Hello, everyone. It's nice to have all of you. I'm gonna start with my presentation. Um A quick introduction. My name is Mila Duchamp. I am a diversity and culture scientist and I'll be presenting or talking on the topic of acceptance, the missing pieces to inclusion and diversity.

Um At any point of time, if you've got questions or anything of that sort, please feel free to type it in the chat. I will leave about a few minutes at the end of the talk um to, to take any questions so enjoy during this whole conversation and presentation. Um Before I start, I'd like to, to hear from you. Have you ever felt a sense of rejection? Um at any point in your life? Um If you have ever felt rejected um in school at the website in, in your communities or any point of time, I would like you to type in over here and at the end of the session, I'll tell you why I asked you. But um I'm gonna start with my talk and the topic again is exception of the missing piece to inclusion and diversity. Um So again, my name is Melody and I'm gonna start with the story. So in 2004, I took a plane to the United States and my new journey started then. So I landed in New York, New Jersey in 2004. And I was so excited to embark on a new journey.

As I got down the plane, I had to walk to its immigration to get my passport stamped. And as I was walking through the airport, I was just so fascinated and excited to see the diverse groups of people present in the airport. And I was so excited to see how America was welcoming diversity with open arms. I saw people from different parts of the world with their native clothes. I saw people of different religious beliefs with the Yarmulke and Turban Abbey Apple. I was so reassured that this is a great place of diversity. And I, I started living in the United States for a few months and the welcoming hands quickly became hands of limitation. Um The picture of diversity that I saw at the airport when I first landed in America was just a picture. Um I would describe it as being very synonymous to how you know, organizations when they want to promote diversity. They slap a picture of people of color on the website where you will see one black person and an Asian person. And the Asian person is very specific to being East Asian and not really representative of all of Asia and that's how it quickly became uh how I came to witness diversity within the United States.

And the lack of diversity quickly kind of like leaked into the interactions I was having with people and the interactions always started with the question of where are you from? And this is such a hefty question. Where are you from? Right. And when people often ask me this question, I I'm really excited to share who Mila is where Mila is from. But I quickly learned that that question, where are you from? Is such a happy question? And it came from two directions right? From the direction of a very condescending manner or from the false curiosity lens, either way but lens carried or had an underlying agenda and the agenda was not a very good one, right? And the question, the interaction would normally go like this, but I'm with people and they were like, oh, where are you from? And I tell people where I'm from and it will be followed. I know where you from and I'll repeat the answer oh, from Australia. And the and the restaurant will be no, no, no. Where are you from? And we play this dancing game. Where are you from? Where are you from? And I quickly learned that they were not wanting to hear the answer that I am wanting to tell where I'm from. They wanted to hear the answer that they were looking for as a researcher, I wanted to play a part in researching this as well. So the next time when people asked me, where are you from? Out her answers until they find the answer that they're looking for.

So it went something like this. Where are you from? Outside London? But no, no, no. Where are you from? South Africa? No, no, no. Where are you from? Australia? No, no, no. Where are you from? And until I say India or Pakistan, the response would be, yep, that's where you are from. Yep. That makes sense. And this was not just in social setting, this quickly leaked into every setting that I found myself showing up in, in school setting as well. I decided to go back to school at the age of 34 to study human conditioning, human behavior because I was so fascinated with why people behave a certain way that they did, why people did the certain things that the way that they did so in as a nontraditional student, I enrolled myself in schools waiting in queue to get my library card.

And here comes a middle aged white guy who comes right up to me and ask me without even like knowing anything about me and says, are you desi? I had no clue what Desi meant back then. And without me knowing my, my reaction to him was that was my reaction to him. And then he continues it by saying join the International Club. There are lots of de over there. That's where you belong. He pointed at me and he used the phrase, that's where you belong, that's where you should belong. And that phrase quickly did not sit well with me. And it triggered curiosity at the same time, triggered disappointment in me. And I learned how the term you belong there and where are you from? Had the same underlying agenda and the underlying agenda was for people to place me in boxes based on how they want me to place me in. All of a sudden, it wasn't a place of inclusion. It wasn't a place of belonging. I became the belonging, a belonging of the earth, a possession that they had the possession that they had the privilege to book me into. It was a space or an act of convenience according to whether it's convenient for them to include me or exclude me. This happened in classes at the workplace anywhere that I showed up, right? Even in nonprofit organizations, it happens even today.

And this space is labeled as inclusive spaces of belonging. Rutley did not understand the human need, the human existence, how humans want it to be accepted. It was just a missing piece. And this led me my curiosity to embark on a research. I really wanted to understand. Am I the only one feeling rejected? Am I the only one who's constantly rejected by people not wanting to accept me? The way that I show up, the way I am, the way I create it, the way I am being brought up, that sparked my curiosity tremendously. The more I witnessed exclusive inclusion in its exclusive belonging, I also witnessed how that impacted people, impacted people negatively, their morale, their confidence, their engagement level, right? And it was not just inherently present at the school, school or workplace, it was inherently present everywhere.

