How to Inclusively Celebrate DEI Holidays & Heritage Months at Work
Episode 499 | Host: Emilie Aries | Guest: Veronique Porter
What can your workplace do to inclusively celebrate holidays like Women’s History Month the “right” way?
This week, we’re revisiting an episode that is just as (if not more) relevant as when it first aired in May of 2023.
I imagine that most of you who listen to this show support DEIB and the pursuit of equity for marginalized groups. You might be proud of what your organization is doing to show that support in the workplace, or maybe you feel like it could be doing more.
My conversation with DEI educator and Ampersand Workspace founder Veronique Porter dug deep into the challenges of celebrating holidays like Women’s History Month and Black History Month in the workplace. From Veronique’s experience as a Black American woman and her education in international development and American studies and culture, she has a lifetime of insights and suggestions for how to approach this often fraught topic. Her ideas help organizations create events and initiatives that are actually in line with both company and employee values.
How to address the idea that DEI detracts from business objectives
In 2023, the war against workplace wokeness was brewing, and we’ve now seen the ramifications of ongoing federal pushback. Some claim that recognizing heritage holidays is a distraction from the business bottom line, and Veronique’s response to this is, unsurprisingly, “an ironic chuckle.” She foretells what we now see in practice: if employers choose to see recognizing the rights of marginalized people as a detriment, they’re going to face pushback from employees.
Veronique cites the widespread refusal to return to work after the pandemic. Alongside factors like commutes and child care was a hesitation to dive back into in-person microaggressions, which a 2021 McKinsey study showed was a huge driver of burnout in Black women in particular.
If you don’t enable your employees to bring their whole selves to work and feel recognized and accepted as such, you detract from cultural resiliency in the workplace. Veronique explains that companies lacking this resiliency are the first to fall in the face of recession, pandemic, and other economic impacts on their industries.
Veronique’s tips for celebrating important holidays at work
Recognizing International Women’s Day, Black History Month, and similar heritage months can impact not just employee satisfaction but also the company bottom line. Veronique’s workshops and trainings help organizations and individuals understand the best ways to integrate these events into their workplaces, rather than doing nothing in order to avoid doing it wrong.
Devote time and resources to the issue
Designating one person to plan weekly activities for Black History Month on their lunch breaks with zero budget or support is not going to fly. Veronique stresses that companies must earmark paid time, enough bodies, and at least a bit of money for their initiatives. This includes beginning to plan more than mere days in advance.
2. Build a team of willing volunteers
Another vital component of a successful heritage event is involving everyone. Don’t just ask the people who (management assumes) fit that demographic or practically force employees to volunteer. Put the request for help out to the whole team to engage both those who already participate in initiatives and those who would like to start.
Furthermore, Veronique prompts companies to ask for input from everyone, whether they will be part of the official planning committee or not. What are their thoughts on Pride or Black History Month, what do they think should be included in the event, and are they connected with any organizations that might want to be involved? This approach shows the company is striving to do more than pay lip service to recognizing and uplifting marginalized groups.
3. Get clear on the company values
Putting a solid budget and willing team behind these projects is in itself an indication of importance—we spend time and money on things we value. But beyond this, Veronique encourages organizations to really think about why they’re choosing to recognize specific holidays.
When questions like “Why this holiday and not that one?” crop up (and they will), the answer will resonate much better if there is already clarity on the goal and the reason for the event: either that holiday fits in the values the company has chosen to focus on and should be included, or it doesn’t fit. In this era of National Pistachio Day, every square on the calendar has a special day attached to it, so nailing down the why makes the selection process equitable and understandable.
4. Follow through year-round
The goal of a work event recognizing the successes and tribulations of a marginalized community can’t realistically be solving that problem in an afternoon or a month. Instead, the best initiatives help people connect what they learned to their day-to-day work and lives.
That means carrying the efforts highlighted at company events throughout the office all year. This can look like affinity groups that provide specific demographics with the in-office opportunity to come together and, of course, the ongoing pursuit of equal and equitable hiring and benefits practices.
How is your organization acknowledging holidays like Women’s History Month and Juneteenth? What would you like to see them doing? Visit the Courage Community on Facebook or join us in our group on LinkedIn to share your thoughts on an issue that’s more relevant than ever as we see federal pressure to hamstring DEI initiatives.
