Episode 41 – How DEI Efforts Must Change to Have Maximum Impact – with Seramount’s Katie Mooney

Katie Mooney: We need to weld DEI into the business, embedding DEI in every relevant aspect that we can. When you think about welding something into the business, it's an incredibly powerful word because you think of welding as kind of these two pieces, the merging or fusion of these two pieces coming together.

Clare Kumar: You’re listening to episode 41 of the Happy Space podcast. Today we’re exploring keeping DEI initiatives strong in challenging times by welding them to your business - with Seramount’s Managing Director Katie Mooney.

Clare Kumar: What would you think if you found yourself in the National Gallery at the Smithsonian? Surrounded by the likes of Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr. Albert Einstein, and then lesser-known individuals such as Gordon Hirabayashi and Esther Schmo. While they were all social justice advocates, Gordon, for example, refused to be forcibly relocated to an internment camp in 1941, as you can probably tell from his last name, he's of Japanese descent, and so many people were interned in America and Canada during the first world or the second World War.

Gordon filed a lawsuit against the government in 1942 and was imprisoned for refusing to fill out a form that questioned his loyalty to the United States. His conviction would only be overturned posthumously in 2012. While for Katie Mooney, our guest today, it was a life-changing moment. Katie today is the managing director at Seramount, a firm known for its four decade long legacy in supporting and advancing women in the workplace.

You may be familiar with an earlier incantation working women magazine. I know. I remember picking up copies of the magazine when I traveled to the us. Katie was inspired to begin her long-term commitment to DEI work in that moment. We met at the SHRM Inclusion Conference in the fall of 2023 and today Katie will share her perspectives and insight on the approach needed to make DEI work most effective in organizations, and also what has been most helpful to her as a DEI practitioner.

I know you'll enjoy meeting Katie as much as I did. Please enjoy the show.

Clare Kumar: Hi Katie. I'm so thrilled to have you joining us on this show today. 

Katie Mooney: So excited to be here. 

Clare Kumar: So Katie, when I first learned of your work and I came across you and I already knew a little bit about Seramount and the earlier incarnation, I was so thrilled to connect with you and immediately knew I wanted to bring your thought and wisdom to listeners on the Happy Space Podcast.

I wanna start by perhaps having you share a little bit of your journey of how you got to Seramount and your personal connection to the work that you do. Oh my gosh. 

Katie Mooney: Thank you so much for having me. It's such an honor to be with all of the Happy Space followers. You know, truly around the time I got into this work, I was a young professional in financial services thinking about what I wanted to do with this career that truly was making my parents really proud.

But I was in the art gallery in Washington D.C. I love that Smithsonian's are available, open, accessible, and free for people to attend. And I'm at the National Portrait Gallery and there's this exhibit called “Struggle for Justice”. And it had icons of people in our social justice American history that had really paved the way.

And I'm sitting there, alone, and I'm in this fall, and I'm looking at these icons. A few we know because we hear about them every year, like Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks. But so many that I didn't know. And this was this aha awareness moment where I thought about my life. My ability from being a Korean adoptee into this American story being able to marry freely, you know my husband who is, happens to be black and Burmian, and just our ability to have so many, just, of course, these freedoms that we have.

I looked at these people and I said, gosh, what am I gonna do? And it almost felt like this invisible baton as I'm sitting here in the middle of this fall. And it was just the baton that propelled me forward to say, in this moment, in this life, what am I going to do? So I ran across the street to a restaurant called Rosa Mexicana.

Guacamole probably is where you find a lot of realization of good, good food and good flavors and good kind of fortune. And you know, as I'm sitting there outside, I find it's diversity and inclusion. Because I'm on my phone, I'm looking through what this means. And for me it was, what can I do with this baton?

Maybe I won't of course aspire or hit the great accomplishments of a Martin Luther King Jr. But what could I do to take that work that has truly been accomplished, and what can I do to then hopefully pass the baton next. So that led me to completely leaving financial services, maneuvering forward in diversity, equity, and inclusion work.

