SAM: This episode of Greater Than Code is brought to you by Atlas Authority. Atlas Authority helps organizations manage and scale their Atlassian stack. With expertise in Jira, Confluence, Bitbucket and other software development tools, Atlas Authority offers consulting, training, licensing and managed hosting services. Visit AtlasAuthority.com/GTC to find out more and learn why organizations trust Atlas Authority to implement, to support, and maintain their critical Atlassian applications. ARTY: Hi everyone. Welcome to Episode 134 of Greater Than Code. I'm Arty Starr and I'm here with my fabulous co-host, Rein Henrichs. REIN: And I look fabulous. And I am here with my friend, Sam Livingston-Gray. SAM: Hello, hello. And I am super thrilled to announce our guest today, who is Halleemah Nash. Halleemah is a social entrepreneur, founder of Rosecrans Ventures, and Chief Partnerships Officer at The Academy Group, which is a startup that invests in young people from under-resourced communities and prepares them to own, operate, and incubate highly successful companies across sectors. She's also a proud Compton, California native and it's a city that has greatly shaped her ambition, values, and interest in reaching back as she climbs. Halleemah is a first-generation college grad who holds a Bachelor of Arts in Business Administration from Howard University and a Master of Divinity and Certificate in Nonprofit Management from Duke University. Halleemah, welcome to the show. HALLEEMAH: Thank you very much. Happy to be here with the fun bunch, here with the cool kids in the morning. [Laughs] SAM: Yes, it is still very much the morning here. [Laughs] HALLEEMAH: [Laughs] SAM: And as we have already warned you, our traditional first question is: what is your superpower and how did you acquire it? HALLEEMAH: My superpower is cultural fluency - the ability to sort of flow in between contexts whether that's socioeconomic context, geographic context and I got that from growing up in Compton, California. The idea of being able to navigate different circles of people. Kendrick Lamar actually talks a lot about it. It is code-switching, yes, but it is also kind of a deeper level of that because sometimes, people think code-switching is changing who you are, changing your tone when you're in different spaces. But cultural fluency is operating authentically in who you are, in any space that you are in and feeling comfortable and having an ability to engage in all of those spaces. Malcolm Gladwell actually calls it connectors as being sort of the gift, people who hold membership in a lot of different social worlds, [in sought] cultures and niches. And that's sort of my superpower and I've got that growing up in a city that, as you mentioned in my bio, has greatly shaped who I am as a person. And it's made it so that I can go to the projects and have conversations with people that have ridiculously amazing skills but can't see them as transferable skills, the same way that I can be in a corporate board room with individuals who need a little more grip in terms of their ability to engage projects and engage failure and all of those different things. And I can be in places where folks do not share my religious beliefs or people do not share my race or people do not share my politics, and still be able to engage in a conversation about our humanity. REIN: So, you're clearly the expert here. HALLEEMAH: [Laughs] REIN: So I'm going to see if the way I think about this makes sense. The way I think about this is humans are super complex and we have all different sorts of parts of us. And we can activate the parts of us that make sense in a situation to relate to people we're with to relate to a certain context. But it doesn't mean that we're being inauthentic, it's just made from using different parts of ourselves. HALLEEMAH: Oh yes, absolutely. And that's the fluency part about it. I think that code-switching is this word that people use in professional development and they use it when they talk about ascending to different leadership positions. And it's funny, we're using this phrase 'I am code', and so, code-switching is not just like how do I crack the code and how I communicate with this other individual. It is like how do we crack the code as a community of people and how to talk to each other and how to engage each other humanity. So, it's not really switching. It's actually being an existing. It's code-existing. REIN: Is simply code-switching is sort of a technique that you use where you decided sort of what register to speak in or things like that. But it's definitely not that you're being a different person. It just means you're using different abilities that you have. HALLEEMAH: Correct. SAM: Or another way to look at that might be you're being an effective communicator. HALLEEMAH: Right. Absolutely. You say code switching, I say being effective. That's nice! [Claps] I like it! [Laughs] REIN: I'm a constructivist, so I think that we relate to people by building bridges. We relate to people by connecting with each other. And that happens by constructing something that wasn't there before. HALLEEMAH: Right. ARTY: So, what I'm hearing, if I sort of think about this as code, [chuckles] is there's this authentic core self that is a wholeness,` that is a lightness, that is your gifts for seeing through all of these different lenses. And when you enter in these different communities and when you interact with different individuals, you learn to see them and speak their language and work toward a shared language such that you can say, "These are my values as a human being." And I can kind of see and understand the underlying human behind your values as a human being and try to make sense of our different adapters so that we can have an authentic conversation by finding a bridge language between ourselves. HALLEEMAH: Yes, absolutely. If you think about it, when I talk about my superpower, I always say I speak multiple cultural languages. Think of people that speak different languages. They don't even know when they switch from Spanish to French. They don't know when they switch from Mandarin Chinese to English. It's just something that you're able to adjust to. So, it's this idea that you can speak