EdUp Explained with Ashanti Martin

Get a glimpse into the culture at Strava, the world's leading social platform for athletes, from its Chief People Officer, Michele Bousquet. From baking antiracism into recruiting practices to giving employees maximum flexibility, Strava is a company that is embarking on its own transformation in response to a period of rapid change in the world of work.

Michele uses her eventful first year at Strava as well as her 20-year career in leading people to reflect on several topics, including:

In-person to remote Strava has moved from being an in-person organization to a place where employees can choose whether they want to work fully remote, in the office, or anywhere in between: "Whatever works for you is how we want you to work."

Anti-racist recruiting Strava's anti-racism commitment starts from the job description: "This is not something you can opt in or out of...you have to be willing to interrogate your behaviors...We invite you to opt out of it if it is not landing for you."

Future of progressive organizations Companies that don't speak out on social issues will suffer from a "dinosaur vibe" 10 years from now.

Team building wisdom "The better you know the people you have the more you’ll know who you need."

A special shoutout to Strava's Head of Talent Camille Tate, co-host of The Career Salon with the HR Twins podcast, which gets a mention in the episode!

Janelle Benjamin is CEO and Chief Equity Officer at All Things Equitable, which seeks to make it easy for companies to prioritize equity and get it right. She is a Juris Doctor with over 15 years experience in diversity and inclusion, accessibility, and human rights. In this episode, Janelle and I discussed:

• the pitfalls and opportunities that come with being a CDO
• how organizations can choose the right DEI consultant
• the risks and rewards that come with working for yourself
• our love of 90s hip-hop (especially the women rappers)

Janelle has expertise leading corporate-wide diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, making system-wide improvements to workplace policies and practices, and working with senior leadership to break systemic barriers to inclusion in society, so that everyone may participate fully. Her recommendations for change have resulted in large-scale transformation to organizations and continuous improvement in a multitude of sectors.

In this episode, we dive into the neuroscience of perspective taking -- sort of like empathy, but not quite. I spoke with Zab Johnson of the Wharton School about how intentional perspective taking can lead to more innovative and more successful teams, and how you can tap into the neuroscience yourself with some easy exercises.

Elizabeth (Zab) Johnson is the executive director and senior fellow of the Wharton Neuroscience Initiative. Her research focuses on vision and visual behavior, spanning physiological approaches in the retina and early visual cortex to using eye tracking to investigate how human observers look, how these processes unfold over time and with experience, and the role of visually-guided social cognition and decision-making. As an expert on color vision, she has collaborated with Lenovo to develop computer and tablet screens with features that provide a more personalized color experience. Before coming to Penn in 2016, she spent 14 years at Duke University, where she was on the faculty in the Neurobiology Department and served as the Associate Director of the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences. Zab has a long-time interest in how our perception of visual art informs how we see.

In this episode of EdUp Explained, I talk to Danielle Williams, founder of Hello World Tarot, about using tarot as a form of self-healing, life as a blerd, some tarot card designers of color and the sound of cards shuffling. Danielle is also a mathematician, educator, and lifelong learning.

Don't miss this awesome conversation with Andre Peart, cofounder and CEO of ConConnect. Andre was moved to start ConConnect after his own release from prison. The constraints and struggles surrounding re-entry led him back to prison to finish his term, even though he had been released for making progress to better himself.

What I love about ConConnect is that Andre is asking organizations to do better and to see formerly incarcerated people as more than menial workers. Some of the smartest, most talented, creative and innovative people I have known have served prison sentences. ConConnect helps organizations find people who are talent matches for tech and white-collar jobs; connects formerly incarcerated people with relevant education; and guides companies in the process of becoming fair-chance hirers. If your company takes second chances seriously, ConConnect is a great place for you to start.

In this episode, I have the pleasure of interviewing writer, author, and speaker LeRon Barton. His article “What It’s Like To Be A Black Man in Tech” was published on March 4 in Harvard Business Review. I enjoyed how LeRon wrote about his experiences as a source of support and guidance to other Black men in the field. We also talked about how these lessons are good for everyone to listen to, to be their own advocate in the workplace, especially for young people just getting started. Please check out more of LeRon's work at leronbarton.com.

Employer brand and culture transformation consultant John Graham breaks down the uncomfortable continuum of work in America -- from the plantation to the cubicle to the board room. His debut book, "Plantation Theory: The Black Professional's Struggle Between Freedom and Security" drops on Juneteenth -- the day that, in 1865, the last of enslaved Black Americans finally learned of their freedom.

John was featured in my New York Times story about Black LinkedIn. His book is available for pre-order on Amazon.

Elizabeth Leiba inspires me to go above and beyond, a LOT. I was drawn to her last summer when I was in the depths of personal and national despair and her content on LinkedIn pulled me through many days when I was just sure I could not do it anymore. So I just knew she was going to be one of my stars of Black LinkedIn, and she was prominently featured in The New York Times article on the subject. I have no doubt she does this for countless others every day on LinkedIn, and now she is doing it through her Black History and Culture Academy. It's a series of courses about Black culture in America and beyond, and EVERYONE can learn from it. We talked about why it's important to keep pushing to do more in these critical times and why the status quo just won't do.

Thoughtful, intellectual, provocative. This is the introductory episode of EdUp Explained with me -- Ashanti Martin. Let's do this!