Colette Phillips is President and CEO of Colette Phillips Communications, and Founder and President of Get Konnected! and The GK Fund. She is a strategic advisor for C-level executives and corporate teams and develops public relations branding and internal/external communications strategies. 

She is frequently consulted by corporations and nonprofits on how to establish healthy, inclusive working environments and engage and serve culturally diverse consumers. 

Colette’s work in creating a DE&I ecosystem in Boston showcases the power of collaboration, courage, and commitment. Her approach emphasizes communication, curiosity, and connections to foster inclusivity and drive positive change in organizations and communities.

In this episode, Colette discusses the importance of inclusive leadership and the impact of culturally savvy anti-racist leaders.

What you will learn from this episode:

  • Understand the importance of the $2.4 trillion buying power of culturally diverse audiences
  • Determine the significance of commitment in driving diversity and inclusion initiatives, and the importance of taking imperfect action to make progress
  • Learn strategies for effective communication in promoting diversity and inclusion, including being mindful of language and addressing implicit biases

“The only people who benefit from division are the people creating the division.”

– Colette Phillips

Valuable Free Resource: 

Topics Covered:

03:51 – Culturally diverse consumer markets

08:51 – White males’ role in DE&I

14:42 – Engaging white males as allies

16:49 – Overcoming the fear of rejection

24:42 – Implicit biases and curiosity

30:26 – Paying attention to communications

32:43 – Unintentional microaggressions

40:32 –  Embracing diversity in Boston

43:41 –  Building inclusive business ecosystems

Key Takeaways:

“I want people to stop thinking of DE&I as if it’s musical chairs. When the music stops, you’re not in front of a chair, you’re out of the game. Think of diversity, equity, and inclusion as a Thanksgiving table, an Easter table, a Rosh Hashanah table. Think of it as a table where, when you are celebrating, you add more chairs, you cook more food. For example, if you’re having your Ramadan fast and breaking it with your family and friends, you add more chairs.” – Colette Phillips

“85% of the new entrants into our workforce are women, people of color, and immigrants.” – Colette Phillips

“When people do something that they don’t have to do, I believe we should basically acknowledge and recognize them because we want others to emulate them.” – Colette Phillips

Ways to Connect with Colette Phillips:

Ways to Connect with Sarah E. Brown:

 

Full Episode Transcript:

Colette Phillips 00:00

I want people to stop thinking of de and I as if it’s musical chairs. When the music stop, you’re not in front of a chair. You are out of the game. Think of diversity, equity, and inclusion as a Thanksgiving table and Easter table, a Rosh a table. Think of it, you know, as a table where when you are celebrating.

What you do, you do, you add more chairs.

Sarah E. Brown 00:47

My guest today is Colette Phillips. She is president and CEO of Colette Phillips Communications and founder and president of Get Konnected! and the GK Fund. She is a strategic advisor for C-level executives and corporate teams and develops public relations branding and internal external communication strategies. She is frequently consulted by corporations and nonprofits on how to establish healthy, inclusive working environments and engage and serve culturally diverse consumers. An active civic leader and board member, she’s listed on Boston Business Journal’s Power 50 list. Her new book, The Includers, The Seven Traits of Culturally Savvy Anti-racist Leaders has just been released, and that’s what we’re going to be talking about now. Colette, welcome. Thank you for joining me.

Colette Phillips 01:11

Well, thank you for having me. I am delighted to join you.

Sarah E. Brown 02:08

So I want to go back to a little bit about your day job, because as we were chatting about this before we started this podcast, you told me that your work goes back to 1986. So did it start off in the DEI realm or did it start off some other way?

Colette Phillips 02:27

It started off with differentiating myself from my competitors. I was a marketer and a public relations expert. And you know that if you are in marketing, you have to determine what is your unique proposition, what are you selling that is different from other people? And my observation was at the time that many corporations, retailers, bankers, healthcare providers, were basically overlooking the markets of color, the black market, the Asian consumer market, the Latino consumer market, the immigrant consumer market. And the reality is these people, they eat, they buy homes, they wear clothes, they wear shoes, they bank. So why are you not focusing and marketing them, to them, and why aren’t they part of your marketing mix? So one of the things I had to do very early is to help educate people about these markets. What are the psychographics? What are the the resonant culturally, you know nuances because I used to say when people come to America, they don’t check their behavior, their habits, their customs in custom. They don’t leave it at baggage claim. They bring it with them. And so instead of assimilating, they are acculturating, which means they are taking the best of the American culture, and they are keeping the best of their own culture and they’re blending it. So they’re becoming acculturated to the United States as opposed to assimilated.