Katie Mooney: And I have the incredible honor of doing that work for Capital One and then a smaller boutique DEI consulting firm. And then of course, where I am today at Seramount. And what I love about, maybe a little bit about this baton or this work is I feel like I get the baton every day because at Seramount, I get this incredible opportunity to work with our corporate partners.

I join a call not necessarily knowing what question they have in mind, what obstacle or challeng  research, insight, and experience. To help them as they take it forward. So we all collectively are using, quote unquote, this baton and taking it forward so we can foster inclusive spaces for everyone.

Clare Kumar: I love it. What a powerful story. I can picture you in the gallery and t's this pause that you invited in where you could tune in and sort of receive. What was around you and connect it to yourself and this opportunity. And I like this analogy of the baton. And that it's something that you pass, right?

So, yeah. Tell us a little bit for our listeners who don't know, Seramount, can you give a little bit of an introduction to Seramount what it is that the organization does and maybe your particular role there too? 

Katie Mooney: Sure. So Seramount has been doing diversity, equity, and inclusion work for a very long time.

What people don't know about Seramount is formerly we were working Mother Media and really had been out in the marketplace with Working Mother Magazine, but also really championing women in the workplace, people who identify as women, and of course, parents, caregivers, and all of the different dimensions of diversity. And that also was inclusive of just naturally being guidance and coaching to our organizations who really needed diversity, equity, and inclusion strategies.

As we turned the table into the two thousands, and so as we've been here a long time, we took the opportunity to rebrand as Seramount. Seramount is based off of Mount Seramounte, a peak in Asia. And we think about DEI work, of course, is maybe that climbing up. Of course. The hill of change, and you think about as we continue to climb and there's different terrains and the course can get challenging, there's also peaks and valleys and moments where we continue to celebrate the work that we've accomplished.

Knowing though, that we're continuing to climb, we're continuing to aspire. So that's a little bit about Seramount. Now, what I'm proud that we offer to our partners, and often when I use the word partners, whether it be our organizational, probably Fortune, 500, 1000 partners, nonprofits, organizations doing this work is that we have kind of three suites of offerings. And I'd say first is our kind of consulting organization and they're really aligned to help assess, define strategies for implementation and the taking forward. I think then, quite frankly, then our learning and development team is really focused on what are the things that we need to do to upskill not just DEI practitioners, but of course.

All people across the organization to be DEI champions and advocates in the work that they do every day. And then it's all fueled kind of by what we call our kind of part research partnership that we can talk aspirationally about diversity, equity, inclusion, why it's important, but then we actually have to do the practical work that is kind of what we call our research partnership.

And it lives on this foundation of research that we undertake. But also, benchmarking and insights because it's so incredibly important that, as I mentioned, what we say in DEI aspirationally is so very much true. To advance and move forward in its connection to innovation, but how them, through benchmarking measurement that we can showcase our progress and seek towards those stated goals and aspirations. 

And so I'm really thrilled that we use this kind of measurement at the base and foundation of everything we do. And then my role specifically is to spend time with our corporate partners, often our CEOs, their teams, to really help define the work that they do, but also to be maybe that pick up the phone, I'm working through something and I need to get an external perspective. 

I need to learn a little bit about what's best practice in the market, what are other people doing, or maybe just getting a phone conversation or a call where we're gonna take deeper research on behalf of their deep concern and then be able to help showcase and share that amongst the incredible Seramount Pure Network.

Clare Kumar: Okay. So much in there. And the value is astounding because I love that it's grounded in research because we can all be theoretical, but we really need to understand what's moving forward. And we won't do that if we don't understand what we're measuring. 

So I love that point, but I wanna come back to a word you used a few minutes ago when you were talking about Seramount and the mountain, the peaks and the valleys, and given the decisions that were made in June, 2023, we saw a little bit of sliding back of the energy and commitment in DEI space. I've seen more in the media recently, and I'm not gonna say media is giving me the full picture, but what I've seen is a pulling back.

