The Rainbow Disruption Transcript

[00:00:00] More Elephant Intro

[00:00:36] Jason Rudman: Welcome to the latest edition of the More Elephant podcast. I'm really, really excited to welcome Jarvis Sam to the conversation. Jarvis is the CEO and founder of the multifaceted consulting company that focuses on DE&I called Rainbow Disruption.

Before that, he's a legend, if I do say so myself, I've got him laughing already - in the DE&I space, previously the chief diversity and inclusion officer at Nike before that Snap, before that, diversity efforts at Google, I can keep going, he's an adjunct professor at Brown and it's my honor to have you here because I'm excited to learn from you about your journey and listen to you as we talk about all things representation.

[00:01:22]Jarvis Sam: Fantastic. Thank you so much, Jason, for having me. I am so thrilled to get to talk about a topic that's so near and dear to my heart that I've had the opportunity to work on in so many different professional capacities. But that really is my personal life's mission to try to find ways to deconstruct and tear down some of the barriers that limit representation, access, and opportunity.

[00:01:43] Jason Rudman: And the tagline of More Elephant is listen, learn, live, better. 

[00:01:46] Jarvis Sam: Incredible. 

[00:01:47] Jason Rudman: And so what better opportunity for me as well, as an individual to just listen to a point of view that I think, as you said, we need to give more power, more volume, and more deliberate conversation to because we have work to do.

I'd love to start with the More Elephant moment or moments. I think it takes a lot of courage to wake up one day and say, this is the day. I've served the good in a corporate setting. It's now my time to go somewhere else. I'm going to start a consultancy, I'm going to step out on faith, because this is what I've listened to and this is the impact that I can have. So, can you describe for our listeners when you said, this is the now, this is what I was put on this earth to do. Let's go.

[00:02:34] Jarvis Sam: You know, I get a similar question, Jason, from a lot of adolescents and early in career talent when they're asking about my career arc and personal and professional trajectory. And I tell them, you know, albeit what LinkedIn says about us or organizations that we've had the opportunity to associate ourselves with, none of our careers are linear.

And there were definitely several moments throughout my career journey where it became clear to me that this is the moment that I need to do something different.

And for me, I've always been so inspired by this amazing quotation. I believe it's a Harvard Business School professor, Deepak Malhotra, where he has this concept of “quit early and quit often.” But he doesn't think about the term quit in a pejorative or negative sense; it's this idea that to maintain effective relationships and to grow your professional journey, you have to be context switching and context setting very often, which only happens when you leave certain environments and move to other spaces.

He argues ‘quit early’ so that you're in a space to maintain those relationships and grow it collectively before it's had an opportunity to diminish some of the great return. And so that's what's been a connectivity point for my entire career journey and how I did that. Specifically with Nike, though, the big moment for me, after five years at Nike, I looked back and I was so proud of everything that we had accomplished from the setting of 2025 goals and achieving those several years ahead of schedule to getting to connect with some of the world's biggest athletes like Serena Williams, LeBron James, Colin Kaepernick, and see their stories breed true through the lens of Nike and the impact that they wanted in terms of representation.

For me, it's the nature of why I started the company and named it what I did. When I think about a rainbow, I'll never forget my first direct exposure to the view of a rainbow beyond the traditional, like, post-storm impact. It was through a prism. And this concept of shining a light through a prism emits this beauty of colors, this multiplicity of colors, the rainbow, the spectrum of rainbows. And that's what I desired to do.

My More Elephant moment was where I realized I have shined a light into some areas, but to fully give exposure to that prism, I need to be working across academia, nonprofit, government, and Fortune 500 corporations to try to bridge some of the divide that exists today. 

Part of why we can't advance DEI work in a way that feels scalable and sustainable is so many of those institutions are running in different directions, and no one is coalescing around a shared agenda that's going to drive consistent impact that's measurable and monitorable. And when I realized that, I knew it was time for me to leave the corporate world behind in the traditional sense and connect with a variety of different corporate entities along the journey.

[00:05:29] Jason Rudman: So going from one to one, if you like, to one to many on some level and having that impact. There's a lot to unpack there. I feel as though the quitting metaphor and, you framed it in a way.

We associate quitting, mentally quitting, physically quitting with defeat and not being able. And you reframed it to appreciating that there's another journey. So in order to get to that next level, in order to get to that next journey, I have to quit on great terms.

Not always easy. You know, from my own experience, that's happened in the recent past a couple of times and I left on great terms. It took me a while to feel great that my quitting had been received in the way that I had intended it to. I'm not giving up. It's just, there's a bigger journey for me.

What does the one-to-many model look like?

Because I'm sitting across in the Spotify Studios talking to you and I'm thinking, okay, Jarvis, how do you activate that? You want to have horizontal impact across many different facets. You're trying to bring together corporations, nonprofits, other personalities into that.

The framework for The Rainbow Disruption - talk a little bit about what that is. What you hope to activate? How you activate that? That is the idea and the change in what you're trying to do. How does that all come about? 

[00:06:50] Jarvis Sam: You know, when people talk about the diversity, equity and inclusion space, they think about it through a very people-centric lens. And I think the reason for that is, on the whole, DE&I tends to sit in HR organizations in companies. The majority of what I've learned, though, and how I run my practice, centers around positioning DEI relative to the corporate strategy of an organization, meaning we have to understand the product. And it's that exact lens that has helped me to understand one-to-one versus one-to-many.

It's the essence of what Snapchat is and what Snapchat was built off of. I studied that product in such depth when working there and understood there is a certain vulnerability that occurs when you have ephemeral messaging of one-to-one communication.

But there's something so powerful when you do one-to-many conversations through broadcast and through stories. And that is how I developed a framework for which the Rainbow Disruption runs off of. The way that we move from a deeply verticalized approach of engaging with just one organization to impacting that horizontal is through the lens of broadcast.

By creating forums with things like Rainbow Disrupt Con, our first ever convening of LGBTQ plus professionals, we're able to create a forum where we're bringing together all of the different stakeholders and populations that are part of this conversation, equipping them with some shared knowledge and resources of what we're navigating in the status quo and then giving them the strategies and capabilities to return back to their institutions and make great change.

In addition to that, I use the stories format or functionality through platforms like Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, and LinkedIn, to help share stories of realities of experiences of work that I've built around representation, education, professional development, and community. It then creates an environment where we are disseminating and distributing information at scale.

And so then when we go in and work with our clients directly, we are able to refocus on the horizontal to the vertical, looking at their product, looking at their branding and marketing efforts, their team and talent, as well as HR strategies, and creating approaches that feel that only deeply coalesced with where they should be going to achieve their true North, but in a way that feels authentic to that brand.

