Best of Season 1 Transcript

[00:00:07] Jason Rudman: So to begin this retrospective of the best of season one of More Elephant, we go right back to the beginning of my first guest, Ben Brooks. Ben happens to be my executive coach and is also the founder and CEO of Pilot, an award-winning employee development program that aims to empower people to feel powerful at work and in life.

His story in that a pilot is one of experimentation, resilience, and the quest for impact both in his career and in helping others achieve their goals. And in this snippet, Ben talked about how he got started making the big jump and ultimately fell in love with a problem that he felt compelled to solve.

[00:00:48] Ben Brooks: It's a great question, and I'll probably come back to one of the things I've realized about entrepreneurship as a place to start is. A lot of people think you have to have a great idea. Everyone's like, I don't have the idea, what's the idea, what's the idea? Almost always, the ideas don't work out.

And you hear the stories of all the pivots, and all the evolutions, and all the luck moments. What typically I think great entrepreneurs, or really great product centric entrepreneurs do, and what I've found has worked at Pilot, is you fall in love with the problem, not your solution to the problem. 

The problem I was falling in love with was the fact that people were miserable at work and not managing their careers well. I've fallen in love with that problem. And that's a problem, I learned to kind of have an R&D field with the one on one coaching. What works? What doesn't work about that? 

But what I started to look at is when we built Pilot out, that we couldn't just duplicate the one on one. We had to actually from a design thinking perspective, kind of re-imagine what people needed.

Because when I work with someone at your tier or your level, you have gotten a lot of feedback. You've been through 360s. You've had a lot of reviews. People that are earlier and emerging in careers often don't know, don't have the feedback, they don't know what they need to work on. So, rather than a super bespoke approach, we took a shared development plan. What's the 80- 20, what most employees need to work on developmentally. 

If they're part of the 99 percent of salaried employees who've never had coaching or formal mentoring. That was a big part of it, which is distinct from, you know, the one to one very highly bespoke process. We also realized that people that are earlier in career have less control over their calendars and they can be distracted when there's a lot of pressure on their time. Whereas an executive can have an assistant say, 'Hey, block off this time and you can go meet with your coach, Ben.' 

And it's great. So we used a cohort or a group model. So people learn together, which have stickier outcomes. Anytime people do things together, generally, you know. Train for a race, save money, lose weight, get sober. They have better outcomes. We did a deep cohort-based learning model. So, shared development plan, cohort-based learning model. 

The third thing is we made a virtual people thought we were nuts. Everyone thought, 'Oh, this guy in person, you got to do it in the ballroom of Sheraton or at the headquarters.'

But, you know, back in 2014, when we started all this, I thought, I think the future of this is it being where people want, wherever they are. And it's before remote and hybrid was popular, but that was a big part of the virtual, so it could meet employees that were in different geographies or in the field, et cetera.

But then, over time, we realized that it also had to collect a lot of data and be easy for HR to implement. And also involve other people at an organization. Cause too often therapy or coaching could be similar is that you have a person you say, I'm going to go provide you a coach and they go off to talk to a stranger outside of the context for a very private, opaque conversation, which can be really beneficial, but the rest of the environment doesn't have any idea what's going on.

So we brought in the managers and the executives and HR. Not only in the cohort model, but also as additional stakeholders to make it about really shaping the ecosystem and the unit of change of the individual. So put all of that together in a six month virtual program that's affordable, that companies can afford to invest in people early in career.

And that's where Pilot is today. And we've won HR product of the year and a bunch of DEI and innovation awards, et cetera. In nine years in the journey, we're still in love with the same problem. But the solution we started with which is a totally different thing we marketed differently and price everything it's radically evolved over time it's all been from learning.

[00:04:10] Jason Rudman: As we got the podcast off the ground, one of the early gifts was a willingness of great leaders to share their stories. The ups and downs, the More Elephant moments, some abundantly clear, some reliant on faith and belief that changed the journey. One such gift was the conversation with Rosa Sabater, a trailblazing executive who reshaped the rules for her own life and then created a company to help other women reshape their rules and live a more fulfilling life that celebrates their greatness and provides flexibility to live fully in more corners. Rosa talked about the moment that she decided to step away from a series of traditional corporate roles, and then what she has learned by helping other women embrace and determine how they work best.

[00:04:55] Rosa Sabater: So I think for Martellus women overall, and then I'll talk about me specifically. It is remarkable to me that the two things that I'm going to talk about have been challenging to almost all of us.