these very different languages in different spaces but it's not like when you change from French to Spanish that you're changing who you are. You're just adjusting your language. ARTY: Yeah. REIN: So, I think that speaks to the variety of experience that you have that lets you find something in yourself to adapt to each of these situations. There's a lot of different contexts and cultures and things like that. There's a whole huge variety out there and you have to have variety within yourself to find something to relate. HALLEEMAH: Absolutely. And I think that when you find that there is discomfort with diversity or if there is discomfort with differences, I think sometimes that speaks to people's inability to hear different languages as the human language. That is not the language that I speak. That other is uncomfortable because you should be speaking my language as opposed to me seeking to understand yours and speak authentically in mine. REIN: Is it time for the Virginia Satir quote? I think it is. Virginia Satir has a quote that I bring up because it always [crosstalk] which is we come together through our sameness and grow through our differences. HALLEEMAH: Nice. ARTY: I'm really curious. In these conversations, you find certain human authentic metaphors that you gravitate toward as a shared language. What words do you use when you talk about humanity and what that means? HALLEEMAH: It's interesting. I think it depends on the audience. I work with mostly young black and brown LGBTQ teens. And Generation Z, the language that they absorb, how they hear, how they respond is so much different than my generation, or my grandmother's, or even my parents'. And so, I work really hard especially when we're talking about humanity, which is our common thread, to ensure that I am existing in the other space. How do I exist in your space so that if my hope is to communicate and to hear you, then I kind of have a little work to do to sort of be where you are. And the hope is, is that you can do the same thing. It doesn't always happen. But when I talk about humanity, I am considering the audience first and hoping to exist in their space and how I have that conversation. ARTY: So you must also be good then at listening to a person and building a mental model of what their world view is? HALLEEMAH: Absolutely. I think you have to. Active listening is not just important in relationships. It's important in business. It is important in -- that's just sort of creating what it means to be an intentional community. I think it all starts with listening. And I think if you can practice listening without judgment and bias, it helps you to hear. If you can practice listening without setting an agenda of what you hope to accomplish in the conversation, it helps us to see one another and hear one another. So, that's sort of the intention in listening. It is, how can I hear? And I don't think we all have conversations in that way. Sometimes, we listen with hopes that the other person will hurry up and finish talking so that you can make your point. But I use the Calm app as a part of my daily meditation and Tamara Levitt it talks frequently about setting intention even in listening. I think that for me practicing mindful listening is also sort of a helpful tool in engaging humanity across differences. REIN: It's kind of like a cheat code. HALLEEMAH: Yes. REIN: It gets people to open up to you. And then I think that's also why being authentic is so important because at the same time, you're trying to connect with them and understand them. It's mutual. They're trying to understand you. HALLEEMAH: Yes, absolutely. And the hope is, is that it's mutual. REIN: So, what do you use this superpower to do? HALLEEMAH: Oh! Great question. It's one of my favorite questions. I, too, am interested in building bridges. And right now, in terms of my career, my greater hope is that I can help to change the complexion of the workforce and ensure that the future of work looks similar to the generation that's growing into it. Generation Z is 61 million strong and they do not engage work and career and the future workforce in the same way that you and I might. If we're interested in professional development, we might go on LinkedIn and look for an article. They are more content-based. They are more interested in diversity. Also, Gen Z is 49% non-white, so they will be the most racially diverse generation. So, how do we talk to them about entrepreneurship? How do we talk to them about social entrepreneurship and its power in changing the world? How do we talk to them about actually becoming owners and operators of businesses? How do we talk to them about ascending to leadership in a way that is specific to who they are and authentic to who they are and not saying to them in order to reach leadership positions, in order to acquire business, in order to reach sort of the heights of your professional dreams, you have to put on this suit, you have to talk this way, you have to conform in this way. And actually, you can be authentically who you are. It's just helping you to navigate the challenges that will surely come, but understanding that those challenges can be navigated in a way that will ensure your success and actually not taking you out of the game. So, cultural fluency, for me, is like how could I be in spaces with CEOs to talk about diversity, equity, and inclusion in an intentional way? How can I be in spaces with young people at high schools? How can I be in communities where there are formerly incarcerated individuals that are looking for workforce opportunities and ensuring that all of those entities understand that they can collide and create the future of work in a more diverse and beautiful way? REIN: And bringing more people and creating more opportunities, making sure that the opportunities that I have, for instance, that other people could have them, too. It's good for the businesses because they get to hire more people that can do good work. But I don't care so much about that. I care much more about it's good for all these people to be able to realize their potential. I think that being able to realize your potential is a huge part of human flourishing and happiness. HALLEEMAH: Oh, yeah. Absolutely. You're talking about human happiness and people flourishing. This next gen, the wonderful thing about millennials and even Gen Z is they're pushing corporations to be more inclusive in ways that we didn't or couldn't because we were more concerned in our generation about being safe, getting the good job, getting a retirement, all of those things that sort of represent safety for us, safety and success. REIN: There's like a hierarchy of needs thing here we're they're building on past success. HALLEEMAH: Absolutely. The idea like everything that happened from the 60's to now and like the fight for equality and setting this wonderful foundation, millennials are the first to sort of benefit from the work that happened during that era. But they're also the first generation to see a lot of those things taken away. So, I think that when we talk about the future for work, for me, I think that we have to have an intense focus on underrepresented populations. I think that we have to have an intense focus on ensuring that this new generation that will be the most racially and ethnically diverse adult generation in the nation's history, how we support that generation that will be entering the US workforce and building ideas and building businesses is intentional and sort of represents their voice. McKinsey and Company actually did a diversity report and discovered, which most of us already knew, that irrespective of industry and global location, companies in the top quartile of ethnic diversity in the executive suite, they actually outperform their competition by double digits. So, diverse companies actually do better. ARTY: Your passion is so inspiring. I'm just kicking back here going, "Wow!" HALLEEMAH: [Laughs] ARTY: I have a question for you. I'm imagining, let's say your hanging out at a community group, say some tech meetup or something you went to. And you're kind of looking around and listening to various people talk. What are some of the sparks that you see flying that make you go, "That person right there has some talent." What are some of the sparks you see? HALLEEMAH: Great determination, agency, folks that talk about being able to build an idea from nothing, folks that know what it's like to try to break that glass ceiling and they keep chipping away at it, folks that are in spaces where they might be the only woman in the space, the only Jewish person in the space, the only Native American person in the space. And they see it as an asset and not a liability. They see the value that diversity can actually bring. A light bulb always goes off. I always want to know. "I'm interested in your leadership story." Something that I generally ask. If a person stands up and asks a question that shows that light, I will be the first person. I might not wait in line for the person on the panel, but I'm going to wait in line to talk to the person that asked that question or that person that is daring and courageous to sort of push the envelope and not just ask a question that will help them get a business card, but actually asks a question that pushes us to be better as companies, as communities, and as just the human race. SAM: You touched on something there that has been sort of in the back of my head as we're talking about all of this, which is that you mentioned code-switching earlier on and it seems to me that we use that in a way that encourages people to take the aspects of themselves that don't fit into the dominant culture and leave those at home. We talk about code-switching as people from an underrepresented group adapting essentially to whiteness. How can we, and I say this as a white guy, on the other end make things easier so that people don't have to do that so that they can be their whole selves? HALLEEMAH: When you say 'we', you mean organizations or just as a wider community? SAM: As somebody with access to organizational power and then maybe possibly also as somebody who is an individual who cares. HALLEEMAH: Oh yes, absolutely. I think that it is engaging underrepresented populations that enter the door as talent and not charity. I think that there are a lot of companies, when they think about diversifying their workforce, they go to nonprofit organizations. And those nonprofit organizations are engaged through their corporate and social responsibility division as opposed to human resources. So when those individuals are seen as quality human capital, when they are seen as talent, they are going to be engaged more as a peer and not a project. So, I think that that's the first thing. Ensuring that how the language that we use and how we engage underrepresented populations is incredibly key. And then the second thing is, I think it actually takes work. We are very tribal people. I think it takes work to diversify relationships. I often hear people say, "Well, we don't have any women on our board because when I go golfing, I'm generally golfing with men." And you reach out to individuals that are in your direct network. "I don't know any Latinx men. And even though we need that on our board, I just don't know any of them." I hear people lean on that a lot. And so, there are diverse spaces all of the time everywhere that we go. And it might take some intentionality to say, "You know what? When I think about conferences that I'm going to go to, as a white guy, I'm going to go to AfroTech this year and do some relationship building." "I am going to travel to a convention that focuses on Latino women in the workforce, even though I'm an African-American male." It is doing some intentional work across differences to build relationships that represent the diversity of the country and the diversity that we want to see. REIN: It's a weird cop-out, right? Like you're the one that chose to go golfing. You're the one to put yourself in those spaces, in the first place. SAM: But oh, nothing I could do to change it now. Sorry. HALLEEMAH: Right. [Chuckles] SAM: It seems to me that in order to get past that, we have to be the ones who are willing to put ourselves in a position where we are in the minority. And that's deeply uncomfortable for those of us who've been centered our whole lives. And we've got to get over it. HALLEEMAH: Wow! That was really powerful. Deeply