And that's where you really start to see big change and growth in capability. It's the movement to understand your consumers, your investors, your shareholders, and your employees are all a part of this broader ecosystem that helps you to advance your approach to equity and inclusion. 

[00:09:14] Jason Rudman: I love that. So as a, you know, the arc of my professional career has been digital for have no shame, I had a dot edu address before I had a Gmail address, right? My Gmail address is my first name and my last name. I've been around long enough.

So embedded in the customer experience and I feel as though what we're talking here is that the customer experience plus the employee experience becomes a human experience,which then feeds the shareholder return, the community connection that brands have.

I also feel as you talked about how you got here, and you and I talked about this a little bit beforehand in our prior conversation that we had, that we're seeing, I'm going to call it a rollback or a lack of accountability. That's how I feel. I don't know if you agree. I'm going to go post-George Floyd, huge signals that we're going to invest millions, billions. We're going to finally address the lack of representation for underappreciated and underrepresented communities across a wide spectrum. And then I feel that what I'm seeing is a gentle and sometimes not-so-gentle rollback.

So, a) are you sensing that as well? And then b) how do you then come in and help re-pivot, re-address, re-point in a different direction through the consultant work that you're doing?

[00:10:36] Jarvis Sam: Part of the biggest challenge with how so many organizations have navigated diversity, equity, and inclusion is it's been so centered around noise, as opposed to signals. And, when macro signals do come up and, unfortunately tends to be in either the form of tragic moments impacted communities or legislation or judiciary decisions that negatively impact the entire history of a particular populationn - George Floyd's murder was one of those signals.

It gave life to the reality of the impact of the connection between black male experiences tied to policing and police brutality in general. The challenge is, the reason that it resonated with so many people was because we had this other macro signal happening, the pandemic COVID 19.

We move to action when there's a shared reality of our experience together. Think about all of the many murders prior to George Floyd, several of which got significant media attention, most of which did not. Think about all of the murders that have happened since George Floyd's. Some of them have gotten media attention, the majority of them have not.

It was such a resounding signal that organizations felt the need to react. 

Similarly, the overturning of affirmative action approaches and collegiate admissions has gotten a lot of attention, and rightfully so. But, folks are not paying attention to what's happening in local school board meetings, state legislatures, municipal city council policies that are being put in place. Those are arguably just as, if not more, harmful than some of those principles that are being rolled down because the impact is not being seen at scale.

What happens in this space is when companies then decide to react to those actions as they happen, it creates a space where intent does not match action. And so, we saw tons of companies highlight millions upon billions of dollars of investment and commitment around their engagement with Black communities, and they had a ton of key strategies surrounding it.

I mean, Jason, I got emails from companies that I didn't even know I was on their email listserv, telling me how committed they are to Black communities. I have not heard from any of them since that initial commitment email, and it's so challenging, especially for major retailers who I patronize often to know these commitments were made and yet there was no follow up aligned to that. Why? 

Because the only accountability channel would be either through the consumer lens or the employee lens. There is no shared industry accountability on some of these topics between organization to organization, government to organization, or otherwise. And so I can't tell you where the majority of the funds that were committed have been utilized, and there's been little to no follow up.

Many organizations will write in their annual ESG or impact reports, here's where we gave money to. And yet the reality is, are we tracking how that's impacting the experiences of individual lives? And how is that then reshaping things like internal organizational corporate structures, supplier diversity programs, team and talent strategies? I just haven't seen that.

At The Rainbow Disruption though, we help companies find greater alignment with that. We argue that it's important that we recognize that these forms of policies in practice will continue. It's the nature of our reality today. It is what companies then do with that information though that matters a ton.

We are seeing this a lot right now, Jason, as we're seeing these macro trends of both general anti-LGBT and more specifically anti-trans legislation being positioned. So many organizations are operating through a significant lens of fear. They don't want to say the wrong thing; they don't want to do the wrong thing. They don't want to feel that they're isolating a certain community or population. And yet the reality is their silence is incredibly isolating to identified communities.

As we see more than 500 bills around the nation be positioned with this deep anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, we depend on organizations and corporations to have a voice in that space, but it has to be authentic voice. There has to be a level of - if we aligned ourselves and subscribe ourselves to this governmental principle of corporations held to similar standards as individuals - I would argue that as individuals need psychological safety, corporations also need to exist in a space of psychological safety.

Meaning they're not infallible, they can make mistakes. But by demonstrating a level of curiosity, asking the right questions and bringing the right folks from the community in to be a part of this conversation, the vulnerability and authenticity by which you lead in that space gives you the cache to take risk, to make mistakes, and then try to do and be better.

We got a couple of hallmark examples of companies from this past summer that people point to around impact on Pride campaigns. I think the reality is if we start to see companies show up through this lens of Pride 365 and actively demonstrating their connected support to communities all year long, you don't get into these spaces where it feels like either queer-baiting or you have opportunities for dissenters or detractors to come in and overrun your perspective.

And so we try to help organizations find that consistency and congruence in their approach so that when these macro moments happen, they're able to respond effectively. 

[00:16:14] Jason Rudman: I feel again that we're talking about incidents in the summer with a number of brands that in my mind were authentically pro “fill in the blank.”

And you talked about psychological safety. I'll elevate it, and I'm borrowing this phrase from a friend of mine, of moving from psychological safety to psychological bravery, because it is very interesting in the environment that we're in.

And one of the things that I wanted to make sure in the More Elephant podcast that I stayed away from is political discourse, because I don't think that we're actually a picking a side or talking about politics, I think what you and I know to be true and share is that equality costs nothing and ultimately, hurts no one.

And so when you use that as your barometer, then it's a real challenge to feel as though, “well, hold on a minute.” Like the ‘Pride 365’ as an example. I love the threading of the needle from African-American challenge in the George Floyd era to LGBT. We could talk about women, we could talk about the Latin population. We can go in a number of different directions.

I think what's fascinating to me, and what you picked up on, is we're in such a moment where there are brands that have been x 365 and have been faithfully supporting underrepresented, underappreciated communities. And then in one moment feel that they've got to dial all of that back.

What does that say to us in terms of where we are? You've got this arc of involvement and creating and having impact. Next chapter with Rainbow Disruption, right? That's your next chapter.

But what does that say to you in terms of what you're hopeful about? And then what you're most concerned about in this moment? 

[00:17:59] Jarvis Sam: You know, I understand the impetus to avoid conversations that engage in politics, but I don't think for corporations, it's possible. I'm doing a lecture these days that a lot of companies are hiring me on how to thrive in an environment of change, particularly in a world of social and political polarization.