And the first is defining what it is they love to do. I have many, many, many teachers. And one of my teachers is a woman named Nyla Berry. And she used to be the Dean of Students at Columbia. And she's just like a work. I have a work posse, by the way, get yourself a posse of advisors that would be another piece of advice I would get people, but.

[00:05:25] Jason Rudman: The hives, call it whatever you want, right? The beehive, we'll go with the beehive. 

[00:05:30] Rosa Sabater: If you are entrepreneur, you need a rehab because it doesn't happen naturally like it does in an office setting. 

But women would come to me and they would say, I'll get back to Nyla. I want to work like you and I'm like, okay. So the whole point of Martellus is you get to the underlying premises. We do our best work when we do what we love. The way you get ahead is by doing things you love doing. 

So I'd have very seasoned women come to me. Well, I'd love to work with Martellus. Like, well, what do you love doing just to make sure that I can generate that kind of work for you? And they'd be like, well. I like to drive results. I'm like, that's not what you love. Those are American express performance review categories. 

So we have just been conditioned to say, these are the things that we like, and haven't given enough thought to what am I having the most fun at work? So that's one, all the women struggle to articulate - when do I have the most fun at work? They either want to go really broad, "I can do everything" or "What does fun have to do with work?" 

There was one woman that you and I both know very well, who was at a meeting with Nyla recently. And we were talking about this zone of genius, which is when your zone of joy and confidence overlap, when what you're really good at, and what brings you lots of joy come together, that's your zone of genius.

And this woman, who you and I both love, was sitting with a group of people who had worked for her. And they kept saying to her, "You are so good at mentoring. That's what you got to do. That's what you got to do." And she turned around at one point. She's like, but I don't want to do it anymore. So just because she was really, really good at it doesn't mean it brought her a lot of joy. I think really knowing what you love to do with something that somehow we don't spend enough time thinking about and was a challenge for women. 

The other thing that was a challenge for women after they left. And started to work this way. And by the way, when you work at Martellus, you don't have a paycheck every couple of weeks guaranteed. You don't have health benefits guaranteed, right? So it's a much riskier way to work. Even in that case, they had trouble maintaining their own boundaries.

You know, I had a woman call me and said, "Well, you know, I really can't work on Tuesdays because I'm taking my mom to chemo." I'm like, then don't work on Tuesdays! The reason you've chosen to work this way so you have flexibility and there are other reasons as well. So don't work on Tuesdays. 

But sometimes, we struggle giving ourselves permission to do it. I think every single woman who joins Martellus, I work with to help them articulate what is really fun for them at work and to help them articulate how they want to work so that they can stick to it.

Look, you're not going to stick to it. A hundred percent of the time, but if you stick to it three quarters of the time, you're good.

The two 'number one things' that people can do to put themselves in the driver's seat of their career. Number one is what I tell people, chase your own carrot. You're chasing a carrot down some sort of track. That's fine. Just make sure it's your own carrot. It's not the carrot that your society, your company, your husband, your dad. Number one, chase your own carrot. 

The second thing is get yourself some options. You know, I think that you should always be looking at, be curious about how other people work and think about, you know, boy, if I didn't go this way, I could also go that way or that way or that way or that way.

If you know what you're chasing and sort of open, widen the beam. My friend, Jill is a gymnast and she always says, in your mind, you got to widen the beam. The balance beam is not this big, it's THIS big, and when you wind the beam, you end up finding the places where you really fit.

[00:08:58] Jason Rudman: Can remote work truly foster deeper connections and exceptional leadership? The second episode in a series on career and work was in conversation with Melissa Romo, author of the book, Your Resource is Human: How Empathetic Leadership Can Help Remote Teams Rise above. Our conversation focused on whether remote work truly fosters deeper connections and exceptional leadership given there's been a significant shift in how workers view their relationship with work, and companies continue to make deliberate choices about post-pandemic organizational norms and culture. In her book, Melissa unravels the Secrets of Empathetic Leadership, unveiling a roadmap for building thriving cultures and forging genuine connections in today's remote and hybrid workplaces to enable courageous conversations and potentially bridge the chasm between those who do the work and those who pay for the work.

[00:09:47] Jason Rudman: You've got five emotional pitfalls - that's the outer wheel of the remote leadership wheel - and then on the inside, you've got five blueprints for success. How do you deal with the five emotional pitfalls? 

[00:09:59] Melissa Romo: Well, each emotional pitfall, the way I designed the wheel, is that each emotional pitfall has an empathy mindset that you should focus on and be intentional about as a leader. 

