Episode 4

Race and Intersectionality in Business

Transcript

Kevin Stevens: Welcome to the Q Talks podcast as we launch a mini series exploring critical issues of race and systemic injustice in business. I am Kevin Stevens, dean of the Quinlan School of Business. Like you, I am sickened by the killing of George Floyd and the long history of systemic racism and violence of us directed towards the black community. I have spent much time listening and reflecting on what the Quinlan School of Business and I can do to move the world toward greater social justice. This podcast miniseries is just part of a list of concrete, measurable steps Quinlan has taken. This miniseries centers on the perspectives of black members of our community to explore critical issues. Please join us in these conversations and other Loyola and Quinlan initiatives as we seek to help end systemic racism.

Emily Nordquist: My name is Emily Nordquist, and I'm a senior program manager for the Baumhart Center at Loyola University, Chicago. And I am extremely excited to have this conversation today with Dorri McWhorter, one of my personal heroes, and the CEO of the YWCA metropolitan Chicago. Hi, Dorri, Welcome.

Dorri McWhorter: Hello. Great to be here. Thank you, Emily.

Emily Nordquist: So, Dorri, one of the things that I have really loved about the YWCA is that you have this incredible and really bold mission, which is to eliminate racism and empower women. And I've really loved hearing you talk about this need to tackle the mission from all different angles. So I'm wondering if you can tell us a little bit about that strategy. What services, resources and community assets are needed to achieve this mission?

Dorri McWhorter: Sure. Thank you, Emily. It's interesting. Our whole mission is to eliminate racism and empower women by promoting peace, justice, dignity and freedom for all. And I love saying our full mission because, of course, we capture within our logo that eliminating racism and empowering women peace. But it's so important to really hear that full sentence, because what I love about that is it sort of gives us license to focus on all the different areas that we know need to happen for us to really be able to fulfill our mission. So we've been at this the YWCA has been around Chicago for sure, has been around for over 140 years. But what we know that this issue of race is just been such an integrated part of our work. So when we talk about our messages or excuse me, our programs, we don't look at them as two separate things. We don't say these are the programs we have to empower women and these are the programs we have to eliminate racism. It absolutely is an intersectionality and the way we approach our work. So, for example, the fact that we do such a full, comprehensive set of services, because we know for us to do this, to fulfill this mission, that it's not just one thing or two things even. It's a lot of different things and all of those things play together. So, for example, we provide the sexual violence support services by operating the rape crisis lines across the entire metropolitan Chicago area, but even more so being the only rape crisis center on the south side of Chicago. So when we talk about trauma informed care, that's at the root of what we do and having that nuance and understanding the cultural competence that's required as we're seeing such a wide scope of people through really a it's not just diverse, it really is through a culturally informed lens. And then looking at how we approach our education and training programs, who we're making sure have access to these training programs, what does that look like for us is another way that we're thinking about this. And even in our economic empowerment services, where we are the largest small business developments that are on the south side of Chicago, at one time we were the only ones, but I don't want to say that if we don't do services on the South Side of Chicago, that we're not as culturally informed or as focused on eliminating racism because the fact of the matter is, is that we are, wherever we operate, across a 1300 square miles of Chicagoland, that we are very much mindful of what's the service, what's the systematic or the systemic impact of racism, and how do we address that with our services, how we approach the work, all of those elements we're constantly thinking about. We recently had a study that was done by Voices for Illinois Children, which is a part of the YWCA. And what they looked at was seeing the inequities and health outcomes of kids. And what we're seeing is that black and brown kids absolutely have it worse in Chicago than any other ethnic group. And so not just Chicago, I should say, in Illinois. So what we're trying to do is how do we continue to make sure that our services address these health inequities as well? So this for us was not something new. It's how we approach our work and how we're constantly leaning in to make sure that we're addressing issues of race and gender across all of the different program areas where we work.

Emily Nordquist: Yeah, well, thank you for sharing that. And to me, when I hear about the way that you approach these problems, it's really almost design thinking in its core. How do you really design for the most vulnerable populations and how do you really think about what structures need to be in place to allow them to thrive? And I'm curious, Dorri, this is a skill set that I think you've been able to develop so beautifully throughout your career, and how might your career have been able to influence the way that you personally are innovating and leading for this mission and for your team? How do you actually work through some of these problems? What type of input and problem solving processes do you go through?

