This week, we invite you into a conversation with someone we admire very much who has taught us a lot this year. 

Carolyn Lowry is a racial equity professional with a focus on cultural competence facilitation and relationship-building. We’ve crossed paths many times with Carolyn over the years, but it was this year that we got to learn from her up close. Carolyn has an incredible gift for teaching. She can make people feel at ease, even when the topic is a complicated one.

Carolyn sat down with Carrie Fox earlier this year to discuss race in the workplace as part of our virtual community conversation series. The goal was to model a conversation on race and racism to show that while these conversations may be challenging, they don’t have to be intimidating.

If you’ve been following our work, you know our team has been engaging in conversations like this one for a few years. We do this work in the spirit of continuous learning and then thoughtfully applying those learnings to build and maintain an actively anti-racist workplace.

We have all made our share of mistakes on this journey. We will make more in the future. But those mistakes are a crucial part of the fabric we create as we learn together, moving together toward a more just and equitable future.

We start this conversation with three questions inspired by our friends over at leadership Montgomery: why did you show up for this conversation? Why does this moment in history feel different? And what will you do about it?

As you listen to our explorations on these issues, we hope you lean in and answer each for yourselves.