Sarah E. Brown 04:35

And I believe you made a statement in your book that the buying power of this audience is $2.4 trillion, which is larger than the economy of Australia, for example.

Colette Phillips 04:48

Did I get that right? Yes. And Canada, Sweden, Mexico, if you were to take this group of people and remove them from the American economy. It might also collapse, but they would be the sixth or seventh largest economic entity in the world. That is not exactly chump change. Correct. So I like to think of diverse markets and consumers as our domestic foreign market, if you want to call it that. We are spending a lot of time going to outside of America, when within America, we have substantive consumers that a lot of companies have only now begun to discover. So my, I have to address an issue within this. There are all these people talking about, you know, they have weaponized the whole idea of diversity, equity, and inclusion, and it’s become toxic. And my thing is, This is not only the right thing to do, it is the smart economic thing to do. If you wanna survive in the 21st century as a business, you better get religion where it comes to where your new markets are arriving from. 85% of the new entrants into our workforce are women, people of color and immigrants. That’s not to say that white men are being replaced. And I want people to stop thinking of DE&I as if it’s musical chairs. When the music stops, you’re not in front of a chair, you’re out of the game. Think of diversity, equity, and inclusion as a Thanksgiving table, an Easter table, a Rosh Hashanah table. Think of it you know as a table where when you are celebrating what you do you do you add more cheers you cook more food if you’re having your Ramadan fast where you’re breaking it and you’re bringing in your family and your friends You add more chairs. So everybody gets to have a meal. Everybody gets to enjoy that meal. So it’s not a win-lose, zero-sum game. You cannot say that you are going to grow your business and then exclude large numbers of people from both your workforce and your consumer. That’s dumb business. So I would ask the politicians out there who claim like the governors of Texas and Florida, when you are working to get the votes of your large Spanish speaking population, do you serve them your literature in English? Really? I don’t think so. You put it in Spanish. Why do you put it in Spanish? Because that’s the language. That’s their first language. That’s the language they’re most comfortable with. It’s smart marketing. It has nothing to do with politically correctness or wokeness. It’s about being sensitive to your consumer, to your voting consumer in this place.

Sarah E. Brown 08:28

Okay, so you’ve made a couple of points. One is that an effective DE&I program is just plain smart business because then you can serve a very large population, like $2.4 trillion worth of economic benefit. But you also make the point, which I think is worth exploring a little bit more, that it is all about inclusion. And inclusion is not excluding or demonizing anybody, including white males. And in fact, you devote a significant portion of your book to case studies of white males who have been good champions of DE&I. Can you say a little bit more about what’s important about understanding of white males’ role in this and why they cannot be demonized?

Colette Phillips 09:22

Well, the reality is that when you have white males at the table, and you have given them the advocacy tools of inclusion, and they get involved. Leadership shifts. There is a new view of everything. And we cannot speak of inclusion and then exclude the very people who sit in the seats of power, who have the influence, whether you are in sports, business, government, entertainment, 99% of the time the people in the corner office in the CEO suite are white males. So I’m not saying that I want white men to come in on white horses like white knights to save people of color and women. What I’m saying is we need to bring them into the table, have them lean in, listen, learn, and lead from behind. When I was a kid growing up, I went to an all-girls private school, and we used to have, we used to challenge other classes. And in my class, there was a young lady who was really You know, a strong little girl. We used to put her in my class she was the back first and we would tie the rope around her waist because she was our anchor and all the little skinny kids would be at the front pulling that rope. But we knew that anger was in the back holding us down. That’s what we are asking white men to do. They have gone through this process.

This system was developed and created by white men for white men. So who are the people who are in the best position to help break down the barriers, dismantle those barriers, that are keeping people from moving up. It’s white men. And there are good white men out there. People might say, well, why are you giving them credit? Well, you know what? They don’t have to do diddly. And the fact that there are white men that are willing to leverage their power and privilege to change the dynamics of their organization of society so that we can have a more inclusive and equitable society and world and country, create the country that our founding fathers intended us to have when they had that beautiful Latin motto of e pluribus unum.