uncomfortable for those who have been at the center of their whole lives. So, consider the level of discomfort for a young African-American male that is at a predominantly white institution. And that is their life at school, throughout high school, and sometimes even college. I went to Howard University. I went to a historically black college that greatly shaped my world view. And if there's one thing that's sort of ingrained in our psyche in being there, it is that this is greater than you. This is about the Howard University community. This is about the global community, your ability to make impact. So, you better learn how to shine, how to be great, how to utilize your voice even if you are the only. Because we know when we go out in the world, it's not like Howard University's campus. It's a very different world. And so, you have this wonderful community that embraces you, that loves your skin color, that loves your voice and your level of authenticity and your background and your history. And then, for most of us, our first job out of college is not that. It's deeply uncomfortable but we are very much trained in how to push through that discomfort to actually get to the power, get to the promised, get to the opportunity. And I think that that's what we are asking in return. You might have to choose to be uncomfortable. It's a tough choice but it is a choice that those that have been in mostly dominant cultures have to make in an effort for us to sort of do this diversity and inclusion thing together. REIN: There's this idea of, I guess I will say, Western culture that change happens when you make a list of the reasons you should change and all the facts that pertain to the situation and you make a decision to change. I guess, the Eastern or the Buddhist or [inaudible] more you change when you're confronted with a reality that you can't accept. And I think one of the things that makes this uncomfortable is that you're confronted with a reality that vitiates your world view. It's really a reality if you fully understand what's happening that you just cannot accept. Not only that, but you realize that the thing that needs to change is you. You're the thing that needs to change, not other people. ARTY: I feel like for me, like these last few years, [lots of hard] where I felt like I was screaming at the top of my lungs and nobody could hear me. I felt invisible. I felt like I was falling off the edge of the world. And I've largely been a woman and the only woman in most context that I've been in in my career. Listening to you talk, I've definitely seen that as a play. And so, I've learned how to use my special powers, my special gifts to be able to move groups and stuff. Then when I found myself in this other context of like saying, "Hey, there's these things that are really important, there's these people that matter." And what originally started as like my software project being crushed from management not listening, that was one of those things that struck my fire. My ex-husband, who is like super crazy controlling, and pulled me into this worship relationship and then he got abusive, and escaping that whole nightmare, that was one of those things that flipped me in life. And then seeing the escalation of normalization of abusive, sort of violent perspective toward others, it is not -- I mean, there's just been an undercurrent of tension for a long, long time. Lot of hard for a long time. But when violent acts, whether those are words or physical or what otherwise become normalized, there's shift in our culture. And at the same time, cracking open and finding compassion for our share in humanity. It's those two things combined that create this sense of arrow, of drive, of passion, of agency, to believe that it doesn't have to be this way. We can be our authentic selves. We can care about one another and we can use our powers combined, our gifts combined to make the world a better place. And so, ever since then, I've been trying to actively listen and also to see what I, as an individual, with my gifts, can actually do to make things better. And I feel like in the process of that, one of the things I've learned that being the only woman, one of the powers that I had is I listen and I watch people and I identify what their gifts are and I help them find their special gifts such that they can shine in the world. And when it comes to dynamics of women and men, as a woman, basically pointing out the beauty in other people, I get a lot of power and loyalty just from being my authentic self and helping other people to shine, helping lift other people, being nurturing and helping people be their stars and making that OK. HALLEEMAH: Helping people be their stars. That's powerful. ARTY: This is why I ultimately changed my name. My Twitter name was @janellekz. And people always asked me, "Why janellekz? What's the Z all about?" And when I started thinking about it, I thought about Z as completion. So, my last name is Klein, which means small. And I was born a little. So, when I think about like people that are known for their small stature, their littleness, the little hobbits. And so, from K to Z was like this metaphor of completion for me, of like, I want to be my whole self. I'm turning 40 this year and I've been thinking a lot about what that means and who I want to be in the world. And this gift of helping other people to find their stars and be their stars in life. And so then, I decided I would change my name to Janelle [Artemis] Starr and that I was going to live that path. And so now, I'm going by Arty Starr. HALLEEMAH: I love that. ARTY: It may take years [crosstalk] but I've been thinking about this for a long time and a lot of that is just once I recognize my own gift in the world, then it becomes about how do I be me in the world in a way that lets people. And I think humanity needs all of our unique special inspiration, all of our stars. There's not a star in the world that doesn't deserve to shine. HALLEEMAH: Yes! Amen to that! There is not a star in the world that doesn't deserve to shine. Yes! Sparkle! I like it. REIN: Well, that will be my reflection for today, as well. [Laughter] HALLEEMAH: You know, it makes me think about something like, how do we, as