So for example, loneliness, what do you want to focus on with loneliness? And I explained in the book how to sort of spot it. If you spot someone exhibiting -some people may just come out and say, 'Hey, I'm lonely. You know, I haven't seen my boss in four months or whatever, and I'm lonely for my team.' They may just come around and say, but sometimes you have to sort of scan for it.

So I explain how to scan for it and some things to ask. If you identify that that's a problem, what you need to focus on is creating belonging. So that's the kind of antidote to loneliness is belonging. 

And then if you take something like boredom, the antidote to boredom is meaning. Going back to what I said about bore out, right, is that the leader needs to bring meaning is to say, you know, this is why we're doing this. This is why the report you just created is going to help the customer. This is why, this is why, this is why, right? The leader needs to bring meaning and be really intentional about explaining meaning to the employee. 

The antidote to depression and depression is kind of a hard word, but it's just sometimes the blues of being at home. It's joy, right? Joy. Like there are definitely days when I log in and they're just people that I'm really happy to see online, and I'll send them a note and say, you know, it's great to see you online. How was your weekend? Whatever. They're just great people. So we need to surface these moments of joy. These sparks of joy as an antidote to just sort of feeling down when you're by yourself.

The antidote to guilt is faith. And I specifically use the word faith because it's a deeper form of trust than even trust is because faith is believing in something. You can't see. When someone works for you, you don't eyeball them every day, but you express your faith in their ability to do their work. There's a phenomenon called the Pygmalion effect that Marie Kondo writes about in a really interesting way; the Pygmalion effect, it basically says that we will rise to the expectations that are put on us.

So if you tell your child, if you say to your five year old, I know you can tie your shoe, I have faith you can tie your shoe, you'll know how to do it. If they hear that enough, they will just buckle down to figure out how to tie their shoe. Because they're like, mom really believes I can tie my shoe, it must be true, right, that I can tie my shoe. 

The Pygmalion effect is about putting in front of people that faith, I know you can do it, and putting that out there so that a person wants to rise to that, right? 

And then the last one is clarity. And when we're, you know, everyone's experienced this idea of out of sight, out of mind. When they work in a distributed way, 'No one sees me. Do people know what I do? How is my reputation?' 

And you do start feeling paranoid wondering about these things. Now, the reason you feel that way is because you don't have enough information. Information flows when we work in a distributed way are hampered by distance. And so as a leader, what you want to do is create clarity and create information flows and focus on that because that helps bring down these feelings of out of sight, out of mind. 

[00:13:19] Jason Rudman: As we began the new year, we asked ourselves, how can we create a life that aligns with our passion and allows us to thrive? Resolutions are made at the start of every fresh new year. The goal is to make positive changes that enrich and enliven our lives. And with the new year, but a few weeks old, we invited a conversation with Aneta Kuzma, host of the Live the Width of Your Life podcast and author of Live The Width of Your Life, 365 Daily Meditations in living with purpose, passion, and peace. Here's what Annetta had to say about a significant change that she made that unlocked her dedication to guiding individuals towards making a meaningful impact, not only in their own lives, but in that of others. 

[00:14:03] Aneta Kuzma: One, even when you make decisions to change, there's going to be fear, and of course there were always fears. And I think for me, not for everybody. And I don't want to speak badly about the corporate world for everybody. Some people are very successful and happy, and that's their joy and their passion. I didn't feel like I could be authentically myself and discover who that is and be successful in that environment.

It just wasn't necessarily a good fit for me or an alignment. And that's okay. It's neither here nor there. That's fine. I was still there for 22 years, but after I left, I did feel like I was questioning what is my worth? What value do I bring? How do I take my passions plus my skills, plus my experience and education, because nothing is wasted.

And what is my superpower? How do I bring all those things together in order to be of service to others? Which I think is always the part that sometimes we forget. You do these things to be in service of others. And when you do, you add value. And then you are blessed just by being able to be part of it.

And that helps with the fears. If you know that you're doing something, not just for your own benefit, but it's helping somebody else, you're able to pursue, to be more persistent. And I just read a beautiful quote. I think it's in a book called Travel Lightly that I just picked up. And like Watkins said, " you'll always feel like an impostor when you're pushing past your comfort zone," something like that to paraphrase him.

And I love that because, yes if you're feeling like an impostor, you're probably on the edge of something really good. That's probably exactly what you should be doing. And if you're not, you're probably complacent, maybe a little stagnant. You might be comfortable. It doesn't mean that there's going to be growth. 

It's never too late. You literally can decide today. It doesn't matter how young or how old you are. It is never too late to decide that you want to make a shift and a change. And there's so many resources available, even if you don't know how to do it. 

