"You have blown my mind" - Uncovering Our Value Client Testimonial

This summer, I was invited to work with the City and County of Denver, and facilitated one of my Uncovering Our Value workshops with 94 participants from 17 government agencies.

Covering – downplaying, hiding, filtering or masking parts of ourselves at work, with social groups, at school and with family.

Through my work including interviews and hosting video podcasts, and research done by organizations including Deloitte and UCLA Williams Institute, women of color, straight white men, LGBTQ+ folx and people with disabilities, among others, have all named ways in which they've covered parts of themselves and their identities in business settings.

Combining storytelling, introspection, and small and large group discussions, we covered a tremendous amount a ground examining and unpacking the topic of covering. I designed the workshop this way, whether it is in-person or virtual, to respect people's learning and processing styles.

It was evident that foundational work had already been done across agencies, as participants stepped into the workshop with vulnerability and honesty. We talked about redefining what is means to be a "professional," the MANY ways covering can manifest and impact the workplace, and explored what uncovering our value and authenticity at work can look like in practice.

Thank you to Jessica Wilson and the team at the City and County of Denver for inviting me to do this work with you all! You can read Jessica's testimonial below.

A few respondents said:

"This is so impactful, this is a launch party to have more of these conversations and feel safe to do so… when we have these spaces and conversations we can move mountains."

"You have blown my mind and I am so appreciative!"

Ventures into the Wild – I am an explorer not a runner, a human not a man.

It has been during my solo hikes and ventures into the wild that I have excavated deep within myself - step by step and layer by layer - to understand, let go of, and evolve the labels that I use to articulate my identity and who I am.

Over the past few months, I’ve been synthesizing – the word my husband Theo Edmonds used for the journey we’ve each been on during this season in life. While different yet interconnected, our journeys hold tremendous similarities in how we are melding learnings, experiences and insights into an expansive framework for who we are, how we relate to the world, what we value and want to dedicate our time to.

Because…

The person you knew ten years ago

Isn’t the person you are now, who

Won’t be the person you are in a decade.

While hiking through the snow to Bear Peak in Colorado this spring, I thought about how constraining labels can be. 

And how,

When we release narrowly defined labels, and instead

Articulate our underlying values and beliefs

Allowing the way we put them into action to evolve over time

We free ourselves to move through a world of possibility.

For example, for more than a decade I labeled myself as “a runner.” Almost all of my outdoor activities and exercise were running in some form. I didn’t carve out time for hiking (too slow) or other activities because I’d have to trade off running, and running was my identity.

Freedom and expansive futures came as I stepped into the mindset of being “an explorer.” I love to experience the natural world, seeing awe-inspiring vistas, testing the limits of what I can do, and doing that through evolving pathways. 2022 was the season of cycling as I trained for and rode the 110-mile Triple Bypass Ride, 2023 was the season of long hikes featuring Colorado’s highest peaks including Mt Elbert and Mt Massive, and 2024 is shaping up to be the season of trail running.

Across these seasons, I still snowshoed, skied, went to the gym, ran, hiked and cycled as forms of exploration. The shift from being “a runner” to being “an explorer” expanded my world immensely, and I didn’t even realize it until recently. By articulating my all-encompassing, broader value - exploration - I freed myself to try out and evolve through the many ways one can embody it. And it’s been beautiful to experience.

There are other labels that have confined me in the past, and through mental exploration, I asked myself, “What does it mean to be a man? What does it mean to be human?” What happens if we imagine who we could become before expectations were imposed and our possibilities limited?

Over the past few years, I’ve tried to imagine that, and sought to understand what covering is and how it has manifested in my life. Covering being the ways that we downplay, hide, filter or mask parts of ourselves at work, with different social groups, at school and with family. I’ve done a great deal to reflect on my own journey and to uncover my queerness, my joy, and my voice. Working - piece by piece and adventures by adventure - to make visible the many parts of myself that were hidden. To question, if I leave the labels behind, what is left? Or rather, what can I become?!

This past year brought much more clarity. I meditated to understand our interconnectedness and my role within it. I explored at the intersection of the physical and the awe-inspiring. As I told a friend, I found the realm where the elves live (And yes, Colorado has many) – because there are magical places in this world if only we go in search of them. In asking questions and going into the unknown, I found fertile ground for growth.

