Dr. Donte Vaughn, Founder & President, Lightpoint Advisors LLC, interviewed by Lan Elliott

Dr. Donte Vaughn shares how his company helps clients develop mechanisms to influence how leaders engage, interact, and make decisions, to realize their full potential.  He explains the importance of treating DEIB as a fundamental business strategy, rather than an initiative, in order to be impactful and sustainable, and why he doesn’t believe in quotas.  Finally, Donte describes 4 actions leaders can take to create a more inclusive workplace and the 3 key pillars women and underrepresented groups can implement to better prepare themselves for career advancement.

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Lan Elliott 0:02

Hello and welcome to D E I Advisors. We're an Arizona nonprofit whose mission is around empowering personal success. My name is Lan Elliot on behalf of D E I advisors, and today I'm really excited to have Dr. Dante Vaughn with us as our guest. He is the C E O of Culture Works, which is a company that helps foster cultural change. With helps companies foster cultural change, and Dante is also the best selling co-author of From Culture to Culture, and he serves on the Forbes Business Council as a company culture leader. So welcome Dante. Thank you

Donte Vaughn 0:40

for having

Lan Elliott 0:41

me. Lan. And one of the things I wanted to share with our viewers is why I'm so excited to have you on is because this idea of focusing on inclusivity and company culture and the work that needs to be done around d e I advisors, it's so much more complex and filters through the entire company. And that's exactly. Work you do. So I'm so excited to hear more about what you bring to your companies that you work with, your clients. But let's start, Dante with you. Can you share a little bit of your career journey and how you became interested in company culture and d e i effort?

Donte Vaughn 1:20

You bet. When I get this question often and I reflect back to my childhood as a starting point and not in the context of I knew I was going to be this organizational leadership and culture strategist, or this psychologist, organizational psychologist. It really began with reflecting on how I navigated my upbringing and the community. Within which I lived, through my childhood and growing up in the inner city of Philadelphia and navigating the complexities of our community and trying to figure out where I fit in. And part of that was this instinctual evaluation of just how people came together and group dynamics. And so I, that started at a really early age. I didn't even realize that, but I was. Finding a way to be more like Switzerland, and I was able to navigate with the sports crews and then with the, the kids that maybe started a little trouble here or there. And then you had, I was running with the the kids that were more into their books and studies and I was always able work through those groups and understand those things that made them click and the influencers of those. Now you fast forward to much of the work that I do today. It's rooted in examining and optimizing how individuals and teams come together, and more specifically how they show up in a capacity of either a leader or a follower. To drive toward a unified goal or objective or outcome. And that, so it is really started as childhood and then playing sports growing up and just how I navigated my development was always centered around, how, what role did I play in influencing how those groups came together? And then academically, I started to study the world of business administration and business management. And I realized through that management realm, it started getting more into leadership principles and leadership strategy and the people side of business. Early in my career, I started on the light industrial side of things and logistics and. Navigated to distribution and all in the retail space and brought, worked my way up through that and then went into more operational consulting and started to experience light heavy industrial operating environments and understanding how to influence outcomes. And what was a common, denominator in operational performance was this evaluation of leadership, culture, and leadership. And that's what really triggered me to examine that through my master's and eventually my doctoral degree, is to then understand and identify and even develop methodologies that impact leadership culture. Because at the end of the day, no matter how great your systems are, no matter how great your processes may. If you don't have a mechanism, a channel by which you influence how leaders engage, how they interact, how they make decisions in the business every day, then you're not gonna realize the full potential. Now, my segue into d e I was really rooted in the work that I was doing in mobilizing organizations to realize a desired leadership culture. They had this interest, they professed these core values and putting those values into action. Was their biggest challenge, especially in this conversation around fostering diversity, equity, inclusion, and even now this conversation around belonging. So not only are you addressing systems and processes, how that leader shows up and how they make decisions surrounding those. Values and those beliefs within an organization is essential. And for d EI specifically, it requires so many considerations across so many groups within an organization. And that's something that organizations started to really pull on me around how do I take real action around this? So more recently it's been this hyper focus on how to mobilize organizations around. Sincere, authentic, impactful, D e I or d e i b strategy for their organization.

