Michele Heyward:
0:00
Welcome, everybody. And thank you for joining another edition today with us we have one of the best women I know in tech, Deldep Medina. She’s the principal of Medina and associate consulting. She is also director of research and data with black and brown founders. So welcome Bill. Bill is great to have you on today.

Deldep:
0:22
Thank you, Michelle, thank you for organizing all of this in the midst of all the changes that we’re in the middle of, and also just giving people access to information that they need from a varied source of experts. So I’m really excited to watch the videos as well as participate.

Michele Heyward:
0:38
I had to it’s been some really, really great information. And and I definitely wanted to have you on as part of this discussion in the midst of the pandemic. When we think about data, like when when we think about data, and I and I have to be different Unlike a few years ago, as an even as an engineer, I thought about data differently than I do now, as a tech founder, what are some common mistakes, or common things you’re seeing when people think about data?

Deldep:
1:17
Um, people think that data and human beings are somehow separate. And actually, they’re interrelated. So depending on who you are and what you’re building, there’s a series of things that you can be capturing and getting information. There’s interactions that people are having. So that’s a very common thing, how many times people click a particular piece, or page, there’s a lot of a b testing of like, we’ll have test a and test B, which of these two messages are resounding with people and then go from that. And then there’s personal data about who the person is and what what they’re looking to interact with. And so often those things are called personas. And then a lot of big tech companies. That’s the way that they look at it is it created prototype of a human being. And then based on that they make some assumptions. Often the folks that are in those rooms are thinking of folks like us as personas, or if they are, they’re thinking about us in one dimensional ways. And so there’s more to us. So like, the example I like to give to people, is folks think, and think, Oh Latina. This is what the equivalent is not realizing that there’s subtleties. So for example, I love salsa music, I listen to it all the time. I also love the Pixies. I also love doctor who I also love girlfriends, that TV show from the 90s. Like, these are things that have influenced me both from a pop culture perspective, but from a human perspective. And too often, people aren’t thinking of the subtleties really make up who human beings are and how you can interact with them. And so like that’s my issue with personas is that, yes, you can go way too deep and way too detailed. Do you like how many Latinas that love salsa and like Doctor Who and girlfriends? Like, I am sure there is a much larger quantity of us than people expect. But these aren’t like the touchstones that are people are thinking of because they’re not thinking of the cultural components. So that’s one piece of it all. And then the other piece around data that gets to be really tricky is with the changes that we’re undergoing, that are undergoing in Europe right now around GDPR. So the idea that the data belongs to the individual, rather than is something that we give away for free. That has meant that tech companies in the US in particular have made billions of dollars off of our data. Every time we click on something every time we actually engage and say yes, I’m going to opt in. That has meant that we have given out a ton of information and that has been mined, sometimes against our own detriment. And sometimes, you know, the things that we’re exchanging we don’t realize With the value is so data and data privacy and data collection and data thinking is a very detailed field that so often women of color are not a part of we’re not asked a we’re not invited. We’re not. And we’re not chosen for those positions, regardless of our, you know, education or background.

Michele Heyward
4:24
How did you get started in tech? Like what was the drive to get into tech?

