Timothy R. Clark invites Love Odih Kumuyi to discuss Diversity and Cultural Transformation. Love is the Founder and Culture Engineering Officer at Unsiloed with 15 years of interdisciplinary experience utilizing law, policy, education, and research to help organizations engineer inclusion. Here are a few key take aways from the conversation.

Delighting in diversity.
If you are working towards a diverse organization it's important to have psychological safety as a prerequisite. If you are inviting difference into the room then you should be prepared to welcome it and embrace it with delight.

Diversity needs inclusion to thrive.
You can count diversity numbers all day but if you don't have high psychological safety, then you're not talking about inclusion quite yet. Organizations who have diversity without inclusion are most likely diverse by chance. Diversity without inclusion will not last.

You can't ignore the past.
Before you can move on to unlock the power of a diverse and inclusive culture you must acknowledge the past failures of your organization. Culture is not just additive, you have to repair old harms and rebuild the foundation in order to do the work well.

Culture is a constant journey not a destination.   
When it comes to cultural transformation you are never done. You can't just say "this is a plan going live March 1st, let's all arrive". You cannot just "hit the reset button" and pretend that everything is fixed. Instead, it's a small continuous effort toward creating shared values, supportive communities, and high levels of psychological safety.

Culture does't happen by chance.
The culture you want isn't going to happen by chance. You need to engineer experiences for a more courageous and connective dialogue not just more online diversity trainings. It's hard to have empathy for, or understand, your team when you don't know their story or struggles. Creating space to learn each other's stories is one way to design a more inclusive culture.

About Love Odih Kumuyi
Love is the Founder and Culture Engineering Officer at Unsiloed

As an attorney and Equity, Inclusion and Justice scholar-practitioner, Love founded Unsiloed with a singular mission: To help organizations make psychological safety and human-rights part of everyday culture, for everyone. As a two-time immigrant she understands first hand the challenges of being 'othered' and is keen on using creating spaces that feel accessible. 

Formerly the Associate Dean at Cornell University, Love worked in dynamic capacities with corporate organizations, including the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), U.S. Peace Corps, law firms, and universities across the globe. With 15 years of interdisciplinary experience utilizing law, policy, education, and research to help organizations engineer inclusion, she believes with 100% certainty: When we create workplaces where it's not too expensive for employees to be themselves, innovation abounds and everyone wins. 

Love’s superpowers are peacebuilding and conflict transformation. She’s passionate about driving systemic change with empathy, fostering learning and facilitating dialogue — all in an effort to redefine human relations, promotes inclusion, and build psychologically safe workplaces where people can thrive. She is an adjunct professor at New York University, certified Psychological safety trainer and coach, mediator and restorative justice practitioner.