EP 109: Leadership, Boards & The Power of Reflection with Dr. Keith Dorsey

In this episode, our spotlight series continues with our veteran guests. Host Dr. Lola Adeyemo sits down with Dr. Keith Dorsey — a board strategist, researcher, executive advisor, and author of The Boardroom Journey — to explore how identity, service, and intentional growth come together to form a successful and fulfilling professional journey.

From the U.S. Air Force to nearly three decades in corporate America to doctoral research on corporate board diversity, Dr. Dorsey’s story is a masterclass in clarity, reinvention, and using lived experience to create impact.

He brings a rare intersection of perspectives as a veteran, a Black executive, a turnaround specialist, a multi-board member, a global search leader, and now a portfolio-career strategist whose work is centered on leadership, governance, and generational impact.

In This Episode, You’ll Hear:

✅ Identity & Intersectionality in Leadership

How Dr. Dorsey’s intersections — from military service to corporate leadership to academia — inform how he shows up, leads, and serves today.

✅ Three Career Chapters & the Power of Reinvention

A journey from the Air Force ➡️ corporate executive ➡️ board strategist and researcher — and why he calls this season not retirement, but rewirement.

✅ Education Beyond the Classroom

Why he earned his bachelor’s degree in his 40s, how he completed an MBA surrounded by other executives, and what it means to be a lifelong learner in the real world — not just on paper.

✅ Becoming a Turnaround Specialist

How investing in himself, reading voraciously, and studying his craft helped him lead large teams, solve people/product/process problems, and transform underperforming business units.

✅ What a Portfolio Career Really Is

He breaks down how he built a career that includes board service, executive advising, writing, speaking, consulting, and research — all aligned under a single theme of leadership and governance.

✅ Reflection, Pruning & Finding Your Joy

His philosophy on reflection, identifying what energizes you, pruning what doesn’t, and uncovering your “secret sauce” to guide your next chapter.

✅ Reverse Engineering Success

Why successful people do what others won’t — and how clarity + intentional action can make your goals inevitable.

✅ Food, Culture & Conversation

What he would bring to share with colleagues — and how even a simple meal can spark connection, inclusion, and rich conversation.

About the Guest

Dr. Keith Dorsey is a board strategist, researcher, and executive advisor with decades of leadership experience across military service, corporate America, executive search, and governance. He is the author of The Boardroom Journey and has published work in Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review, Forbes, Directors & Boards, and more.

Dr. Dorsey holds a doctorate in Organizational Change and Leadership from USC and an MBA from Pepperdine Graziadio Business School.

🔗 Connect with Dr. Dorsey on LinkedIn
🔗 Explore The Boardroom Journey

About the Host

Dr. Lola Adeyemo is a workplace inclusion strategist, author, and CEO of EQImindset.
She helps organizations strengthen ERG/BRG programs and build cultures of belonging through strategy, storytelling, and systems change.

🔗 Connect on LinkedIn: Dr. Lola Adeyemo

Want to Go Deeper?

For HR & DEI Leaders:
Need ERG/BRG strategy support or fractional partnership?
📩 Lola@EQImindset.com

For Immigrants & First-Gen Professionals:
Join the free community for networking, resources, and peer support:
👉 www.immigrantsincorporate.org

Want to Dive Deeper into this Conversation and Engage?

Follow on Substack for extended reflections, storytelling, and community insights tied to every episode. Your story matters. Keep thriving in your intersections.
— Dr. Lola Adeyemo