Deldep:
4:31
Um, I would say, I’ve always loved computers. It’s really silly. And I love computers at a time when computers were not a thing, right? So I was the only girl and after school Computer Club, and Alvarado elementary school and I often say that in a lot of the talks that I give, because I was very lucky to be at the school, it was my local public school. There was, by all accounts, there was nothing special about it, but there was a lot that was Special there. For example, ruthless Ah, Wilde was a very well known artist was my art teacher and I want a scholarship, through her to go take some art classes. There was an after school Computer Club, there was all sorts of programming that was happening there. That really gave me an opportunity to see many sides of who I was, unfortunately ended up dropping out because I was the only girl in it. And all the boys wanted to play video games, and I wanted to learn how to build them. And so I’ve always liked computers. I bought my first computer at the age of 16. It cost as much as I used car at the time. All my friends thought I was nuts. They were like, why are you buying this thing a Commodore 64 but that one machine that cost like $330, which was a lot of money back then, like a trained me and I trained my younger brother, one of my younger brothers on some computer basics. And then my first job while at college was a bulletin board service. So it’s an old school dial up service. You would dial up, you would exchange information with people, you’re dialed out, and then it became calmer. And I attribute all of this to several factors. One geographic luck. I grew up in the Bay Area, to a curiosity and access. But three, that wasn’t enough for it to make a successful career for myself, right. And so while I’ve been in a lot of spaces and places, and I’ve had a lot of experiences, the reality is, it didn’t all add up to, you know, necessarily financial wealth, necessarily professional positioning, or the aspirations that I would have liked to have had. And in the process, I’ve learned that so often people think of nerd and they think of a certain prototype. And that is not necessarily true. There’s a lot of us that are nerds that we just don’t look like our white male counterparts and we have different experiences. So firstly, When I was working at the bulletin board service, I was young, I was single, and yet I had family responsibilities. When my father lost his job, I was the one that bought him shirts so that he could go and interview as a 40 something year old man. When my family couldn’t afford for my brother to go to summer school, I was the one that paid for that summer school. So often, my salary, even though it was less than my white male counterparts, was not only important, but pivotal to my family’s well being. And that also meant that my experience in tech spaces was very different. And that wasn’t necessarily taken into account. But I didn’t have the language to be able to say, here are the things that I need, because I was just grateful to have a well paid job.

Michele Heyward:
7:50
Yes. And we’re taught like you have opportunity, take it, you’re going to have to work twice as hard. You’re going to get last and we’re working to change that. So I want to go into the work you do with Medina and Associates consulting. And again, I, yeah, what does that look like when you’re helping clients with their DNI?

Deldep:
8:15
Thank you for asking about that. So here’s the thing. This wasn’t something that I saw as a plan or a thought of like, I’m going to form this company. And this is what I’m going to do. Like I had a startup that went bust. I, I’ve had other programs and other work that I’ve done that just didn’t go anywhere. And at a certain point, I found myself in this interesting place of having had a lot of experience within the industry, having a lot of experience interacting with people and having a deep interest in sociology, psychology, workplace dynamics, reading these things in really as a way of both explaining my own situation and trying to figure out what I needed to do next. For me to succeed cessful and as a result of that, I had more than one person that said, Hey, do you do XYZ? And in the beginning to be honest, I would say, No, that’s not what I do. I’m a database analysts. I’m a database manager, like, I love data, like data is my thing. This is what I’m doing. I like I took SQL 1.1 classes, you know, like, this was my thing. I ran databases, I cleaned up a lot of databases, like these were the things that I enjoyed. But people kept on asking me and I was at one point I said, Okay, so if I was going to do this, how am I going to do it? How can I differentiate myself from other people? What are some of the issues that I see? And I see that so often? There’s two things that happen in parallel one, we, as a culture and deeply do not understand the historical roots of race and racism. We do not have a common language we do not have a common understanding what these things mean as a result That you have a lot of people that are cross talking without actually talking to each other. Right? So it’s like, I will use the kitten latest thing that has happened and maybe this will make this video a little bit but the whole Karen thing like is Karen the N N word, right? That comes from a specific place where the person who said that does not understand the historical, emotional context in which most black folks live in today or have lived in in the last 50 years right there, this person is talking about the their inability to understand how, as a white woman, they’re still white and that they benefit from that whiteness, right? So patriarchy and white supremacy are two things that are baked into our culture, that so often we have to understand to be able to try to remove ourselves and I say try because it’s a constant process because you are never really going to be removed from it until we’re all removed from it right? So there’s that piece of we just don’t have a common language and understanding of what it is meant to live in a post 1968 world where we thought a lot of folks were told, and we were taught that racism was over, after 1968. That was the prevailing narrative that we were told up until 2008. Right? So there’s that piece. And then there are the systems in place that are currently in place and have been created and recreated, that hold this lack of understanding or lack of education or lack of engagement, whatever you want to call it, are absolutely totally blind. I don’t want to know about it. I don’t want to see it, it’s too painful in place, and that these two things are in relationship to each other. So I look to address both creating a understanding and education around if you are a CEO accompany, how is it that you’re looking at and unpacking and understanding the racial dynamics, not only in the workplace like number one in the workplace, because that’s your position, and that’s the place that you’re in. And that’s your responsibility is for a workplace. So how is that you have that? How do you have an education? So I like to create what I call syllabuses that are specific to people, I like to gather the data, understand who the person is, and then say, here’s some reading less for you to have. If you’re, if you’re reading the Wall Street Journal every day, if you’re reading the Business Insider, if you have time to read management books, you also have time to read some bell hooks. It’s that simple. Yes. Like you have to know who she is at least, so that you have an understanding of what does this look like? And what are people experiencing that are coming to you that you’re managing that you’re responsible for. So that’s one piece, and then two, how is it that you’re taking responsibility and doing an assessment of all the systems that you currently have in place?