It has been through this ongoing process that I finally released another one of the labels that constricted me. What is it to be a “man,” I asked again?

As many people as exist on the planet, that is how many definitions there are. If I span the masculine and feminine, and everything beyond, is that a label I believe in or claim for myself?

Finally during a hike in the wilderness (You may be picking up on a theme here, being out in nature has been transformative for understanding who I am and what I can be), the answer came forward quietly yet firmly.

No, for I am human.

That encompasses it all.

These revelations, this synthesis, has been like delving into the filing cabinets of my mind and pulling out dusty files labeled “man” and “runner.” Opening them to find that the contents were outdated, and based on faulty research, with pages of contradicting edits in pencil and red ink, and sliding them into the recycling bin. Creating space for new files and new mindsets to fill that void. 

Remembering at each turn along life’s many trails, to dream expansively and to take ambitious steps forward. To remember, that your very presence shifts spaces, energy and minds. To know that transformation is possible, and can be experienced everywhere we go - if only we are open to it. 

Opportunity for reflection:

• What labels do you cling to?

• How do they shape what you do and do not try?

• What world exists beyond them, if only you’d let yourself imagine it? 

• How can embracing ventures into the wild help you uncover new ways of being?

Click here to read a variation of this piece published by The Advocate.

Ventures into the Wild featuring Dani Reyes-Acosta

Interview by Josh Miller, MBA (they/he)

Since moving to Colorado in summer 2021, I have witnessed a tremendous shift in myself and my relationship with and understanding of the world as I’ve ventured into the wild. From hiking through awe-inspiring vistas to cycling over mountain passes, and slow walks around lakes and along creeks, countless hours have been spent outdoors, delving deep into questions of identity and values, community, and the stories we tell ourselves and others. 

This series - Ventures into the Wild - is meant to peel back the layers of the reciprocal relationship we can have with nature, when we are open to its fluidity. I love hearing about the experience of others, and how they are navigating both well worn and newly forged paths of life. What they are learning about themselves and uncovering along the way. 

Between scouting and shooting days for her new documentary film OUTLIER: COMMON, I got to sit down (virtually) with Dani Reyes-Acosta to talk about how their relationship to nature and the outdoors has evolved over time, how much of it is centered on community - dreaming, healing, growing, connecting - and what they’ve learned about themselves along the way.

Dani is a narrative strategist, professional mountain athlete, and public speaker based in Colorado. She is a trilingual (English, Spanish, and French) and multicultural (Mestiza and Filipina) storyteller who leverages her unique perspective and voice to inspire and challenge others in their own journeys of collective and creative connection.

“The diversity in the ways I engage with the outdoors is informed not just by my lived experience, but by those in my family, my loved ones,” Dani said. Growing up in California, the oldest of three sisters with parents who have roots in land cultivation, Dani experienced both beaches and mountains. Losing access to nature in her late teens and early twenties, her father’s death, her mother’s cancer diagnosis, and her own injuries including a broken back in 2020 and broken hand in 2021 all “redirected the course of how I engage with nature,” she noted.

“It forced me to slow down and think about non-adrenaline activities that would still allow me to feel grounded and connected.” 

For both of us, being in relationship with nature has been challenging, healing and illuminating. “I look at time in nature as fulfilling, and it can change at any given moment. It’s also directly informed by not just the people you are with, but by the landscape, and the weather and environment that surrounds you… It requires us to be flexible to what’s happening outside of us.” To be “fluid” because as Dani outlined, “nothing is fixed. Nothing is static. It’s always changing, moving and evolving.” 

Over the past eleven years, Dani has dedicated a tremendous amount of time to being outdoors. “It was in parallel to when I hit the metaphorical ‘reset button,’” she said. “I left an abusive relationship. I left a corporate role that just wasn’t right for me. I moved out of my apartment, and was on this vast journey I call ‘the reset.’” This inflection point for Dani served as the launch pad for her journey of self-discovery, including travel, adventure and connection with people and land in South America. “And oftentimes food, because for me food is how you connect with people and land,” she said while tossing an orange from one hand to the other. 

