Chief Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Officer – Omnicon PR Group
What qualities makes for a Moves mentor?
I think the qualities for any mentor are the abilities to listen actively, to be able to gather from their own experiences, to be able to share with whoever they are pushing forward, pushing to mentor, and also to use their platform or their space to speak up for those who may not have the ability or audience to speak up to. So that’s what I think is most important, is utilizing what you’ve built already as a mentor to help those that you might be mentoring.
Do you feel there are any benefits for a mentor– whether that’s intellectually, spiritually, socially– what do you feel that a mentor gets out of mentoring somebody?
Oh, everything. I don’t think any mentor/mentee relationship is only one-sided, so I do believe that it’s two-sided. You can, as a mentor, you know, you can learn from the individual with the reverse mentorship. So I have gotten some great learnings about ideas or things that I hadn’t thought about so you know, that might be something that I should move forward to start thinking about. You know, I’ve gotten some things to be more youthful about, you know, understanding what’s going out there for a different generation than my own; that has been worthwhile just because, for my nieces and nephews I seem like I’ve got it going on, which I really don’t, I just pay attention to the right things. I just, you know, as much as I try to provide them, my mentees, with knowledge or to drive them down a path to complete something they might be working on or to think of something differently. Every time I do it it makes me think about whatever it is that I’m working on, or dealing with, and using the same methods that I might be using or having them use to do so it helps me kind of rejigger myself back to what’s worked in the past and help myself just as much as I’m helping those individuals.
I always say, the younger generation today are not just the driving force with finding all of the answers to problems that have happened, but they’re also so switched on in ways that I couldn’t even imagine that I could keep up.
Oh, totally. I mean there’s so many people that I meet, that I’ve met, that are of the younger generation that I think to myself, “There is no way I would’ve gotten a job if I had to compete against these people.” Like some of the we’re-with-all and the talent and the tapped-inness of them is so impressive. I’nm just excited to see what they’re gonna be able to do and what they’re capable of doing as they continue to grow.
Do you feel though, that mentorship and driving Corporate America to understand the relevancy of that space is important to make almost mandatory? Or do you feel that it should be more of a voluntary relationship?
I think it depends. You know, I would argue that this is where the space of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion comes in. I think for some people, it comes natural for them to look for mentors and to really lean into their mentor/mentee relationships. I think for other individuals, depending on their ethnicities or backgrounds or what all the things that make us different, some people do not feel comfortable stepping out and leaning into a mentor, asking someone to be their mentor, or any of that, right? And I think when it comes, when you think about it like that, I think it makes sense to, within Corporate
America, if your companies or agencies have employee resource groups to maybe utilize those to help build mentor programs that are specific to those communities, because I think that it’s not in everyone’s nature to think that people would want to mentor them? And then, I think, once you have them in some of those ERGs, you could say, “Hey, this is a mentor program, and we would like everyone at this level to sign up for it,” or just giving them the opportunity. I don’t believe in forced mentorship because those are terrible relationships. And I have been on the other end of some of those, as a mentee, and I remember thinking, “Why am I matched with this person?” Like it was just name-matching and I don’t think out of the ten times I got matched did it ever really work. So I don’t really believe in that, but I do believe in providing the opportunities to all the different groups that should be having it, but not expecting people to go out and find their own mentor all the time.
Mentoring and DEI increases the bottom line from hard facts that are shared, is it something that Corporate America needs to think about mandating because of its relevancy? It should be a five year plan, or something?