Related links from today’s episode:
McKinsey: These Women Experience the Highest Levels of Microaggressions
New York Times, “Google Calendar Deletes Women’s History Month and Other Cultural Events”
The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker
The Bossed Up Sports Reference case study
Morgan Freeman on why he doesn't want a 'Black History Month'
Episode 304, White Fragility, White Women's Tears, and Dismantling White Supremacy
Connect with Veronique Porter on LinkedIn
Learn more about Ampersand Workspace
LEVEL UP: a Leadership Accelerator for Women on the Rise
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[INTRO MUSIC IN]
EMILIE: Hey, and welcome to the Bossed Up podcast, episode 499. I'm your host, Emilie Aries, the Founder and CEO of Bossed Up and Happy Women's History Month. Today, to commemorate Women's History Month, I'm bringing back an episode that first aired in 2023, featuring my friend Veronique Porter, all about how to thoughtfully celebrate heritage months like Women's History Month.
Now, this is an important conversation now more than ever, because there is a very overt backlash, war, whatever you want to call it, against DEI, diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, including things like celebrating Black History Month, Hispanic Heritage Month, and March Women's History Month. We talked about this burgeoning backlash on the episode when it first aired, and now in 2025, it feels like this is mainstream. In fact, just a few weeks ago, the New York Times published a story all about how Google, in their Google Calendar app, deleted Women's History Month and a lot of other cultural heritage markers, like references to Hispanic Heritage Month, Pride Month, Jewish American Heritage Month, and even Holocaust Remembrance Day. They'd all disappeared from the GCAL app, which is an unfortunate sort of cultural backlash that we're seeing play out across tech right now and across America in so many overt and covert kinds of ways.
So today, I want to really ask for your input. How is this impacting your workplace? Has your workplace changed their approach on diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives or employee resource groups? Has the commemoration of Women's History Month continued to be something that's talked about or not? I want to hear from you, so please know that my inbox is always open, shoot me an email at emilie@bossedup.org to tell me how this is going in your neck of the woods. And as I always mentioned at the end of every episode, our Facebook group, Our Courage Community on Facebook, and our group on LinkedIn are great forums for conversation after each episode as well. I know the irony of pitching you on a community based on big tech after acknowledging that big tech itself is rolling back the clock on DEI right now is a little ironic, so. And my whole inbox runs on Gmail too, so that irony is not lost on me. But tech is a reflection of our broader society, of our broader culture. It's embedded in everything that we do nowadays.
So I'm really dismayed by how far we have gone, fallen from celebrating things like black lives mattering and how over the course of the past few years, the political dialogue has really unveiled or revealed how left out men have felt, how left out white people have felt, and I get into it in this episode with Veronique, but I think there has always been a place for ERG’s, employee resource groups to include men. I think there should be men's ERG’s where they get together and talk about the constraints of masculinity, where they talk about the fact that things like alcoholism and suicide disproportionately impact men. Why aren't we creating forums like that as part of our DEI initiatives?
Same thing with white people. Like, having a DEI approach that incorporates whiteness as a race that has its own baggage to unpack, to me, always felt like a missed opportunity. And yet I've never come across an organization that's doing that work in that way. Sure, a lot of the women's ERG’s that we work with here at Bossed Up open their doors to folks across the gender spectrum, which I appreciate and understand. But I just wonder if we had gone about DEI explicitly, including men's identities and white folks, racial identities as valid, important, and worth discussion, I wonder if we'd still be here.
Odds are yes, because all progress is met with backlash. But I hope this is just one step backwards in a two step forward kind of movement that's coming next. I wonder what this is going to look like in its next iteration. Because let me tell you, Bossed Up, we've been talking about the backlash against DEI for years and here we are in 2025 and it feels like it's gone mainstream. Anyway, the wisdom that Veronique shares from her perspective as a DEI practitioner, as someone with a background in education, and as a black woman herself is as valid today as it's ever, ever been. And I'd love to hear what you think about it.
Joining me on today's episode to help break this down is Veronique Porter, the Founder and lead educator at Ampersand Workspace, who teaches folks to recognize race and gender based oppression and use their power, privilege and influence to disrupt it. She uses facilitated conversations, small group trainings, workshops, as well as speaking engagements to shape folks mindsets, build their skills and create lasting impact. Veronique is a thoughtful facilitator and teacher trainer, capitalizing on her background in international development, research in American studies and culture, and her years of experience as a Black American woman in the world.