As we’ve both witnessed, “the journey outside informs the journey within, and vice versa,” as Dani noted. An ethos represented by the name of her Instagram account, @NotLostJustDiscovering. “I was trying to do a lot of these things I didn’t know anything about, whether it was backcountry snowboarding, or going solo traveling to South America… all of that was very scary. I embraced a learner’s mindset, or beginner’s mindset without even realizing what I was doing. I came to realize that mindset is exactly what I want to continue cultivating throughout my entire life.” 

Continuously learning new skills, processes, and ways of moving through the world can come with uncertainty. “Whether it was trying to learn to prune grape vines or new skills in the mountains, I faced questions that I think any human that’s doing new things faces, right?” Insecurity and maybe a little bit (or a lot) of anxiety came with the territory, along with embracing both the soft and scary, the fear and sadness, and the wonder.

“We can catalyze all of these experiences and say, ‘I’m going to turn into something else’... it helps us lean into whatever we want our experience to be in nature. The best thing is, if you can truly wrap your head around all of who you are, you might find out that your goal is totally different from what you thought it might be.” 

Our conversation reminded me of a quote from Josh Waitzkin’s book The Art of Learning. "The most important thing is to be in a state of constant learning, to be open to new opportunities and new ideas,” wrote Waitzkin. Similar to our conversation, the new opportunities and ideas, or as Dani mentioned, turning into [or becoming] something else, is a process that our relationship with nature can unlock. For me personally, it was a space to question my gender, my values, and my goals. And for both of us, the past 10-11 years represented a tremendous shift in understanding and questioning who we are, and what we want to create. 

Before hitting ‘reset,’ “I didn’t know about social identities,” Dani shared. “I didn’t know how much of our social identities were constructed and imposed on us, whether its language, gender, religion, class… they’re all constructs. When I embarked on this journey of self-discovery, I started from a place of knowing that what I was doing didn’t feel right in my body. I didn’t know that I had anxiety and dread [didn’t have the language or understanding to name it then], I just knew that I slept very poorly.” She noticed a difference in how her body felt on the days when she didn’t venture outside, and on the days when she would ride her bike or go rock climbing with friends. 

This also raised the question, What does healing look like for me? “Over the last ten and a half years, I started to understand that this healing needed to happen at multiple levels,” she shared.

“And, that healing can be accompanied by growth and connection. So much of the covering I was doing was rooted in pulling apart those different social constructs, including racial identity.” 

From Google to research at the library, Dani sought to understand the things that make us who we are and influence how we move through different spaces. “I would show up in BIPOC dominated spaces very differently than I would show up in a mountain town space. But over time, it’s probably more specifically in the last 3-4 years, I’ve learned to meld all of those ways,” Dani said, talking about how she has filtered and code-switched based on the community she might be engaging with (both of which fall within the broader covering umbrella). “In some ways I was having to be different people for different circumstances. Part of it was certainly meant to make other people comfortable, and a lot of it was really meant to make me comfortable, because I wasn’t confident in my skin, in my identities.”  

Something we’ve both found is how spending time out in nature, either solo or with friends/family, can help us uncover who we are, especially when we practice it over time. “At this point, I’m 100% rooted in the knowledge that I have this ever growing/shifting/evolving understanding of myself,” she notes. “These experiences in nature, no matter what they are, have helped me feel strong in those different identities because I can show up in these different ways outside any given day… Whether that's as a sad healing girl or as a very confident, excited person ready to get after it, or anyone in between. It’s that repetition of doing that work to just say, it’s ok to be all of these different people. I have to move through the world with acceptance and grace for myself.” 

“I want to tap back into the question, How does nature help us uncover?” Dani said. “Moving meditation, whatever it looks like, whether that’s pulling weeds out of the ground or running for 12 hours, or whatever it is that you’re doing outside, it becomes this key to unlock a lot of what’s going on in our brain. … There’s nothing like being outside for a long time to start asking yourself some big questions, if you are open to it.” 

After a bite of orange, Dani continued, talking about the months she spent back in California as her mom underwent cancer treatment. She kept finding herself trying to “stay busy,” something I’d experienced traveling back to places where my brain didn’t necessarily want to revisit past experiences and memories. “I was like, I might lose my mom, I should spend time with her. And it was really interesting to see how my brain wanted to go and do these different things to maintain busyness,” she said. “Because the stillness of being in that space was one that cut closest to the heart. It was so difficult. And learning to embrace that stillness was I think one of the things that was most difficult, but rewarding. It’s nice to be still.” 