we evolve, it's this idea of changing your name. It's this idea of -- we're talking about authenticity. So, the idea is not to move away from who you are in terms of your soul. I am such a different person at almost 40 than I was at 30. And I was a different person then than I was in my 20's. So, as we're constantly evolving, we reach a deeper level of authenticity. ARTY: Yeah, definitely. And I think that's one of the things I learned is it's not a box. It's not a shape that you're trying to arrive at. We are an era. We live as a flow. We're always growing. We're always becoming more and more of who we are. And that core star in our being is always our star. It's uncovering our gifts. It's all of the suffering and the hard and the challenges and that agency of going after it and doing it anyway and living with intention that way. Living with intention is being your arrow. HALLEEMAH: Yeah, absolutely. REIN: Virginia Satir has a metaphor that she uses. SAM: I'm sorry, Rein. You've used your Virginia Satir allotment for the call. REIN: No. We discussed this, I have three. SAM: Oh, OK. Go ahead. [Laughter] SAM: And then you need to take a long rest. REIN: Yes, that's fair. That humans are like a film. We have all of these jets and water is flowing in all these different places. We can choose where the water flows and where to direct our power. But sometimes, some of the jets are stuck up, some of the jets don't work the way that they should. And when that happens, the flow gets really irregular and hard to control and we just can't move our attention or our power to do the things that we know we ought to be able to do. And so, for her, her focus was on freeing up all of those jets, freeing up all of those possibilities that are inherent in ourselves so that we can really be our complete selves and direct our power to wherever it needs to go. And that's what she called congruence, that we have access to all of our possibilities. HALLEEMAH: Yeah! I would agree but there is this idea that having access to all of your possibilities can sometimes feel like a very internal thing as opposed to an external reality. So then what is the bridge from this idea of congruence to what you can actually see from a tangible perspective? It's like a question that I'm pondering. REIN: Yeah. And there is also what we can do with sort of the capabilities and resources that we have available to us and maximizing that. And then, there's also giving people who are making available the resources that people need to really achieve their potential. HALLEEMAH: Absolutely. And I think that's a part of why I'm so passionate about my work for opportunities to ensure that young people can reach their full potential. REIN: Stephen Jay Gould has a quote: I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain that in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops. HALLEEMAH: That part... REIN: It is pretty good. HALLEEMAH: Yeah. [Laughs] REIN: And you think those potentials were in those people all along but they didn't get to realize them and it's not for their own lack of trying. HALLEEMAH: Correct. SAM: That's where we get out of psychology and into sociology. HALLEEMAH: Yep. There were intangibles that existed. There were spaces that were not inclusives for that talent. And there's this idea that you have to have will and that's the reason why there's differences between like equity and inclusion, like you kid level the playing field but you can also make it a lot harder for me as someone that's different in that space. Creating inclusive spaces means that, "OK, we've got equity. I'm going to open the door for you to come into the room. But once I enter the room, creating an environment where I feel included." REIN: So, there are individualists that think that society is just the sum of all the individuals and there are people that think the opposite, that think that individuals are just the sum of all of the society's pressures and influence on them. And I'm in the middle. I think that it's not enough to just be an individualist and think that there is no structural societal issues. But it's also not enough to think that the society isn't really influenced by who is in it and what their behaviors and goals and values are. So, I think it goes both ways. HALLEEMAH: I would say that I'm right in the middle, as well. I'm just thinking that, we talked a little bit about humanity and our goal to become one humanity. It's this thing that we talk about all the time. But if you acknowledge that there are societal pressures that exists, if you acknowledge that there is equity that exists, and you have one group of people, one sort of remnant of folks that are fighting for that level of equality and then you have other individuals that are fighting against that equality, there is an imbalance that exists in community. And that's what we're seeing now. And I think that we are at this space now where we are in a country and we are in an environment that represents tremendous promise but also represents tremendous problem. So, will you be that individual that swings the pendulum on the side of promise or on the side of problem? And I think that there are really strong efforts on both sides. SAM: I feel like that the structuralist perspective really lets people off the hook because if you say, "Hey, it's not me. Society is just oppressive and there's nothing I can do about it," then you're ceding your ability to act, your opportunity and your responsibility to act. HALLEEMAH: Yes. SAM: And what you're doing is you're letting the individuals who do act to challenge or reinforce structural norms. You're giving them all the other control. HALLEEMAH: Yeah. And you know what? I think that it makes it really easy to be apathetic. It's easy to be like, "You know what? Things are just messed up. I don't like the direction of my company. I don't like the direction of my city or the direction of my country and I feel like I'm volunteering, I feel like I [inaudible]. Things just are not changing, so I'm just going to not engage." It's really easy to do that. And I think that it takes an effort to really tap into the most beautiful things that make us human to not make that decision. The resilience that I think