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Hello and welcome to the Thriving in Intersectionality Podcast, a podcast that explores the real experiences of professionals navigating the workplace with layered, leaded identities. I'm your host, Dr. Lola Ateemo, the CEO of EQI Mindset and founder of the nonprofit Immigrants Incorporate Inc. I'm also an author, speaker, and a workplace inclusion strategist. I work with organizations to build communities of belonging through strategy, storytelling, and systems change. This podcast amplifies the voices of professionals from intersectional backgrounds, immigrants, ethnic minorities, first-gen professionals, veterans, working parents, individuals with disabilities, and so many more. Through solo reflections and guest conversations, we'll uncover the eating challenges, celebrate the wins, and offer insights to help you thrive, not just survive in the corporate world. Because in today's global workforce, belonging isn't just a bonus, it's the catalyst for real growth and impact. Let's dive in. On today's episode of the Thriving and Intersectionality Podcast, my guest is Dr. Keith Dorsey. Dr. Keith is a board strategist, a researcher, and a speaker. He helps executives translate leadership success into boardroom impact. As an author of a book titled The Boardroom Journey, he also guides leaders on pathways to corporate board service. Dr. Keith is a former managing partner of CEO and Board Services at a global executive search firm. He's advised Fortune 500 companies for over two decades on governance, succession, and leadership strategy. His work has appeared in multiple Harvard Business Reviews, MIT Stone Management Review, and Forbes articles, where he writes on leadership, diversity, and board effectiveness. He holds a doctorate in organizational change and leadership from the University of Southern California and an MBA from Pepperdine Grazedio Business School. I'm looking forward to sharing this conversation with you and don't forget to read, share, review, and follow Dr. Kate. Thank you for listening. All right, welcome back everyone to another episode of the Thriving in Intersectionality Podcast. I am looking forward to this conversation with Dr. Kate Dursey. And before I bring him in, I'm going to take a minute to talk about intersectionality. Intersectionality is a framework that recognizes how multiple aspects of identity, such as gender, race, ethnicity, immigration status, and class, among so many others, overlap and interact, and it creates a unique experience of privilege or discrimination that cannot be understood by examining just one single factor in isolation. I came across this word a couple of years ago and I've loved it ever since. I always say a huge part of my intersectionality is my immigrant status in America. And of course, I just think Dr. Kimberly Crenshaw gave us a language to capture something that is a part of just being human in a lot of ways.

SPEAKER_02 4:07

Hello, Dr. Lola. It's great to meet you and great to be here.

SPEAKER_01 4:11

Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for your yes. All right. So I'm going to dive right in. We heard your bio a little bit, but I like to take a minute to also understand who my guests are through this lens. So when you when you think of the word intersectionality, could you please highlight some of the identity intersections that are important to you that tells us more of who you are? So that we can connect beyond your bio.

SPEAKER_02 4:37

Beyond my bio, I would say, you know, I'm I bring a lot to the table. I bring a lot to the table as an individual, as you know, just from a personal standpoint and professionally. You know, I'm a father, I'm a husband, I'm uh a son and an uncle. And so I I I bring all of that like most humans bring to the table. And I make certain all of those roles are present. And when I'm in that role, I'm present at the time. That's important to me. But all of those components of those roles really make up who I am today. A lot of what I'm doing today is because of the people I've surrounded myself with. And and so I really do try to embrace the intersectionality of everything I bring to the table being a black man in America right now. Um, I also think about intersectionality when I think about my career. You know, this is my third chapter from a career standpoint. My first chapter was the US military. I was in the Air Force for a number of years. I planned on making that a career of at least 20 years, but um five years into it, I decided, you know what, I want to move on to corporate America. And I entered my second chapter of being, you know, in corporate America, in which I spent 17 years with the Fortune 1000 company and then another 12 years with the Fortune 500 company leading very, very large sales teams. And I, you know, for that 29-year period, I I focused my growth and my career on being a turnaround specialist in corporate America, like I said, running these very large sales teams and being a strategic growth expert. And so I when you do that for a number of years, really lifting up the hood and figuring out whether that new entity that I was working with had a people, product, or process problem and then making the necessary tweaks there, really building trust and and uh, you know, I spent a career doing that. Then I entered my third chapter in January 2019 when I was supposed to go in semi-retirement. I entered this portfolio career chapter where I took all of that human capital and leadership experience from the military and from corporate America as an executive, and I brought it into this portfolio career of doing a little bit of this and a little bit of that, executive advisory work, um, board service. I started serving on corporate boards, and then I went back to school to get my doctorate and organizational change and leadership. And it was there that I started investigating and researching and doing studies around the lack of gender and ethnic diversity on corporate boards. So I entered this new chapter, um, you know, being a board member and corporate governance was a big part of it. And then an executive search firm found me and said, Keith, with all your strategic growth experience in corporate America, coupled with all your research around corporate board refreshment and corporate board diversity, we think you would be excellent in search. And I became a search professional uh as a managing partner and a practice leader of CEO and board services for Global Executive Search Firm. So when you think at Dr. Lola and talk about intersectionality from a professional standpoint, uh it's there that I brought in something that's very unique. 25 years of being an executive in corporate America, um, several years of being a vet a military person, uh, and then the fact that I've served on six corporate boards, uh, you know, or six boards, three private company boards, one municipality, one university, and one nonprofit. And then you couple that with my role in being an executive at a professional search firm, and then lastly, all the research I did to become to get my doctorate and organizational change and leadership, with that intersectionality of those three chapters, coupled with all those uh learning experiences and uh expertise, I I bring a unique intersectionality to the to the world, I think, in a professional way. And this chapter is about letting go and letting God and paying things forward and hopefully creating uh an environment where I can do generative work to make a difference in the world and have that be part of my legacy. So that was a long-winded answer.