Even though back then women were not equal, Black people like myself were not even considered fully human, they somehow understood that at some point this country is attracting people from different parts of the world and that when people come together. We should be the model for the world of how women and people of color and LGBTQ individuals different religions-Jews, Muslims, Hindu’s. Sikh’s- can all coexist peacefully. So I take homage with people who are out there trying to create divisiveness and pitting people against each other deliberately. For what? The only people who benefit from division are the people creating the division. And I think we have to be smart enough. Women have to be smart enough. And I know that many of the people listening to you are women. I want white women to be smart enough to recognize that they must embrace their sisters of color. You’re not going to win the battle by yourself.

You need to engage black and brown and Asian women to stand in the breach so that we can be stronger and we can reach out to our white brethren who are in those positions, starting with the ones who have already demonstrated. People like the CEO and senior managing partner of PricewaterhouseCoopers, Tim Ryan, the head of State Street, Ron O’Hanley, the head of Liberty Mutual, these are all global companies, Tim Sweeney, the head of American Tower, Tom Barrett, all of these, and a regional bank here in New England, Eastern Bank, Bob Rivers. These are all men who have, white men, who have basically recognized that they have a responsibility to leverage their power and privilege to change the system. 

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Colette Phillips 15:36

And we have to give them some kind of acknowledgement and recognition because they don’t have to do it. When people do something that they don’t have to do, I believe we should basically acknowledge and recognize them because we want others to emulate them.

Sarah E. Brown 15:58

Okay, so as a white woman, or as anybody of color, I’m not, I’m white, but as a woman or anybody of color, how do we best initially engage these white males and turn them into allies?

Colette Phillips 16:14

Well, you work with them. They’re your fathers, they’re your brothers, they’re your brother-in-laws. You know, you start with your initial circle, the people who are most around you. You know, that’s how we engage with them. And if you work in a company, there are white men in the company who are good people. Go ask one of them to be your mentor and your sponsor. It’s that simple. And I know people say that we get busy and we can’t, we don’t have time. I am telling you, most people like being asked to help and to do something. And I want people to stop burdening women and stop burdening the people. Reach out to white guys. They will do it. They will help. I can tell you that because as a Black woman, I have been helped by white males in my business when I have stepped out and asked them. People like to be asked. If you don’t ask, I always say to people, what’s the worst that can happen? I also coach CEOs and senior level of people, and I say to them, what’s the worst that what’s your worst fear. People don’t like to be rejected. So their worst fear is the person will say no. I said so what they say no. You’re, it’s not Henny Penny, the sky is not gonna fall out. You just move on to the next person. Have a list. Here are five people, if I could choose five people in my company or in my community that I would want to mentor or sponsor me. And then start with your number one. that person turns you down, go to number two, go to number three, keep asking till you get to a person that you would like to work with you. So that’s my advice to people to not be afraid to ask. And you never know until you ask. If you don’t ask, you wouldn’t know the answer.

Sarah E. Brown 18:39

Very good advice. Now, I want to switch hats just a minute and talk about one of the things that I am well aware of is that the minority culture in any organization understands the majority culture better than the majority culture understands the minority culture. And the minority culture often understands the majority culture better than the majority culture understands themselves. So I am curious about your opinion, and now I’m speaking as a white person, to what extent do you believe it is the responsibility of the majority culture to understand the minority culture and what is offensive, oppressive, holding them back, et cetera? Do you have a point of view on that?

Colette Phillips 19:28

I do. I think it’s important for you to know what your own implicit biases are. Right. We all have implicit bias and implicit bias. Let me let me explain for those people who may not understand it. Implicit bias is an unconscious association that. Or belief. or attitude that you may have towards a particular group of people. It’s to me, a negative attitude that one may not even be consciously aware of. And that attitude is against a specific group of people, whether it’s men, black people, Latinos, white people, you know, Muslims, Jews, you know, so implicit bias is the product of, I think, learned association and social conditioning. You know, there is a song, if you know the play South Pacific, You have to be carefully taught to hate. You have to be carefully taught.

So people are taught hatred. You see, I have seen pictures of little children dressed up in Klans outfit. That’s where hate comes from. So we have to be willing to understand our own biases, our own implicit bias. And there are many organizations out there where you can take an implicit bias test. I call it improving your cultural IQ. There is the Harvard test you could go on. There is, if you Google it. And I would say that one of my cultural IQ icons is the late Anthony Bourdain. who used to have this show on CNN called Parts Unknown. I was fascinated with that show because you never knew where he was going to end up, who he was going to be with, what he was going to eat, you know, and he would sit and engage with the people as equals.