And one of the pieces that I highlight is [that] we have to create forums where political discourse can exist in the workplace. Political diversity is arguably one of the biggest areas of diversity that we don't talk about. And the reason is if we think about identity and social identity through the lens of the iceberg, there are some things that are above the waterline of the iceberg, the more visible qualities and characteristics. There are some that are less visible and there are some that are seemingly not visible at all.

Political ideologies tend to exist in that not visible space in the workplace because we've often been so conditioned to not talk about things like politics, race, sex in the workplace. Whereas the reality is we have to get to a space where there is a comfort around that and how do we enter into these conversations respectfully.

The reality is a lot of organizations, because of the tie of politics to identity, a lot of organizations throw the baby out with the bath water and don't talk about either at all. We have to create space in our organizations where all political ideologies can have space in a respectful way.

Now, when the holding of your political ideology comes into conflict with someone's identity, then we have to talk about the challenge that exists there. But I think just a complete aversion to the topic in the workplace is really why we've gotten to where we are today.

The reason corporations struggle with some of the decisions that they're making is you have a diversity, equity and inclusion team advocating for a whole host of perspectives connected to representation, access, opportunity creation. You have a whole business unit that's running the corporate side of the business in terms of product, merchandising, B2B engagement with clients. But you also have a government and public affairs team that is literally working on both sides of the agenda to ensure that policy, whether it's connected to trade, supply-chain, international engagement, foreign policy, are aligned to ensure that the company can effectively generate revenue and profits. They're not disconnected in any way. 

We just need to take on a more respectful and holistic approach that says how do all of these things feed into each other and where is going to be the bright line that we as organizations draw in the sand to say we will remain committed to driving these actions that positively and productively impact our consumers, our bottom-line, our employees, but also stand true to our values in that regard as well.

The reality is Jason, corporations can do this. We've seen it with the climate change agenda a ton. When it comes to global sustainability and ESG programs, we've seen them navigate certain climate provisions that they want to advance while also engaging in, at times, hotly debated political topics that come into conflict of what they're trying to advance. It is just so much more complex when we get into the deeply multifaceted conversation of identity. To respond to your question around what I'm hopeful for. One of the things that we do at Rainbow Disruption is, and it always shocks my clients in a lot of ways, one of the first things that I ask for in terms of deliverables that I need them to get to me is the corporate strategy. For the organization. I want to know what are your value drivers? What are the engines that over the next 3 to 5 years are going to help this organization see significant growth?

I ask for this because the first thing that we have to do when we're developing strategic initiatives aligned to diversity, equity and inclusion, is to ensure that it's hitting on one or all of those strategic drivers for the business. This form of integration helps this remove itself from being an afterthought or a secondary experience, or worse, an experiment, or the phrase that I use or that I hear heavily now, an initiative.

And it allows us to link it directly to the overall success of the business. This adds a layer of accountability to everybody - Chief Design Officer, Chief Marketing Officer, CFO - around how commitments to this work have to be positioned to drive continuous growth and development. 

[00:22:16] Jason Rudman: I think it's fascinating if we strip away a lot of this. It starts with values. I remember when I decided to go, many moons ago, was in New York and I ended up working for American Express.

[00:22:29] Jarvis Sam: Yeah. 

[00:22:29] Jason Rudman: At first, worked in a small consulting company, quit. I was burnt out. Didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. One might argue, “Hey, we're still on a little bit of that journey, figuring it out.” And the reason I joined American Express, I actually researched and said, what values are important to me, what company holds those values.

What I find in your hope message is aligning the values with the strategies that actually come to pass in what is a highly-charged and feeling-centric area of the business.

It's not lost on me that you said we shouldn't be devoid of political debate in corporations. And we shouldn't forget that corporations lobby based on interests all day long. And one can argue, “Hey, you shouldn't, it's interesting that you lobby there, you fund politicians here, etc., etc.”

I think what becomes the challenge is what I believe is the connection to what is a highly emotive feeling, part of who we are and how we show up in a corporation connected to what I would say in my experience is generally a gap or a lack of enough empathetic leadership, especially in dominant ownership of the C-suite, which by and large is white and male and straight.

And it is a challenge to truly understand what I'm trying to do in this space if it is a experience, a community, a life that you have neither lived nor really been exposed to.

So, I love the push on the ‘We can't walk away from the politics of it’, and then I'm struck by the empathetic, feeling part of the work, which by nature with human beings, makes them incredibly uncomfortable.

You and I agree that we need to do the work and yet we're playing in that, it's such an uncomfortable space. Forget the markers of race or gender or sexual orientation, just the very humanistic space of sharing feelings and authenticity.

And I, as the CEO, have to do what on behalf of something that I may not have any, I mean, that on some level might expose a weakness or an opportunity where you've got to go on a learning journey. I've got to feel as though that's part of the challenge that we're up against with the work that you and I deem from a representation perspective is so important.

[00:25:01] Jarvis Sam: Yeah. You know, I think we have to start to draw greater comparisons to other functions and organizations to truly get it.

So follow me with this metaphor real quick. When we look at comparable organizations, a CMO of an organization and their entire team are responsible for marketing or creating the brand that ultimately drives the product of an organization. There is not an expectation that this person is the best marketer on their own social media. We're changing how they think about and how they behave in the marketing forum to support the business.

Similarly, in finance functions, we expect you to understand fundamental finance principles around how the company's money is being utilized, where investments are being made, how budgets are developed and spent, so that we are driving a level of financial culpability and viability for the organization. I don't care how you balance your own bank account. It is the behavior that you're doing to drive the business.

Similarly, where we've gotten to in the diversity, equity, and inclusion space is we have so conditioned ourselves and convinced ourselves that it is the work of changing hearts and minds, which is connected to people's personal and professional life.

Here is the reality, and it's kind of controversial for me to say it, but I will. My job as a DEI leader, practitioner, and I often say I am a business leader who happens to leverage diversity, equity, and inclusion as my driver for helping organizations find value. I am not paid enough to change the hearts and minds of people. Rather, our job is to change mindsets and behaviors.

Here's where the difference happens. What you do in your own time, that's your business. However, when you're in the four walls of this institution, digitally, virtually, or physically, these are the values, policies, and practices that we hold true and stand by, particularly connected to diversity, equity, and inclusion. And so I need you to shift your mindset and as a result, your behaviors, to have impact.

It's no different than the marketing or finance examples. How you handle your own brand externally, how you handle your own accounts externally, that's on you. The culpability that you have when you're operating in this corporate space, and with this brand, has a level of impact that's aligned to accountability. 