exists in all of us. The idea that you don't necessarily have to take no for an answer every time. But if you get a hundred no's and you finally get that one yes, it's something exhilarating about it. Sometimes you have to push through to get to that yes. Sometimes you have to push through to get to justice. Sometimes you have to push through to get to equity. And I think that it's in us to do. And I think we are fighting against our own humanity to lean on apathy. ARTY: That was so beautiful. Resilience in all of us. I jumped off the entrepreneur cliff [crosstalk]. Everyone told me, "No, you need to get your head out of the clouds." And I'm like, "But I have a dream." And I'm a bad-ass engineer even if nobody understands what the hell I'm talking about, I can sit down and code. I'm in a fortunate position with respect to privilege and that gives me the opportunity to get out there and actually do something that makes difference. And so, it's like we all have the capability of that resilience. But I mean, I think that introduction about 'as you rise in the ladder, always reaching back', it's like, "Yeah, reaching back as she climbs." That's beautiful, too. I think that's one of those things that's necessary. I don't think we should feel ashamed for our privilege and our success. But I think being able to see what's going on and see your own gifts and capabilities go, "OK, what can I do from my position of privilege to make a difference in the world, to make the world a better place?" HALLEEMAH: Absolutely. The question becomes what do you do with your privilege. I think that in in culture now, there is a really resonating dialogue around what people are doing with white privileged, for example. You know that you have it. What are you going to do with it? But I think that there is an additional conversation in acknowledging whatever privilege that you have. White privileges, white supremacy and white privilege, it's a structure, it's a super powerful thing that I hope we are able to break down. It's taken generations to build and it might take generations to break... SAM: But it's worth doing. HALLEEMAH: But it's worth doing. It is worth doing. I think that the more white people that can sit down and acknowledge that white privilege is something that they have grown a level of advantage because of, then that acknowledgement of your own privilege, if you don't have that, then there's no thought, so what am I doing with my privilege? You're not acknowledging that it exists. The same way that I could say I have a level of privilege as a college graduate. I have access to certain things as a person that has also graduated from Duke University, their privileges that come with being a Duke University alumni. I know that there are privileges that come with being a homeowner, for example. And a lot of things that I think my ancestors and even my grandparents prayed for, prayed that I would one day have. And now that I have them, the reason why I always say it's my effort to reach back as I climb because I realize that there are a lot of people that look like me, that share my skin tone, that share my context that don't necessarily have the same privileges. And I'm using the word 'privileges' because I realize that that's what they are. And these are hard fought privileges. These were not things that were handed to me but they were things that I worked my ass off for. And even though, even still, there's still this constant idea how am I creating an environment where these privileges are available to other people that are not just myself. ARTY: How am I creating an environment that opens the door, that allows people the opportunity to grow in these sorts of ways if we're always looking forward at the next stair that we need to achieve in our own gain? And we don't look back and realize, "Hey, the stairs behind us, they're missing a few steps." HALLEEMAH: [Laughs] There's splinters in it. Let's get some sandpaper. It doesn't work. ARTY: I ended up going down my life path and I don't have kids and my husband has a good job. And so, when I got the entrepreneur itch, I could basically go, "What is it that I want to spend my time on? What is it that I want to spend my effort on and how pretty much near zero constraints in terms of what I could do?" And so, I look at the social infrastructure type problems of these systems that are broken that could be so much better, and I erased the world in my brain and think, "OK, let's think about this is a software problem. And if the goal of the system is helping people to shine like stars, how do we self organize and come up with a system that helps all the people shine because we all deserve to shine?" How do we do that? We think about that as a design problem, how do we engineer systems that help lift people? If we take a step back and think about it as a design problem, it's amazing how many ideas and stuff are already out there and things that people figured out that worked in ways that we can use science and run experiments together and care about each other together. And we can build lots of stairs. Stairs in every neighborhood. So, there's no reason why these stairs can't exist. But they take effort, they take intention to get your ass out there, get some sandpaper. [Laughter] SAM: Maybe even build an elevator while you're at it. HALLEEMAH: There you go. Make the climb a little easier. Make elevation. There is an article that will be coming out in MADE Magazine in celebration of women where I talk about the idea of self-made. The definition of self-made for young African-American women that become entrepreneurs will be very different than when Madam C.J. Walker built her business a hundred years ago. I think that we are now in the making of opportunities and organizations like Girls Who Code and organizations like Polished Pebbles that are doing work to ensure that this hard, jagged stairway is not as difficult for the next generation. So, being self-made for them means that we're shortening the distance. We are shortening the distance for their ability to make it to the top of the stairs. That's something that I'm really proud to be a part of - a generation of people that are doing that work, shortening the distance. Right now, you