And I think one of the things I should do for you, Sarah, is let me read something from a CEO, the power of cultural curiosity. This is about the former CEO of AT&T, Randall Stephenson. He had given a speech in 2016, and at the conclusion of his remarks to his employees at AT&T, Randall Stephenson explained why he believed cultural intelligence differed from simply trying to coexist or get along. “Tolerance,” Stevenson says, “is for cowards. Being tolerant requires nothing of you but to be quiet and not make waves.

Holding tightly to your views and judgments without being challenged. Do not tolerate each other. Work hard move into uncharted territory and understand each other.” He recognized something about inclusive leaders, that culture is personal thing. It shapes our values, our life trajectories, our own relationships. So when someone makes an effort to understand another person’s culture, it means a lot. And so I say, life begins at the end of your comfort zone, get out of your comfort zone you live in a community, even if you do you have indigenous people in your community. Google and see what events are coming up that maybe I can go and, you know, go to a food festival.

Here in Boston, 10 years ago, I created something called A Taste of Ethnic Boston, because I wanted to give people of all cultural backgrounds an opportunity to get to know other people’s culture through food and music. Those are two things that no matter where you are, music unites people, food unites people. Growing up in an island, my father used to say, you cannot call someone your friend until you have broken bread with them. Because you could butt heads all day with someone and you go out and have a meal with them.

You’re sitting across from them and you begin to learn things about that person and all of a sudden that toughness that you both may have had starts to melt away because you now are seeing the person in a different setting under different circumstances and you can ask them questions and talk with them and interact with them. So my thing is that If you know your implicit biases, you can say, I need to work on this. Why do I? And the minute you start to think, oh, you go into a room, you see a group of young teenagers, Black teenagers, you said, oh, they are. When you start to ascribe a particular generalization to any group of people, that’s your implicit bias.

Sarah E. Brown 25:12

Very cool. So any time you say they, fill in the blank. It’s a clue. It’s a clue to get curious. It’s a clue to get curious. That’s really good. Yes, curiosity. Well, switching gears a minute to the book. The book has been categorized as kind of a handbook. Yes. and on how to do right for employees. What inspired you to write the book?

Colette Phillips 25:40

Well, first of all, what inspired me to write the book is the fact that a lot of companies, I would say, after what I like to term America’s racial reckoning and maybe cultural awakening, which happened in 2020 with the murder of George Floyd. A lot of companies jumped into the fray and they wanted to become engaged in DE&I, but most of them really didn’t have a clue how to go about it, what to do. And then there were lots of people who threw out shingles about, you know, diversity, equity, and inclusion, who themselves did not have a clue. And so I said, I’ve been doing this now for three decades. I’ve been an advocate and a voice for inclusion, for cross-cultural communications, connections and interactions. And I have worked and counseled and advised CEOs and C-suite executives. And I could probably, there’s a lot that I have learned myself that I wanted to impart and to give people the opportunity.

And I thought this is a opportunity for not just CEOs, but it could be chiefs of police, mayors, superintendents, college presidents, anyone who is in a leadership position or someone who was curious enough to find out, you know, it doesn’t blame, it doesn’t shame, and it doesn’t guilt anybody because blaming, shaming, and guilting doesn’t accomplish a darn thing. There’s no power in it. There’s no power in it and it diminishes the other person and it makes them walk away. It’s like, okay. No, I don’t want people shamed. I don’t want them blamed and I don’t want them guilted. What I want them to do is lean in and listen and to understand and to ask questions. How can I help? How can I be a better ally? If as a straight, I was one of the first straight women to serve on the board of directors of an organization that was serving LGBTQIA because I believe as a straight woman, It was part of my responsibility to be inclusive and to break down barriers and to be an example that other people would want to emulate. So I think that, to me, is what this book is about. It’s how do we get the tips, the advice, the insights, of advocates and allies that we can adapt and we can emulate to really create a better America, a better and more inclusive and diverse, equitable workforce where everybody feels valued, appreciated, and that they belong.

Sarah E. Brown 29:02

So just to help the listeners here, the way her book is structured is she has seven traits or characteristics that you have found to be important for leaders who are moving the ball forward. And then what she does is to do case studies on seven white males who have actually exemplified these characteristics. And so that that’s the basic structure of the book. So let me just do a couple of if we could just drill down a little bit on a couple of the characteristics or traits that you are highlighting in here. I’ll read them. Character is one. We’ve done a lot of talking about that. Cultural intelligence, that’s understanding your implicit bias and the like. And the getting curious aspect of what we’ve been talking about. Connections, mixing it up and multiplying. Communications is the fourth one. Make the message matter. So just let me pause on that one for a minute. What’s the gist of the, Pardon the pun of the message on this 1. what what do we need to pay attention to in terms of communications?