Dorri McWhorter: Sure. I think because my background, I'm a management consultant. One of my friends says that a management consultant is a business doctor. And so what I think I lead with as a management consultant. To actually is looking for. What questions do I need to ask to be able to solve the problem at hand? And I think that having that sort of orientation to sort of how I work has allowed me to ask at the YWCA, Well, how in fact, do we eliminate racism or how do we empower all women? What does that look like for us? And that has allowed us to go into different areas to say, for example, when we launched our exchange traded fund, it was because we look to see if we actually want to empower all women, that we need to use workforce as a lever to do that or workplace, I should say, as a lever to do that. And so we constantly say, okay, if that's happening in the workplace, how do we then also complement the work that needs to happen in the workplace, in community as well? Because I think that when you think about human services work, we immediately think about community based work, which is absolutely important and key. But members of the community, particularly in black and brown communities, are at all areas of this marketplace. And so we need to try to reach as many people as we can regardless of where they sit in the marketplace. And so the thinking that we have in the approach that we have that I think is absolutely informed by sort of my background in business is how do we reach people and where can we reach them so that we can expand and accelerate our impact. And so that's been really informing our approach for some time.

Emily Nordquist: And what does it really look like for you to build those types of partnerships across sector? I know you describe yourself more so as a social enterprise than a traditional non-profit, but as an organization that has this history of really being in the social services non-profit work, how have you built those meaningful partnerships to really move the needle for equity?

Dorri McWhorter: Well, what we've done is how people understand that what happens in community absolutely impacts what happens in the workspace. And so it isn't that you can find problems in the community to just the community. What happens is that those costs and issues need to get addressed in a number of different ways. So we may have a very community centered approach by understanding and actually taking a very value driven approach to community as well, an asset based approach to say that people that are in community may have some barriers or challenges, but how do we address those most effectively? And by the way, no other sector gets a pass on how they should at least participate in addressing those issues, because most of the time we already know that the community does not put impose those issues upon themselves. So we talk about green or redlining, and I actually had green lining on the brain because that's been the approach of a partner that we've been working with to to reverse the effects of redlining. The community didn't do redlining, so why do we expect the community to fix red line? So how do we look at access to capital? How do we look at there was a study that recently came out looking at one particular financial institution and looking at the disparity around who they lent to across Chicagoland and seeing the numbers in Lincoln Park compared to what they were doing in neighborhoods on the south side of Chicago. So we're looking at these community issues as if the community saw created the problems themselves. So our role is looking at multi sector cross-sector partnerships to say, hey, what are the issues or what is the issue we're trying to solve? And by the way, what role do you have in perpetuating that issue that you could also have in supporting us fixing that issue? And so we really take an approach that helps people understand that it's all of us, not just a part of us, that will actually get these things done.

Emily Nordquist: Yeah. And, you know, over the past few weeks, I think we're seeing this huge uproar in response to George Floyd. And we see this kind of cry for racial justice. But I think what you're speaking to is the fact that these issues are not just coming about now. It's not that we've just hit our peak, but really they're simply surfacing in a way that we haven't seen before. And ultimately what we're seeing is this response to 400 years of racial injustice that we've witnessed in this country and the populations that we're talking about, especially black and brown communities. It's not that they've created this issue for themselves. It's that we have set up a system in which we see inequity upheld. So as someone who's really been leading for this type of work from the very beginning, know, what does this particular moment to you? Are the conversations you're having changing? Is your approach to the work changing?

Dorri McWhorter: So it's interesting. Our approach to the work hasn't changed because we have been doing the things that we felt are absolutely those things that are going to create longer, sustainable change, longer term sustainable change. The piece that's happening now is that more folks are recognizing that they absolutely have a role to play, whether they have been silent in the past or complicit in the past of not doing or not understanding enough to realize how what they do has impacted these systems or participating in these systems in ways that to somehow they've remain unaware or in some cases just outright ignorant as to what the impacts are. The effects of how they do their job ends up landing in community or ends up landing in communities, specifically communities of color. So I think that we now finally have an opportunity to address all that. And people really take that mirror and look to see where they can play, where they have played a role, and where they now can change because they understand the impacts of whatever they're doing. And it. So it's interesting because I realize that I'm speaking in broader terms because the fact of the matter is, is that racism is woven into the fabric of everything that we have done in this country. And so if you just take a step back, regardless of who you are, regardless of what your role is, you can identify racial inequities. And so it's all going to be up to you to figure out how you address or solve them and really take leadership. And I just think that this you know, I've been talking to a number of folks that says, well, we don't seem to have one single leader. And I was like, well, because we're not really focusing on a single issue because we have sort of the battle is on a million fronts. And so the question is, what front are you going to take on and participate in? Because it's not just one thing. It's all of it. It is. It is all of it. Yes. It sounds so optimistic to to have sort of a coordinated response that's like, yeah, around this issue or that issue. But the issues are just so comprehensive that racism has impacted us, that we just need to lean in to whatever area makes the most sense for what you understand and what you're willing to further dive into.

