-: I was a principal and Bay was a summer intern,
and he comes into my office and he says,
"I want to talk about all these things, like how I make
"my slides and my analysis." And then he said,
"I also want to talk to you about racism."
And I said, "Oh, that's interesting."
And Bay proceeded to open up
a conversation with me that
was analytical and thoughtful and
personal about his life
and his thoughts and what he's committed to.
And it struck me as different for
a white person to raise the topic and to
have such fluidity and clarity and
confidence in that conversation.
-: Ellen was one of the people that
when I sort of said, "Hey, would you be
"up for talking about this?"
She said, "Yes."
And then over the years,
I kept picking up the phone, checking in,
"How are you doing?"
"Can we keep talking?"
And she just kept saying "Yes."
And so it would just go, year after year.
And she would introduce me to
other people, and we would stay connected.
And then when that
opportunity to work came up,
I was the one that said yes, because it was a no-brainer.
So it's been a great journey, great coming together.
And there's no doubt BCG was a huge part of it.
What we do at the Groundwater Institute is something that I
have wanted to do for a long time professionally.
And that is,
what I call leveraging or harnessing the power of business,
and the wisdom and the staying power of social movements,
racial justice movements in particular,
and bringing those things together so that we could really
move the ball forward in the country and in the world in
terms of moving towards racial equity.
-: What I think distinguishes us in this work
is that we bring a framing and a lens
for structural racism that helps
leaders develop a more sophisticated
analysis to respond to a problem that has a depth and a
complexity to it that I think is easy for us to ignore.
-: Our work is based on the idea that
diagnosis determines treatment.
And so we do spend time talking with people about what
causes racial inequity, what causes gender inequity,
what causes any kind of inequity that's not desired,
because our view is if we're not aligned
about what the underlying causes are,
then even people who agree that inequity is a problem can
end up working across purposes.
-: We have had the tremendous opportunity to work with BCG
recently on building leadership
and DEI racial equity work amongst BCG's senior leadership.
And we continue to be inspired by the caliber of leadership,
by the brainpower in BCG, and by the commitment of the folks
that we've worked with. And it gives me hope in this work.
-: I'm donating my prize to
the Indigenous Resurgence Institute: Honor the Old Ways.
The organization is just coming together,
but building on a history of work
that's going to include working with indigenous ceremonial
elders and doing work that is important to them.
But key projects are going to include
the work of international repatriation,
which is actually repatriating remains and sacred objects
of people, things,
and human remains that were literally stolen and
exported all over the globe.
And the work of international repatriation
is actually about repatriating those things home.
-: I'm donating my gift to
the Greensboro Health Disparities Collaborative.
The Greensboro Health Disparities Collaborative
is a group of committed community people,
academic leaders,
and medical professionals who have worked together for
decades to study how racism operates in the health system
and to work to eliminate disparities in outcomes
in cancer care rates and in outcomes for
breast and lung cancer in Greensboro, North Carolina.