Colette Phillips 30:15

But I think we have to be careful about how the words that we use, you know, like a lot of us say things like you guys, and you guys is a very masculine term. You know, it’s like when you use the term you guys, then you are basically diminishing the women who are, who might be in the group. And I know it’s a terminology, but we have to be careful about words that we use.

The ADL has a wonderful, I would say, sort of word smiting of how we address people. And the best thing that I would advise people to do is to ask you know curiosity there you probably know this Sarah but there was there’s a term that people used to say curiosity is kills the cat and my sister always had but satisfaction brought it back. you know so if we if we are curious and we ask people questions and I say to people you know don’t call people out call them in somebody says something that is offensive especially if it’s a colleague or a co-worker or a boss or something. Don’t chastise them, you know, in front of everybody, go into their office, take them aside and say, you know what, Sarah, maybe you don’t know, but that term that you used this afternoon in your interaction or conversation with me was somewhat offensive. And let me tell you why. And most of the times when that happens, people are personally shocked and genuinely remorseful because it wasn’t intentional. And so we have to be willing to also give each other grace, and to recognize that not everything that people say or do is intentional. They don’t know what they don’t know.

And part of, I have heard friends of mine who we laugh a lot because we said, oh, I’m so black exhausted, as a black person, you know, and I’m sure there are women who say I am, you know, I’m gender exhausted or I’m gender frustrated. But part of it is, you know, and I have friends who say, it’s not my job to teach these grown people about blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I say, but it may not be your job. But how are we going to help bring them across the line if we just say, well, it’s not my role, it’s not my job, they got to learn on their own. No, I believe strongly that We have a responsibility. We are a brothers and sisters keeper. We have to get out of this space of, as I keep saying, divisiveness and hostility. Do I get angry? Of course I do. I get angry because I see stupidity. I see people who should know better, you know, weaponizing race, weaponizing gender, weaponizing D, E, and I for their own personal political gain.

And they know it’s wrong. And that angers me. But somebody who is asking me a question or somebody who wants to learn genuinely I don’t consider that a, what I call offensive. I want to help you recognize that something you might’ve done or said might be a microaggression. And you may not even know it because, again, biases are mostly unconscious. And we live in a society that the framework and the system is set up for a sense of superiority for a certain type of people. And when I say to people about when my white friends, I say to them, When people talk about white privilege, they’re not speaking about the fact that you may not have had a hard life growing up. You may have been brought up in abject poverty. You may have come from Appalachia. But what it means, white privilege, is your skin color was not a barrier to you getting over.

When we say to men, white, black, Latino, you know, you have certain gender privilege. We’re not saying that they didn’t grow up hard. We’re saying as a man, there are certain things that you get to get away with or you get to do that is not afforded to us as women. And it’s not that you are better or we are saying we are better. It’s we just want to have be treated equally. We want to have a path of equality. That’s what it is. We don’t want to be men. I don’t want to be a man under no circumstance. I just want to be treated with respect and dignity. I want my humanity to be acknowledged and recognized. And I think that’s what we all strive for.

Sarah E. Brown 36:09

Very well said. So I want to hit the other three traits. They are collaboration, courage, and commitment. And on the commitment one, you make a statement in your book to not wait on perfection to get started, but to take action, even if it’s not perfect action. And I would like for you to expound a minute on that, because that’s a major tenet in all of my work.

Colette Phillips 36:35

I agree. I think, again, even if you have all six traits and you don’t have commitment, commitment is what pushes everything across the line. You must have a commitment to make things happen, but you cannot let perfect be the enemy of the good. And I will give you an example. Ron O’Hanley, the CEO of, chairman of State Street Bank, when he supported Reiki Kuma, one of his then employees, around the idea of the fearless girl that was erected on Wall Street in front of the bull with the little girl with her elbows, her knuckles on her waistline she akimbo her hands akimbo as we call it in the Caribbean i don’t know what they call it here um people say oh they’re only doing that as a pr stunt because at the time state street was being in the middle of a class action suit from women who were not paid equally as their male counterparts for doing the same work. And even though this didn’t occur on Ron O’Hanley’s watch, he didn’t have anything to do with that policy. The suit came on his watch.