Deldep:
13:01
that are not necessarily giving you the best talent. That’s possible, right? Yeah. And how are these two things interrelated? And the reality is like, I like working with CEOs, often white men who are willing to undergo this, this conversation, and is not they’re not easy conversations, but they’re important pieces for you to have true leadership in the 21st century. Like, as a data nerd. I have to tell you, my biggest worry right now is that with a pandemic, nobody’s filling out the census. Like I have had palpitations. It is not a healthy thing. I agree. But census 2020 was something I was looking forward to because the results of the senses are going to show people the realities that we’ve been living under this country has undergone a demographic shift. In some places, it is visible, it is palpable, and you can tell you go into a place and you’re Like, wow, the demographics of this region have completely, utterly changed. Yes. And you can feel it, right, you can go like, wow. But those people haven’t been counted yet. And that reality has not been accounted for yet. And so census 2020, for me was that opportunity. And so I just like my one plug be like, please fill out the census. If you have a kid that’s anywhere from 10 to 12, fill it out with them, you can have a conversation about who you are, where you come from, you know, and they can learn to do it, because 10 years from now, there’ll be 20 years old, they’ll be 22. They’re going to have to learn how to do this on their own. And so it’s important for you to engage your family. But you have to fill it out regardless of what the situation right now because if we are under counted, county by county, we’ll get less than federal funding. You will have less access to everything from education, to infrastructure, you name the thing that you rely upon right now. Especially during this pandemic, hospital sizes, hospital beds, all of those things. The census is a key key key thing. And so that’s the thing that I would say that I often said to the CEOs is like, who you used to hire 10 years ago, is going to drastically change if it’s not already changed today.

Michele Heyward:
15:21
I love the response and definitely filling out the census is important. I think this is the second time I’ll be doing it as an adult. Yeah. So I was I was living on campus, I want to say the very first time I was of age, so it still went to my parents house. But anyway, what are common myths about digging AI in tech?

15:44
That’s a big question and I’m going to try to give you an answer. Because I think there’s a lot of myths out there that myth number one that I think has been chipped away at but is not completely gone. Is that We are meritocracy. I know that I was told that a lot when I was younger and it was coming up of you didn’t get x or so and so didn’t get Why? Because we’re a meritocracy. And their work just isn’t up to standard. Right.

16:18
And I think that that was really frustrating.

16:22
Also, because we’re data driven.

16:28
You know, because most companies are data driven that deal with tech. The absence of data means that people can turn a blind eye. Ah, that’s why, for example, I like the census, because I think the census is very important. And I would say like, the demographics of this area are x, y and z. Right. How is your company stacking up to that? Where’s your EEOC report? Are you filling out an EEOC report? These are things so EEOC. Let’s just start with that is equal law. opportunity, equal opportunity. Before I forget, right?