Emily Nordquist: And can you talk about that from a personal perspective? You know, this is something that I've been reflecting on a lot in my own role and kind of how I want to show up in this space and really advocate for racial justice. I think it's hard to say that you run 110% in every single lane, right? As a leader, as a social impact leader. But how might an individual be able to step back and take that moment of reflection and kind of understand their role in addressing racial inequity today?

Dorri McWhorter: So I think it's interesting. The question you ask was how might they? And I think that it's not even the how. It's just that they do that right, that they do take the time to reflect, take the time to learn. I always say it's sort of a capability maturity model. And in my mind it's see, do change, right? It's understand it, see it, really recognize it, then decide that you're going to do something about it and then actually implement the change that you've decided that you would do. And that could be, quite frankly, I know some folks are like, oh, you know, to some degree I always say raising an anti-racist child in some cases is enough for me. But I know that people want people to take more extreme actions. But I also realize that everyone isn't up for that. Right? Like everyone, I think about the civil rights movement. Everyone wasn't marching, right. So you had people that understood their roles in it. But I do think that we're at a point in time in history that people do need to determine how they will act and what that action looks like and how they will participate and what that participation looks like. But it does have to be from, in my opinion, from an inside out. It has to be understanding where you sit with things, understanding what really is your platform, no matter how small you believe it is. And I do believe that, you know, to some degree, if you have an outsized platform. You should be tackling outsized issues on that platform. Right? And so I do think that there is some of that in my mind, but at a minimum, I just don't want to get people to be like, well I can't change the whole thing so I can't do anything. That's not true. You can do something even if it's educating and having conversations with your family as a starting point. And really recognizing or even assessing and understanding your own belief systems and where have you acted on a belief system that was just untrue or ill informed? I just think that it takes a lot of self-reflection and then also a lot of outward action.

Emily Nordquist: And for social sector organizations or organizations that have already kind of been leaning into this work and kind of made it their mission, how do you think they can capture this moment in our history? How can they take this moment and go even deeper and kind of capture the attention of people and move them to action?

Dorri McWhorter: I think, you know, I think the same thing for a lot of our organizations, because while some of us have outwardly facing missions to eliminate racism, organizationally, we're not that good at ourselves. So how diverse are teams? How do you work with diverse suppliers? How do you invest your money? What does that look like? I think that operationally, we all still have to take that inside-out look, if we're an individual, we have to take that inside-out look. But as organizations, we do as well because the sector isn't that great either. I don't care if their mission is to somehow impact racial inequities, I can pretty much guarantee you that organizationally you wouldn't be able to tell it if you only examined them at the organizational level and not necessarily at the level of what their work that they're doing. And I think that we have to do all of it. I think we have to look inside and get our act together as well as do the work on the outside. And then really even on the outside, challenge your partners. Who are you working with? How are you impacting them with these issues as well? Because I do think that sometimes in the nonprofit sector we have this sort of savior effect that we're just going to go save the world. But yeah, we need partners, we need to do that in partnership, and then we need to be informing our partners as we're doing this work on the things that they could be doing as well. Because it's not good enough for us to just act outwardly if we're not also doing the work across regardless of who your sector is doing it internally as well. Which is why I'm so focused on calling us a social enterprise, because we have to look at who we are and how we do the work and not just what we do and let that what we do be enough. We have black and brown people inside of our organization that we need to address. We have partners that are black and brown and in some cases are not. We need to be working with our vendors and having those conversations with our suppliers too. There's a lot of work that needs to get done and I just feel like we all need to commit to doing it at every single level and not just on the outward level, because that's just not going to be enough.

Emily Nordquist: Can you walk us through what the last few weeks specifically have looked like for your team? What questions are you asking of your team of yourself, and what actions have you really taken in the last few weeks?