And a reduction in the number of roles potentially and positions. In 2020, we saw absolutely a commitment of organizations investing in DEI roles. And I think in 2023 we saw pulling back. So if we're in a valley now, and maybe I'll ask you, would you, would you suggest we're in a valley and if so, what are you seeing?

That can help people that are committed to this or have an ear to the ground on this still, which we all need to. What can you, what can you share that would be optimistic if indeed we're in a valley? 

Katie Mooney: Oh goodness. I think Valley is right. I think almost what I'd add to a little bit of our kind of picture here, if we've got one of this kind of climb and ascent that we're moving towards, is the activities that we've seen, quite frankly, and what we at Seramount have called these are volatile times.

Whether it's an economic downturn, whether it's kind of this you know, kind of pushback on DEI. The legislation. Whether it be of course you know, even coming down to just continuous change that happens for organization, it almost feels like this moment or volatile times is almost like a boulder coming down, quite frankly at us.

And as we think about us kind of trying to push, of course, back up that obstacle or that, or that boulder, if you will. I think most importantly when we're talking about this moment. Seramount did this incredible research just recently that we released on what we call Keeping DEI Strong in volatile times.

Because you're right, Clare, we need this information to really help determine what are we gonna do in the going forward. So our incredible research team looked into this, analyzed over 200 sources on the state of DEI, challenges we were facing, what things were impacting us broadly. Spoke to about a hundred organizations serving chief diversity officers and other kind of subject matter experts in this space.

And what's interesting, is we found out there was in fact this one CDO that said the thing that's gonna really help us in this moment, to propel us forward is that we need to weld DEI into the business, embedding DEI in every relevant aspect that we can. When you think about welding something into the business, it's an incredibly powerful word because you think of welding as kind of these two pieces, the merging or fusion of these two pieces coming together.

So whether that be DEI and the case for DEI, and then the other part, goals and business goals. So that's really important to then be able to weld, concretely something together. So it was this really powerful way to think about our role as DEI advocates and practitioners in moving forward, contributing to the advancing of our organizational and business goals, ensuring they're in alignment and truly creating the infrastructure.

So truly DEI can not just become imbedded, but welded. And that was really important research we found through, of course, that recent study we did called Keeping DEI Strong in Volatile Times. I love it. 

Clare Kumar: We'll definitely put a link to that in the show notes. Is it publicly available so I can share it?

Katie Mooney: Absolutely happy to share an executive summary. I'd love to hear your insight. Love that. If folks wanted to reach out, ask questions, I'd love to talk more about this.  

Clare Kumar: Fantastic. So we'll definitely share that. What I loved in hearing that made me connect to a conversation I had yesterday with another upcoming guest.

You might know her Minal. She wrote a book called Equity. And we spoke yesterday and she has a graphic design firm and is really largely involved in communication and embeds DEI in all the communication. So it becomes how we do something. And this is so infused. I like the word weld. It's such a strong connection and, infusion into everything that we do and making sure that DEI thinking is in.

How we communicate, how we hire, how we think about everything. It needs to be there. And then it won't be, it won't be this extra layer of, I should, it'll just be the how. The, how we've come to understand it. 

Katie Mooney: Yeah. Well, first I have to say she is one of my favorite people doing this incredible work, so I'm so glad that you have her as a future upcoming guest.

I think the work she's done, quite frankly, has helped strengthen my work as a DEI practitioner. So really excited to see that upcoming episode as well. But when I think also too about then people say to me, how do, then, how do you probe, how do you weld this? Like what do you, what are some of the practical ways that we can weld.

Yes, and so when I had a conversation, we have what's called the Seramount's Chief Diversity Officers Collaborative, and it was this unique convening that came together in 2021, has about a hundred chief diversity officers or heads of DEI right now, and they're fueled exclusively with these research insights with additional content webinars from industry experts to really help support their role as visionary leaders.

Katie Mooney: And so after we unveiled this research to a CDO, I was sitting at a table with them and we were talking a little bit about the research and she was from a large technology services and consulting firm. And we were talking about this idea of like, well, what actually is welding? How, what exactly is ways in which we can look at DEI contributions to business outcomes, for example?