And he said, look, this is not about a PR stunt. We have a lot of work to do. I acknowledge that. But let’s not let perfect be the enemy of the good. You have to start somewhere. And so why not here? Why not now? Why not demonstrate that you are committed to gender equity and the best way you can hold yourself accountable is to have a monument so that every time you see that monument and people see that monument, they are holding State Street Bank accountable to what that monument symbolizes. And I admire that in Ron O’Hanley because it is what true commitment is about. Let not perfect be the enemy of the good.

Sarah E. Brown 39:05

Great. And as we’re wrapping this up, I want you to say a little bit about the Harvard Business Review case study that was done on your work in Boston and what you did to create an ecosystem there and how you’re defining that ecosystem.

Colette Phillips 39:23

Well, first of all, if people are familiar with Boston, Boston has always had had and let me underline had, as opposed to have, because I think Boston has changed dramatically. We have, in the last 24 months, we have had two mayors of color. One was appointed when the former mayor, Marty Walsh, left to go join the Biden administration as Secretary of Labor. Kim Janey, a black woman became the first black first female mayor of Boston. And we now have Mayor Wu, who is the first elected. woman, first elected person of color, and first Asian American mayor. We have a city council that is now 70% people of color with the president of the city council being a woman of color, first Caribbean, first Asian American, and fourth woman of color to hold that position. So the city has changed. And so when 16 years ago, I observed that I was going to a lot of events, I’ve been going to a lot of places year after year, time after time, and often it was not inclusive. There was no, not a lot of people of color. It’s the same group of people showing up. And I realized that the people who are hosting the event maybe may not have been deliberately being exclusive. It’s just that the people I know and the people who should be in the room were not in their database. And so I created this networking event, cross-cultural networking event series called Get Konnected with a K. And the whole idea is to bring people together of all cultural backgrounds, Black, white, Latino, Asian, whatever your background is, alien from outer space. You came into the room and you felt welcome. And I wanted to give companies, because some of the companies I was counseling keep saying, we can’t retain our talent of color because people come and they stay a year, two years, and they go because they don’t think of Boston as a friendly place. And so this was a venue where people could come, connect, make connections, build friendships, build business relationships, and go on. So 16 years later, we are still doing this. And so when the pandemic hit, I recognized that there was a number of small businesses that were either going to go out of business because these were not businesses that had a digital presence or they were they were dependent mostly on foot traffic, because they were in the neighborhoods and mostly black and brown owned companies and immigrant owned companies. So I decided I was going to create a platform, like a mini market online marketplace for these companies and help them to have a digital presence so they could stay and survive during the pandemic.

They could sell their goods and services online. So I created that system. And then I went on to create a nonprofit called the GK Fund for targeting people of color who needed to have, who had micro business and who a $10,000 grant could make the difference between them growing their business to the next level or going out of business. So I created that. And then I also created something called the GK ExecuSearch, which was a lot of companies were now thinking about how do we support and bring more women more people of color into our workforce because we look around and we don’t see the diversity that our marketplace reflects. So I created a job, a search. component to my business to help companies find the best talent, they can.

And I also started putting together lists of the most influential people of color, the most influential people of color in particular industries, to give people an opportunity to stop saying, we can’t find any. Well, here they are. So with those lists, I am able now to reach out to my database and say, hey, you know, such and such a company is looking for a senior executive in whatever the field is. So that was an ecosystem. So I had like five different components and a job hub that was free to people who were entry-level people. So that was what fascinated the Harvard Business School professor, Rosabeth Moss Cantor, who said, wow, this is really smart, you have created a diversity, equity and inclusion ecosystem, looking at the needs, and then responding to it. So there is my case study that other colleges and now other business schools are now using.

And I had the privilege of going to one of Professor Cantor’s class and listening to the class literally dissect the case study about me and then to address them about what sort of motivated me to do this. So there you have the story.

Sarah E. Brown 45:37

Very interesting. And what a way to end. So Colette, thank you so much for sharing your perspective and being with us today.

Colette Phillips 45:58

And thank you for all the work you do coaching women and helping them move up the ladder and build their careers. Thank you.

Sarah E. Brown 46:55

Thanks for listening to the KTS Success Factor Podcast for Women. If you like what you are hearing, please go to iTunes to subscribe, rate us and leave a review. And if you would like more information on how we can help women in your organization to thrive, then go to www.sarahebrown.com. You can sign up for our newsletter, read show notes, and learn more about our podcast guests. Read my blog, browse through the books, or contact us for a chat. Goodbye for now.

Sarah E. Brown
Sarah E. Brown

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