Yeah, that’s a tough one. I think that, I think the answer is yes. I think there’s always got to be a five year plan related to your people because the people are what make all these businesses run and move, right? As much as we bring in digital AI and all the different things, there’s still people that you need to make sure you have a plan for, a strategic plan for. So I do think that there should be a plan set up, especially as you’re looking at, “How do you impact or drive the growth of those people that are underrepresented to have opportunities that they wouldn’t normally have?” I think that’s where it comes into building out funding for the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion team to be able to search out and find development programs that help employees of all backgrounds and ethnicities but most importantly those who are underrepresented, because that’s where you kind of have to break what the system built that has been against a good number of people. Yeah, you absolutely have to have that funding because that funding and that plan is really important because you know, more now than ever companies had brought in people to do DEI very rush-rushed post George Floyd’s murder. I think right now we’re seeing some of those individuals or those companies say, “Oh, we don’t really have the funding anymore for DEI, or we’re changing the way we’re focusing in.” And to me, that’s just a sign of how short-sighted it was, right? They weren’t thinking about the bigger picture or how that impacts the full plan? Or they didn’t have a plan. They were just like, “Oh, let me get a person because Instagram tells me I need to have a person. All the outrage is telling me I need to have a person.” And now because things are kind of smoothing out, and people are starting to feel like, “Oh there’s a place! There’s a person for me to go to, there’s all of this work that’s being done to help us move along!” that now companies are saying, “We don’t need one. There’s no drama, right?” But there’s no drama because the people were there to help drive that change and make people feel like they belong. And I think it’s short-sighted for people to do that, and that’s why I think it’s important to have a five year plan, because then you’ll be building on what you’ve been doing over the course of time.
Was there a defining moment or experience that brought you to where you are today? And what was it?
Yeah, I think it was, you know, actually the death of my father. He died young, he was 51. Was he 51? I might have made that up. I think he was 53. But anyways, he died young, I was young at the time when he died and he actually lived at home with me in my apartment. So I was working at my corporate job and he passed away from complications with kidney disease. I think for me the reason, you know, other than the impact of losing your father at a young age and how that might impact growth and what you might not get because he’s not here, I think the thing that it impacted me most to do, or to realize it’s that: life is short. And all of the, before he passed, I was very much about, “So I gotta get this money. I gotta do this, I gotta get this job so then I can save this, save that, so then I can go retire and blah blah blah,” I was very much so about the path of the normal dream of everyone. And I was an accounting major, I had just graduated, finance is where I’m going, this is what I’m gonna do and lean into it. And then when he passed away, I started realizing life is short; you gotta do all the things when you can do them. It changed my pathway from being very focused and what’s the corporate timeline or as they call it, the American Dream, of just working yourself all the time and then worrying about what you do for fun or experience life, or what have you? And so what that has done for me it’s made me say yes. I say yes to a lot of things, right? And I say yes to a lot of things because you never know when you’ll be able to say yes again. I think my father paused a lot of parts in his life, and I think that because he did that and then he died young, he never got to do a lot of things. So I have since then, since I was 25 pretty much been, “You wanna go to Africa? Yup. Let’s go. You wanna go here? You wanna try this? Sure. Let’s do that. Do you wanna take a job in HR? Yeah, well what’s it about? Let’s talk about it a little bit more.” You know? It’s been very open. It’s helped me open my mind up to different possibilities and to think differently about what my career path is, my life path, what I’m doing in that. So I think that was a pivotal moment for me that switched me into a different direction.
What do you think is the number one action that we as a society can take as women who add power and equality and make it more of an affirmative action for people? What is the one thing we could do to help elevate this conversation?
I think the thing that we could do is be vocal. I think it’s the number one thing that can help elevate it. I think at times some of us, some people, are like “Yeah, yeah, I need more help,” right? They only want to tell one or two people or they’re like, “Oh, that person really helped me out,” but they don’t want to share that it happened— like it’s a weakness to say you needed the help or had the help. I think we need to be more vocal. And kind of what we just talked about, I think the vocal goes into sharing your experiences and telling your story because one, that shows your authenticity, and two, you never know how people might connect with you. Right? That’s something I say all the time in my role at OHG, we launched equity inclusion and the acronym is HI. The reason it’s HI is because when I started I said, “You need to start talking to each other. You need to walk up to a person and say hi, and be like ‘Hey! Where did you grow up?’”
Take a minute to take it away from the work part. But then start to get to know the people you actually work with, and I think that being vocal in this sort of thing could really move the needle for what we need.
What is the best piece of advice you feel you’ve ever been given?