Michele Heyward:
17:05
employment opportunity,

17:07
equal employment opportunities are I suppose that.

Deldep:
17:11
So most companies have to fill this out, especially if they get beyond a 300% range, right? So it’s like, at that point, you’re asking people every time that they’re coming to your website, and they’re applying, and a lot of this, by the way, happens in software, and most people don’t. Most CEOs don’t know about this, because they hire somebody who’s doing the HR, they’re not asking the details. I’ve had this come up where I asked them, like, Where’s your EEOC report and they go, I don’t even know what that is. And I’m like, well, you better go talk to your HR person. And you better be getting that data of like, how many people are coming to upload to your site? And what are their demographics? And of those people who are you actually hiring? And they’re like, Oh, that’s a data point. I wasn’t keeping track of And then internally, when what what happens is what to hire people? How many people are actually getting promoted? How many people are actually, even if they’re moving laterally, what is the opportunity that you’re providing for people internally so that you have an understanding, kind of like your own mini senses internally of what’s happening internally in your company. Um, a lot of folks don’t have that data. And as a result of that, they can take a look and go around like, everybody’s happy here. Everything’s good. We’re a meritocracy. We’re not doing what these old companies used to do. And so I think like, that’s a big myth. But once again, in an absence of data, you actually don’t know what you’re working towards, and you don’t actually have goals. And every single other department in a tech company has data that they work on so that they can have goals. And so I think that that’s one of those places where people need to do work on another myth that I would say around it is that there’s no technical folks that are people of color. And that’s just also not true. And I think code 2040 did a really good report on this a couple years ago, where they said, this is how many folks are actually graduating with CS degrees that are folks of color. This is how many of them are actually getting hired. And that gap in between was huge. I think. I want to say it’s a shamba. I can’t remember right now, but I’ll send you the link, Michelle. So you can share with folks where there was another organization and said, Okay, how many people are getting MBA said are black. And how many people are actually getting hired? there two was a gap. I have seen this across the board. It doesn’t matter what reported is and it doesn’t matter what demographic it is, if you’re not a white man, your chances of actually graduating with often advanced degrees and actually getting hired for something. There’s a gap of people who are just falling through and so you Have the friends and family effect, which is, I remember a investor once said to me, if you can get your friends and family to give you $100,000 for your startup, I am more willing to give you $100,000. And I just said to him, Well, I guess you’ll never give me $100,000 because I don’t have anybody in my network that’s actually going to be able to do that. I am the friends and family, often to my family, right? Somebody needs extra rent money, somebody needs extra childcare money if something happens, like I’m the one that ends up helping, not the other way around. I don’t have people who are going to be able to invest in me readily without it having a consequence for everybody, right? Because once again, I’m not just an individual, I’m a part of a community and we are responsible for each other. That’s a very different way of interacting and living and being then it is I earn individual sounds And I’m responsible for myself. I think like that’s a huge cultural gap that so often people look at and go, Oh, here are great benefits. And I think that there’s some fantastic benefits and a lot of big tech companies. Not all of them apply to me because I don’t live that way. And that’s just not the way that I culturally interact with people.

Michele Heyward:
21:22
Exactly. And that brings about understanding who is in your employee base, and what their needs are into office like with the majority of our employees said this, that doesn’t mean you’re taking care of your people that just went by percentage, and too often women and people of color on the lacking in of getting the benefits that are beneficial to them, even though they’re called benefits. Yeah. So we’re in the midst of COVID-19 and It’s still relatively early for us data on the impact. For death toll, yeah, access to healthcare, and economics, as well as employment. What is your early assessment of what we’re seeing? And then I want to talk about the next part is where do you see five years what what that impact will be on in each of those areas?

22:32
Yeah, I’m sorry. I just got a little emotional.