There are so many resources available, and just ask yourself if I were my 80-year-old self looking at my life right now, would I say 'Well done' or would I say, 'Ooh, I wish I'd done something different' and use that to maybe propel you forward. 

[00:16:21] Jason Rudman: We were fortunate enough in the first season to meet a number of amazing entrepreneurs who stepped away from corporate gigs many times and followed their passion. Have you ever wondered what drives someone to leave the perceived security of a blue-chip career to the often unpredictable waters of FinTech entrepreneurship?

And how one pivotal woman on a Peloton on a Sunday morning sparked an idea that could impact people for generations? We talked with Mical Jeanlys-White, founder and CEO of WealthMore, an inclusive investment in advice platform, about a few More Elephant moments that led her to the belief that everyone's wealth deserves the benefit and respect of great financial advice. 

[00:17:04] Jason Rudman: I like to talk about More Elephant moments, context being sometimes we just have to stand still, listen to those around us, maybe not even ourselves. And again, I know you're going to share, sitting or standing in meetings and rooms, and which solving things in the wrong way for the wrong people or should I say to your point, the financial system is not working for everybody. What were a couple of those More Elephant moments that stick with you? 

[00:17:32] Mical Jeanlys-White: I think my first passion was credit, helping people better understand credit cards, borrowing, and how to make that work. Did that for many years at Amex, did that for many years at JPMorgan, bringing in products that gave people access to the free credit score, building products that allowed you to sort of borrow with the sort of fixed repayment plan, if you will.

But I had that moment where I was like, we've been moving the needle on this for a few decades now. And yet, I'm still hearing these same headline stories. Americans living paycheck to paycheck. People not building as much wealth. Generational wealth being gone within one generation. 

I think that particular stat, particularly for women and minorities, that the generational wealth erodes in one generation probably was the biggest eye opener for me. A mom of three black boys to hear that all of this hard work could be gone in one generation is like not on my watch. 

[00:18:36] Jason Rudman: So it's personal to your point. 

[00:18:37] Mical Jeanlys-White: It's personal, but then you unpacked and you sort of say, well, why is this happening? How can all this hard work not have more of a safety net for so many?

And it lies with advice. So when you start looking at who has access to that great advice, it's the folks that already have money. It's the people that already have a few million dollars. They get a financial advisor who talks to them about, Hey, do you have the right insurance? Are you doing the right college planning?

Do you have the right state planning? Are you thinking about your retirement planning and living off of the interest income versus the principal and hence being able to transfer wealth? 

So these things are not happening because of coincidence. It's who's getting great advice and who doesn't. I don't think these problems are unsolvable. I just think we have to be very intentional about identifying the root causes. 

And I always bring up the wage gap, both gender and racial, because I get very concerned about headlines that seem to blame the victim. Because it's demoralizing if women are hearing this like, Oh, what is up with the gender wealth gap?

What is up with the racial wealth gap? And it always has this sort of undertone around, you're spending too much, you're being irresponsible. And I am always challenging that narrative. But I also think these problems are solvable, but I think it's going to take many pieces coming together.

We have to have the law on our side to make sure people are getting equally paid. We also have to have legislation. Like the automatic IRAs. Things to make it easier for people to take from their paycheck and invest, not, your employer has a 401k, that you have these vehicles to help you get there, and then making it easier and more accessible for people to get great financial advice, like we're doing with Wealthmore.

[00:20:31] Jason Rudman: So, how did you start? What was sticky, like the Post-it note or the gem of that idea? Where were you when you said, this is it, this is the More Elephant path I've got to go down? 

[00:20:41] Mical Jeanlys-White: I was on my Peloton. 

[00:20:44] Jason Rudman: Of course you were. 

[00:20:47] Mical Jeanlys-White: On Sundays, I ride a more sort of zen ride.

Sundays are my zen rides. There are two particular instructors I ride with on Sundays. Either Ally Love or Denis Morton, for those of you Peloton fans out there. And this particular Sunday was actually a Denis Morton, Bob Marley ride. And we are jamming to one love and the idea for Wealthmore comes to me. 

[00:21:15] Jason Rudman: Wow. 

[00:21:17] Mical Jeanlys-White: You know, you get ideas all the time. It doesn't mean you go and act them. But I actually got off the bike and I was like, this one's too good. Got off the bike and I wrote it down. And if you're familiar with Mel Robbins, she has like the 20 second rule. And she always says, within 20 seconds, you'll talk yourself into or out of an idea.