Before we moved on from the topic of covering, Dani said, “The title of your talk struck such a resonant note with me, this idea of The Courage to Uncover who you are is something that I think for so many people feels really intimidating. On one hand, I think to myself, these are folks that choose to do difficult things every day, whether that's going for a long bike ride, or ski tour or spending hours in the garden. And I have to ask myself, if we can have the courage to do that, don't we really have the courage to ask ourselves some questions about who we want to be and the world we want to live in? I know we're all capable of it. We just have to try and expect often that we will fail, but failing isn't the end all and be all, it's just a step to uncovering.” 

The Well Worn Life documentary that features Dani gives a clear snapshot for how she moves through the world. “In many ways, a lot of my activities outside are rooted in moving through landscape to see how I fit into it… I don’t just belong, I am part of the landscape,” she says in the film. Dani’s focus on relationships carries through, from how she cultivates teams to the types of stories she works to tell through her company Afuera Productions. 

Their current project, OUTLIER: COMMON, is the second installment of a series that features three women, athlete-scientist Nina Aragon, athlete-community builder Vanessa Chavarriaga Posada, and athlete-filmmaker Dani Reyes-Acosta. The series uses their snow adventures as a lens through which to explore the evolution and growth of their relationships with the mountains, each other, and themselves. It reframes how women—particularly women of color—are portrayed in action sports media.

Like it did for many of us, the disruption caused by COVID-19 made Dani question her work. “I wanted something more,” she said. “Rooted in this desire to dream of something bigger and better. Something that didn’t just benefit me but allowed all of us to dream… ultimately the OUTLIER series allows us that space of dreaming, no matter what identity you hold.”

The creation of this series is “an understanding that living in between different identities and communities and spaces - in the gray area - can be a great thing because when you’re neither in one or the other, you’re a bridge,” Dani shared. “If you allow yourself to be a bridge. I realized I was between communities, between identities, between languages.” 

“I don’t want to live in a world where I am afraid to walk down the street, or of the questions a doctor might ask me, or because of who I am as a person,” Dani explains. At its core, the OUTLIER films are about the collective journey. “This [series] is something that is rooted in our rights as humans. What do we want as a society? The visuals of the big mountains give us space to dream and imagine.

My goal is to not just to flip the script on who we are in the mountains, but also like, what is our relationship to these spaces because so many of the stories that we’ve been fed - ever since mountain stories became a thing - are about domination, rather than cooperation.” 

Following the behind-the-scenes on Instagram, as Dani, Nina, Vanessa and the production crew have traveled to create the film has been fun and informative. From a beautiful sunrise or waterfall, to travel problems due to winter weather, it’s all part of expanding what’s possible. “If episode one, OUTLIER: TRUST, is about understanding the journey of who we are, and trusting the process and embracing it or not, then episode two, OUTLIER: COMMON, really digs deep into [the character’s] individual journeys and how they show up in community,” Dani said. The film will encourage viewers to ask, “How do you show up for yourself? How do you show up for others, even when you’re surrounded by chaos? Each of us are learning, both separately and together, that our tenacity and desire to move forward is grounded, not in just our individual goals, but is very much rooted in the support of those around us. It’s 100% reciprocal.” 

If you’ve followed my own adventures, you know as a photographer that my exploration and experiences in nature are often depicted through photography. My relationship with my camera is one I continue to reexamine over time as my motivations and dreams evolve. For the OUTLIER series, Dani plays a dual role, on one hand, serving as Creative Director and Producer, and on the other, as a subject of the films. Dani explained, “It’s been very interesting, and I think it ties back into your question about covering and identities and how we move through those spaces with different identities depending on what’s needed at the moment. It’s not been easy… you have to be willing to have some hard conversations, with yourself and with other people.” 

Again, the theme of connectivity arose. Working with mentors including story advisor Monica Medellin and visual advisor Corey Robinson on the series spurred conversations focused on self-awareness, commitment, and ways of viewing things from both in-front of and behind the lens.