Deldep:
22:40
So Michelle, you and I both know that it was a surprising to see that both in terms of death toll in terms of impact. It’s hit around communities the hardest it’s hit working class communities the hardest like, this is not a surprise for any of us. If any, I was just waiting for the data to actually show that, because I knew that was the reality for a lot of folks. I was getting the texts, I was getting the messages. People were saying, My mom is sick, my dad is sick. You know, in places where folks of color live, like that’s just the reality and that too often we know that there was already health disparities, that had some to deal with the systems that we currently have, you know, and how people who get access to medical, you know, care in general beyond COVID-19. Like, if you’re not feeling well, do you have a personal doctor, the majority of folks of color do not, you know, health insurance rates, all of these things were already we already knew the numbers were bad before. This is just kind of showing us the consequences of that. And, and that too often racism has a personal physical cost. We have also seen an experience this of like, it’s not a surprise that high blood pressure is very common amongst black folks, because racism is not fun to deal with. And that is an accelerating kind of thing that is a, it’s always there and your body feels in your body absorbs it, the body keeps score, like that’s a reality across the board. And so I’m not surprised to see these things. Um, I have been heartened by how many folks have decided to self organize in different ways. I know that I’ve also gotten those texts and messages, and I’ve done a lot of those zoom calls where it’s just like, what are you doing, this is what I’m doing. This is what I can do who needs access to this and it’s been everything from a friend of mine put together a call, and she was able to get someone in Michigan who had access to machinery access to material cereals that were coming from someplace else, and then the expertise of a doctor to be able to create p PE. And they were able to create PP, that they were planning on creating that they had no expertise on creating. But suddenly they had a whole bunch of factories like working in Michigan. And it was a combination of two Latinas and an Egyptian doctor like that got together and were able to do this. And it all happened because of one phone call where somebody said, This is what I have. And somebody said, Oh, this is this is a connection that I have. Let’s make this happen. That’s been really heartening. It’s been everything from that to somebody just texting me and saying, Do you have any reusable bags and I said Funny you should say because one of the things that I’ve been doing during the quarantine is going through my closets and getting out stuff and I have a ton of reusable bags because I go to a lot of events and people have given me bags. And he’s like, great, can I come and pick them up because I’m putting together care packages for undocumented families that are not going to have access to anything. And I need bags right now somebody else has given me this, somebody else has given me that. And he put together 90 bags for a whole bunch of families. And that has been very heartening to and I just it’s one of those things where I realized like, thanks to technology, we were able to do that, right? We were able to have a national phone call and a national conversation with 15 different people. I was able to have someone that I that lives in my city, but I’m not in touch with a lot to suddenly sent me a message. And so I’m really grateful to all the engineers that have worked on these technologies so that we can have these conversations. But I know that so often when they’re looking once again at their personas, and they’re looking at their things. They weren’t necessarily thinking of a pandemic and they weren’t necessarily thinking of people that are serving folks of color and the needs that they have. And so that makes me realize on the systemic level, as we’re undergoing this demographic shift as it’s happening, how is it that we are both not only counted but considered Because we we actually run the economy in this country like that’s the thing like millennials of color, in particular, like, wow, the amount of the billions of dollars that they put in the economy because of millennials of color, women of color, in particular, like major buying decisions are made in our families with our approval. Exactly. That’s just the reality. So we run the economy.

Deldep:
27:31
But so often, we don’t have ownership stake in that economy, which is why it’s important for us to have that and it’s important for us to advocate for these things. And it’s important for us to be doing not only the community work that we always do, but to recognize it amongst ourselves for the value that I has, and to uplift those stories. Sir.

Michele Heyward:
27:53
That was a lie, but no meaning. It definitely has to be said. What would you like to see come out specifically for people of color? From COVID-19?