And so this is where I push people on this topic. The shift of mindset and behaviors becomes a much more objective standard than hearts and minds. It's objective in this sense: colonialism, enslavement, have produced racism, homophobia, xenophobia, transphobia, etc. that have a trickle down impact on the experiences of your teammates, who do not exist at the center of power and privilege, and who are exposed to any form of oppression or marginalization. Hard stop.

That is just a true fact. It is an objective standard that I think we can all agree on. So then, once I've fixated your mindset on that, that this is the nature and scope for which we're operating, now your behavior has to reflect an approach connected to inclusive leadership that positions toward the creation of a culture of inclusion and belonging for everyone. Recognizing that equity dictates that we all come from different starting points.

And so how we divvy up resources to support people and communities also has to look different. This means that we are justified in ensuring that provisions are there for communities that are underrepresented, or equity deserving, to be able to give them equitable opportunities to engage in things like growth and career advancement. It's uniquely connected though, to empathy, exactly what you described.

There's amazing research that's been produced in Business Insider and a variety of other forums that says so many CEOs struggle with empathy because they don't even know how to access it or tap into it. The reality is the easiest way to tap into empathy is to get proximate to communities that are different than yourself.

The reason that we see greater acceptability of LGBT populations now is because the world over, people have seen more experiences where their kids are coming out, their siblings are coming out, their co-workers that they know and love at work are out. They are forced to get proximate to the experience of the community.

It is for that exact reason though that we continue to see such anti-trans rhetoric and sentiment because so many people can say that they don't know a transgender identified person in their family, in their workplace, due to a variety of structural barriers, and rarely see these communities positively represented on television.

If we get people to start being more proximate to communities, it's real hard not to advocate and be an activist for folks whose journey you know and can experience. When these C-suite leaders exist in these towers and spaces where everyone around them comes from a similar socioeconomic experience, background, gendered experience, you're not getting proximate to other communities. And so you can't have the empathy needed to drive success. 

[00:30:16] Jason Rudman: Hey, we might be here for like three or four hours. I think, right because it's just so much to unpack.

So, I remember I was volunteering. I was on the board of the Ali Forney Center and the way that I got to the Ali Forney Center in New York - for the listeners that don't know what that is - centered in New York City, one of the nation's preeminent organizations trying to tackle LGBTQ homelessness in a city like New York, where it is rampant.

And my first, how I got to the Board is I volunteered, and I would go once every other Thursday. There was a safe house. I'd go for like three hours. I’d do resume writing. We'd cook. I mean, I'm part of the LGBTQ community. And to your point, the power of…I did not know a trans person in my life. So we're talking, 2011.

And that changed me for the better because what it did is it enabled me to walk the walk as closely as I could walk the walk to understand the challenges, the day-to-day struggles of what it means to…

And particularly to be black and trans, right? Because again, the Ali Forney Center, large number of their population identify as black or Latin, they've got a healthy trans population.

And so to your point, look, I'm a white presenting gay male, I'd gotten over the hump of being out and was in a healthy relationship. And again, I sit at this intersection, my husband's African-American. So, I've got great people in my life given me a lens to what the world is like, such that I feel as though I'm pretty well-rounded. But I had never experienced, up close and personal, what it meant to be trans and that learned experience.

So, so much power in what you were saying that a CEO should do, which is to get to walk the walk, right?

However, I want to challenge the notion a little bit. I agree in principle around mindset and behavior as opposed to changing hearts and minds. And yet what you talked about was, within these four worlds - virtually, digitally, physically - there are values and mores of the company. And if you're going to be an employee, it's like a contract.

If you're going to turn up to work and be paid by the company, these are the values that we expouse. And yet, I don't care what you do when you leave?

And so let's talk about that a little because, for me, that's tough because, not from a DE&I perspective but you know, I write about part of launching More Elephant is before, [for] a long period of my life I wasn't seen because I also didn't allow myself to be seen because I live two different lives, right?

I was an employee of American Express, as progressive [an experience] in New York City as it comes, was in a relationship with a man and was not out at work. I had my first leadership role, still friends with this person today, who at one point just said, would you stop leading what was in effect a double life? Stop acting. So how do we square the circle? 

Can't change hearts and minds, don't care what you do. I mean you can be xyz outside, but when you're in these four walls, I need you to be abc and yet aren't we advocating that you can be two different people and that you're putting on an act when you're in the four walls and it's not really authentic, it's not really genuine, and therefore should I trust it?

[00:33:35] Jarvis Sam: Yeah, I love this push and let me explain and clarify. We have to think about it through the lens of locus of control.

When we, as an organization, try to take on that large challenge of changing hearts and minds, we lose our ability to control, for example, the role that government plays in this regard, the role that non-profit engagement plays in this regard, the role that the rearing of an individual has led to the holding of certain perspectives and principles.

In essence, when corporations try to force this concept of hearts and minds on people, it can be very challenging. It can be very challenging. I think the reality is that we recognize when I change your mindset and behavior, it, in essence, will change your heart. I'm just saying I cannot control that. And I should not be leading with controlling that. And so to that notion, it's not that organizations don't care about what you do on the outside. How many folks have we seen that have been fired for things that they post on social media? 

[00:34:30] Jason Rudman: That's where I was about to go next. Like, you know, that's a really good point. I mean, they are connected and even more so in this environment. And I didn't mean to suggest that you were saying they were completely divorced. 

[00:34:40] Jarvis Sam: No, no. And I think that's the pathway that we have to explore. If the organization can control mindset and behaviors, and how we are getting people to think about the reality and the space of power dynamics in how they position it, then give them the opportunity to then go on that hearts and minds journey on their own, because it's a very individual journey.

For example, it's akin to where organizations bring in DEI consulting firms and they're like, “Great, fix our culture. You have six months.” And it's like, you're a 104-year-old company. Like, no, we can't do that because there was so much that built into creating that. Similarly, you know, you're talking about a 40-, 50-year-old person who has gone through their whole life experience, leading, understanding and thriving in a certain way. To try to undo their heart in that capacity, it's a tough undertaking, rather similar to going to the gym.

If I get you in the habit of thinking a certain way and behaving a certain way, it starts to impact your conditioning and the values to which you hold on the value and benefit of that. So, it's not to say hearts and minds go away entirely. It's saying it becomes a part of the process, but where I'm going to build it heavily is on mindsets and behaviors.