Dorri McWhorter: Sure. So it's interesting because we've been busy not just the last few weeks. The last few months. Let's do this right. We've had COVID, so we already started pivoting and responding to COVID, not only ensuring that we were meeting the needs of our community, but also making sure our people were safe in the process. So that's the first thing. Then, as we are slowly beginning to understand the impact greater of COVID, we also saw the impact, disproportionate impact that COVID was having on communities of color. So when we talk about just the unemployment numbers that came out, what, not even a week ago now, a week ago or so, that they were at 20% for the total population, but African American adults were 50% unemployment. So then you add on that piece of it. Then on top of it, we now have civil unrest. So we have been very busy at the YWCA. And so what we've done is taken very holistic approaches. So for example, we were already doing food distribution. We were at one point at one of our sites on the South Side. We were doing food distribution three days a week, then we added Sundays. So that made it four days a week. Now we're up to six days a week because what we were feeding people during COVID because of the jobs and the slowdown from an employment perspective, now you had looting of grocery stores that also created food insecurity. And so so then when we got some more resources to really do food distribution six days a week, we understood that we needed to also help small businesses. So we started getting the food directly from small businesses so that we could have that comprehensive approach to serve the community food, also buy the food and supply the food from black and brown businesses, and now in addition, we're looking at who can we hire to distribute the food instead of taking volunteers. So redirect some of those resources back into the community as well. So for us, we're taking a step back and say, how can we leverage some of these strategies and create the most impact possible because of the intersectionality of what's happening across the board with all of these sort of crisis that are occurring at this time. So as I walk through the last few weeks, it's been constant pivot, but asking a question, how do we do more? How do we do more? Who's impacted? How do we do more? And that's been our approach to all of this.

Emily Nordquist: What do you think organizations can learn from this moment? It seems like you all have been able to pivot rapidly, but you're also an incredibly innovative organization and you're known for being kind of fast to move and really strategic. So for other organizations that are kind of facing these similar questions, what can they learn from all of this?

Dorri McWhorter: Well, I do think, you know, I saw a quote years ago that said it's not the big being, the small, it's the fast beating, the slow. And I think that just look how fast the world has changed. We're talking about three months between March and where we sit in June. And then within that three month period, we had another huge change that happened. The world is moving so fast. So I believe that it's really for all organizations that agility has to be at the top of their list. So to the degree that you're either your decision making processes are slowing you down or your lack of infrastructure that are slowing you down, that you really have to lean in and understand. How do you meet the rapid needs and not the rapid needs that the rapidly changing needs? Because there's always going to be something. And I think that hopefully we get a breather for a minute, just a minute before something else happens. But I do think it's important that we maintain this culture of agility, that we can really respond to the needs, because when people need you, they need you now. The things that we saw, we had we were delivering diapers. We were delivering--of course, we were delivering food, we were getting cash. We were fortunate that we were able to get resources quickly and get half a million dollars out into community members hands with direct cash assistance. We were able to get computers. So I just think that it's one of those things where it's no longer that we have this long runway to create change. I think that we need to be having an immediate focus, of course, thinking about the longer-term outcome that we're trying to create in the world, but recognize that people need us now and we need to be able to respond and address those needs immediately because guess what? We still have our eye on the ball that we see higher infant mortality rates for black children. We are still focusing on that, but we also know that we need to sustain these households and get these parents jobs so that they are in position to go to their health appointments and do the things that they need to do to take care of their families. So it's you just have to recognize sort of the business that we're in. And human services are complex, right? And so we just need to make sure that we're highly agile but willing to sort of lean in as we need to as well.

Emily Nordquist: And so one of our mutual friends at the Heart Center, Bryan Abrams, is teaching a class right now on entrepreneurship to the Baumhart scholars. And one of the things I've loved about his approach kind of resonates with what you're saying is this idea that typically in entrepreneurship we're teaching about disruption, but we're only teaching about it from the perspective of technology. How is technology going to disrupt the world? And obviously that's something that happens. But the way he's framing his class is that COVID 19, this recession that we're in and now this call for Black Lives Matter and really responding to 400 years of racial injustice, those are disruptors. And we need to innovate and be entrepreneurs for those types of disruptors. So that's something that I think really resonates with me when you talk about your approach running the YWCA metropolitan Chicago. And I'm curious, you know, given that that's a business class in an MBA program, what do you see the role of businesses in all of this? What responsibility does business have to respond to the systemic racism and injustice or these disruptors in the world?

Dorri McWhorter: First of all, business needs to recognize that itself was built on historic racism and injustice. Free labor that was provided by a certain race was the very foundation of this country. And many businesses that were developed over time and over the years. And so business absolutely has a number. I mean, they have, I would argue, been the beneficiary of all the racism and the injustices. And so they have a role to play. They can't exist outside of community. And this is where I always say that businesses can't be successful in societies that fail and our society is failing, whether it's the pandemic that has caused a failure or whether racism is causing the failure, it is failing when you have the type of disparities and inequities that we have across this country. Society is failing. So the question is, if business solve problems in a business can actually bring solutions to the table, then what are they going to do? And to me, that's the biggest challenge in, you know, the notion of anyone still believes that the only purpose of business is to make money, I think that's such an antiquated way of thinking about it, because, again, business sits within a society. It doesn't sit outside of a society. So the question is, how do you advance society and make a profitable business? And I don't think that those two things are mutually exclusive. And I think that the winners of this new economy are going to be the ones who figure that out. And so business has to make the societal impact as a top priority as much as it's stakeholder value, because quite frankly, those are one of the same.