Veronique, welcome to the Bossed Up podcast.
VERONIQUE: Thank you. It's nice to be here and I appreciate it.
EMILIE: I'm so delighted to have you here. So tell me, how did you get into this work to begin with?
VERONIQUE: Mm, that is a good question. So previously I had a career in international development, and this is work that I had been doing kind of unofficially because I was interested in it. And these are the conversations that I was having with my friends and honestly, even with anybody who I came across. This is what I was reading about, this is what I was posting about on social media. So the content is content that I've informally researched and vetted and talked about and had hundreds, literally hundreds of conversations about for so long. And long story short, I ended up having a summer where I didn't work for the first time since I was like 14. I wasn't working, I wasn't in school, and I was trying to figure myself out what was going to happen.
So I was going to start a blog or a podcast and that turned into a business where, you know, I started really reconciling that people had a need that wasn't being met. Especially after George Floyd's death, a lot of people were reading the books and listening to the podcast and still saying, what now? How do I do this? And so those are the conversations that were progressing. And again, I just felt like there was a need and I wanted to fill that need.
And just really, honestly, my long term goal is to really redefine how we talk about race and gender. When I say race and gender, people make the leap to DEI, which is not wrong, and that's perfectly fine. But across the board, the way in which we talk about race and gender, I truly believe that it factors into every aspect of our lives. Whether we see it, you know, consciously and overtly or not, it's really about how we're consciously addressing it, how we're consciously dealing with it, how we've consciously unpacked it, what we've learned or what we need to unlearn around those issues. And I just feel so happy being able to make impact in this space officially and with a wider platform than my family and whoever I come across. It's more purposeful in a way.
EMILIE: Yeah. Congratulations.
VERONIQUE: Thanks.
EMILIE: On making this your mission. You know, you write in your about section on LinkedIn, Veronique is a Black with a capital B, Cis gender woman, you know, and you really are looking to turn race and gender theory into actionable steps. So what do you mean by black with a capital B? And how does that experience, how does your lived experience as a black woman sort of impact your approach to this? Because it's not just theory, right? It's not just reading, it's not just research.
VERONIQUE: And I think that's where we, all of us, myself included, where we get caught up in that idea of like what we, you know, every time something happens, somebody's like, I'm not a racist, I'm not a Karen, when their actions clearly say the other thing, and it's because they haven't aligned what they think about themselves and what they think about race and gender to how they're manifesting that into their actions, right?
There's so much that we don't even realize that we've absorbed, that we've taken in often times that theory, what we think we believe versus how we do that in action, what we're putting our time and energy into, what we're putting our money into, how we respond, how we interact with people, that's the difference that we need to really tap into. And that's what I'm trying to teach people to make that connection.
And then the Black with a capital B I think is super important because black is a color in some ways. And there are a lot of associations that we have around that. But then there's also this race thing. And as a society we struggle with that idea of race versus ethnicity versus nationality. And so I am a Black American, Black with a capital B. And I make that distinction not to separate myself from other Americans, but because in my very much so lived experience, that is a separation that is already made. And so there is a pride, there is a very well deserved distinction around Black with a capital B that says I am a part of a heritage, a group of people, a history, a culture that is distinct.
EMILIE: Yeah, that's so interesting. You know, you mentioned some people conflate what you do with diversity, equity and inclusion. And every DEI professional I talk to DEIB is under attack, including my business. You know, we focus on gender inclusion and intersectional feminist framework to what we do, but the budgets are being slashed, the war on, quote, woke capitalism is raging. In 2023, the Wall Street Journal is publishing articles about how, you know, this is a distraction from business bottom line needs. Do you think focusing on things like heritage months become a distraction for the workforce or for the workplace?
VERONIQUE: You know, I really. I'm glad you brought up this attack on like wokeness, because, I'm seeing more and more about it. I don't know how else to respond but to ironically chuckle because really?
EMILIE: Yeah.
VERONIQUE: So for me, this idea that like, if we bring wokeness into the workplace, it is a detriment, I think that employers are going to really see a lot of pushback. We're already seeing with, you know, the pandemic, how folks don't want to go back into the office in large part because of microaggressions. Yeah, you know, some of it is they don't want the commute and all of that. But at the end of the day, you know, we had this, you know, slice in time where we could sit at home and not have to worry about microaggressions, about our identities and our intersections of our identities, and we just don't want to do that anymore. If we're going back to work, we want to bring our full selves to work, or we don't want to go back to work.