I think to that same notion though, as individuals go on this journey, we got to equip them with the resources. We got to extend a bit of grace as they're engaging in some of these, at times, deeply complex conversations, as they're challenging their own reality of experiences. And quite frankly, in some cases, learning that everything that they have been taught has been either rooted in otherization, tokenism or the various -isms and phobias that play out into our reality.

There is a time horizon that people need to take on the tough journey. It is easier to learn certain behaviors than it is to unlearn others. And so we have to give people the opportunity to do that. And so organizations, by establishing the perspective on these are the values to which we uphold, you enable yourself to extend that into people's personal lives and realities.

I'll hit on one other point that you made though. A lot of the work that I do and lecture about is about this topic that you described of identity covering where so many of us, whether it's appearance-based, affiliation-based, association-based or advocacy-based, we all cover in some capacity.

Deloitte did a great study in 2018, where they found 61 percent of all employees cover some element of their identity; 45 percent of straight white men cover some element of their identity; 83 percent of LGBTQ plus folks cover some element of their identity at work.

The duality of experience, it's tough. The consequences of covering are clear. It could have a huge psychological impact on people, leading to anxiety in their personal and professional experiences. It forces people to feel gaslit in many experiences in the workplace. And what's worse, is it leads to people making shifts or changes to their reality that can be so harmful.

Appearance-based covering, for example. Given the fact that in 27 U. S. states, you could still be fired for how you wear your hair, a lot of Black women, as a result, have to [apply] appearance-based cover to get over the impact of that hair discrimination that impacts her life and reality. And she may even show up different. She does show up different. 

[00:38:00] Jason Rudman: Smaller, right? By definition, if you're not showing up your full authentic self. Like if somebody said to you, for those of you that can't see, Jarvis wears the Rainbow Disruption in his hair. It's the most fantastic, colorful, brilliant. You come in, it's a showstopper.

I mean, if you were ever in a space where you would denied that opportunity, the world would not get the full Jarvis Sam. 

[00:38:22] Jarvis Sam: Absolutely.

[00:38:26] Jason Rudman: It just wouldn't happen, right? That is a core part of who you are. 

[00:38:28] Jarvis Sam: Yep. Yeah, it's serious. And so you know what I advocate for that space is if we can change mindsets and behaviors for how people engage and interact in the workplace, we could actually start to resolve the need for employees to cover in the workplace.

And so then they start to drive a sense of congruence between their personal reality and then professional reality. If we get to a space where the 83 percent of LGBTQ plus employees feel more comfortable being out at work, putting their partner's picture on their desk, talking about some of the issues that they have in navigating adoption, for example, in this country and in various spaces around the world. And we create the conditions where managers don't just manage diversity, but understand how to lead it, and lead empathetically and inclusively, it will lead to a decrease in the number of people that feel that they have to cover.

So then what happens on the flip side? Now, the folks who are operating in the space where their heart and mind hasn't changed, but they're showing up inauthentically to proverbially, or even performatively, do the mindset and behavior game at work. Now it becomes a difficulty for them because all of those same consequences that I described previously, they don't just play out when it's an underrepresented person, they play out as part of human condition. 

And so they will find it difficult to balance the performance versus thinking and believing and reacting differently at home. And so you ultimately have two outcomes. Either the person leaves the organization because it becomes too much for them to bear, or you start to see a shift in hearts and minds. So you see what I'm saying, Jason? 

[00:40:03] Jason Rudman: Yeah, I do. 

[00:40:04] Jarvis Sam: It's a journey that we go on with people, but I cannot come to you from the very beginning and say, I'm gonna change your heart and mind. I have to get you conditioned to go on this journey with me. 

[00:40:15] Jason Rudman: And so, if we were to think about how we need the vast majorities of the C-suite to show up, which by definition, if you look at any version of the numbers is underrepresented from a person of color perspective, an LGBTQ perspective, a disability perspective, because again, I think we often go to the more sizeable populations, I mean, have a whole conversation about disability in the workplace and so forth.

So, your reality, our reality is that, yes, we want to change mindset and behavior. I mean you've just basically written a thesis that if you get this right, your turnover will reduce.

It is the quintessential business case as to why DE&I is of a growth mindset because you create a greater sense of belonging amongst your employees. They are then able to fully represent. It's really classic design-thinking 101; you're knowing and solving with the customer in mind, and your customers are not homogeneous, by the way, they're not. So we've just laid out a mindset, behavioral, you've solved it.

And yet we've got a cohort, again, that needs work. I would argue needs work. 

[00:41:27] Jarvis Sam: Yep. 

[00:41:28] Jason Rudman: So there's The Rainbow Disruption doing great work. But what's the first thing that then needs to change? We're in this moment where we've just threaded a needle, which is, we need more accountability. We've got a cohort that we're going to say is willing and they have to be able because they're smart. 

[00:41:41] Jarvis Sam: Yeah.

[00:41:42] Jason Rudman: We can't say that they're not able. We believe they're willing. We believe they're able. You talked about you’re hopeful, [so] what needs to change? 

[00:41:49] Jarvis Sam: Yeah, there's a few things. Part of it is in the C-suite and the way the rhetoric around DEI has been positioned largely over the last three years - media and politics has continued to position it in such a pejorative sense. We have to do a lot of reframing on it.

A lot of approaches to DEI can feel very ‘otherizing’ to underrepresented or marginalized communities. It becomes their problem. It becomes their issue. It becomes their challenge. I often ask a question when I'm engaging in public discourse and lectures to broader audiences is how many of you see yourself as diverse? And there's confusion. Often times, there's silence or you'll see underrepresented communities raise their hand.

I didn't push people on this to say, to not see yourself as diverse when relative to a specific group of people or population positions you as one dimensional, and I don't think any of us would see ourselves as that. Identity is complex; identity is multifaceted. And so we all have some element that is unique in this perspective.

Corporations, though, continue to allow rhetoric to reaffirm some of the same issues that we're trying to overcome. [For example], when recruiting teams talk about diverse talent, diverse candidates, and they're specifically referring to a female candidate or a Black candidate, you create this assumption that anybody that is not that is not diverse.

We as individuals ourselves cannot be diverse. We're diverse relative to a population or a group through the lens of comparison. As a result, DEI approaches in companies have created this deeply ‘otherized’ standard where white populations in general, and specifically white men, don't see themselves as part of the paradigm. When that happens, they don't see their role or how they can interact and play into these conversations.

The first thing that needs to happen is the folks in the C-suite have got to understand, having existed in that space and held the same rank and title as many of them, they have got to understand this concept of the wheel of power and privilege, and that power dynamics dictate everything that we do, privilege dictates everything that we do.