“In a nutshell,” she said, “It’s been mentally and emotionally exhausting. [It also] Cultivated better communications habits, better expectations, and in so many ways helped me think about how I’m bringing the right people onto this project.” 

From the creative team they collaborated with to film in the Tetons (shout out to Charlotte Percle, Sam Davies, Carly Finke, Sophia Schwartz) who set a new bar for creating a supportive, safe space, to seeing how people with different racial backgrounds and lived experiences play a role in supporting the vision of OUTLIER, Dani said that “what I needed are people who are actively checking in with themselves, and who are invested in not just doing beautiful work, but also in seeing others thrive.” 

As an example of that belief, when Director of Photography Sam Davies - a cishet White man - experienced travel delays flying from Dublin, Ireland to Jackson Hole, Wyoming to meet the team, Dani said, “I just reminded him, tomorrow is a scouting day. I just need you to focus on getting on the next flight… I want someone who is an empathy driven leader that is excited about creating art and space. Sam, I want you, it’s gonna be ok.” 

If OUTLIER: TRUST is any indication, the next episode will be compelling and vivid in its depiction of these women’s ventures into the wild. I reached out to Dani before seeing that the second installment was underway, and then became one of the first investors when the crowdfunding campaign launched last month. These stories and the expansive approach they are taking is important, and I’m excited to see what they create together!

Like this series is meant to explore diverse experiences and what’s possible, OUTLIER is “meant to be a way to engage with each other and have bigger conversations that oftentimes don't happen when we keep the same insular social circles,” said Dani. “I think what all three of us in COMMON are really excited about is that this can be a tool and a platform for all of us to grow and connect together. So I hope people join us - this is going to be fun!” 

How you can support OUTLIER

Dani and the OUTLIER team plan to finish filming in early spring, and hope to host a screening in fall 2024 once post-production wraps up. They are ¼ of the way to their $26,000 crowdfunding campaign goal that will cover production costs, with various benefits for people who contribute including the BTS footage on IG, access to the screening this fall, and more based on the giving level. The campaign’s current fundraising deadline is April 4, 2024. Click here to learn more. 

Photos courtesy of Dani Reyes-Acosta, taken by Carly Finke and Guy Fattal.

Seema Sheth on the impact of assimilation, non-negotiables and the power of TikTok to help us understand each other.

Josh · Uncovering Our Value Featuring Seema Sheth

My conversation with Seema Sheth, Senior Vice President & Regional Executive at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis reminded me of a quote from Walt Whitman, “I contain multitudes.” Seema is multiracial, neurodivergent, queer, a wife and mother, witty, engaging, and endlessly curious with a love for finance and economics. We talked until we had to sprint out the door for our respective meetings and could have kept going. 

Seema and I parsed through language used to describe a universal yet different experience based on who you are – covering: downplaying, hiding, filtering or masking parts of ourselves at work, with different social groups, at school and with family. We mined personal experiences and the impact of covering on us as individuals and on the places where we work, and even more broadly, the economy. Later on, we talked about the role of privilege and changing the places we step into as a demonstration of what’s possible. Through each example and question, demonstrating the role that vulnerability plays in expanding how we relate to each other, what we understand about people’s lived experience, and as a way to reflect on our own journey. 

“Assimilation,” said Seema when I asked what word or language she used and how she felt about the term covering. She often heard code-switching, and “masking is one that I hear a lot,” she said, “especially for those of us that are neurodivergent.”

As someone who is multiracial – half African and half Indian – with parents from Sudan and India, she has never fit into one racial box, and assimilation is how she tried to fit into culture in Kentucky as a first generation American. “The way to navigate the world was just to fit in,” she shared. “Then, you find yourself in new realities…. And when you do that sometimes you lose the thread of what is real.” As she became an adult, she began a discovery process, asking, “Of all the things I can do, of all these environments that I can operate within, which one feels authentic to me? And, what am I going to choose moving forward?” 

The covering, or assimilation as Seema described, also directly impacted her identity. “Growing up, [identity] felt like a luxury,” she said. Fitting in was “a privilege I didn’t have access to.” Through middle and high school, what she wore was one way of assimilating. This cascaded into the professional sphere as she got older. “I work in finance… and I wanted to express myself,” Seema recounted, sitting across from me in a bright yellow sleeveless vest and sleeveless white button up, gold calculator watch and bootcut jeans. Her blazer, draped across the arm of the couch. It was Seema’s version of corporate. Years ago, when she stepped into the corporate finance world, there were constraints. “One must wear a pinstripe suit that is blue,” and “your shirt must always be white in color,” she said of the norm deemed “professional.” As a theatre person and fashion love, Seema wanted to express herself through color and pieces that represented her.