And I quickly learned how people show up in the workplace and how they are being treated, how they are being accepted, impacts them, how they show up at home, how they are at home, it impacts them, how they show up in society, in different communities of practice. It's a triangle when you're impacted in one place, it shows up in the other place. And this curiosity, this research led me to really dig deep into acceptance. And I found that acceptance isn't approval, approval, in fact, is very synonymous to a door being gate cap by a person with a singular key. And then just wanting to allow people whom they want to allow into the door as I traveled around the globe, right? I traveled around the world to really understand how people wanted to feel accepted, how people saw the narrative of acceptance, how people felt, whether they were rejected or accepted in spaces of inclusion and belonging. And I found that acceptance had a huge impact and it had the crucial role of being played into someone's life. And that rule was how it created a space of one to be become and thrive in. I spoke to so many people, hundreds of people, hundreds of people doing my research on the concept of acceptance. I spoke with people of various cultures, various religions, various political views, belief system eating habits, gender identity, global views, socio-economic status.

And they all share a common denominator regardless of the differences that they all have. The common denominator was they all wanted to feel accepted for who they are, how they show up regardless of their accent, regardless of how they look like, regardless of which country they are from, regardless of their richness, riches or regardless of the ability to perform based on their life circumstances that affected them to perform at work or at school based on the lack of experience due to the lack of opportunities given to someone and all of them shared, echoed the same thing I want to be accepted the way I want to be accepted.

I spoke to a woman from Southeast Asia during my research and she shared with me her journey, her story of how at work. She was a senior manager at work. The only difference was she was a Muslim and as a senior manager showing up at work of space of inclusion and belonging and diversity, her voice was not opened. She was constantly dismissed, she was constantly dismissed or uh by saying that you do not know what you're speaking.

No, that's not valid despite her experience, despite her expertise. And she also said that the constant dismissed rejection behavior in an inclusive space that promoted belonging, impacted her confidence, impacted her engagement level, impacted how she performed. And that was not a one off story.

I met with hundreds of people who shared the same story and the story was similar regardless of which part of the world they were from. I spoke with another woman who is from the US. She is a hr manager. The only difference that she had was her identity marker as an immigrant and a person who has an accent in meetings. She would present her projects, present her ideas. She too shout that her voice was dismissed. Everything that she contributed was rejected in a space of inclusion and belonging and all because that she didn't look like someone else's identity. People's biases got into the way and rejected her. And she too shout that her level of confidence dropped. Her engagement level, dropped, her performance level dropped. And these two were not the only ones sharing these stories from my research. Speaking with hundreds of people, hundreds of people share the common thing that these two women share the performance level dropped. Engagement level dropped, confidence dropped.

Creativity dropped when we create a space of exclusion. When we create a space of rejection where we, where we say that it's inclusion and belonging and yet we mirror the exact opposite thing. It takes a huge impact on people, the lev the level at which that they are being engaged, the level at which that they are going to be showing up, people felt isolated and ostracized. And that leads me to the next point. If we spend 70 to 80% of our time at work or in schools, whichever is the more dominant spaces that we show up in, we need to become conscious leaders in how we are leading today, how we are building today and not just for today, but for tomorrow and for years to come where we are building for equity.

Today, we talk about diversity. Diversity is such a romanticized topic nowadays, especially in the past year. Everyone is trying to push the diversity needle without understanding the missing piece of diversity, inclusion and belonging, which is acceptance. How are we creating a space of equity when we are not understanding what acceptance is? What is acceptance? Acceptance is when we truly open our hearts and embrace the individual who's showing up at work or in spaces that they belong in based according to the life journey they are in. If someone is not performing at what we have got to understand why they are not performing as opposed to just putting it, putting them up on a pit. Sometimes people, people's in a uh motivation level drops. If someone is undergoing a grief. If someone's parent die or a loved one passes that impacts them. That has got a direct impact on how someone is going to be engaged, someone is going to be performing, right? Someone is showing up that takes a direct impact. Acceptance is about embracing someone at the stage of their life that they are in whether they're struggling, whether they are have a facing burnout, if they are facing any other difficulties, how do we acknowledge that and create a space for them to thrive in as opposed to creating the large ways that we have always been adopting?