28:10
I think

Deldep:
28:12
there’s this concept of the future of work that people have been talking about now for the last three to five years of what will it look like when we’re fully integrated with computers and machinery, and there’s a ton of software that’s out there that’s going to make people’s lives easier. There’s been a lot of conversation and papers and books that have been written. So often those books and papers and things are either not taking the demographic shift into consideration. Or if they do, those are not necessarily written by folks of color. There are a couple of black women that think goodness are thinking about the ethical implications of AI from a professional kind. Like, I’m a professor at an institution, here’s the thing that I’ve written, here’s why it’s important for us to look at algorithms and the biases that algorithms have. There’s a couple of professional kind of like folks that have gotten together and are working on these things and are saying, hey, if we’re going to build tech, how can we build it ethically? So build tech trust, I think is doing fantastic work. But the future of work is now like the pandemic has actually pushed us into not the future of work then now what works, right. So then now a work means that everybody is has to have access to work that is safe, has to have access to work that is engaging and that pays a livable wage. Not everybody does, which is why we’ve seen the disparities that we have like so those of us were college educated and that are, you know, haven’t been engaging in tech work. have that as a as a privilege, but that does not necessarily, you know, reverberate across my family equally. I’ll say that for a fact. You know, not everybody, my family makes a professional wage, everybody. Some people make minimum wage, some people make more money, like there’s a spectrum and that we’re interconnected and in relationship with each other, right? So that you can’t say, oh, but you’re the smart one, or you’re the you’re the college educated one. You’re the exception to the rule, because I’m still in connection and relationship with other people. And so I’m hoping that the now work, the way that we’re working today

Deldep:
30:46
is going to take those things into consideration. And it goes beyond just governmental policy, but actually company policy and access right. So when you shut down your offices, Are you paying your janitorial staff? Exactly? Like, and when you’re shutting down your offices? Are you paying your food staff? More importantly, how is it that you can think of your food stuff injured janitorial staff if you’re not going to all return to big buildings, because there’s now this conversation? are we all going to go back to the buildings? And what does that look like? How is it that you can take the staff that tends to be for the younger part, but doesn’t necessarily need to be that and retrain them to actually keep on working for your company? Right? So I had this I had this concept that I said this once to someone and they looked at me and they said, What? So I said, What would it look like if all the big tech companies that have frontline staff so whether it’s somebody at the front desk, somebody that’s doing security, somebody is doing janitorial, somebody that’s doing food service and said to them, hey, we have some professional positions that we don’t need somebody with a college education. We just need people with skills. We’re going to train you on this, this and this because we have the training already, because we train people on this all the time externally. If you come to this class, we’ll pay you X amount for the Y amount of time. Let’s say it’s an eight week class, we’ll pay you your normal salary for eight week class. And if you pass this training, we’ll hire you on because we have all these positions that are available, and we can’t fill them. majority of the people that have those positions are folks of color, that don’t have college education, haven’t had an opportunity for college achievement for whatever reason. And you would suddenly have folks that would be more dedicated to those jobs because they would feel a sense of like, wow, this company is looking out for me. So I gave this as an example, like, five, six years ago, somebody said, what would it look like for you to negotiate this because if you’re going to be negotiating on behalf of janitors, if you’re going to be negotiating on behalf of frontline staff, like advancement is important, and at some point, they’re going to get robots With these floors, and they looked at me and they said, why would anybody want to hire a janitor, as a coder or something? And I thought to myself, so you’re thinking of people as disposable, because that is my big concern. And I’m saying this is like, nobody is disposable. We all have should have the dignity of work, we should all have the opportunity of decent paying work. And these things are intertwined with each other, they’re not separate. And the more you think of somebody based upon their position, and not their ability to grow, the less access you’re going to have to real talent, the less access you’re going to have to folks who actually want to go and work with you. And so like, that’s my hope is that people are taking this time to rethink what does it mean to have people work for me? What does it take what what does it mean for us to work with each other and how can we Make this as equitable as possible. But that’s not going to be possible unless we have some hard conversations. And we show up for them like and so often that work is work that folks of color and women of color in particular do. But more than ever, now, we really are going to have to push that out like, this is not the moment for you to say di was a nice idea. And we just need to survive. Because the reality is that your customers are going to be folks of color, and in the near future, or there already are and you don’t acknowledge it. And if we’re not buying your products, then nobody’s buying your

