"If you cannot be who you are where you are, you change where you are, not who you are.” — Caroline Wanga

We're excited to welcome Kenyetta Hall back for one of our deepest conversations to date, the complexities of navigating corporate America as a black woman. Lakisha has wanted to have this conversation for sometime now, and we knew Kenyetta would be a great counterpart to this important conversation.

As a reminder for our listeners, Kenyetta is an entrepreneur and strategic consultant who specializes in helping businesses bridge the gap between vision and execution. With her company, The Katalyst HQ, she focuses on business strategy, digital product development, and leadership development, offering services like strategic planning, software development, and product management.

We covered a broad range of topics, from dealing with poor leaders to code switching, and got into spaces that may make some uncomfortable. We also laughed a ton and had a great time. Our biggest takeaway is the reminder that not every company or job may be for you, and that's ok. Go find the place that is.

As always, we have these conversations to give our listeners a new perspective and humanize the workplace. We hope folks from all background take away from valuable nuggets from this conversation.

Connect with our Guest:

Kenyetta Hall LinkedIn

The Katalyst HQ

Resources For Listeners:

The Diversity Gap: Where Good Intentions Meet True Cultural Change - Bethaney Wilkinson

DEI Deconstructed - Lily Zhang

The Inclusive Organization - Netta Jenkins

How to Be an Ally: Actions You Can Take for a Stronger, Happier Workplace - Melinda Briana Epler

Can you truly be authentic in the workplace? How does one balance their own values and beliefs in environments that make that so hard? And... if you do need to GTFO, how do you build something that is true to your own vision?

We dig into this questions and many more with our hilarious, honest, and impressive guest, Jazmyn Lopez. Jazmyn is the founder and thought leader behind Anthelo, a consulting studio concept that delivers her mission is to help intentional entrepreneurs cut through the noise to build sustainable business growth. Her unique corporate experience blends with a no-nonsense personality and earned authority to guide ambitious leaders through the journey of expansion.

Our conversation with Jazmyn reemphasized the importance of changing your environment to meet your needs, and not the other way around. We laughed, we swore a lot, and we also discussed the challenges that we have all faced in one way or another.

Connect with Our Guest:

Anthelo Consulting Studio

Connect with Jazmyn on LinkedIn

A Note From our Hosts: We're shaking up some things and getting ready to roll into another year of O&U! In this reflection stage, we are dropping our episodes down to one per month through the end of the year. We're excited to bring you format changes and even more unfiltered content in 2025

It's been a challenging time for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, and for the professionals working in this space.

In the US, backlash and polarization has resulted in several well know organizations reducing or eliminating their DEI teams and programs. The Society of Human Resources Management recently made the decision to "rebrand" DEI despite the loud outcry from their members. Those who feel the most passionate about this work are now exploring avenues like consulting and public speaking after years of working in resource deprived corporate environments.

Regardless of how you feel about DEI, it's clear that something isn't working. However that doesn't change the fact that we all have bias, our biases can negatively impact our place of work (culturally, legally, financially, etc.), and the only way to address that is to talk about it.

This is a delicate and often controversial subject, one we wanted to look at from outside the American lens, which has resulted in what might be one of our most 'unfiltered' conversations to date.

Our guest this week is Heeral Gudka, an Equality, Diversity & Inclusion consultant in the UK who's been working with organizations since 2014.

Her 10 years of experience in EDI spans across private, public and third-sector organizations, delivering consultancy to People Teams and Executive Boards, stand-alone workshops and also curating 6 to 12 month employee learning journeys. The support she provides to senior leadership teams is an essential part of the success they have created internally in building inclusive cultures – everyone needs a safe space to talk about difficult subjects, but they also need to understand where risks lie when it comes to workforces that don't understand minimum expectations.

Heeral is a former actuary and risk professional, she is trained to coach from a trauma-informed perspective, has a diploma in counselling skills and a deep interest in philosophy and consistent thinking – the ideal blend of skills for providing this support to senior leaders.

She also wishes she could see more of the night sky, but London is her home and that just doesn't happen there!

Obvious trigger warning as we dig into some sticky conversations around trauma and identity that may be upsetting to some listeners. However, we hope our listeners will walk away with a new perspective and inspiration to be the change they want to see in their workplace.

Is DEI 'business critical'? We'll let you decide.

Resources from this episode:

To get in touch with Heeral about EDI or dark sky recommendations you can find her on LinkedIn.

Changes Coming Soon to Offline & Unfiltered!

Dear listeners, we have had so much fun bringing you unfiltered conversations and finding our home in the podcast ecosystem. We have learned so much and are committed to bringing you the best quality content. In 2025, you'll see some refinement to our format, sustained activity on the socials, and much more. To achieve these goals, we're slowing down a bit. Through the end of 2024 O&L will release one episode a month, rather than two. Don't worry, we'll be back to two episodes per month in 2025.

Thank you for your continued support. Please don't forget to like, subscribe, give us 5 stars, tell all your friends, and all that good stuff.

More to come.