Emily Nordquist: Yeah, I completely agree. And I think of when we talk about this new normal, we're not going to go back to the world that we knew before COVID 19. Things are going to look extremely different. And my belief is that the only way that we will survive as a country for our economy to be strong again is to think about business in this way, to run business like you are kind of overseeing the YWCA. It's really about integrating these market opportunities with social good and social impact.

Dorri McWhorter: Absolutely. And I love the way you frame that, Emily, because that's exactly the way I think about it. I talk about our business as the business of human services because you have no business as of humans are not okay. Technology does not solve for everything. And by the way, technology is still a product of the of the people that created it anyway. And so I just think that it really is our opportunity to really make and build an inclusive society and an inclusive and equitable society and what could that look like? And I think that this is the moment that we have across the board to really make that happen. And it's on us. And we can't look back and say, why didn't they do this or why didn't they do this? Because we are the ones that need to be doing this. We need to be the ones driving these conversations and all that's possible at this moment. And I am very hopeful and optimistic because, one, because of folks like you and because of what I know, Baumhart is teaching and then all the volunteers that are supportive of Baumhart even now. So I'm really hopeful that we're going to get it better. I know that nothing is going to be perfect, but I know that we're going to get a lot better than it definitely has been.

Emily Nordquist: Well, I just want to echo you in saying that although the last few weeks in this moment have been extremely challenging, I remain extremely hopeful knowing that we have leaders like you who are leading the charges and really demonstrating for other social service organizations and companies what needs to happen to really move the needle for equity? And I think what people need to understand is that we will all be better off by investing in equity and thinking about social business, right? It's not that there is this limited pie and everybody gets a piece. Everybody is going to benefit from us kind of changing our perspective and the way that we do business and the way that we run our organizations. And so Dorri, is there anything else that you want to share with us today about the work you're leading at the Y and kind of how you are processing this moment? Absolutely. I think that we are doing one thing that you'll you'll see we are launching the Racial Justice League, really to put a more public facing accountability out there for individuals and organizations who want to say, yes, we support anti-racism activities and this is how we're committed to creating a racially just society. And so we want people not just to make the statements on their Twitter feed or their social media pages. We want them to actually make commitments. And we will be one of the exchanges, so to speak, that have can house all of these commitments to say, hey, if you're working on this and this person is working on this, you all need to work together. And maybe we can create a different product or a different solution or whatever the case may be. So what we want to do is we really want to see people, both individuals and organizations lean into this moment. So we've actually launched what we're calling the Racial Justice League. And our tagline is, 'until justice just is' because we believe that that's the world that we want to see and that we know it's possible if people are willing to make those type of commitments to make the change happen. So we're excited about that. And people are people are willing to do it. So we're ready.

Emily Nordquist: Well, I absolutely love that, Dorie, and thank you for all the incredible work that you are leading. I know this conversation feels extremely timely and I've just been amazed at everything that the YWCA has been doing in response to this moment. But really, before then, all of you have been working at the forefront of your mission from day one. And it's incredible to at least be in your world in terms of this bubble you have of really impacting the way that we think about social enterprise and really thinking about how we're going to make this world different and make this world better. So thank you so much, Dorri, for all of your work and for having this conversation with me today. I really enjoyed it and I look forward to seeing everything that is to come from the YWCA metropolitan Chicago.

Dorri McWhorter: Thank you, Emily.

Speaker3: This has been an episode of the Q Talks podcast where we seek to marry the wisdom of the Quinlan community with the issues of today. Our thanks to Emily Nordquist of the Bomb Heart Center and Dori McWhorter of YWCA Chicago for their contributions. Listeners interested in diving deeper are encouraged to visit the Racial Justice League's new website until Justice Just is. Org. Review the documentary Boss The Black Experience in Business on PBS. Additional thanks goes out to Dean Kevin Stevens for his generous support of this project. Mat Shiley, our student producer for editing this episode. Loyola School of Communication and WLUW for their continued collaboration. Please take a moment to support us by rating and reviewing our episodes to help us expand our reach. Thank you for listening and we hope you join us next time.