54 - Diversity & Inclusion in Your Business w/ Brittany Cole

<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Today’s guest is Brittany Cole, a speaker, coach, and consultant that is passionate about equipping leaders to cultivate an inclusive culture where diverse talent believe they belong. In addition to her corporate achievements, Brittany founded Career Thrivers, which is a leadership development firm that partners with organizations to engage, develop and retain diverse talent through targeted leadership development. She’s here to talk with Elyse about diversity and inclusion in marketing, how we can be more intentional about being more inclusive, how to have those tough conversations if we’re not sure where to start, and she shares some tactical tips and strategies you can apply to your work today. </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Brittany first breaks down three cornerstones of this important conversation. Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity are often used interchangeably when in fact, they’re very different things:</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Diversity: This is ‘difference.’ This can mean many different things. Primary Diversity--things you can’t change (age, ethnicity, race, etc.) and Secondary Diversity (things like education).</span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Inclusion: The intentional act of including that difference.</span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Equity: Outcomes that aren’t determined by difference. </span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Being diverse and being inclusive are two separate entities. It’s important to be intentional and ask how you are including difference. Brittany touches on how it starts with a culture of inclusion. Adding diversity for the sake of adding it won’t retain valuable perspectives--perspectives you would’ve otherwise left on the table.  </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">They discuss the idea of customer Avatars and how we can avoid unintentionally passing over other populations. Brittany talks about the key practice of testing, expanding,