And I had that 20 second moment where I was like, write it down and come back to it and see whether or not it still sticks. And I wrote it down and it just kept taking off, like more ideas just kept flowing in and I was like, well, why can't we have these dynamic wealth advisors that are diverse, that have these great lived experiences and create this digital community where people can one get great advice, but feel part of a wealth building community. So you will see in WealthMore there are a lot of design elements or inspiration that comes from community building, that comes from having access to an expert. And then sort of wrapped around this very impairment message around building well. 

And Jason I also want to pull a little on lived experiences. It's amazing what happens when you tell someone, you can bring your lived experiences to the table.

So a lot of the diverse wealth advisors felt like they had to hide where they came from in order to fit in these environments. Like I shouldn't let my wealthy client know that I grew up in poverty, they're not going to trust my wealth advice. So when you tell someone, no, I actually want you to talk about that because the people we are talking to are builders, they didn't necessarily come from money.

Actually, most Americans don't come from money. So, why are we posturing? 

I couldn't be prouder about the group of wealth advisors that we've recruited. Their lived experiences, their personal stories, the humanity and expertise they bring to the table, I'm better with my money having all these amazing wealth advisors around me. 

[00:23:27] Jason Rudman: We continued to meet amazing entrepreneurs in the financial services space, and it's interesting reflecting on over a year ago, meeting Evan Leaphart, founder of Kredit Academy, and Mike Gross, COO and Head of Education. They joined the latest More Elephant Podcast at that time to discuss the team's journey from Kitty Credit, a mobile app designed to educate children on the credit system by completing chores.

The Kredit Academy, the solution and approach dedicated to equipping teens and young adults with the knowledge and tools for optimal credit health. When we met them, the team had been awarded a $1 million investment from the 43 North Startup competition. Evan had moved his family to Buffalo, and they were focused on continuing the movement towards a financially literate future through Kredit Academy, by creating an opportunity for the next generation to embrace credit management with confidence and wisdom.

[00:24:23] Jason: So, how did you guys meet, and what led you to Credit Academy building this business and ultimately help young people think through their financial experience?

[00:24:34] Evan: Yeah. I mean, it goes all the way back to 12 years old, man. So I was born in Pittsburgh but I grew up in a city right outside of Baltimore called Columbia, Maryland. Mike and I have been best friends since then. And how we got to where we are today. It's just kind of an accidental conversation. I always like to say like with your friends you talk about everything kind of like what you do but work because you're kind of the escape for your day to day. 

So when Kredit Academy came to be, it really just stemmed from my personal journey with credit. I was that kid who turned 18, got a credit card right away and messed it up.

So the first product we launched with Credit Academy was a platform for underteens called Kitty Credit, which helps you learn about it through chores. 

[00:25:13] Jason: I love that. So, you're a serial entrepreneur, you've got this educational bend and you're a teacher at heart. How does that then come together in terms of Kredit Academy? What's trying to do? Who is it trying to impact?

[00:25:26] Evan: Yep. So, essentially building the business, the big emphasis on what we're saying is education. 

Financial education has continuously been an afterthought and what we want to do is make sure it's at the forefront of what we do and not on the back burner. And, it's just a big part of our rationale. So as a company, we realized that if we're going to start talking about finance, we need to start about it earlier. Financial studies show that your habits are formed around money as early as seven years old. 

So even though we're making tremendous steps in the right direction with high. School mandates, I think we're up to 25 states now that they make mandatory to have one financial literacy course in high school prior to college - we're still talking about it too late. Our first product in market, Kiddie Credit, really takes that proactive approach that we mentioned specifically for under 12 and we do it through chores. 

So, KittyCredit, think of your everyday chores, your everyday activities and rewards, get tied into this, mock FICO credit score. So you miss a chore. It's like missing a payment. The longer you've had a chore, the long you've had a credit card. Anytime a kid's asking for something, Hey mom, can I get this? Hey dad, can I get this? It's like an inquiry. 

Our go to market on this. I think when we start kind of naive, like who wants their kids to learn about credit. Everybody. Right. So had this and build it and they will come approach. And then we realized that by building this product specifically and just saying, Hey family sign up and maybe families pay five, 10 a month, we're going to start shifting away from the folks that really need to learn about this stuff, but don't necessarily have the resources to get our services.

So that's when we started shifting towards a B2B to C model. Ultimately we allow organizations to get in on the fun too, because we truly do feel that it takes a village to raise a child. So, alongside the kiddie credit app for organizations is a sass platform where they can interact, add activities and rewards. So what happens when they outgrow kiddie credit.