EMILIE: I think it was like this year's McKinsey and Lean In study that found black women in particular report just unending microaggressions, being a huge driver of their burnout, of their attrition, of their reason for trying to exit the workforce altogether.
VERONIQUE: And even before the pandemic, black women were the leading group of folks starting their own businesses for a variety of reasons. But now that the pandemic has hit, those numbers are soaring even more than they were in 2019, before the pandemic ever hit. We are still the leading demographic and by leaps and bounds, even above white men. Like, we are the leading entrepreneurs because we don't want to deal anymore. And we know that we have talents and skills. We know that we have strengths that we bring to the workforce. And we are just tired of having to deal with everything else on top of that and then being doubted about the same skills that we bring to the workplace.
And back to that idea about, you know, workplace wokeness, and that being an attack on the workplace. You know, we are saying flat out that a recession is coming, right? And workplaces are already, you know, again, having issues bringing people back into the office. They're losing a lot of staff to gig economy and, or entrepreneurship. And so if people can't bring their full selves to work, and if you're not able to address some of the issues that staff are clearly bringing up, that employees are not hiding, that they feel that the workplace is kind of broken in a lot of ways.
And so if we are not addressing that and instead we're going to push it under the rug and try to approach the workplace in this kind of, like, blind, we don't see any of this, and we're just not going to address any of this, what you're not going to have and what employers need in a recession and what employers need when they have gaps in their employment and trying to keep and retain staff, they won't have cultural resiliency like, workplace cultural resiliency. And what cultural resiliency is, it means that when a recession comes, when a pandemic comes, when your particular sector or domain, like tech or media or anywhere else that is undergoing large layoffs and big shifts and big changes, your particular workplace culture, if it cannot be resilient to that, then you will suffer as well.
And so what these sort of, you know, building a good culture, addressing DEI, this idea of being woke, in a positive way and not a negative way, what that's going to do is, is that's going to provide a safe space in which your staff says, I want to be here and I want to stick it out for the long haul. And I'm not looking for jobs all day. I'm not quiet quitting. I am committed to my job and my job description 100%. And I might be going above and beyond because this is such a good place to. To be, because I feel seen here, because this place is investing in me and not just in the bottom line. That is what is increasing productivity. That is what is increasing the bottom line. You're not getting there without it, period.
EMILIE: Yeah, I love that. So how do we make a space feel safe in that way? What role does Heritage Months play? Like, you know, there's been so much talk, I think, especially since 2020, and became a ton of employee pressure put on employers to say, hey, we need to celebrate things like Black History. We need to celebrate things like Juneteenth as a holiday. You know, we need to push for commemorating AAPI Heritage Month and Women's History Month. What are the right ways to do that work? And what are some of the pitfalls you see or mistakes that you see people making there?
VERONIQUE: And I think the biggest pitfall, which is completely valid, is that idea of, if I do it, then we're going to do it wrong and we're going to get canceled. There's no way to do it correctly. You know, you’re, excuse my language, d***** if you do, d***** if you don't. There's no way to get around this. So even if we try our hardest, it's not going to be enough, so we just won't do it at all. And again, I say to you that your employees are looking at that and saying that you won't put in the effort, you won't put in the time to figure it out.
And that really is my first tip is that we put time and money into what we value, hands down. And so it doesn't mean that you have to put massive amounts of money into these celebrations, but if you're unwilling to spend any money on them and you just expect them to magically appear and be meaningful and be great, you're going to have a problem. Same if you're doing it last minute where you're like, oh, yeah, it's February 1st, it's Black History Month. What are we going to do? You're going to have a problem.
So the first thing is we have to move past that discomfort of we're going to get it wrong and put the time, the effort and a little bit of money, a decent amount of money into what can we do to do it right? What can we do to make this meaningful? Not just to do it to check the box, not just to say, oh, look, on social media, we are highlighting our black employees. Oh, look, our Asian people work here and they're on our social media. What are we actually doing to make this meaningful for everyone and to make this a learning experience, a celebration, whatever your goal is. So we have to define those goals of what we want out of these celebrations or out of these sessions around this and, and make it meaningful.