SPEAKER_00 9:52

And I no, oh my gosh, I was just like, okay, I'm gonna let you finish.

SPEAKER_01 9:57

I wanted to interject so many times, but I think you you did a great job of blending the two. The second question I was gonna ask, but I'm gonna still bring you back to which is the your journey, your career journey. And then I was gonna make a comment about the fact that I thought you were trying to retire. You never actually did.

SPEAKER_02 10:19

You and my family and many others thought I was trying to retire. I thought I was, I'm not even allowed to say the word anymore. It's not retirement, it's more of a rewirement.

SPEAKER_00 10:31

Rewirement. You know what? You are my that's interesting. That I I heard that phrase from my last guest, uh Celeste Warren. She was the first person, I had never heard that before until she said, Oh, you know, she you know, this is a rewirement phase. And I was like, huh, that's a good way to put it because that's what I want to do. I can envision myself always wanting to do something. And I think sometimes when we use the word yeah, retirement, we kind of think you stop everything.

SPEAKER_02 11:02

Absolutely. I am right there with you. I have neighbors that golf every day, and you know what? I I I can't I can't do that, you know. I I think retirement for me, ultimate the ultimate retirement would be I move from working five days a week to taking Fridays off and having a three-day weekend every week to then taking Thursdays off and having a you know a long weekend of Thursday through uh through Sunday. That's my retirement where on Monday through Wednesday, I am just gonna focus on giving back to the world in various ways.

SPEAKER_01 11:44

Yeah, and I and I think I mean it it's the freedom.

SPEAKER_00 11:49

It's the freedom to do what you want to do on your own terms, right? That that's really what what I what I explain to people, you know, like we're not looking for I'm not looking for retirement for example where I don't have to work.

SPEAKER_01 12:02

Yes, it's it's more for I want the freedom to do what I want to do, to to shape what I want to shape, and a lot of times we get to do that sooner than we think.

SPEAKER_02 12:14

So especially if you make it a priority, and uh, you know, in this in this third chapter, this portfolio career, I am only doing things that I'm extremely passionate about. What I uncovered was that I was passionate about a lot of things, and so that's how I end up becoming uh a full-time job, and so now I'm focused on moving from being a floodlight to a spotlight and then ultimately a laser and be laser focused about the way I want to get back and move forward in this world. Um, right now I'm in that spotlight phase, but I initially, because of my passions, I was full on a floodlight. But I've since learned that no is a complete sentence, and I'm learning how to say no to even things that I'm passionate about so that I can eventually get to be laser focused.