When you look at the center of the wheel of power and privilege, cisgendered, straight, white men, who are able bodied, who identify as neurotypical, and who are in the upper levels of socioeconomic status, operate in that space. It's the construct with which this country was built. Property-owning, white men. It's that same construct. And thus, in possession of privilege.

I argue this. Folks have got to get comfortable with the term white privilege. It is not a red badge. It is not negative. It is an advantage that you hold that you did nothing by which to have or acquire. White privilege is a reality. It does not make you a bad person. It does, though, however, come with an obligation to wield and leverage that power and privilege in support of communities that exist in more marginalized or oppressed spaces than yourself.

Similarly, male privilege is our reality. If you identify as a cisgender man, you are a beneficiary of male privilege. It does not make you a bad person, but it does mean that systems of heteronormativity, heterosexism, misogyny, sexism in general, all help you to benefit and elevate in your capacity. You have an obligation to support cisgendered women and trans and non-binary communities and intersex communities, etc. This is a part of the obligation that comes with privilege.

We have got to get the C-suite to understand that, first and foremost. Your engagement with communities through the lens of equity and inclusion is not about charity. It is about making effective business decisions that drive strategic transformation for the organization, operational efficiency, and optimization with everything that we do.

The cost of rehiring talent when someone has attrited from your organization is significant. It is much easier and quite frankly, more competitive to retain the talent that you have in your organization, then to go on the search for additional talent.

When we think about the innovation that's driven when people bring historical legacy knowledge to the table and are able to develop the next version or iteration of our product, that goes a long way toward driving organizational growth, revenue generation and ultimately profitability for the organization. 

Leaders have to go on this journey of understanding who am I? What obligations do I have? Where do I fit in this grand spectrum of diversity?

If we can bring folks in and help everyone to understand, we all have a role in this paradigm. Part of it means, though, we have to give certain privileges and leverage certain power to elevate groups or communities who, due to systemic and structural barriers, have not been able to achieve that. That's the essence of what we desire to do.

[00:46:52] Jason Rudman: So a couple of things. It is without a doubt, a truism, that my maleness has opened up doors and I'm a girl dad as well. So I'm raising a boy and a girl, mixed race. One presents fair, one presents black. So we've got it all going on, right? And I would like to think that that's the universe's way of saying we need you, from an allyship perspective, however you line up, to do more of what you were put on this earth to do.

It's also a truism, because I've experienced it, that my gayness, I'm talking about the very fact of being a gay man and being out as an executive, has not even implicitly, has it been explicitly used to stunt my progress. And I think you know even for me, the personal here is so important. I have been subject to more microaggression than I care to think about and yet still I rise because I have to because you and I still have work to do.

And so I think it's incredibly important that we also on some level appreciate, as you said, that we have a responsibility as well, with the C-suite, to get to know the C suite because we might not know everything that's going on. And it might be our responsibility to bring them to the fountain to say, this is what it feels like. Let's do the work together. I think sometimes we put a incredible onus, because the C comes in front of it.

It's the chief of something that…Jarvis, you’re the Chief Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Officer. It's your responsibility. I have no role in opening your eyes to the possibility of a different experience.

And I think that we've got to challenge ourselves to exert our power and take that conversation into the spaces and places where we might not think that we can go, but you'll be surprised when you go, what actually happens.

[00:48:43] Jarvis Sam: And you know, I wanted to tap into two things that you said. I have seen organizations make such a cosmic shift, particularly during periods of economic volatility, to try to get everyone to see themselves as a financial steward of the brand. You know, use the brand's money the way you would use your own. That's the same rhetoric and intent we have to get people into around the diversity and inclusion conversation.

We all have a role to play in this regard. And so we all have to think of ourselves as cultural stewards and how we build and develop the environment that we all want to live in for the future.

The second thing, I love this experience that you described about your direct exposure to microaggressions. It's age old affinity bias. People find so much comfort being around folks that are similar to themselves. And I can recall experiences before I was out in the workplace, before I had 40-inch rainbow locks in my hair, where people would come up to me and make microaggressive comments about the LGBTQ-plus community.

And even today, and you know, we can do a whole another session, Jason, on racism. 

[00:49:46] Jason Rudman: We're doing it. I mean, you just signed up for it, brother. 

[00:49:48] Jarvis Sam: We’ve got to talk about the racism and transphobia that exist in LGBTQ plus spaces and particularly amongst LGBT folks. There is immense amount of racism and there is immense amount of transphobia. And I have definitely heard people say microaggressive comments about trans communities. These were other gay men making these statements.

I say this to say, we don't know anybody's reality, and yet the onus is not only on you, as a white-presenting gay man, who is married to a Black man and has Black kids, to have to defend and make statements when those come up. The true north for me is a space where somebody who has no direct connection to Black communities can hear a microaggressive comment about a Black colleague or coworker and leverage their political, social and corporate capital to defend that conversation in the moment and highlight to that person the fault in their behavior.

That for me is the win - where you got a group of straight men having a conversation at work and a microaggressive, or quite frankly, inappropriate comment is made about the LGBTQ plus community. Are you willing to use your capital in that moment to defend the community as an ally and advocate and go against your colleagues, knowing that it might position you in a different point of view or like with them?

That is where real impact starts to happen. 

[00:51:12] Jason Rudman: And to your point, I think that the opportunity for Individuals like me is to not shirk from that responsibility. I take it and I appreciate it, that it's not on us alone because of our lived experience, and we happen to be married to who were married to and the kids we’re raising. So I think that's a really, really good point.

I'd be remiss because I also know there's a book coming there. And I think we're either close to it and it's about to go live…DEI Credential. 

[00:51:40] Jarvis Sam: Yes. 

[00:51:41] Jason Rudman: Let's talk about that. I don't know how you have time of the day to do all of this greatness.

However, so you've written a book. I always, you know, I've talked to a few authors on the podcast, not for everybody. I've got a book in me, but I'm not going to tell you right now what it is, but might surprise and delight some folks. 

So why the book? What's the book? What's the essence of the book? Is it an extension of Rainbow Disruption? Is it a toolkit? Is it a plan?

Talk us through why the book, and what you're seeking to do with that part of the brilliance of Jarvis Sam. 

[00:52:09] Jarvis Sam: Thank you. You know, in many ways, it's all of the above. For a number of years now, I have desired to become a published author and there's a few things that play out for me.

Most of my inspiration in middle school, high school and college. and the reason that I chose to study what I did in both undergrad and grad school, was because of inspiration that I found from Black and queer authors, and the ability to take the brilliance of ideas in the crafting of either fiction or nonfiction work and put it in a book.