Katie Mooney: And so then she and I started talking about. Per organization as it relates to RFPs or the requests for proposals in which her organization is submitting to potential clients, opportunities to work for them through bids and what we call requests for proposals. And so we've seen it overwhelmingly work in RFPs that ask the questions, do you have a diversity statement?

Katie Mooney: What is your mission? What are your goals? What is your commitments for DEI? Maybe even, what does representation look like in your organization? Do you track progress? And she was able to basically showcase and share through every single day work. Yes, to every single one of those answers are the questions.

Katie Mooney: I said to her, so then welding might look like if we could actually take those proposals that you were awarded, calculate the total revenue. And if we could link, of course our suite of services is prominent into what? Creates a by decision. But if we can say that DEI or having a mission for DEI and our commitment and our work in our organization 

Katie Mooney: Is a contributing factor into those awards. How much would it be? And she looked at me and she was like, oh my gosh. I mean like that could take days. And I said, is it worth it? She said, heck yeah, it's worth it. And I said, well, I guess we've got to get wealthy. And so when we think about that example, we think about those being ways to really attribute DEI contributions to, of course, business and the outcomes and goals we all aspire to do as a collective.

Katie Mooney: So I hope that helps, give a little bit of framing into the way, yes, we surface the research, but we also really have to define what are those practical, tangible ways for our CDOs to elevate this work. 

Clare Kumar: I love that example. And that implies though, that somebody is looking for those DEI contributions, right?

It's making me think, how do we weld it in a way so we can measure it when it's not so specifically concrete there? How do we then weld the measurement of that diversity and inclusion into the results when it's a little bit harder to find the boxes that were actually. You know, or the actions or that richness of diversity if it's not so easy.

Katie Mooney: Right. Yeah, absolutely. 

Clare Kumar: I think that's the explorative work I think that is required to understand. Well, and the big point is do organizations understand the actual diversity they have. I remember speaking to a chief people officer about three or four years ago. She said a big challenge in her organization was that people were afraid to answer the questions.

Clare Kumar: I think it wasn't perhaps anonymous enough, anonymized enough, or it wasn't trusted that it was anonymized data so that people were still afraid to disclose. And so then you don't, you know, is there still a challenge around that, or do you think we've had significant shifts? 

I mean, as a Canadian, I hear a lot. In the US about a reluctance to embrace diversity anti woke and all of this. And, you know, I was in Florida, we were talking about, I spent a few days in Florida and I was at a farmer's market and we were having just a, a chat with the vendors and they said, oh, what do you do? You're I said, well, I'm a speaker.

I speak about productivity, productivity and inclusivity. She said, oh, you can't do that here. It's against the law. Yeah. And I pick my jaw up and I'm like, oh. So what about that?

Katie Mooney: You know, it's interesting because I think that there's kind of two parts of that question. Oftentimes, you know what we do with Seramount, whether it's being called in and helping, supporting our CDO or CHRO to really get their leaders clumped together.

Katie Mooney: Because actually there is no point in. Defining and showcasing the metrics if you really didn't wanna learn it in the first place. Because if you learn that your kind of status is here, what are you gonna do to bring it here? And that is why sometimes we see people almost not even wanting to know their representation numbers or kind of where they are when it comes to measurement and metrics.

Katie Mooney: But again, through our benchmarking, one of the ways we tried to really help. Organizations and CHROs tell their leaders, like, let's get more comfortable in these numbers first to know that you are not alone in this space. Yeah. That when you look overall at the veil, at the numbers and when you see, for example, representation of people of color and senior leadership still in kind of those single digit percentages.

Katie Mooney: We're all still in this. Together. And so I think that that is the one kinda invitation that I always recommend that leaders kind of pause for a moment to consider. Secondly. You know, I think Seramount does a really nice job of helping to kind of call in, engage and build opportunities to, for advocacy versus the calling out now.

That's, I would say, kind of the internal approach. But when you talk about, to your point, kind of the external environment and what are, you know, the diverse voices of our, whether it be our employee base, our customer base, what are they saying? You know, it's really interesting because as I think about volatile times, what I do know is that.