SPEAKER_01 13:17

Exactly, exactly. Yep, no, no apologies needed, no explanation needed when we choose to say no. Um all right, well, I am gonna take you back through that career journey a little bit uh because I I wanted to start from school just because we didn't touch about uh uh we didn't touch on that. We have a lot of early career professionals. Well, apart from the doctorate, the fact that you decided to go do a doctorate after a full career, that's a different question. Uh, but we have a lot of you know professionals um that linked in, some of them earlier in their career, maybe just finishing bachelor's or um or just thinking about masters, and you know, there's different schools of thought around education and degrees these days. I my dad was a professor, so I'm always going to be a proponent for education, and the way people uh choose to do it or what they study, I think that's up to individuals. But I wanted to learn a little bit about your educational journey. What did you study? How did it translate when when you did decide to do a doctorate and everything else you studied in between?

SPEAKER_02 14:29

Yeah, you know, it's my educational journey has been quite interesting, and many people don't know much about it, but I I um uh went into the air force straight out of high school. In fact, I knew the summer between my junior year of high school and senior year of high school uh the exact date that I was leaving for the Air Force. I enlisted in the Air Force before I started my senior year of high school. So I knew what date I was leaving right after I graduated from high school. But I also knew while I was in the military that I wanted the military to pay for my undergraduate education. And so I um six months into the military, I started taking college classes on base uh to work on my bachelor's degree. And I did that throughout my five years in the Air Force, and I just continued, you know, to take classes, two to three classes at a time, until eventually I was able to get my undergraduate degree. But life happened. Um I left the military before I completed my degree and married with young kids, moving into corporate America, and I was taking classes when I was a full-time salesperson in corporate America, still going to school. And all my peers that I was working with in the same role as mine already had their bachelor's degrees. And so most of the world and my colleagues just assumed I had a bachelor's. I didn't. I was still taking night classes, doing what I needed to do to uh get the education I thought was necessary. But at the same time, I believed in meritocracy, I believed in working hard to do what you need to do and become a student of your profession. So outside of my classes, I averaged two professional business books a month that I would read to make me better in my profession of sales. And I back then there were cassette tapes, and so I would I remember going to an all-day event, listening to all these professional speakers in sales talk. And at the end, I bought $500 of cassette tapes to learn how to be a better salesperson. And I came home and I was working in a commission-only job, and I just spent $500 in my self-improvement education, and and my wife said, You went there to do better and and so you can make more money, and you just spent $500, we didn't have. But I believed in becoming a student of my profession, and I learned so much from those tapes. And that year I became the number one salesperson in the company, and I was the only one out of 50 salespeople to hit quota that year, and they immediately flew me up to headquarters, and it was the first year of this new division, Dr. Lola. And they said um, they put me around the table, and it was at the same time of the Clarence Thomas, Anita Hill herrings, and I sat in front of this group of executives at our headquarters around this huge U-shaped table, and they grilled me for about six hours, asking me question after question. And their first opening statement was, Keith, you are the only salesperson to hit quota in our inaugural year. We clearly got the quota wrong, but you didn't only hit quota, you smashed the quota, and we're here to talk to you about the things you did. Well, because I came as became a student of that of my profession, I brought a lot of things to the table that they didn't teach me in their training program, and I incorporated it, and I just was honest with them, and I told them all these things that I did. And after about six hours of being grilled in front of them, they said, Well, what we think we would like to do is immediately promote you into management, and we want you to teach others how to do the things you you you told us you did so that we can grow this division much quicker. And that's exactly what I did. And that was the beginning of my turn becoming this turnaround specialist, uh, was because I invested in myself. Uh, and I went on and built a 17-year career with them, really taking over teams, looking under the hood, figuring out whether they had a people product process issue, and then making the necessary tweaks to to fix the things that need to be fixed, surround myself with the people that need to be there in order for us to be successful. And I did that throughout my career. And I continue to go to school. We had children, we moved, we did, life happened. And I didn't get my bachelor's degree until I was uh just over 40 years old. Um, but most of my colleagues, because I at that point I was an executive for almost eight years with the company, uh senior manager with the company, and most thought I already had my MBA, and here I am going and taking night classes and corresponding courses to get my bachelor's, and I did. And then after getting my bachelor's, I I went to Pepperdine and I got my MBA at a president's and key executive MBA program that Pepperdine University still has to this day, yeah, which the average the average age of the students were 45. We all were executives. And instead of reading HBR articles and and research um case studies, we pretty much had an NDA and we could talk about the organizations we were leading as CEOs, presidents, or heads of sales, uh CFOs, and we would talk and do case studies about our own company. And and and that's how we learned, and we met every three weeks from Thursday to Saturday, every three weeks for 15 months, and I got my MBA from them, and that was my first introduction to becoming faculty because after that I became an adjunct professor with Pepperdine.