talked about being a founder. And I am super excited that I am formally launching my company called Rosecrans Ventures and we are doing work to coach underrepresented talent toward success and helping them navigate those systems that we were just talking about. It's about shortening the distance. How do I shorten the distance for young people that are now 16, 17 years old so that they can understand the lessons that it took me learning when I was 25, 26 getting out of college? How do we give them the level of professional development where they are receiving the same level of coaching that a CEO gets? You hear about executive coaches. You get an executive coach when you're in the C-suite. But our young people need that level of coaching now because we know that there are going to be young girls in these systems that have to be more prepared. Transgender teens in these systems have to be more prepared. Young African-American males have to be more prepared. Young Muslim men in systems that are not welcoming to them have to be more prepared. So, how do we help these populations of people that come from marginalized communities shine and be greater and level up so that when they are 21, they have the same level of executive prowess that I had at 35. That's what Rosecrans Ventures is about. I named it Rosecrans Ventures because I grew up in Compton, California. And Rosecrans was sort of that thru-way. It was the street that leads you to the big bold future. It takes you to the freeway and the freeway takes you to the beach. It takes you downtown. It takes you to all these places. But I had to learn to navigate the local road first. I had to learn to navigate where I was. So, how do we help young people navigate internships, navigate their interviews, navigate conflicts? How do we help them navigate their spaces so that they are not learning the hard way the way a number of us did? And it leads them to that big bold future, but the distance isn't as far. REIN: I really like this idea of going to them and helping them where they are, figuring out what are the obstacles that are in their way. What's their situation like, and then finding ways to help them with the skills they need to do better in their internships. This sort of local contextual action, I think, is super important. HALLEEMAH: Absolutely. I have a very different business model. My strategic advisors are young people in between 18 and 21. And the reason why they're my strategic advisors is because I don't feel like naturally I speak Gen Z language. So, I want to build a model that comes from their perspective. I want to understand when I think about professional development and I think about career development, I went to college in the late 90's. So, what we learned about showing up well in business structures, I think is going to be a little nuanced when it comes to their generation. So, before I build out what the model looks like and tell them, "This is how you build your profile," I want to learn what does it mean to understand what building your profile looks like in your generation. I don't know that the static Word document resumé that you attach to an email is going to be the way that you build your brand in business structures in the future. My young people talk about -- for example, I have one teen that started a robotics club at his high school. And so, in trying to get a coding internship, what does it look like for you to build a 30-second video of this machine that you created and talk about starting a robotics club. And that's your resume. That's what I want to do with Rosecrans Ventures, ensuring that we're building profiles in their language, that we are understanding how to deliver content in their language because there will be 61 million Gen Z professionals entering this new workforce. And I think that it's going to look a whole lot different. So, I am trying to capture that generation with urban authenticity, is what I call it. REIN: What I always say is that if you want to teach, you have to start by learning. HALLEEMAH: Absolutely. REIN: I said I'm a constructivist. And in learning what that means is if you want to teach someone, you do it by going to where they are, learning what it's like for them and then building from there. HALLEEMAH: I would absolutely agree with you. It's learning and it's doing. So, the learning for Rosecrans Ventures, actually hiring young people that represent the target population in the target market. And they're doing is hiring to do work, providing employment for that generation. If I'm going to Google and I'm going to Facebook and I'm going to Uber and I'm saying, "This is the generation of talent that you want to hire. They are different. They are [inaudible] and they are ridiculously content-driven and entrepreneurial and amazing," then I actually have to do that work as well. How many of this population am I hiring for my business model? How many internships am I providing through this model? That's the learning and it's also the doing. REIN: I think that's also implied in reaching back, right? You have to reach back to where they are so that you can pull them with you. HALLEEMAH: Yeah, absolutely. And it speaks so much about just the age. Like it's going back and being in service to my younger self. It's reaching back to that 14-year old Halleemah that 16-year old Halleemah. What was her level of ambition? What did she need to know? What does she need to hear? That is my thinking as an entrepreneur. I have them in mind and I have this honor and privilege to serve this population of young people that teach me something new and bold and beautiful, I think, every day. ARTY: [Crosstalk] authenticity and what were some of the other words you used? Intentionality. I love that. HALLEEMAH: Yeah, absolutely. Intentionality. It's how I do my work because I always have to be thinking, how do I make sure that I do not get too far away from their voice, I don't get too far away from what I believe to be this big bold future that we can create together, like a more diverse workforce, a more inclusive culture, a humanity where we are not always defining ourselves in terms of our differences. But we acknowledge our differences and our own diversity, we walk authentically