Lan Elliott 5:38

that, that's a great explanation. And I do wanna dig into a lot of this May, maybe what we could do is start with company culture which is something when I think about company culture, I think, and changing it, I think of my management 1 0 1 classes many years ago where. We're taught, Peter Drucker said that, that's right, that our culture will eat strategy for breakfast, right? So I came away with the idea that you can't really change com company cultures. It's just there. So let's unpack that a little bit. Maybe we start with how do you describe company culture and how do you even measure company

Donte Vaughn 6:16

culture? Yeah. I love this conversation and again, This evaluation of workplace culture and and I'll date myself by even saying workplace culture. Cause first it was really corporate culture. Then it navigated for corporate culture to workplace culture, then organizational culture. And now we just use the phrase culture, right? We define culture as the values we share, the language we use. The behaviors we display, the connections we make, that's what makes up or shapes an organization's culture, right? Values we share, the language we use, the behaviors we display, the connections we make. And historically, as you touched on, even in academia, this conversation around workplace culture and the nature. The, I guess what's grounds company culture was always vague and it's set in this world of human capital management and it was always treated in this very abstract way. So it's how do I get in front of this? You can just measure it as it happens and then try to react to it. And what I found in my partners in the business, that is not only reactionary, but misaligned to the premise of what it means to actually manage something. Cuz you can't manage what you can't actively or proactively measure, right? And take intentional effort to impact. So we're saying, how can you manage culture? Then we put our operational hat on and said what's at the heart of. Values, we share language, we use behaviors we display and the connections we make. Who owns that? Is it the employee who we're asking about their experience after the fact? No, it's owned by the leaders within an organization and how they embody the values of an organization, how they, how that manifests in their language, the words they use the actions that they take and the decisions that they make. So what if. looked at culture through an operational lens and found a way to more systematically and intentionally impact values, language, behaviors, and connections, because that's at the root of that employee experience. So that's what we mean when we talk about company culture. Now, how we measure it is through the value and efficacy of the connect. That those leaders make, that perpetuates the experience for that employee or employees or customers. Because if I can measure that and get in front of the disconnect between what I want or what I believe is important and what's actually happening now, I can actually directly impact company culture, not waiting for lagging indicator of a, a group of employees or customers perception of their experience after the fact and try to make generalizations from. And then react to that. That's still this reactionary cycle that often isn't rooted in root, is not connected to root cause. How do I get to the root of it? that's, so when we talk about culture and that context or company culture, that's what we mean.

Lan Elliott 9:45

Okay, so in your book you discuss operationalizing company culture. What, what does that mean? How does your team do

Donte Vaughn 9:54

that? So when we talk about operationalizing culture, what we, or it's really the approach to actively managing culture. Now, we refer to that in our book as a, our methodology as culture, performance management, or cp. and what we mean by that is to take culture and apply it in the same manner that you look at other strategic functions or pillars of your business. What is required for you to actively define, implement, manage, and improve those processes? You need a. So we developed this seven pillar framework or cultural performance management methodology to apply a more systematized and proactive approach to managing company culture methodically. Starting with the value system as the foundation. What's your value system as an organization? Now, connected to that value system, of course, is your purpose, your vision, your mission. The beliefs that should guide how you all come together and how you operate. We start there as a foundation to this culture performance management system.

Lan Elliott 11:13

That's amazing. And it's really much more like a business process that a business person would be more used to seeing rather than this really vague, amorphous concept that's out there, which is what I really love about what

Donte Vaughn 11:26

you do. Yeah. And to your point, land, that's part. Our attempt to also bridge the disconnect in the marketplace from ops leaders and even from HR practitioners who are looking for strategies, but they're, again they're only have the tools that they believe or the systems that are available to them. You didn't study culture performance management in academia. Now I'm working to, and to get it as a formalized methodology in academia. But that didn't exist when we were coming up in, in our collegiate experience. We had to pick leadership theories and organizational culture theories and try to make sense of it. But an operationalized approach says I start with a plan. There are specific actions that we need to be clear. that we're taking, we're gonna put mechanisms to ensure that we are equipped to take those actions and we're gonna have a goal in mind of outcome. We're gonna measure those outcomes and we're going to refine 'em or continuously improve our efforts over time. Whoa, that sounds really familiar to Lean Management Principles, six Sigma. Other methods of how to optimize operational performance. Why can't we do the same with workplace?

Lan Elliott 12:42

That's amazing. Yeah. It's a really great way to look at it and and to make it, embedded in the systems, not just having seminars and teaching individuals about it. And then when they leave the company, it leaves with them. It's really about embedding it within the company itself.