SPEAKER_01 21:16

Oh, you you you left that out, you left that part of your career.

SPEAKER_02 21:20

I became an adjunct professor, and uh uh and then I also um was asked to join the board at Pepperdine University's business school board uh after completing my MBA there, and that was my very first core uh very first board at that point. So that's a little bit about my education and formal education and informal education and what it meant for me to drive my career by becoming a student of my profession.

SPEAKER_01 21:54

Yeah, well, two things. First, that was the best $500 investment I will tell my spouse. You spent if I was your wife, it's like, oh, good investment. Um, but I also love that I'm glad I asked that question. I'm glad we got to dive into this because I think a lot of times when people are asking about degrees, it's almost you think getting this degree is like the magic bullet for something, and so you pour so much into getting the degree, and then you finish and you look up and you're like, okay, who's gonna recognize this? Who's gonna do something to me for me because of this? And so it's helping people understand the learning happens outside the classroom as well as in the classroom, um, whether you're working on a degree or program. Um and so I I thank you for thank you for sharing that that path to to your learning. Um, I think there's so much we can do on our own to drive our educational career and align it with professional experience. Um, especially these days. I mean, degrees become what's that research around degrees becoming irrelevant as quickly as a few years after getting it. So if all you're doing is reading textbooks and and uh and getting good grades, you're missing out on the whole point of getting an advanced degree or even a fashion.

SPEAKER_02 23:18

Couldn't agree with you more, Dr. Loma.

SPEAKER_01 23:21

All right, well, after like 1500 careers, the Dr. Kid is bringing all of this lens together, and we're kind of getting into the advice piece already, right? So this for anyone listening who can relate with your background, your your journey, your intersections, and um is thinking of what's my next step, what's the next phase for me, how do I advance in my career? Um, what should they be thinking now? What should they be doing? And I I know you also use the phrase portfolio career. I've heard it before. For those that haven't heard it before, if you want to shed more light on what what you meant when you said my portfolio career, yeah. Um advice that you want to give to people around that.

SPEAKER_02 24:10

That's a great, uh, great question. Uh, just quickly, a portfolio career is where you are doing many different things, uh, several different things in your career. And uh, you know, for me, it's being an consultant and an executive advisory advisor. And also um, another career is serving on corporate boards, and then I have you know, another career of now being a senior advisor at a uh executive search firm. And then lastly, I am a writer. I write articles that have been published in Harbor Business Review. I write articles with uh MIT, Slow Management, Forbes, Fast Company, Directors and Boards, and others. And then I also wrote a book called The Boardroom Journey that was published by Wiley this past May of 2025. So uh, and then I travel around the globe as a speaker. So when you think about some people might just have one of those categories as their career, the fact that I chose in areas that I'm passionate about to have many different types of careers under this portfolio, that's what I mean by a portfolio career.

SPEAKER_01 25:37

Yeah, yeah. Somebody I I I like uh sorry to interrupt, I I like that I wanted you to go into that because I think when I was in corporate America, and I'm I don't know what stage of my career I am in now, but I was in corporate America for about 17 years. I know one of the things I struggled with is I always thought there was something wrong with me. Why can't I just focus on one thing? You know, like okay, but I want to write, I want to speak, I want to do this, and and then I got introduced to that phrase, and it gave me, you know, just very comfortable way to sit and process all of the things I want to do and know that it's okay to have multiple interests because your your big umbrella is still the same, you're still you, you still have the same big vision of the things you are passionate about, how you do it. It's just got many, many tools, many, many steps to this tool.