It gives you scale. It allows you to share gifts, arts, crafts, ideas with the world in a way that is scalable. And the ebook marketplace has made that even more brilliant in our ability to share our thoughts and perspectives the world over. And so I wrote DEI Credential through that same lens. That was the first big point.

The second was, I really just got tired, as both an academic in the DEI space and a professional demonstrating practitionership and expertise in space, I got tired of not seeing a level of comprehensive perspectives being positioned to the world. Or where it was namely just the passion connected to the work being out there without people understanding here's how you got to run a business in light of all of these attributes connected to DE&I.

And so DEI Credential, the credential is actually an acronym or an initialism, and so it walks through 10 global strategies that will help organizations significantly improve their understanding of diversity, equity and inclusion. It covers topics like Chapter 5, one of the E's focusing on the differences between equality and equity, and how we need to think about all of our programs and measurement through the lens of equity more than anything else.

One of my favorite chapters to write was Chapter 4 of the D on decolonization of the mind and the organization where I have the hard conversation about the fact that all of our organizations have been influenced and informed by approaches to colonialism.

And this impacts how we think about our teammates. This impacts how we think about our consumers. It impacts every decision that's made. And so unless we focus on decolonizing our own minds and approaches, we will continue to see this cycle where organizations are comfortable literally stealing resources from various parts of the African continent, various parts of South America, where they are continually negatively impacting the climate and environments in regions like South and Southeast Asia. And so to decolonize our organizations requires us to go on that journey.

Or what's more, on an even more tactical level. The T focuses on team and talent strategies that actually work. It's for hiring managers, for talent management professionals, for HR professionals, a playbook of sorts on how to do great inclusive recruitment, inclusive succession planning and talent management even more effectively.

All culminating in the final L, which is leading and leveraging with a growth mindset, where I provide leaders within the organization an actual platform and action steps for how they could lead this work, recognizing that risk and failure are part of it, but tapping into that construct of a growth mindset that every time we make a mistake, it's just an opportunity to learn, grow and develop.

[00:55:21] Jason Rudman: I feel like I'm ready to say, okay, we're, and then you drop another nugget on me and then I want to talk about decolonization and think about hierarchical structures and the way that they're set up by definition, reinforce the fact that there's somebody always above you that's holding court and take judgment, but that's again, that's for another day.

I do think that the power in rethinking talent and performance - we've talked a lot about how we improve representation and through a DE&I lens in the four walls of an organization, whether they, again, be physical, digital, virtual, however you want to describe that, that's what we spent most of our time on.

It's not lost on me, your point around talent development and even recruitment and where I feel that again, just in my own experience, I remember very early on, you always got what you always got because you always went to the same places, right?

So some of the brightest minds may not necessarily have made their way to the Ivy League and you've got to come up with very, very different strategies in order to be in their space in order for them to understand that your opportunity is an opportunity that they're worthy of.

Again, probably another topic that you and I could talk ad nauseum about in terms of how we need to rethink representation from a talent pipeline and a recruitment perspective.

And we should also point out on getting somebody new into the organization because the turnover is exactly the same as growing an existing customer versus going and getting a new customer. So if we were to apply what we do from a business revenue perspective, if we were to apply that to the employee perspective, somehow, I think we'd be able to make great strides. 

[00:57:10] Jarvis Sam: Absolutely. I argue that we need congruence between employee experience and client experience, and the loss of one on either side has a significant impact to the business. And so we have to find ways to redefine and redevelop that.

You know, as I was writing DEI Credential, went back and forth on having a chapter on team and talent strategies, because so many folks are critical that when organizations go on their journey of DEI, they focus on diversity recruiting first. It's always the area that they focus.

And so people have become very critical of that. And so organizations are like, “OK, well, great. Let me do some consumer work and let me do some community engagement work.”

And I'm like, stop. You have not gotten this right yet. It's OK if that's the first area that you work on. Because the reality is, if you get that right, and you bring in voices from underrepresented and marginalized communities, guess what? They will translate this into their work.

And so you'll see the impact on brand and marketing. Turns out, if you dedicate resourcing to hiring more Black, Latino, Native, or First Nations, and Asian-identified marketers, your approach to marketing..,and put them in the right positions of leadership - it can't just be those early career jobs - but them in the right positions of leadership, it will start to impact the lens of corporate strategy to what you're building.

You know, one of my really good friends is Adrian Lofton, and she is in an amazing senior role as VP of marketing over at Google now, but previously led North America marketing for Nike, CMO of Under Armor at one point. I have seen, at every institution that Adrian has gone to, a cosmic shift in how those institutions market to Black women. It is not that they had this on their radar or agenda and they were like, we're going to hire Adrian and she'll come and figure it out. It is that she brought that lens and mindset to those organizations and unlocked a whole new space for them.

And so, organizations cannot neglect approaches to diversity recruiting. And in fact, I try to push organizations to rethink diversity recruiting in the same way I try to get them to rethink multicultural marketing. It's just good marketing. It's just good recruiting. Diversify the pipelines of where which you're recruiting talent from, and it will have a significant trickle down effect on organizations.

[00:59:26] Jason Rudman: Yes, in the spirit of design thinking. And there has to be a recognition that there is more than enough talent out there. So I think you've said a couple of things that are really, really important. It's not just hiring the person, it's surrounding them with the things that will make them successful, with an acknowledgement that yes, you may need to develop them.

[00:59:49] Jarvis Sam: Yeah. 

[00:59:50] Jason Rudman: I do feel as though the quick-shot approach, and again, I've experienced it 20-plus years in corporate, I've seen it inside organizations I've been in and in other organizations. Just to be clear, this is a very general statement, which is - How can we do this quickly?

Because we've got a percentage or a number or something like that. And that exists for everybody listening. It does. It's not a quota system, but it is, we're always going to fish in the same pond, we're going to balance this, whether we're explicitly doing it or not.

And I think the miss is then you bring them into the structure that is not necessarily designed for their success because there's not enough people within the structure that have the lived experience to say “we might approach the learning differently, we might need to have a different set of case studies or an approach to the learning that we actually haven't built yet.”

So I feel we've still got to walk that walk to build the systems to enable people to be successful and then, and this came, has come up a couple of times in my career, if you can't find it, go build it. If you can't find it, then invest in the pipeline. 

[01:00:55] Jarvis Sam: Yep. Right? Yep.

[01:00:55] Jason Rudman: Because again, there's enough raw material out there. If it's not readily available, then you have to grow it. 

[01:01:00] Jarvis Sam: Yep. 

[01:01:01] Jason Rudman: You have to grow it. 