As her positional power expanded, and she stepped into roles with more visibility and influence, she began carving out space for herself. “You try to find the kernels that are non-negotiable,” she said. 

Both of us are millennials, and what she shared about evolving how she dressed and how she showed up over time really resonated with me, it’s been a big part of my uncovering journey the past 8 years as well. Because of our ages, we were steeped in productivity culture. “You want to be as productive as possible,” she said, when I asked about why she started uncovering as a professional. “I found that I couldn’t be as productive because I was spending so much damn time managing expectations of other people,” Seema shared. “Figuring out how to fit in. Every choice I made down to nail color… what is this going to say about me? How do I need to make sure that they’re comfortable with me so I can have the best outcome?” 

All of this mental work - this cognitive strain - from trying to cover 24/7 in the workplace meant that Seema was “unable to produce in the way I wanted to produce.” She elaborated further, “If I’m spending so much time thinking about how other people are going to perceive me, I don’t have enough time to be creative in the work I’m doing. There was no space for any of that. So part of me was like, this is unsustainable.” This internal process, the reflection on what was being experienced and how much it directly impacted a realm like work, was something we both went through, and her journey resonated so much with my own, and that of leaders I have talked to and interviewed. And, as we both experienced, as you start to uncover and evolve as a person, some of the relationships around you fall away. “I had a lot of relationships that were not very real,” Seema said. Relationships that changed or ended because “the person that you were really close with, it wasn’t me.” 

When you combine all of this inner work and sharing who you really are, from being on the edge of burnout to relationships changing as you allow yourself to step into the world differently, it can be bittersweet. “It was a little bit of heartbreak,” recounted Seema.

“Thank god for therapists, because my therapist was like, ‘Who are you back bending for? What do you think the end goal is, that you imposter so well that you can be successful?’” Doing this inner work allowed Seema to “navigate away from places where even little pieces of authenticity were going to make me unsuccessful, or make me feel badly about myself, or make me think that I’m the problem,” she shared. As we’d both experienced, the environment matters. It often won’t be perfect and can create additional work for those of us who move through spaces as outliers of the norm, but part of why we do it is “so the next person after you doesn’t have to do quite the same amount of gymnastics to what you’re trying to do,” Seema said.

One thing we both acknowledge is that privilege comes into play when you start to uncover, as you “evaluate the root cause of what’s making you feel this way” [hollow, unhappy, like it’s your fault]. “Authority breeds privilege,” Seema explained. “The more hierarchical stature you get, the more leeway you earn. I’ve sort of navigated becoming more authentic as a person, employee, and leader.” Having started her job at the St. Louis Fed in the past few years, I asked how she asses the culture and environment she’ll be stepping into. “The way I do it is I show up so authentically in the interview… to a freaky extent,” she said smiling. Rather than straightening her hair, “I’m gonna make my hair as big as possible. I’m going to wear the brightest. I’m just gonna do all the things that I felt for a long time invalidated my credentials and credibility. I am going to show you what you are getting. I’ve learned to ask a lot of questions upfront, and to be okay with the answer. Sometimes it’s yes, that is our culture, and I’ll know I’m not going to be able to be successful in that environment.” 

As many of us have seen and experienced over the past few years, there is a push and pull happening when it comes to covering and how people present and act in the workplace. What parts of themselves and their identities they can bring and share. “There is a need for people to show up authentically so that they can feel comfortable, and there’s also so much polarization happening in our world that people’s authenticity is often triggering,” Seema explained.

“Do you want people to show up as their full authentic selves without the tools to manage that internally? Or do you want to shut people down so that you don’t have to deal with the conflict that arises?”

From employers to employees, this becomes the challenge, with economic implications for all parties involved including places like downtown business districts. “We talk a lot about trying to get people back into the office and the prevalence of remote work,” she said. “I think a lot of that is because people like that they can be themselves at home. They don’t have to go to work and put on a show for people. But, I also think there is a huge relational loss for people that are just working at home all the time. It can make your work lifeless, horrible, tedious, and boring.”  