Donte Vaughn 12:57

Yeah. Yeah. The methodology we speak on in these seven pillars, we start with the value. once we're clear about the values, we're trying to promote and drive accountability around what those values mean and the impact they have to the organization must be defined by the second pillar. Those behavioral standards and expectations you have for everyone. What does it mean to show up this way? It's not good enough to just say, these are my values, and we somehow realize them in. You are prescribing to the marketplace and to your suppliers and to your customers that these values are important to you. And we stand by diversity. We stand by equity. We stand by inclusion. We foster belonging. We do these things. What does it mean? How do you, how does, then what do you want from your leaders to and how they should embody those core values? So pillar two is defining those behavioral standards and expectations. Pillar three is, how do I connect them to how I as a leader, show up in the business every day? The embodiment of inclusion for the c e O on a day-to-day basis may look different than the embodiment of inclusion for the front of house manager. The principles around inclusion remain consistent. The definition of inclusion for your organization remains consistent, but the behavioral expectations and the context of them being actionable. needs to be relatable to the level of the organization you're speaking to. We gotta get out of this abstract or arbitrary vision around our culture and make it more actionable because then once I can get it to an actionable state, I can start to evaluate it, measure it, refine it. that's pillar three. This connecting to how I operate and move every day. From the time you walk in the building to your startup huddle, to your ops meeting, to these points of engagement, interaction and decision making, that's essential. Pillar four is more around, all right, just because I have these standards, I can't assume that you as a leader know how. Practice or embody them. Maybe it could be new to you. I'm telling you what our culture is in our hospitality organization, but you may not be familiar with that. Or you came from another organization where that wasn't the core value. Let me give you an opportunity to learn what it means to show up this way. Let me give you the opportunity in pillar five to practice. learning and practice is essential, but we apply more of an experiential learning approach. So we look at learning retention theory and say, wait a minute, traditional classroom training around D E I or D E I B has its value for sure, but the learning retention rates statistically is somewhere around 30% or less. And that's if you are inclu, including demonstration as part of that. 30% retention. So their ability to take this classroom training or these workshops or seminars and go back to the workplace and apply them every day, the reality is that's not how the human brain works. We have to make sure we not ignore people's science and understanding of learning and development, especially among adult learners. So we adopt more of a of an experiential learning approach that says we, if you're going to foster. Connection to behaviorally, how they should be showing up every day. Do you have the right tools and mechanisms in the business that can, you can drive that in real time, drive awareness and connection to what it means to show up that way and drive accountability and feedback as part of that behavioral change or development process. So pillar four is about learning. Pillar five is about practice, and it's part of that. Establishing this points of reflection and understanding of how I'm showing up every day, and also accountability, someone else holding you accountable. That's when you start to realize this leadership culture in a tangible way. Now. Okay. I'm practicing. I'm learning. What's my. Your measurement is not rooted solely in the lagging indicator of what the employer customer tells you their experience was after the fact. If I wanna get in front of it and refine it in real time to have real impact, have to measure it in shorter interval. I'm not talking about pulsing in shorter interval. I'm talking about taking your points of reflection and capturing them. I'm talking about taking someone who's holding you accountable, who's observing how you show up every. And having moments of evaluation or reflection and then acting on that, putting action behind the gap between how you thought you showed up, how your accountability partner told you, you showed up, and then doing something about it, not waiting for the employee to decide they want to quit, not waiting for the employee engagement survey after the fact because now you've impacted their experience over 2, 3, 4 months a year in some organiz. What if I told you there's a way to, to foster that in real time? Now we build in culture works. Once we mobilize you around pillar 1, 2, 3, 4, and five, that 4, 5, 6, and seven. We build tools both in technology and in some ancillary tools to help promote and foster that real time learning and development because that's essential. You think about how you learned how to play any. You think about how the coach goes out on the field or when they're back in the in, in the dugout, they get feedback in real time so that player can correct how they are executing in real time to have an impact on the game. We can't wait till after the game and the video reels you watch a month from now because you missed out on opportunities. That's what culture, this managing and impacting company culture looks.

Lan Elliott 19:06

That's amazing. And I wanna stay on, on, on the sports analogy a little bit. Sure. Cause cuz you taught me a new term, which is D E I B. But what I really loved is how you explained the com components of d e I be diversity, equity, inclusion, and the b, which is belonging, which is the one that I learned from you. But can you share a great way to think about it? Because people think. D e I, like we, we hired some diverse people. Are we done? And and they actually have different meanings and different impacts, each of those four letters. So can you share that great analogy that you shared with me of how to think about each piece of d e I?