EMILIE: You know who you're reminding me of, Veronique, is Priya Parker, author of The Art of Gathering. She starts every event, whether it's a birthday party, a dinner party, or a work conference, and says, what is the goal? What is the purpose behind this event? And what I hear you saying is that, look, you don't need to change the world with your, you know, Black History Month celebration. You're not gonna necessarily solve systemic racism with your Juneteenth event. But be clear about your goal. Is it to celebrate? Is it to educate? Is it to commemorate?
You know, and I almost wonder to what extent do you think companies, employers and organizations should put the sunniest disposition on these events versus acknowledging the shadow side of where we're at? Because with all of these elements, there's so much more work that needs to be done and there's progress that's been made.
VERONIQUE: Right.
EMILIE: How do you balance the negative and the positive in those?
VERONIQUE: Yeah, and honestly, this was a conversation, uh, that I saw come up a lot. This year in particular, maybe it was just me seeing it around International Women's Day, where, where I was seeing a lot of folks saying this was meant to be a disruption. This was meant to be a protest, right? And we hear this a lot around Pride as well, right? Where Pride was Started from a riot and we've gotten too celebratory. It's been too co-opted, it's been too commercialized. Yep. All those things, right? For me, it's always both. I don't think you can celebrate without also acknowledging the history, the context, right? And to say, like, yes, there's still work to be done, but. But we can still celebrate. We can still say, this is the progress that we've made. And so there is that balance. And I think if you focus too much on one and not the other, it leans too much in one direction, right. And so I think there has to be both.
EMILIE: You know, not to, like, throw this up as an excuse, but what you started with the you're d***** if you do and d***** if you don't feels very real because it does feel like this is easy to get wrong even for well intended folks. So what advice would you give to the, like, committee member who's totally unpaid and frankly unqualified to be planning one of these things, but has been tasked nonetheless to do so? Like, what should they do, what should they avoid, and what should they keep in mind when thinking about programming for Juneteenth or Black history in general?
VERONIQUE: Well, first, I'm going to speak to their management and say that they should be given more space to do this work if that is a part of their job now, and also some money and some resources to do this. Honestly, that's my second tip. For organizations as a whole. We need to ask and not demand that folks put these things on, particularly the folks in which their identities intersect.
And so, for example, with Pride, it is really easy for you to say, oh, yeah, we have this LGBTQ+ person in the office. Clearly you can do the pride thing, right? That's your thing. No, what you do is instead of pointing out one person or a group of folks, you ask everyone, you know, about this particular event. Say, you know, we're looking to do something about Pride. Again, start early. We're looking to do something around pride. What are your thoughts on that? What do you think should be included? Do you want to be a part of it? Do you have organizations that we can partner with? You get a sense of what your staff knows, how they feel about it, and you more often than not are going to get people who volunteer, but if you voluntold them to do it, and that it is kind of a question, but without the question mark at the end, it's expected that you do it. We can't just like, really push and push until they go oh, yeah, sure. I'd love to do that. Because they know what's expected of them.
We ask them if they want to be a part of it. We ask them what they'd like to see in the workplace. We ask them what kind of celebrations, what kind of themes, what kind of organizations they want to be a part of. And then we take that information as management and we figure it out. If we do have employee resource groups or affinity groups, that's great. And they can take the lead on those sort of surveys. They can take the lead on that sort of organization, because that structure is already in place.
But again, the time and the money needs to go to it, the resources need to go to it, and you need to be coming up with the collective, because, for example, I might not be a part of the LGBTQ+ community, but maybe I have a family member who is. Maybe my partner is. And so in that way, you're including everyone who has a stake in it, who wants to say something about it, or even other people who have no sort of stake in it and want to learn, who want to be able to say, I want to see this because I want to learn about it, because I want to support.
EMILIE: And we're not defaulting to the marginalized community, championing their community, and doing the work of educating the rest of us, right? Like.
VERONIQUE: For free, outside of the bounds of their work. Exactly, yes. And then, yeah, for that committee person, similar, where it's, like, get support from whoever is interested, not from who, you know, already identifies, because it's easy enough to just rely on those folks, and it puts other people in a passive seat. So include everybody to say, this is what we're thinking. You know, we're thinking about doing something. What do y'all want to see? Who wants to be a part of it, who wants to help out? And maybe that is a seat on the committee, or maybe that is just you being a part of this event. Maybe that is you connecting us to folks that you know outside of work, other organizations that, you know, whatever. But opening it up to everyone so that you get this buy in, you get this support, and you find resources that you might not have known you had otherwise.