Like no 15 year old wants to use something named kiddie, right? So we like to say at Credit Academy, we offer a suite of financial wellness solutions. So that's what led us to launch a credit quest, which ultimately takes kind of an all ages approach towards financial literacy. And that's essentially what we're launching now.

 We white label it for brands too. And our entire approach is basically saying, how do we make sure that we educate, but also provide real world usage. 

[00:27:36] Jason: So Mike, how does the educational model work? And what have you learned that might point to how this will showcase a different outcome for the people that use it?

[00:27:49] Mike: Great question. As an organization, we focus on creating experiences. Our focus is on introductory credit experiences and emphasizing experiential education to allow a user to now not only go through this personally, but see how it works best for them. 

Our focus is really around the attitudes, the emotions, your cognition around financial topics. If I can help you understand these things and I can help you see what the vision is, and then I can help you relate to while you're dealing with these things, then you have a much higher likelihood of creating positive outcomes for yourself.

We learned very early on with kitty credit. Children today, like children at any age, love instant gratification. The goal is not for me to now have a great FICO score 30 years from now. The goal today is for me to get some more candy, to get some money, to get something that I want now. So, when we first started with the app, we wanted to have you earn your rewards weekly.

At the end of every week, we were going to pay out what you were earning. Kids said no. What I make, I want now. 

[00:29:03] Jason: I have two of them. It's like why can't I have that now? Oh, yeah we gotta have a whole different conversation about how money gets made but that's a whole separate whole separate conversation.

[00:29:11] Mike: To be fair, the next generation has really been trying to make a push for immediate payouts, even in employment roles. They want to be paid out at the end of the day for the work that they did earlier that day. I understand it, but that's not historically what's happened.

So, somewhere in between we need to figure out how to make these things work. What we started with, simply enough, is within Kiddie Kredit when you complete an activity, you earn the bamboo bucks, our internal currency, you earn for that immediately. You get an immediate payout for what it is that you've done. You can then, redeem those rewards for something but our goal is to help you envision that if you save a bit more of bamboo bucks you can get something larger that you actually want as opposed to like I did whenever money came in it immediately went out money in money out. 

So I'm trying to help you understand this from a younger age. Again, by having you go through these experiences, you now start to understand it in a different way. There's a very important I'd say, influential behavioral science approach called COM B. C O M B, Capabilities, Opportunities, Motivations, Equal Behavior Change. So if you have the capability and the capacity to do it, if you have the opportunity to practice it, and you have the right motivations, that will lead you to the behavior change that we're after. So that's how we design all of the activities and the work that we do. 

First, I need to provide you with the capability. So you have done these things to be able to earn your money. Or you have now this credit card so you now have the opportunity to be able to do this. Then I need to help you create a vision for the future.

If I can help you make those things, then you have a much higher likelihood of following through on these activities. 

Where many times we go wrong with the diet and any other saving for that matter. We lose sight of the big picture. The day to day struggle pulls us out of the mindset of the big picture. And the more I can keep the big picture focused while still having some celebration along the way, there's a higher likelihood that you're going to stick with it. If my diet is all just about abstaining and never enjoying my life, I'm not going to stick with it. If I can only eat bread and water for the next 30 days, by day 10, I'm going to lose my mind.

I'm going to eat higher cake. So I'm trying to help you understand in a much younger age, building habits takes time, there is a goal that you have for the future and you can still celebrate along the way, but we're focused on that big picture for the future. So plan for today, plan for tomorrow. 

[00:31:52] Evan: In my businesses along the way, this is my ninth company, but first tech startup. I said, if I could do anything, I would love to just be the vitamin and not the pain pill when it comes to education on credit. 

[00:32:01] Jason Rudman: One of the remarkable things about putting together a best of a season that ended almost a year ago is with the passage of time. You get to see some remarkable things that have changed and then some things that cause you concern. Early on in the season, we talked to Nikki Darden and her role at the time at Citi was to integrate diversity, equity inclusion into Citi's marketing efforts.

A vital importance within the walls of Citi, and on behalf of the millions of customers Citi serves across the globe. One of the pieces within the conversation was the work that she had done with a group of people at Citi to reimagine her image library with Getty. It's quite remarkable about 18 months on how we are now having fundamentally different and often limited conversations about the power of diversity, equity, and inclusion within marketing and across the globe.

[00:33:00] Jason Rudman: The transformation of the lenses of identity with the Getty library. Can you talk to us a little bit about that? 