If we are going to push the diversity need, we need to understand what acceptance is. Acceptance is about understanding and listening and seeing someone as a human, humans, heartbeats go up up and down just like that heart that goes up and down. Humans experience days that are up and down and on the days where it's down, we need to embrace that. Those are the days that impact them the worst and days that are up, makes them thrive. So how can we shift the lens from exclusive inclusion and exclusive, belonging to really inclusive conscious acceptance? How do we work backwards? Business isn't all about the financial piece? Isn't about the profits. It's very much so about the people. When we empower our people from the core, that's when we thrive. We create an organization of thrive as evolving organization, innovation and diversity isn't a one size fits all schematic because humans are different, we change every single day and hence our diversity, schematic changes according to how each person is different in our organization, we have to understand our core, we have to align the whole organization as to how do we build our humans to become evolving talent.

As opposed to seeing each person as a dispensable or disposable number, we have to rethink diversity, we have to rethink and reimage diversity, right? We can talk about diversity, we can hire X number of people, we can create a space of belonging, we can have er GS and BRGS and have committees, but without understanding why our people change how they change and to support them throughout the change, to contribute to their success only then can we build an effective space of acceptance, inclusion, belonging and diversity?

It's no longer about employee experience, it's about the human experience that we're talking about. It's no longer about the employee retention. It's about the human retention that we are talking about. It's no longer about the employee engagement. It's the human engagement that we are talking about through the lens of acceptance if we don't accept or embrace someone's weaknesses, right? But then we can never find solutions for them to thrive in. We are so quick to dismissing people when they don't conform to our biases, when they don't fit into our bill, right? When we look for great talent, right? Our highest performance, we are always looking through the lens of earth. We are always through looking through the lens of what we want for someone else to be. Going back to the question, where are you from? You belong here. We create spaces for people to belong in according to boxes but not spaces. How people want to be accepted or want to show up in. Can you imagine a world or space where we treated people like how we treated our Children? How many of you have had Children? And when your child says mom or dad, I don't like football. I, I want to try rugby. I want to try tennis and you keep on putting the effort in finding what they like to do, finding the things that they can thrive in.

What if we took that scenario and translate it into the diversity field and really accepted our people for who they are. See people for people, for the beating heart, not for the prophet because at the end of the day, business is personal and it's personal because of our people. I'm gonna pause, I'm gonna open up the floor. Do you any questions that they have or any questions that I may clarify? Or if you like to share a story because I started the, the talk. Where have you ever felt rejected? And I posed a question to you, how would you challenge in your spaces? How would you change the space of rejection to acceptance, Bruna? I just saw your question. How do you suggest to start this conversation starting with sea level first or first with a small group of people? Yes. So I would always start with small questions, right? And I would always, I would always say I, I do not use the word ally. I would always use the word success partner. Success partner is someone who is a sponsor of law, who is willing to bring that change, who's willing to be the catalyst to make that change. So I will introduce the conversation in a very small group first, right introduced by asking, have you ever felt rejected?

What does the space of acceptance look like? And not just having that conversation but collecting that information is false because people's story are data. People's story are impactful data that impacts at organizational level. So I would start with that biola your question is, do you think it is fear of changing the status quo that prevents companies from changing? The there's so many variables that goes into this fear is one of it at the same time. Um Power, fear and power goes hand in hand, right? And privilege goes hand in hand is as well. Oftentimes when people hold on to privilege and power and they're not willing to let go of the comfort zone because with privilege and power comes comfort, right? With comfort comes maintaining the status quo. And when we introduce, it's not a new concept of diversity, inclusion, belonging and acceptance. It has been going on for decades for alos even from the tribal days. But when doin and cultures take on privilege and power, they want to control the status quo where they continue to have the privilege and power that can benefit them, benefit them and then they can control other people. But we have got to shift their mindset again. We have to shift the mindset of what leadership means, what it means to lead, what it means to create opportunities for people, what it means to create spaces of conversation and dialogue. So I would start over that. It is fear.

At the same time, we need to become success partners in pushing that needle needle and have cos conversation. Is there any other questions that I could answer? Julia? I, I agree with you. The question of where are you from is an affirming question of you do not belong here. I've experienced it all throughout my life. I've lived in different parts of the world. I've moved to different parts of the world. That question follows me every single time. Where are you from is actually to show that I don't belong or either way they take on, they take on this. You are my possession. I have got the power to place you where I want you to be. I appreciate all of you being here. I appreciate all of you listening. And if you ever want to find me, find me on linkedin. Um My name is Mia De again, if you want me to start, be, be present in your spaces uh to start the conversation of acceptance. I'm happy to network with you and start the conversation, help you start the conversation as well. Yes. Yes. There are many companies that are advancing and progressing in this sense of inclusion and belonging gravity. Payment is one of it. Uh They are based of Seattle and I do know uh Starbucks is taking a lot of effort in moving the needle as well. There are many small other small businesses surrounding this as well that they are doing this kind of effort again. Thank you.

I appreciate all of you. And remember your voice is equally important as anyone else's and you are accepted in every space as you are because you are unique. You're created uniquely for a reason. So share your unique individuality and I leave you with that. Thank you, everyone.