EMILIE: Absolutely. I think that's resourcefulness. That's just smart business. And creating culture doesn't have to be crazy cumbersome or expensive to be inclusive. You just have to be thoughtful. And I think that's such a great takeaway.
I'm reminded of one of the areas in which we work with businesses where this comes up a lot is the question, who are we inviting to this event? And so, some of our organizational clients, they brought us in for an active allyship series, understanding unconscious bias, how it's systematically embedded in organizations, how they can dismantle it before they went on a hiring spree, and how that led them to creating a much more diverse workforce, but also much more inclusive work culture.
And that obviously requires everyone. But then the other way we work with organizations is with our Level Up leadership program, which we've run for folks across the gender spectrum. But oftentimes we're making the case to our clients that, you know what, sometimes, not always, but sometimes folks of a marginalized community need some time to themselves without the dominant community being there, right? So, you know, whether it's a black employee resource group, a gay employee resource group, a, women's ERG’s, where do you come down on the question of should we invite the whole gang? Or should we make this a safe and frankly, somewhat secluded space for folks of that identity to come together?
VERONIQUE: And I think that goes back to what is the intention of this event or celebration, right? If we're here to learn, right? Then everybody should be there to learn. If we're here to support a certain community, then we default to that community to say, what do you want? What do you need, in this moment? Right? And that is what it really comes down to. And when you're in a workplace, I personally would say it, it should come down to this learning idea, right? An affinity group should be an affinity. Like, you know, if you want to have a black affinity group, a black employees affinity group, that should be year round so that they can have that support, so that they can have each other around.
But when it comes to Black History Month, that should be for everybody. That affinity group can do their own thing, for sure. But when we talk about, you know, the workplace thing that we're going to do for Black History Month, that should be everyone, because everybody should be learning, everybody should be taking part, and it should be for everybody.
So I think in my brain those are two separate things. That group that supports those folks and that affinity group, and that should be year round. That should be something that we put time and energy and effort into as well. And of course that can be kind of insular. But when we're talking about heritage holidays, identity based holidays and months and celebrations, we all need to be able to have a different appreciation, to have a different understanding, to be able to connect this to our work in a way that we hadn't before this event. And that should be everybody.
EMILIE: I love that. That makes a lot of sense to me. I guess my last question and comment might be creating space for there to be different opinions about how this is done well. Including among people of that marginalized identity. I'm thinking of some very prominent actors and influencers and leaders in the black community who've said, I don't want a Black History Month, right? That's American history. That's not black history. And so, you know, we are here to provide suggestions. But you're not saying that, guess what? This is a bulletproof strategy that everyone's gonna love, especially everyone who's black is gonna love your Black History Month plan, right?
Like, what encouragement would you give folks who are trying their best to manage multiple stakeholders, including some white folks or folks outside of whatever identity group we're talking about, who feel like this should never be a thing? Like, when is white Men's History Month, right? How do you balance just the constant barrage of differing opinions, which are more likely coming in from every angle if you do venture down this path? Like, what would you say to folks who are tasked with managing these many different opinions in terms of persevering and why is it worth it to do so?
VERONIQUE: Yeah. And so I've had to address this with organizations specifically. Especially that White Man's History Month thing. It has literally come up in the past, and not just once. And the thing is, it always comes back to values. At the end of the day, before you do any DEI work, before you figure out, you know, what your approach is, what your initiatives are, you already know your organization's values. What does it come down to? And so when we're talking about what events we're going to take part of and what events we aren't, because there's so many, literally, you know, when you look up heritage months, if you look up identity based holidays of any sort, there is like a whole calendar of we have a holiday for everything in the U.S. and so there's so many.
So even picking and choosing of the ones that are established. No less the noise, we're hearing about things that should be. Because if we have women, then we should have men. What we need to really focus on is our values, right? There's a reason why we want to uplift black voices because we feel like they have not been heard otherwise, because we feel like even within our culture, we need to make sure that they are feeling not only equitable, but equal in this space. And so that idea of a Man's History Month, for example, is like, okay, why do we need that? In what ways are you feeling left out, right? Let's really get to the root of it. And does it align with the values that you have as an organization? Does it align with the values that you've associated within your organization, your missions that align with your DEI approaches and initiatives? That's what it comes down to. Your values.