[00:33:05] Nikki Darden: Yeah. So, that work came about, I talked about my global integration role and one day, as also the DEI strategy lead, I was talking to a couple of different teams from different countries and different regions about DE& I and I just wanted to start the conversation about infusing more diversity and inclusion and representation in their work.

And I won't go through the details of how these conversations went, but the takeaway, which is a very real one, is that the way that we think about diversity in the U. S. is not the way that we think about diversity in Mexico, in Brazil, in Hong Kong, in London, in the UK, in keep…it going in Japan, in Nigeria, there's not a one size that fits all.

And so, our work with Getty was to say, okay, we know that we've got this opportunity to be more inclusive in our work. We know that our marketers aren't necessarily equipped with the tools that they need in order to do that, particularly outside of the U. S. And so how do we create something that's going to enable them to be able to be more inclusive and representative in their work?

We started with Getty and said, all right, this is what we're trying to do. And they were like, “Oh, not exactly what we do, but we love it. Let's figure it out.” They've been amazing partners. And we brought in another partner, Kantar. And Kantar just helped us to understand what's the landscape.

So we looked at 10 different countries and we said, okay, these are the, what we call eight lenses of identity. I don't want to forget any of them, so I might not go through all of them, but just to give a flavor, it's race and ethnicity - maybe I will go through all of them. It's race and ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender and gender identity, age, religion, body, socioeconomic status, and one that I'm forgetting.

[00:35:11] Jason Rudman: And for the win. One, Nikki, for the win!

[00:35:15] Nikki Darden: It'll come to me and an eighth one. Okay. Yeah. And we said, alright, so if we go through each of these lenses and look demographically, what does the population of a given country look like? How would we be approaching our marketing if we wanted to make sure that we were really representing the communities that surrounded us.

And so that's what Kantar helped lay the groundwork of what each of these countries look like. And we brought in some of our own data, etc. And then Getty's got images from all over the world that are tagged on their database that you're able to pull down as one of the leading stock imagery companies in the world.

And so they helped us to understand what does the imagery, the advertising look like in each of these countries. And then we looked at the gap, [and] we identified, where is there a disconnect here.

And so, I can tell you that there are a few consistent themes. The consistent themes are women in leadership are underrepresented almost universally across the world; they are quite overrepresented in traditional roles white men, overrepresented, white people, overrepresented.

And I mean, around the world. So as an example. White people make up less than 4 percent of the population of Singapore. I'm picking on Singapore because this stat always amazes me. They represent about 27 percent of the advertising, the images in advertising in Singapore. Fascinating. 

And the business imperative here is the world is changing. Even if you think about our global footprint and you think about, again, I'll pick on Singapore. The data I just shared is not Citi data, this is about the market as a whole. But as you think about so many multinationals in Singapore, they are not reflecting the local community.

[00:37:12] Jason Rudman: Well, in this retrospective of the first season of the More Elephant by highlighting one of a number of conversations that we had with nonprofit leaders highlighting the great work that these organizations do. We talked with James Black at the time, CEO of Family Equality, and now CEO of the Trevor Project. Family Equality is the leading nonprofit focused on fighting to protect and support lgbtq plus families.

James shared their journey from corporate America to leading family equality and being at the forefront of efforts to elevate the stories of LGBTQ plus families while continuing to give voice and challenge discriminatory efforts to de-legitimize the community. Now more than ever, this conversation remains relevant.

[00:38:01] Jason Rudman: Let's pull that thread if we can, right? That's a More Elephant moment for sure. The combination of the origin story of being seen and rejected in a school environment because you were seen, and South Texas said not on our watch.

You started as a customer service representative and through resilience and preparedness and working hard, you get to this seeming pinnacle of, my goodness, I've worked so hard. And then you say, but I know this is not what I'm supposed to do.

So could you go a little deeper then that it's the pandemic, we're rethinking, reframing what we were supposed to do on this earth. You mentioned that this was something that “I felt compelled to do for our families.”

[00:38:48] Jaymes Black: Yeah, and I believe what you're referring to is my own family and our family creation story.

And so, my lived experience is a reason why the work of Family Equality is so significant to me, so important to me. My own journey, for my wife and me, as we were building our family, was not one that was easy. It was over an eight-year journey, over time trying our best to have children, to build a family in one way or another, and roadblock after roadblock.

We experienced a roadblock of an adoption agency going bankrupt on us. And we had a roadblock of an agency in Texas telling us that women would never place their children with lesbian women. We had the roadblock of a fertility doctor saying, you know what, I can do the fertility clinic, but you're gonna have to have the baby somewhere else should you get pregnant, because this is a religiously-affiliated hospital.

