What I learned about Allyship as a White DEI Professional

You see, I am a privileged white cis-gendered female who virtually fell into this full time diversity, equity, and inclusion role because of my colleagues’ good faith in me. I had no generally accepted qualifications in the space (I mean, I grew up in beach cities in Southern California, rode horses, and had the privilege of a college savings started before I was even born). When I was in high school and college I was interested in some of the topics covered in this broad space and took courses accordingly, but that was the extent of it. The core curriculum at the college I attended was centered around social justice; I’ve been passionate about, and an advocate for, the expansion of what “success” looks like for professional women in the corporate world since as far back as I can remember; and I have had numerous close friends and family members come out as LGBTQ+ over the years which early on led to my understanding of the importance of advocacy sociopolitically and beyond. Where I had little to no experience, stepping into this role, was in my relationship with the BIPOC community. 

You see, I was hired into the role from the marketing side of things. Given my personal values alignment, I started informally helping out with our diversity and inclusion programs in the region. I planned and organized events, managed relationships with external associations, put together invitations, and wrote essays and proposal content. After about six months of this, and getting to know some of the more active attorneys in the space at our firm, my friend and mentor shared with me that the firm was looking to bring someone on to do this work full time (a new role for the organization). Given the energy and personal passion I felt supporting our efforts in the DEI space, I couldn’t imagine the thought of not getting to continue to contribute. So, at her gentle urging, I decided to apply for the position. I like to think the national leaders of our employee resources groups and human resources team saw my passion and sincere desire to help build the program because, as luck would have it, they hired me. Looking back on my career to date, it is the most rewarding and terrifying role I have ever stepped into.

In the span of 3 months I transitioned out of my marketing role and onto the human resources team. I was terrified about our diverse employees finding out about my lack of qualifications to represent them in this space. I imagine not dissimilar to how many leaders currently feel; expected to advocate and know how to help their employees and the broader BIPOC community through their influence but feeling ill-qualified and equipped to do so, and perhaps a bit fearful about acknowledging that. This mental space typically leads to one of three different coping strategies: task-oriented, emotion-oriented, and avoidance-oriented. I went for a task-oriented approach and spent that 3 month transition (and beyond) learning as much as I possibly could about DEI work and best practices in other organizations. I started with a programmatic outlook, as I’m a natural project manager and organizer and this seemed the best way for me to make a significant impact while I still continued to learn and grow, myself.

While there are numerous individuals sharing resource guides, that are more robust than this, some resources that helped me early on (and hopefully will help you):

• Quick single-topic articles by Dr. Arin Reeves at Nextions
• The Diversity & Flexibility Alliance
• Understanding the main reasons people support DEI in the workplace so that I could better understand how to communicate the “Why” of what we were building (at the time it was money, innovation, and because it’s the right thing to do – that has, thankfully, broadened with current awareness and efforts in the space)
• Anything by Vernā Myers (now VP of Inclusion Strategy at Netflix)
• PFLAG’s “Guide to Being a Straight Ally” had significant early influences on my overall journey as an Ally, as I applied the principles across the full scope of my role
• Connecting with all of the national professional associations in my industry centered around diverse professionals; attending their national conferences in my first year. While the aim was to meet key association representatives in person, along with those across my firm who attended, this had the unintended benefit of showing me what it was like to be the only person (or one of only a few) who looked like me in the room, a feeling often experienced by our BIPOC colleagues. The added privilege I had was that people knew I was there to learn, grow, and support their mission so I was more often greeted with warm pleasantries than not (REALLY important to keep your ego in check here and attend with the intention of listening, learning, and connecting only)
• White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo (this helped a lot with understanding the emotions and perspectives I was experiencing and continues to be a go-to reference for me)
• Diversity in Action: A Manual for Diversity Professionals in Law (while written for the law firm space, it’s chalk full of sound implementation advice for any organization or department)
• Developing a network of other professionals whom I was comfortable sharing my fears, concerns, and growth-areas with. There are a few caveats to this that I learned the hard way:
• • The NETWORK component of this is important, as a lot of our BIPOC colleagues are burned out and oftentimes it can be helpful to reach out to other allies, too – you are not on an island, especially now. I saw this burnout phenomena 6 years ago when I started working in this space and I can only imagine that the experience is heightened in current times. It is important to be sensitive to whom you are talking with and their own mental space. Do they want to go deep on a topic? Send you to a resource instead? Not interested in engaging right now (or ever)? Respect that. It’s not their job to educate you. If your colleague does let you in on their insight or provide feedback, consider it a gift that they put in the energy and trust, and use the knowledge you gain to continue to advocate and grow.
  • Do the hard work yourself: the use of my network was most successful when I reached out to be pointed toward a resource and then did the legwork myself. It was not helpful when I asked people to take valuable energy explaining things to me at a base level. 
  • Seek to understand first and foremost. Most of us can’t really understand the experiences of our diverse friends and colleagues; we haven’t lived it. Nonetheless, we need to fully listen and be present when our colleagues do share, so that we can ultimately advocate from a place of better understanding
  • I still step in it regularly, and you will, too. This was a tough thing for me at first, as I’m naturally pretty conflict avoidant (interesting when you work with attorneys in an emotionally charged space) and I grew up in the age of gold stars, so I bristle a bit at getting things wrong and tend to take it personally. I learned that by stepping into the DEI space I would get it wrong A LOT of the time. I had to learn to be okay with that. I learned that being humble, trying to take the ego out of it, and using these moments as learning opportunities created growth and movement forward for both me and our program. I had to learn not to internalize it. Easier said than done, but it does get easier with practice and experience – I promise.