Donte Vaughn 19:44

Sure. So I guess my interest in passion in sports, both as an athlete of my younger years, and then also I even coached Pop Warner football, and I love the enology. As it relates to D E I V because it simplifies it and it brings it back to a point that people can understand. When you think about diversity, if I play for a team or I'm the coach or the general manager of that team, first, I have to believe that there is value in diversifying my team in terms of skillset. Competency, the impact they can have in realizing the outcomes. I want to be a high performing team or to be the champion or what have you. I have to believe that is important, right? And as part of that, I'm gonna evaluate skill, competency, the gaps that I have in my own organization. And I'm gonna do and I'm gonna put the right systems and processes to minimize any barriers to me improving my chances of diversifying my team. Cause it's so important. So I'm gonna mitigate biases and barriers to that. So I got you on the team. I found you, I got you on the team. Not just because of a demographic, but because I believe that you being added to my team is critical to our success. But I'm gonna be conscious of the fact that there may have been biases in my in the way of how I selected my team members in the past. And I'm gonna try to mitigate those. Cause I recognize that some of those barriers of screen. Were irrelevant to the real capacity or what I was trying to realize. That's the D. Now, I brought you onto the team. I can ensure that you have an equitable chance to receive the tools, the resources, the support you need to thrive in your capacity. Now, a lot of times we can misconstrue equity, as in everyone gets the same. equity means that I'm gonna afford you the resources necessary to ensure that you thrive at the same level that everyone else does. But that doesn't mean that it's e equi equivalent in these specific tools and resources because that may not be value added to you. It needs to be relevant to. your role and what you're trying to accomplish and what I need you to accomplish from our organization. That's the e I'm gonna make sure you have a uniform. I'm gonna make sure you have the equipment you need. I'm gonna make sure you get a level of investment in your development as an athlete. All those things are the E and equity. Now, I brought you on a team. I've ensured you had the tools and resources to be successful in an equitable manner. I think it's important to accidentally includes you in the plays. I gotta get you, I gotta get you out on the field and leveraging all these resources and all your skills and give you a chance to display them. Otherwise, what's the point of being on the team? Inclusion is essential. As you and I know and many of our listeners know. oftentimes. Initially, that was a huge gap, right? Oh, I checked the box. I hired a certain number of certain people and I brought 'em on, but I really didn't make sure they had the tools and resources to be successful. And frankly, I didn't even give 'em a seat at the table. I just checked the box and, all right. Done. D e i, this bee starts to get at the actual experience. Okay? I'm on the team. I have the tools and resources. You've included me on the. I may have even been added to a couple of plays during a game, but my experience in terms of how I'm connected to the purpose of the team, the intent, the vision, the outcomes, the celebrations, rather I'm in the score or in the play or not. That's that sense of belonging and that's oftentimes that's the next evolution of d e I strategy for organizations. What are my leaders doing? Or how am I fostering the connection to purpose, to meaning, to intent to outcomes in an intentional way. That's the D E I B.

Lan Elliott 23:51

That's a great way of looking at it, and I love your analogy with sports, so I'd really wanted you to share that with our listeners. Thank you for that. Let's talk a little bit about D E I B as a key strategy because I think firms are understanding the importance and also the benefits of D E I B, and we've seen a lot of firms invest in D E I and perhaps they hire a chief diversity officer. So I was really interested to read recently Korn Ferry publication that said that 60% of diversity officers at s and p 500 companies left their positions between 2018 and 2021, and that the average tenure. Of Chief Diversity Officers has dropped from three years, which is one of the shortest average Tanners aro among C-suite executives to less than two years, actually. So it doesn't seem like just hiring a Chief Diversity Officer is the answer, and you take. A different approach, right? You suggest treating d e I like a key strategy, a key pillar in an organization. And can you talk a little bit about that and how your approach creates a sustainable approach to D E I or D E I B for companies?