The best piece of advice… there’s been so many good pieces! I think the best piece I got was to build my personal brand. I hate that I’m saying this, I don’t know if he’s gonna see it, because I didn’t want to give him his credit when he was talking about it, but I think it’s been important to do and it’s not in my nature to pump up my own brand or things that
I’ve been doing. It’s cultural I believe as well, it’s just not in our nature as Black women to speak up and speak out about what we’ve been doing day to day, at least for me. It feels like, this is what I do, it’s normal to my day. But I think if other people were doing as much as we were, they’d probably be like, “Did you know I did this? Did you know I did that?” I don’t really do that. Too tough, I’m not really good at it, and it’s hella awkward for me. Sometimes I’ll send an email and be like, “This is what I do,” and then I’ll send it and be like “Ooo… can’t believe I just sent that.” But I have a mentor/sponsor who at the first meeting he was like, “We need to talk about how you build your personal brand.” And I was like, “Yikes, hi! Nice to meet you. Yeah ok, let’s talk about it.” And he gave me some good nuggets as to what to do within my company, within my network, and who to talk to, how to build out some of those relationships, and start to build out what I’m able to bring to the different leaders and build out the brand. Talk about what I’ve been doing. There were a few instances when we were meeting together that I did the thing we just talked about, he was like, “Gena, aren’t you working on that?” And in my head I was like, “Oh god, this is the time to talk about what I’ve been doing.” So I say all of that to say as uncomfortable as is it, he was totally right. It’s changed a big trajectory of the career path that I have, and it’s changed the way I’m received by some individuals, that I think were probably not even down to receive whatever the DEI person’s talking about, and so I would say that’s my best piece of advice.
The next question is whatever women are involved in, the aspect of life —domestic, business, or recreation— evidence shows that their activity enhances a real tangible way on the differences they make. But why is there such fierce resistance to female influence?
Oh, Moonah. Men are uncomfortable with relinquishing what they think they have is power. And that’s why there’s resistance; it’s plain and simple. It’s the age old, drunk with power, drunk with access, it’s the same thing that’s been happening for years. People get too much power, people say it’s only movie talk but it happens in regular jobs, right? I think men are afraid of change, and we can see how that plays out in a lot of places. We’re seeing it play out in different political arenas, we’re seeing it play out in different conversations on healthcare vs. how it plays out in the media. It’s everywhere, it’s the fear of losing something that makes people not want to be open to the change of bringing in women, diverse leaders, or having voices. To me, it’s so unheard of that in this point in time we’re still having the same fight for certain things; the only thing that seems consistent is who’s doing the fighting. And so until they start to change their
minds, we’re gonna continue to have that fight. It doesn’t matter how many statistics we throw at people, I mean we know women get shit done, right? We know all that. There’s my stat. And we also know the more diversified you have of a board or leadership team, the better your revenue is. Doesn’t matter. Because I think a lot of these leaders are
drunk with whatever power they believe they have, and they’re too afraid to relinquish it.
What would you tell yourself if you could go back to being 15 years old today?
Do it. I think when I was younger I was so afraid of getting in trouble, like I was a good kid. Like I was the kid that never really caused any problems. So I think what I would tell myself is be you, and not what the expectation is of you.
Last question and a fun one, who do you admire and why?
There’s so many people to say. I mean, I think I’ve always admired, it’s not just one person, my grandparents. My maternal grandparents and that is because they took so many risks in their journey; that’s how we ended up in Canada. They moved pretty much on faith and came to Canada because my grandfather played Canadian football, but this was in the late 40s early 50s when doing something like that as a Black family from Washington D.C. could just up and move to Edmonton, Alberta there’s no— I would imagine you have no idea what it’s gonna be like, what it’s gonna look like, what the people are like, you don’t know anything. They did that and they made a whole life for themselves. Fantastic. To me, they grew with that and they built their careers there, my grandmother was a doctor and my grandfather was an executive after his football career. Just knowing, later in life, I started talking to them and understanding what they went through, they were like one of the only Black families in the whole city. Everyone knew them, “Oh, that’s the Miles family.” And to me, that’s like, “What! What do you mean?” It’s a city where I grew up. And I’ve now learned as I’ve gotten older that depending on the generation of the people I would meet at home, I could be like “I’m from the Miles family,” and they would say, “Oh, ok!” They instantly knew what that meant— this is weird! I so admire their tenacity to step up. They left their families; my grandfather was one of 10, so he left all his siblings and parents to chase his dream to play football, and my grandmother out of love went with him. And so, that’s amazing to me.