Slow progress isn't an option here because of the demand for transparency and the communication vehicles that give us instant, immediate for better or for worse information such as social media, instant messaging, just the ways in which we want to consume information at the ready. And so then due to this demand, we have to kind of have some really strong, proactive processes and systems in place.

So, because when we think about slow progress not being an option, we know from a consumer perspective in the market, seventy-five percent of consumers will boycott organizations that don't reflect their DEI promise. 

Or then we can think about attracting talent. We know, for example, when it think, when we think about generational diversity. The younger generations, they are two times more likely to turn down a job where they don't see diversity in leadership, the representation in leadership. And so it's interesting because it's kind of this, you know, mode of. We're, we absolutely have to be putting forth the information that people want to consume.

Now, if we choose to not do it, fine, but I do worry that as we think about overall, our opportunity is to brand our organization, both from a talent perspective, a consumer perspective. This is really our time with or for better or for worse technology to help define who we are so someone else doesn't define it for us.

Clare Kumar: And to invite those people to recognize that and then feel compelled to be part of an organization that stands for something. Very powerful. 

I'm curious what you're looking forward to. We're in a, volatile could be the word. This is an interesting year. Already, this is an election year in I think sixty-something countries in the world where democracy is under challenge, I would say.

And particularly in your country, in the US, what is your sense of where this lies in the politics of the country? How was that? How's that being? How's that, how does that have a part to play in this conversation? 

Katie Mooney: You know, I think about this upcoming year and I think about whether, to your point, it'd be the US election.

Whether it be just, of course, humanitarian crisis and global concern. Just whether it be of course, legislation. Is getting pushed back or overturned or, you know, just different pieces of change that is just coming right at us as DEI practitioners. You know, I'm really excited about this opportunity.

We have to really as we kind of helped our CDOs and given them some tools, we've really begun conversations about how to navigate through polarities kind of utilizing kind of a little bit of this both and thinking, because when you think also too about diversity and inclusion, this work that we've created for so many policies, so many procedures, so many strategies in place, it is centering everyone.

In the workplace, and whether that's one spectrum or one part of this continuum, or whether this is in opposition to my feelings and beliefs. So I think we have this real moment to have inviting, essential, sometimes even tough conversations because you know, Clare, no more do we get to say no, we don't discuss that at work.

No. That's not gonna be something that is on our mind every single day. That impedes us then from getting work done, like no more. Can we just leave that there? So with a little bit of kind of glass half full. I am really excited about. I'm hoping deeper, richer, inviting, conversations across difference.

I think it is gonna take a little bit of my own deeper listening, cultural intelligence, kind of leveraging, kind of the navigating through the information of what's factual, actual. If I'm being a little bit of the glass half full here, I'm looking forward to the rich conversations.

And that's actually what I love about the work that you do and with this podcast, is that you're inviting diverse thinking, richer conversation. And that's really powerful. 

Clare Kumar: Thank you. Yeah, it's interesting as I look at, even in my personal sphere, I happen to be an admin in a Facebook group that's a neighborhood Facebook group.

And something unfortunate happened recently in the neighborhood. There's somebody that had a pride flag out in the summer and in the winter they have two, a blow up snowmen holding hands. They received a hate letter or a, you know, an invitation to repent was in the letter. And this evolved into a discussion in the group.

And there were some offensive to some language being used to talk about the people that were writing the letter, the people that were responding to the letter. And what ultimately happened is some people left the group because they didn't like the language. And my invitation was, be kind to each other, be courteous.

If you are raising the blood pressure or the member, somebody in the group, then consider, you know, amending your tone. And we had, I've seen people, two people now opt out. Because they don't feel like it's a safe place. They weren't, they were not advocating for self-expression and so on. And I was really torn looking at this and I thought, wow.

Even in this neighborhood environment where we're generally in the group, it's about 3000 people now in the group. Very helpful toward each other. Resources, all kinds of advice, everything. Rather leave than perhaps stay there and work it. You know, so the appetite, there's a, there's a considerable emotional energy, I think, and commitment to the importance of staying listening even when it's difficult.