Michele Heyward:
34:37
products. Absolutely agree. It’s so interesting that you bought up the places they they said nobody, you know, while we hire a janitor, to be a coder, I’ve literally worked with several white men who worked their way up from the mailroom and they’re dead. But they were with the same employer for 30 to 40 years. They were eight To 19 years old when they start, so it is an opportunity and like you said they work their way their way up somewhere in management somewhere in your level something else. But they found value in building a career with the employer who invested in them early and saw their potential. So I absolutely agree it goes across spectrums when employer truly do this. What What is some advice or just last question, what what would you tell an employer who is looking at the eye as overhead costs, as opposed to an investment in their organization right now during COVID?

35:49
Yeah, I want to acknowledge nobody right now has a crystal ball. So

35:57
I just want to acknowledge that and I think this the are difficult situations that everybody’s in I think the more centered you are as a human being the better leader you are as a human being. The more you’re asking questions, the better off you are. This is a really good moment for leaders to listen and to make nuanced but needed decisions. And I think so often, in a situation like this is that people are going to rush into something out of a sense of panic. And I understand there’s different types of businesses and cash flow is different for different types of businesses. I think this is a great moment for accountants. So if you’re an accountant out there, thank you for doing your job. Because I think this is a moment where numbers matter but people matter as a accordingly. The economy doesn’t exist What are human beings? The economy is not the s&p 500 it is not the Dow Jones, it’s not any index out there. It’s not any index right now actually being driven by algorithms. Let’s let’s be clear about that too, right? Like, a lot of these indexes are being driven by algorithms. And those algorithms are not necessarily attached to human beings in some ways and have the ability to make decisions and were tasked with the ability to make decisions without human intervention unless somebody pushes a giant like comical red button, you know, metaphorically, you know, like, Oh, we better put a stop to this right. But the economy doesn’t doesn’t live without human beings. So the question you have to ask yourself is, what kind of company do I want to have? What kind of company do I want to lead that actually takes human beings into consideration? And di I think as a practice as the shift happens, is going to stop Being an external or an extraneous or a thing that’s built on top of something, it actually has to be in meshed into all of your work. The sooner you do that, the better off you are, the sooner that you’re thinking about how are we making sure that we’re equitable? How do we make sure that we’re hiring folks who have great skill sets, regardless of what their background is what they look like, whether they have an accent, disability, loving a different way, whatever it is, that is not your prototypal prototypical kind of like employee right now, the better off you are, because hiring and then getting rid of people and then re hiring them, and retraining people costs a lot more than actually thinking about what are the skill sets that are needed? How is it that people want sir in your You know, your ambit your like your workplace, you will understand what they’re great at. And how is it that you allow them to do that really successfully? It is not an easy thing, because if it was easy, everybody would do it. So I just want to acknowledge that.

39:15
And I think that

Deldep:
39:16
you can’t let the pandemic be the thing that scares you from actually being successful at it. Right?

Michele Heyward:
39:24
Absolutely, absolutely agree. It’s always going to be you always gonna have something to encounter. It is. How do you get through it? Like you say, as a leader, how do you bring your people through it? as many of them as possible? So, Dale, Dale, thank you so much for joining me. How can people connect with you?

39:47
So the easiest way to find me is I am d l d LP. That’s my name, Dell, Dell, the pure silent.

39:55
That’s my website. I am.

39:58
I am DL dlp.com

40:03
and you can also find me on Twitter at

Deldep:
40:05
D l DLP, or on LinkedIn, d l DLP and Ed ins so they’ll tell me, which was always fine.

Michele Heyward:
40:15
All right, it is a pleasure. Everybody tune in. We always have more when it comes to di here. We will talk to you later.

40:25
Bye. All righty. Bye Michelle, thank you so much for having me. You’re welcome.