Raising Your DE&I-Q with Katrina Jones (Leading in Color - S1, Ep13)

Leading in Color with Sarah Morgan

Today's Leading In Color episode guest is Katrina Jones.

Katrina Jones is the head of diversity and inclusion for a major tech company headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her area of expertise and passion is in developing workplace solutions that increase organizational effectiveness, boost employee engagement, and contribute to a more equitable and inclusive work environment.

Katrina previously served as the HR and diversity lead at Vimeo, creating the company’s first-ever diversity strategy and plan to disrupt bias. She has also worked in a number of inclusion and diversity, and HR roles, with multinational companies, across industries.

Katrina holds an MA in Human Resource Management from The Catholic University of America.

Here are the takeaways from this interview with Katrina:

• HR vs DE&I … Organizations have to determine where diversity, equity and inclusion are best advocated for. Sometimes HR cannot be that place either because we’re too transactional or because we are too rigid and risk averse to be the disruptors needed to make the shift. Ultimately, HR needs to see DE&I as a complementary area of our overall work and focus on ways to collaborate until we call all live under the same umbrella.

• DE&I-Q and EQ … Similar to what Dr Conrad said in Episode 11, Katrina talks about that need to increase your DE&I-Q and your EQ at the same time. She highlights the importance of recognizing this is something that is going to take a good amount of time and effort. Confronting and unlearning our bias is not an overnight process. We cannot expect views that we’ve developed over a lifetime to disappear after one seminar. Katrina highlighted the work of White Men as Full Diversity Partners as a worthwhile resource.

Please connect with Katrina on Twitter @Katrina_HRM and on LinkedIn at “Katrina Jones"

I also hope you will connect with Leading in Color at @leadingincolorpodcast on FB and Instagram and @leadingincolor on Twitter. I’d love your feedback and questions at my email [e-mail] -- and of course I want you to subscribe, rate and review the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts and Spotify.