Clare Kumar: And I wonder what you sense the appetite is in the corporate world when there's so much drive on results and so on. How much patience is there for the listening that we need to have.

Yeah. You know, it's a really good point. I think about, of course, just the kind of ways in which I think.

We understand the kind of importance for transparency, for listening, for hearing. I think honestly, we have to do more of it. It will lead to more insightful, more rich. Kind of stories or insights that then bring life into some of the metrics that we see. So incredibly important, and that's why we often think it's so incredibly important to surface insights and conversations and employee voices.

Before we go after recommendations, but to your point, when you think about what I care about, because it's the bottom line, because of the competing priorities I might have, and maybe even it's I don't disagree with DEI or this work that my teams are doing, but often might think it's a not now or maybe in the future, kind of a decision to be made so it doesn't have the same strength or priority that it once did.

And so we kind of call that a little bit of that pendulum swing, if you will, of the work of DEI and its influence kind of going back and forth in different direction. But I, you know, I think it's on us to determine how far this pendulum is going to sway, and that's when, even when the discussions are difficult, even when I'm only going to hear things related to my sales objectives or my revenue results.

This is where being a DEI practitioner and welding. Or being able to really translate what's critical and important to that stakeholder to surface that, but then also showcase why DEI is so important, why this diverse opinion is critical. Why this myth of DEI not keeping the lights on. As I often say, as a cost center, I acknowledge that we don't, but I will challenge and say when doing DEI work, right?

We keep the organization illuminated. 

Clare Kumar: That's a beautiful quote right there. And I wanna end with that kind of optimism because I think that yes, we have to stay the course, we have to be guarding for those boulders and committing to that steady progress forward, which if we look in the scheme of things in the history, we have made strides forward and, and I like the analogy of the valley because I do think that's what we're experiencing right now, but we have so many more people that have come to understand the value of diversity.

And so it's up to the practitioners that are there to keep connecting the dots. I think. To the opportunity, to the business imperatives and be ready to do that thinking and do that patient work to be able to connect to the business and as you say, welded in. 

Any last thoughts, Katie? For sure definitely let people know how to find Seramount and how if they wish to connect with you, what's the best way that they would follow your insights and what you publish out there in the world. 

Katie Mooney: Thank you so much for just this opportunity to be with you and in community with you as we started this conversation a little bit about maybe for me personally, a little bit of that baton that we're carrying and as we kind of talked, as it's taken me through some different peaks and valleys.

What I know is that this work that I do, you do, we all do, is richer in community together. When we walk with the baton, handing it off to each other in a bit of a relay fashion. When we have connection co-conspirators, when we have just of course, this network and community. That has been so incredibly powerful in propelling us all forward.

And so, you know, I keep that kind of baton, if you will, kind of really true and centered to the work we do. Of course, the work I am committed to, but I know that it was those ancestors and the people who have made history that helped us get here, and we have an obligation, we have an opportunity to take it forward.

Clare Kumar: I love that. Well, you heard it listeners. You heard Katie's call to action invitation to grab onto that baton and figure out how you connect to this journey. Maybe it's something you're already doing, maybe it's something you're interested in, but certainly connecting and embedding, infusing, welding, DEI into the way we operate and run business today is going to have rich results for everyone.

And my big mission is to stop the squandering of human potential. And so this is innately connected into that big, big opportunity that's before us. So thank you Katie, for joining us. Do you wanna just let us know a website or social media handle or something that we should look to?

We'll put everything in the show notes, but in case somebody's just listening and doesn't get there, what would they, what would they put in. 

Katie Mooney: So easy. Seramount.com. S-E-R-A-M-O-U-N-T seramount.com. Easy email to get in touch with me. hello@seramount.com and I look forward to continuing, of course, the conversation with you, answering any questions, but most importantly, invite you to join me in this work as we all continue forward.

Clare Kumar: Oh, I'm so here for it. Thanks so much for joining us today, Katie. 

Katie Mooney: Thanks for having me.

Katie Mooney: All right.