Donte Vaughn 25:06

You bet. It's like anything else. You make important in your business, you make it important if you establish it accordingly, if you invest. you allocate the resources, not just through appointment, but through the decision making practices in your business. You're going to sustain it if you measure it, if you drive accountability around it. So for D E I B, it can't be treated just like we speak to all workplace culture. It cannot be treated as an initiative. You treat it as an initiative or check the box. it's gonna be under-resourced underinvested in. So imagine the people who are appointed in these roles to impart change. You have a percent of that demographic who frankly were appointed because of just that, their demographic construct, not necessarily cuz they understand strategically how to move, mobilize that organization around D E I or d e I. So you have a percent of that demographic who has a high attrition rate simply because I don't your point you highlighted me cuz I was the one woman leader or the one iPOC leader in the business. So let me, lemme go ahead and do this now. Realize I don't know how to drive the change that's required here. You have another percent of that demographic who frankly knows how to, but feels under-resourced and underinvested in from a strategic point of view, cuz d EI covers systematic change. process impact, employee experience, customer experience, regulatory compliance. There's so many areas that your D E I B strategy covers. It's essential that then those individuals appointed to drive strategic impact and change in that category of your business. Have the seat at the right tables and are part of the conversations that. D e I has so many overlapping qualities that it's essential that you put the right resources at the right time, in the right position to have the impact or the potential of impact. Checking the box to just say, I've appointed someone isn't good enough. And we see that in the studies and the statistical. because then they become a figurehead, and over time they feel disempowered. And then guess what? It's disingenuous because now guess what? Your employees and your suppliers and your customers are waiting for this impact. And they're like it's more of the same. So then it's You lose integrity in that capacity. Yeah. Yeah.

Lan Elliott 27:41

I think it's so important, especially as a lot of companies are now with the right intent moving towards D E I B, but unless they follow all the way through, we've had another guest on our show that said that diversity without inclusion as. Is a parade of different looking people and doesn't really accomplish, doesn't accomplish the goal. Now, one of the things we've talked about that I thought was really interesting is you are not a fan of quotas to say, if we're gonna have a more diversified workforce you're the no quotas person. So can you share a little bit more about that and why you don't like quotas?

Donte Vaughn 28:17

You bet the challenge with organizations mo attempting to mobilize. Their entire d e I strategy and measure, the output of that in the form of a quota is rooted in one. You're not actually I necessarily impacting. What led to the result of you believing that you lack or have opportunity to improve diversity, equity, and inclusion in your business? Quantitative measure as an. without addressing systemic challenges. Issues root cause is a futile effort because you will find yourself back where you started, right? So the challenge with that is it becomes very reactionary. The other side of the coin in that is a quota driven approach also perpetuates in many cases unproductive outcome or counterintuitive outcome. Let me give you an example. I'm gonna set a quota that I want to increase my leadership team of women by 50%. Women or individuals who identify as women. I want to increase that by 50% cause I realized we had, we are highly saturated with men and okay, that's a honorable effort in trying to. Balance and diversity among gender in your organization. So gender diversity is an area you want to tackle. The challenge with that is then everyone's mobilized around achieving the number, not addressing behaviors that led to their biases and why they did not hire a more gender diverse workforce to begin with. No, let's just get to the. guess within that perpetuates this fee. One resentment because as a hiring manager, I want to know that I'm hiring on the basis of skill and competency and ability. Not because you're just because your gender, but that's gonna be top of mind cuz corporate keeps trailing the number down. I gotta hit 50% of my staff. The other side of that is you're perpetuating inequity for the can. as well, because now they're, now, wait a minute. I'm a man. Every criteria that you've set forth in, in consideration for this role, but because you have a quota, I'm not gonna be considered. So now I've created inequity in the midst of trying to drive equity, or at least a balance of DI gender diversity. I've created resentment in my organization and I've mobilized people around the lagging indicator instead of the leading indicator that said, how did I get here in the first place? Which is why at Culture Works, we focus on behavioral change. How do I address what got us. So that it becomes a sustainable and a change process because now I gotta look at the systems I put in place. For example, what are my interview protocols? Am I ensuring I'm asking equitable questions regardless of gender? am I ensuring I'm following an equitable process to to identify if there are biases in that hiring manager's decision making? It's gonna flush out because I'm gonna see in the, in how they capture their interview notes, how they, how the candidate answered their questions. I'm gonna build it into my process that equity and inclusivity. Because I, I want to get at root cause I'm gonna layer that in. I'm also going to incorporate unconscious bias training and other things. But I have to look at my systems. I have to look at my processes and behavior, not just the quota. So that, that's my premise around quota, maybe as a lagging indicator that you want to trend. Oh, wow. I noticed by enhancing behavior, by creating awareness, by adjusting my processes, that our ratio of male to female or individuals who identify as male to female has increased from 90% male and 10% female to 80 20, 70 30. But I'm a, that ratio is based on what's necessary for the business, and I'm not gonna force us to create a balance without ensuring that I sh uh, address root cause.