SPEAKER_02 26:29

Absolutely. And the catch is you know, you don't want to be a floodlight, a spotlight is fine, but you do want to be laser focused about your impact and begin with the end in mind. So to have a portfolio career that's so disparate that you don't know whether you're coming or going, that might not be healthy, but to have it all around the theme, and my theme is around leadership and it's around corporate governance. So everything that I'm doing, my writing, my speaking, my advisory, my consulting, uh, all of that is around that leadership and corporate governance from that lens, those lenses. So I think um that's key to really having a successful portfolio career. And Dr. Lola, you asked the question about what advice you know do I share? What I share with people. As an executive advisor, I really talk with people about one, the power of reflection. And you mentioned this early in our earlier conversation. Uh, you challenge people to reflect. And as individuals in our busyness of life, we know that we should be reflecting on on a routine basis, but we don't necessarily take the time. And if there has to be some sort of trade-off, it's always that time that we allocate it towards reflection, it's the thing that we trade it off. And it's probably the biggest mistake we can make because so much comes from out of reflecting. So I would challenge people uh to take time to reflect, and these are the things I want them to uncover from their reflection. One, reflect on what brings you joy. I mean, to really think about what brings you joy, because we get caught up in our busyness of life, and we end up without reflecting, we end up doing a bunch of things because someone asked us to, and because we can. And the saying there is just because you can doesn't mean you should. And when you take the time to reflect on what brings you joy, then you could begin and you truly uncover what brings you joy, you could begin to prune the things in your life, whether that's relationships or tasks or jobs or whatever, you could begin to prune the things that don't bring you joy. And because they're taking your energy, and there's only a finite amount of you. And by pruning the things that don't bring you joy, you can begin to thrive in areas that do. And you can sprout new growth. I call it, you know, letting go and letting God, because you pruned the things that didn't bring you joy, you now have more energy to sprout that new growth in the areas that can make a big difference. And the force multipliers that come from focusing on your secret sauce, your superpowers, your strengths, and less on your weaknesses, is where you really uh can end up having a serendipitous journey that is so rich in joy, so rich in success, because you took the time to reflect. Then reflect on why I want to do whatever I think I wanted to do uh or need to do. And and I mentioned it before. Reflect on when you are doing great, why you're doing great, when you have problems, why you're having problems, and you'll begin to uncover your secret sauce, you'll begin to uncover your superpowers, and you could begin to be more intentional about bringing those your secret sauce and your superpowers into whatever you're trying to do. And there was an assessment that I took many, many years ago uh called strength binders. And strength finders, you have your 34 care 34 areas that uh you can have strengths and weaknesses, and it ranks them. And the whole idea there was to spend all your time, if you can, on you with your top five strengths, and so strengths the 30, the 29th through 34th, your bottom five, it doesn't mean you can't do them, right? If you have enough commitment capital, you could do whatever you put your mind towards, it just takes so much more energy. But those uh who focus on their top five strengths um really excel because it doesn't take a lot of energy to make to do things, and so it's some of those things that I learned via the power of reflection and assessment, and then taking the information and doing something differently with the information. Many people have taken many assessments, many 360s, and and they got information, they have incredible data, but do nothing differently with the data. That's also important.

SPEAKER_01 31:44

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I love it. I I love taking assessments too. But one other thing that I think kind of tied up to the reflection is that we're changing. So if you're operating in a space where you've outgrown, then you haven't re-reflected enough to realize that I've expanded beyond here. I need to move to the next phase. And I think that's the biggest miss we have. Just because it's been working for 10 years doesn't mean you stay there forever. You might be up for a brand new challenge. Maybe I'm like me, I knew I loved new beginnings, I love new projects. I got into project management early on because I was like, I just got excited before the project ends. I'm like, okay, when is the next one starting? So, you know, but that's that's where understanding ourselves and then reflecting on where we are really comes in. So thank you so much for that. Um, anything else you want to share uh before I ask our final question?