[01:01:03] Jarvis Sam: Yep. You know, I want to hit on a couple of key points there that just matter so much to me.

You're exactly right. So many organizations go out and they go on these massive diversity recruiting sprints, but the conditions for that talent to be successful are not there.

In DEI Credential. I talk about the three ways in which we enable representation organizations. It's hiring, it's promotion and it's retention. So many folks leave off that last piece. How do we retain this talent? And they wonder why they don't see their representation numbers grow. And it's because, yeah, you do start to see a healthy pipeline of talent coming into the organization, but you're not noticing the revolving door of somebody that are actually leaving. And this is why your numbers seem to plateau, again and again.

Because even if you've developed an effective talent attraction and engagement model and you're able to get talent to start seeing this organization as beneficial, you can't keep them. And so the conditions have got to be met there to support talent.

The second piece is organizations have got to diversify even more their approach to thinking and engaging with these spaces. Following George Floyd's murder, every organization had an HBCU recruitment strategy. Here's the challenge - all of them, or at least the grand majority, were recruiting from the same top five HBCUs where they have made investments previously, where they've developed the type of talent that they want to consume into their organizations.

Meanwhile, HBCU #6-25, your Texas Southern University, your Grambling State Universitiy, your Prarie A& M University, are left behind without the right investment that's necessary to be able to support that talent. So if you're going to have an HBCU strategy, it needs to be connected to all of them to support them along their journey.

And last but not least, on this idea of building talent, I have forever been a supporter of this idea, but in every organization and institution that I've worked in, have implemented programs aimed at how do we hire and develop more community college talent.

Where the world is so concerned right now with overturning of affirmative action, I see an opportunity for us to really dig into community college talent pipelines to create space and opportunity for continued growth of representation in our organizations.

Put simply, community colleges, particularly those in New York and LA, are rife and rampant with immense diversity in their talent pool and populations. And you're talking about a group of folks who typically are working a full-time job, 40 hours a week, while also in pursuit of education. Every program that I've built to support them at Google, Snapchat, and Nike, has seen amazing retention rates from these folks. I'm talking near 100 percent retention rates over the course of four to six years because of the opportunities that have been enabled for this talent.

And it's been a really great experience where you get to train them from scratch in many ways on the right approaches and ways to do great work, like information technology, like design, like operations, and it's been a game-changer for these companies.

I think organizations have got to use their voices as we're thinking about policy going forward. Let's assume that there's the overturning of affirmative action, and so that's going to impact representation of incoming four-year classes. We need to create better bridge programs where students that are in community colleges get automatic admission into four-year degree programs at different institutions.

That allows us to directly challenge some of these issues that have come up connected to affirmative action and still grow the representation that's needed to ensure that our organizations can ultimately hire this talent down the line. 

[01:04:42] Jason Rudman: I promise for the people listening, we did not plant this, right? So I think this is really, really important. You know, a truism that over-indexing of people of color in the community college system, from an affordability and an accessibility perspective, if nothing else. We could talk about educational attainment and preparedness for college; that's a whole separate conversation that probably feeds into that.

It is no secret, if you're on the More Elephant site, that Alvin and I started a community college scholarship with Point Foundation for that very reason, is to create opportunity in a way to have impact. 

So, you know, I was smiling from ear to ear, because we'd never had that conversation and I think that the path to community college, to your point, is such a vital bridge and I think what it also frankly does because you mentioned it, is it's “I'm going to college.”

[01:05:35] Jarvis Sam: If your cousin makes it to the NBA or the NFL, you as a kid see that as a potential reality of something that you could take on. When you see the first black president getting inaugurated on that beautiful day in January, it reveals to you that that is a possibility for you. That's the essence of representation is when we're able to visibly see shared experiences of our social identities and realities in someone else and see them growing and thriving, it becomes real for us.

Recognize several folks, myself included, grew up in single parent households where my mother was actively working to try to figure out how to make sure my three siblings and I understood the value of education and could pursue four-year degree programs. We didn't have that father that was a Fortune 500 CEO.

Think about so many folks see potential family members or visual representation of athletes, but less than 1 percent of folks will ever see that as their reality. Think about, it's wonderful to see the impact that President Barack Obama made in the essence of his representation, but we also witnessed the immense amount of stress and strife and pain that he endured simply on the basis of his identity.

Representation is brilliant. We often argue that representation matters. The challenge is there are conditions surrounding this because there is a big shadow side to representation, and it comes with the need to get proximate to others. So leave this conversation recognizing that we all have power and opportunity to elevate and amplify representation in so many capacities.

But go on the journey with someone else simply by getting close to them, thinking curiously and asking the right questions, and demonstrating a bit of cultural humility to humble ourselves that we don't know it all and I can learn from someone else.

[01:07:38] Jason Rudman: And then to use your power, which can be hard power and soft power, to then do something with what you've learned.

That will be the bookend to that, right? You have to do something, right? Like that's that's what being a change agent is about.

The book will be available via the moreelephant.com website for people to be able to link through, read about it, purchase it.

I want to thank you for your time. This has been an amazing, amazing conversation.

How do people find out more about Jarvis Sam? Where do we follow? How do people find out more about The Rainbow Disruption? 

[01:08:15] Jarvis Sam: Yeah. So to find out more about me and stay connected please feel free to add me on LinkedIn. I post a lot of thought leadership and perspectives on my work and role at Brown and with The Rainbow Disruption there. So it's just Jarvis Sam on LinkedIn. You won't miss the rainbow hair.

You can follow me on Instagram as well at @OfficialJarvisSam, and then I still am actually a very active user on Facebook. I often laugh with people, I think I might be their youngest active user these days, but certainly feel free to add me on Facebook as well, again, @JarvisSam

And then, for The Rainbow Disruption - www.rainbowdisruption.com. It features a series of videos and content on the work that we do, some of the key clients that we work with and what's so important to me: there's some free resources there for your organizations, great books and movies and media to watch, read, and consume; a calendar of some of the top cultural holidays around the world that your organization should consider taking a celebration of; and then last but not least, a glossary of terms.

There's a lot of terms connected to identity and the changing landscape of who we are, how we identify, and what we represent can sometimes be a little disarming. So take a look there as well and understand a little bit about the changing nature and landscape of the work.

[01:09:32] Jason Rudman: Now you go seek the knowledge to seek to understand, to seek the change. I want to thank the the great folks here at the Spotify Studios in LA for hosting us. Great conversation, Jarvis. As I said, one of many so thanks for your time today. Really appreciate it. 

[01:09:46] Jarvis Sam: Thank you.

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