in that and that is included in spaces. It's a multi-layered work for sure. But I think it takes intentionality to get there. ARTY: So at this point in the show, we usually have each person give their reflections about what kind of things stood out to them, key takeaways, things you're thinking about tying final threads together. SAM: I can get us started, I suppose. Halleemah, you talked about reaching back as you climb and then Arty, you followed up on that and you used the metaphor of a door. And I started thinking about that and I realized there's a bunch of things that you can do with a door. You can walk through it and you can lock it behind you, you can barricade it, you can start shooting people who try to come through, you can just close it behind you, you can walk through and let it swing closed behind you, you can hold it open, you can prop it open, you can prop it open and go out on the sidewalk and like say, "Hey, there's an open door over there. You can help people walk through it." And if somebody is in a sledgehammer and the door isn't wide enough, you can just take a sledgehammer to the wall and make the opening bigger. There's a lot of things that you can do with that. I hadn't really thought about that before, but I like that as sort of a continuum of the possibilities of things that you can do with something that you originally think of as just being this sort of static part of the landscape around you that you can interact with and that you can change. REIN: I'm going to use up my third Virginia Satir reference. She has the self-esteem tool kit which is a collection of metaphors you can use to think about difficult situations you're in, try to bring more of your personal resources to bear. And one of those tools is a golden key. And golden keys will open any door. It's not just enough to open the door, you have to think about what it means to walk through it, and decide whether that's the right door for you. But the first step is to make sure that the door is open. And sometimes, that's something you can do, sometimes that's something that you need help with. Arty, when you said everyone deserves to shine, that really hit home for me. And I was thinking that you could not be shining because you haven't reached your potential, you're not as bright as you could be. But that's not the only reason that people don't shine. Maybe they don't shine because there are systemic challenges that are shadowing them, that are preventing us from seeing their light, or preventing them from being as bright as they could be. So, I think that we have to think about both of these things, about maximizing the potential within each person and also maximizing their ability to shine through the world, and to actually take all of the systemic things that are producing their light and doing the really often tough work to change them and get rid of them and make it so we can actually see them. ARTY: We started out this call with the superpower of cultural fluency. And I think it was beautiful in really getting to see what that looks like. I asked you, Halleemah, this question about what are some of the words and language that you use when you talk to people in these other worlds. And I got to hear a bit of your vocabulary and the words you used. And you were very deliberate about your word choice, with talking about urban authenticity and intentional community and practicing listening and changing the complexion of the workforce. Through the entire discussion, we got to hear this beautiful metaphorical language of your core values and what you're doing in the world. And I think what you're able to communicate with your cultural fluency is your passion and this message about what matters. And I think that's such a beautiful thing. Of all things, of all gifts, to be able to communicate in all these different languages is what matters. And you see this generation, this future of people, and you think about them in terms of who was I when I was this age? What were the things that I needed to hear? How do I give that to these other people? How do I communicate what these people need to hear, what I needed to hear? And I think that's such an amazing gift to be able to communicate that and reach back in that way. So, thank you. HALLEEMAH: Thank you. That was beautiful. I think that cultural fluency, it does very much feel like it's my gift to the world. The ability to connect different communities whether it's public and private sector, whether it is young girls and older women, young African-American males and men who have achieved a certain level of success, underrepresented populations and giving them a platform where they feel heard. And that happens in their voice. And it also feels like a gift. It feels like a gift that I have audience of the next generation of what this will look like. I like to call it radical professionalism. This idea of elevating your professionalism and authenticity in spaces in a way that's radical. And I think that is how you make people matter, that is how you code. REIN: That's really good. I just had a, I guess epiphany that's better than my reflection was. Can I replace my reflection with a new reflection? SAM: Bonus reflection from Rein. REIN: Bonus reflection. Arty, you were talking about stars and shining. And I was thinking another metaphor that might work is light bulbs. Light bulbs have the ability to shine but only through their connection with others. I think we get our power through our connection with other people. And some people have more access to that power than other people. And for me, it's about making sure that everyone can shine because their connection to others gives them the power that they need. SAM: Well, this has been a really wonderful conversation and I'm sad to see it go. But I hope that we can continue it on the Slack channel. Listeners, if you're interested and [inaudible], so you can join our Slack community by donating as little as $1 on our Patreon page. That's Patreon.com/GreaterThanCode. It's a great place to go and hang out, and ask interesting questions, and support each other. It's one of the highlights of my days is interacting with people in there. So, we'll be back, catch you next week. Thanks very much.