SPEAKER_02 32:45

You know, I I you know those are things that I think if more of us would do those intentionally, uh, we would get really different results than what we're getting today. Um, there was a saying that I heard many, many years ago: successful people do what unsuccessful people don't do. And and really learning about your strengths, your weaknesses, and learning what it takes to be successful wherever you want it to go, uh, and then reverse engineer that to then execute on the little steps that you need to get to your goals, you'll you'll almost hit your goal 100% of the time when you begin to incorporate the things that most people who want like that exact same goal aren't doing, uh you'll you'll get different results. And so I uh I try to lead people with that bit of advice, you know, focus on what needs to happen, reverse and you know where do you want to go, reverse engineer it, and then go execute.

SPEAKER_01 34:00

And then go execute. Thank you so much. I love it. I for those listening, I will have uh Dr. Kate's book and details and where to find some of his light reading on board service, um, because I think that's also an unexplored path for a lot of people. Just what boards are uh I'm I'm looking forward to sharing that and checking out your books and articles as well. And I think that was one of the things on your work that I saw that um excited me to beet in you. Thank you so much for saying yes and coming to chat with me today. Um, I always end with a final question. And the question is if you were to share a meal with your co-workers, what would you pick and why?

SPEAKER_02 34:48

What would I eat?

SPEAKER_01 34:50

What would you pick if you were to share something, a meal? Take a meal or a snack to work to have with your co-workers. What what food item or snack or meal would you peak? And why did you pick what you picked?

SPEAKER_02 35:06

No, that is a that's a fun question. That's an interesting question. What would I peak? I don't even know.

SPEAKER_00 35:19

I love I I I I it's meant to make you think, it's meant to stomp you. Okay. You you did it, you you definitely did.

SPEAKER_01 35:30

What would I think? If you were to take something to share with your co-workers, it could be a snack, it could be a meal, it could be a fruit, yeah. What would you choose?

SPEAKER_02 35:45

I would choose a sandwich. And I would choose a sandwich because that's something that someone would feel comfortable sharing with someone else. So I can cut that sandwich into four pieces, and and the four of us can have a conversation around uh whatever topic we want uh while enjoying the exact same meal. I will pick a sandwich, and we can even incorporate our thoughts about the sandwich, and that will bring up uh different perspectives uh because we're different people, and it would be fascinating to hear and have a discussion around what I like about the sandwich and dislike about the sandwich and how that differs from the other three that are sharing that meal with me.

SPEAKER_01 36:43

Yeah, see, that's why I asked the why question with these, and I always enjoy tying back the way people respond to this question to the responses and the person that I've been getting to know since the beginning, uh, because you just made a simple sandwich meal about inclusion and about conversation, and that speaks to a lot of the themes that I've heard you talk about. Absolutely conversation right there.

SPEAKER_02 37:13

Um, I'm thinking about diversity of thought, I'm thinking about the mental models, I'm thinking about their cultural capital, and when they're reaching back and thinking about their comfort foods and why, and and so all of that can come from out of you know us breaking bread together by having some exactly.

SPEAKER_01 37:35

Thank you so much for that. I love it, and um, thank you for taking the time to chat with me today. It's been great uh hearing about you, getting to know you, and I look forward to staying connected. So if you're listening, don't forget to share, rate, and review this episode and let me know your thoughts. Connect on LinkedIn um with myself. Dr. Kitts uh LinkedIn will also be on the show notes. So um let us know what you think about this episode and any thoughts or feedback.

SPEAKER_02 38:06

Thank you, Dr. Lola. I enjoyed this.

SPEAKER_01 38:14

Thank you for being part of today's conversation on thriving in intersectionality. If you're an HR or DEI leader and you need employer resource group or business resource group resources, let's connect and LinkedIn and help organizations build inclusive cultures through inclusive workplace communities, strategy, and storytelling. Immigrants and first-gen professionals join our free community at www.immigrantsincorporate.org for career support, networking, and resources in community with peers who understand your journey. Tag our podcast page on LinkedIn or connect with me directly to continue the conversation. Please don't forget to rate and review to help others discover these discussions. Keep thriving in your intersections. Your story matters. I'm Dr. Lola Adeemo, and this has been Thriving in Intersectionality Podcast.