EMILIE: And let me just go on the record here and say I would love to see a men's erg that focuses on. Let's unpack masculinity. I would love to see a white ERG that focuses on white fragility and whiteness and how it's impacted. As we interviewed Robin DiAngelo on this podcast about her book, White Fragility. Right? I am all about creating those spaces for folks to examine privilege and power and systems of patriarchy and white supremacy. I just want to be clear that, you know, the task at hand is different than uplifting and mainstreaming voices that have been historically left out, to your point. VERONIQUE: Yeah. And I've said to folks all the time, and I continue to say to folks that, you know, we talk about feminism and equality and equal rights, that. I'm not saying women's rights for a reason. I'm saying equal rights and equality and dismantling white supremacy that also impacts men and can impact men positively. And white supremacy does impact men, even white men, negatively. That's okay for us to talk about. That's okay for us to unpack. Do we want to prioritize that? And we talk about, you know, limited resources, limited time. There's only so much we can do…
EMILIE: Right.
VERONIQUE: …Who gets chosen? You know?
EMILIE: Yeah. You know, it is a question of priorities, like.
VERONIQUE: Yeah, values and priorities.
EMILIE: Yeah. And maybe three years post 2020, we should start having those conversations. Like, if you've been championing black history, maybe it's time to have the unpacking white supremacy conversation. I think, honestly, my theory, Veronique, and I'd be curious to hear what you think about this, is that the reason we're getting all this pushback on, woke capitalism, or whatever the h*** they want to call it, is because three years of black lives mattering in the mainstream is too much for a lot of people who are used to being in the mainstream, they're tired, it's hard, s*** hasn't changed overnight. Activism, burnout is real disengagement. What is the saying, that if you've been historically privileged, a little bit of equity is gonna feel really threatening? And now we've three years in, people are over it. Can't we just move past this whole anti-racism and justice crap that we had to start talking about in 2020. And it's troubling, isn't it?
VERONIQUE: But we've also been taught that like rights and equality is a pie. So two things about this pie. One is, is that most people want the whole pie and they want to give it out to who they want to give it out to. They want to give it out to their family, they want to give it out to their friends, but they don't know you, so they don't want to give the pie to you. But here's the thing. It's not a pie. It's not. If you get rights, I don't get any, or I don't. I get less rights. This is not like rights. And equality is not a finite thing. Everybody can have it. Everyone can have it. And so once we get past that idea that it's a scarcity thing where there's only so much rights to go around, there's only so much equality to go around and somebody has to lose. And I think some of that comes from capitalism. And I won't go into my soapbox, but this idea that somebody has to be at the bottom, somebody has to be underneath in order for me to feel good about myself. And somebody doesn't get any because I get to have some. Everybody can have some. Everybody can have rights, everybody can have equality. And that doesn't take away from you.
EMILIE: Yeah, you and I could have a deep philosophical political theory convo right now. Veronique, this has been such a joy. Thank you for sharing so much of your brilliance. Where can our listeners learn more about you and your work?
VERONIQUE: So, you can follow me on LinkedIn. I am being more consistent in posting more about what I'm up to on the business side of things, but also more about how we can just conceptualize race and gender in the workplace. More about how we can think about these things. You can also check out anything that I'm doing on ampersand-workspace.com and I'm always available for a chat. Again, these are the conversations that I love having that I've been having. And I love to talk with people and not at them. And we're all on this journey together.
EMILIE: I love it. I will drop links to all of those great resources and your website in today's show notes. Thank you again for being here with me.
VERONIQUE: Thank you for having me. This was really incredible. I feel like we just scratched the surface, we could talk all day. So thank you so much.
EMILIE: And now I want to hear from you. How does this conversation land for you in 2025? And how is your workplace responding or not to this new backlash against ERG’s DEI and Celebrating Heritage Months? What, if anything, are you doing to commemorate Women's History Month where you work? I want to hear the good, the bad and the ugly.
So let's keep the conversation going. Please know my inbox is always open at emilie@bossedup.org and we can always chat as a community in the Courage Community on Facebook or in our LinkedIn Group, both of which are linked to in today's show notes, which you can find at bossedup.org/episode499. That's bossedup.org/episode499.
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And until next time, let's keep bossin’ pursuit of our purpose. And as the motto for America's first black women's club said it best, way back in 1896, let's lift as we climb.
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