Lan Elliott 32:34

I love that approach and I love the way you look at it, that it really is going to the root cause. It's not just trying to target a number. You bet. So Dante, we are getting close on time and I could actually keep asking you questions cause I have so many questions about what you do and I love what you do, but thank you. Keeping in mind that d e i advisor's mission is around empowering personal success, I wanted to ask you two, two final questions. The first is around for the view. Who manage or lead people, what is a practical or tactical thing they can do to start creating a more inclusive workplace?

Donte Vaughn 33:15

No, I think it starts with the individual and their own self-reflection of their, the personal barriers they have that may contribute to them not being open to. fostering collaboration to fostering decision making or promoting decision making outside of one's self that gets in the way of their interests in being more intentional about what it means to be inclusive as a leader. So I think first it begins with self and shifting mindset and recognizing why it's important. Cause if we don't place importance on something, we're not gonna be inclined to, to be accountable. I think the next step in that is to begin to educate oneself about what does it mean to be an inclusive leader? How do I show up? How does that shape my engagement, my interaction and my decision making Every day? Do research, ask questions, speak to subject matter experts so that you have some context to what to do. It goes back to our seven pillar methodology. Having, establishing a value and understanding without understanding what it means to embody that value as futile. And then even once I understand how to embody it, how do I apply it every day? So you have to go through that exercise for yourself and then establish some goals around what that means. Now that you have a better understanding of how to apply it, set some goals for. Maybe it comes down to, every week I set a performance goal that's in, in response to our performance last week. And I always just tell everyone what the goal is. Maybe this time I'm gonna reflect on the outcomes from last week and work with my team and ask members new and tenured to contribute to the planning for the week and how we intend to execute it. It's subtleties in fostering that inclusive experience and that's just one minute example. And then the fourth step would be to appoint an accountability partner. It's okay to go to a peer or a colleague and say, Hey, I'm trying to be more intentional to be inclusive in how we operate every day. And inclusion means this to me is, and these are the things I'm gonna be intentionally doing. Can you just observe and gimme your feedback? It's not always from your direct report relationship, especially in our senior leadership. it's more about establishing an accountability partner, and that becomes a catalyst to reflection and feedback and refinement of how you are trying to intentionally show up in that way.

Lan Elliott 35:51

That. That's amazing. Yeah. That's really great advice and self-reflection. Such a hard thing. I know it's a hard thing for me to, when you're running around and you've got all this work to do to stop and really self-reflect and then also do the other components, and I love the accountability. Piece of it as well to have an accountability partner. Last question. Could you offer some advice for aspiring women and underrepresented groups? What would you offer them to help them be better prepared for career advancement?

Donte Vaughn 36:19

I think it's important to first evaluate for yourself personal and professional goals. You. and how the organizations you choose to work with or work for, align with your own core values, the, your own belief systems, your own principles that, that you le, that you use to navigate your career because misalignment in those core values. often as a starting or an indicator that you're going to run into some struggles along the way as it relates to, progression in your career, advancement in within that organization. So start there now, if you find that you are generally aligned, be thoughtful in expressing your interests and your desires to have, not just for the sake of. but how you impact the fulfillment of that organization's purpose, vision, and mission, and the value you bring. Understand your value. If you can't speak to your value, how do you expect someone else to, especially someone else who may have biases toward where that value rests, be conscious or unconscious so you better know your value and be able to speak to it. The third pillar in that is recognizing. that results are important. Advocacy is important. Self-advocacy and advocacy of others, and when you can identify a member or members in the organization, ideally, influencers in the organization who can also serve as advocates for. You have a greater probability of being positioned for visibility, for growth, for progression, and be careful not to presume that it's because of your underrepresented or minority status that you become stagnant in an organization. Don't go on that side either and immediately get on the defense because of your consciousness of it. Remain conscious and aware, but the intentional about the actions you're. identify the advocate. You're gonna be in a greater position to start to understand how to navigate that organization effectively. And when those breakdowns happen in terms of D e R I or B, then you'll be able to speak to it through the lens of fact and not just emotion or misperception. So that would be the advice I would give someone trying to, advance who may be a part of that underrepresented.

Lan Elliott 39:03

thank you. Really wonderful advice that you've offered, and thank you so much, Dante, for being on our show today. I, as I said, I had so many more questions for you but maybe we could do those back We can have you back. Absolutely. So thank you so much for being here today and for our viewers, if you've enjoyed. This interview with Dr. Vaughn, I hope you'll also go to our website, d e i advisors.org to look for other interviews to watch. Thank you so much.

Donte Vaughn 39:36

Thank you.