Roadblock after roadblock we experienced, year-over-year, and we wanted to have a family so badly. And this is not something that is uncommon for LGBTQ+ people who are trying to create families.

But that heartbreak of wanting to become a parent and not being able to and then having people tell you that you're not worthy, that you are not good enough, that you don't belong in this kind of parenting club that we have in America. Parents are highly respected, and highly regarded usually. Not you, because you're a lesbian.

And that was heartbreaking for us. And I'll tell you, we almost gave up on becoming parents. And we were finally matched with the birth mother of our wonderful twins. And it was such a joyous moment for us.

We were thinking, finally, we're finally going to be parents; then we had the challenge of that birth mother pulling the rug from under us and changing her mind days before the boys were to be born. She changed her mind. And that was such a gut punch, Jason.

It was like, we've waited all this time, and we’ve finally found someone who is willing to work with us, we're going to have these twins and she's going to place them for adoption. And then she changed her mind and we were just gut-punched.

Thankfully, through the work of the universe, she came back around and asked us to adopt the boys after six weeks. And we've been on the twin journey ever since. They're nine years old now. 

[00:41:08] Jason Rudman: Having met the twins, you are on the twin journey, and we love them much. I think it's worth pointing out - you share your story, I've shared my story - I think our journeys, particularly Jaymes, are such teachable moments.

The reason I bring that up is because, to this day, I still surprise many, largely straight couples when I say, oh yes, as part of the journey, we went through surrogacy, our kids are biologically Alvin's and mine. And yet, the surrogate mother, who is not the biological DNA connection (and her husband) of Roman, had to sign away the parental rights, of which they had no connection to, because the way the law works for families like ours is you're actually not the parent, even if you have DNA connection in the eyes of the law and the surrogate mother and her husband, actually, in the eyes of the law, the parent, until they sign away.

Now, I will say that our surrogate's husband could not sign that quickly enough and said, okay, where do I sign because I'm not raising another kid. But I think it's those dynamics and the work that you do to shine a light on - here are the extra hurdles, the emotional hurdles, beyond just trying to have a kid and what that brings, that we have to go through in order to bring our kids into the world.

[00:42:27] Jaymes Black: Absolutely. And folks believe that if you are a queer person with means, that means that your journey is going to be easier. It does not matter if you are someone who makes 50,000 dollars a year, or someone who makes triple that. If you are an LGBTQ+ person, there are going to be barriers to your family creation journey, as you said, because of the way that the laws work.

And, that is why Family Equality still exists. And many people are surprised. They'll say, well, you can get married now, right? Because you can get married now, doesn't that make everything easier? No, it doesn't make anything easier, because you can get married on a Saturday and then you can be denied to adopt a child the next day.

I always say that freedom to marry does not mean freedom from discrimination. Freedom to marry does not mean that we are absolutely free in all the laws and the ways that things work. We are still not seen equal in the eyes of the law and I don't think we're still seen equal in the eyes of society either.

[00:43:27] Jason Rudman: We have work to do and we can break that down because I think there's even levels of equality within the community that we can talk about as well in terms of access to and visibility of. So why take the call for Family Equality? What were you walking into in terms of the organization at that level? And then why was it a yes?

[00:43:50] Jaymes Black: Yeah. It's funny. I'm chuckling because I remember having the conversation with my wife about coming to Family Equality and let's just be honest. Charles Schwab, my former employer, and a non-profit are very different in a lot of ways.

And those differences meant that we were going to have to shift things. We were going to have to look at life a little bit differently than we had. And I remember having a conversation with my wife about it, and this is sort of why it was the yes. And we both said this is bigger than us. This is bigger than the fancy job. This is bigger than just our family. This is bigger than Jaymes, you were someone who was pulled out of the closet in high school. This is bigger than us, and it's going to have a larger impact, and it needs to have a larger impact.

And you stepping into this role, especially as the first, if you're selected - because this is when we were just saying, yes, I'm going to apply - selected as the first African American person to lead the organization.

So really, it was about that we felt that it was bigger than just even this job. We were hoping that the impact could be magnified by stepping into this role. And we talked about equal access; that more LGBTQ+ people who look like my family could be seen within this organization,  could be accepted, could be embraced. 

[00:45:07] Jason Rudman: We likely could have recorded three or four best ofs in season one. It has so much fun meeting, talking, learning from so many great people who have ideas that are shaping the world, large and small, who are living their dream space in their dream, highlighting a passion that has impact on other people's lives and doing crucial work that we have come to realize is the work that matters.

I look forward to having more conversations and hope you'll join me in season two.