Seema and I sit at the cusp from a generational perspective, in between the older generations who have been in the workforce for longer than us, and Gen Z, whose continues each year to shift what the workforce looks like. “They’re [Gen Z] walking into places where they don’t feel comfortable, it’s a weird, alien and unnecessarily structured environment a lot of the time. So it’s not that they don’t have soft skills to do well in the workplace, it’s that the workplace they are trying to do well in was made for someone fifty years their senior.”

This brings forward the larger question, how do we coexist and be respectful of difference, seeing “how that difference is robust and makes us all better?” Seema asked. 

These various facets of our personal and professional experience, whether it’s how we show up in the workplace or how we think and talk about money are ones that Seema often creates videos about on TikTok (@bobeema). One such video, which led to our conversation taking place, was about people with positional power showing up authentically in the workplace, for the reasons we’ve explored already. TikTok in particular, has provided a lens through which to understand a variety of lived experiences and things that happen for people internally, that we may not have been exposed too. “It’s a validation of your experience all the time,” Seema said. “I’m also a person with ADHD that didn’t know it, right? Because obviously, I’m female. So we get under diagnosed, and, I’m highly productive. I make all my deadlines, I don’t miss anything. But, the amount of work it is for that to be my reality – the amount of systems I’ve had to set up, the false trigger points, the fake deadlines, and the amount of anxiety I had to like whip up in myself to get myself to do things, I didn’t know that was what was happening for me until I was given a peak into somebody else’s life on TikTok.” 

Seeing those videos made Seema think, “Wait, excuse me, not everyone has to do this?” After seeing the videos that described so accurately how her mind worked, she showed her husband, asking, “Do you do this in your brain?” He asked, “What is that?” For twenty years they had functioned so differently, not understanding the internal process of the other. Similarly, TikTok has helped me understand my husband, who is also neurodivergent. It’s made me think, “Oh, now I understand.” It’s given me some tools and language to inquire and also talk about things differently. In the video that Seema shared that sparked our discussion, she is calling on people who have earned trust and respect and have positional power to “show up in these spaces differently.” She outlined why. “The reason why things are so importance is cognitive bias… it is informed by what you’ve seen. If you see it, you can be it right? So if we can show up in these spaces differently then what people have seen will change. So the idea of a president can change, the idea of a leader can change. So if you’ve earned it, use it. Show up to the board meeting where everybody else is dressed differently than you and be a little bit unconformable, but do it anyway, because that’s how we can create some more space.” 

TikTok demonstrated a way to learn about and gain understanding of other people’s experiences. And, as our conversation moved forward, we talked about how “professionalism” and norms in the workplace can rob us of connection because people feel forced to conform. Whether it’s the formal language of emails (or the issue of using AI to generate messages that can mean losing the personal touch and humanity we often infuse between the lines), or the way many diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs have been implemented, we create more separation than connection. As Seema explained, she had a DEI workshop experience for a Board where she was the collateral damage of them trying to be “inclusive.” She reiterated that she is a person that “lives in intersectionality.” The two-day training culminated in five breakout groups, delineated by race. She asked the facilitator, “I’m not one race, but two, what should I do?” They said, “Well, pick the one that you identify with the most.” Being 50/50, Seema didn’t identify with one more than the other. “I was like, ‘That’s messed up. I don’t identify with one the most, where would you like me to do?’

Their response made her the problem, “You’re just making this difficult, pick one.” Rather than participating, she abstained. Later, the moderator said it was a learning moment, in their effort to celebrate attendee’s identities, they excluded someone. Seema said, “Yes, but also recognize that there’s a person that is your fallout.” 

Like the discussion with her husband about having ADHD, stepping into rooms with people who look or identify different than us, and working to understand their experience can shed a lot of light on how people feel in different spaces, from board rooms to parties. For many people, Black women, queer folks, and others, there is a scan that takes place. But, sometimes, we avoid doing the scan because stepping into that room already took courage. For me, I don’t step into rooms as an androgynous queer person not recognizing how confusing many people find me or that there may be issues with safety at times. But I would rather risk a little bit to feel more whole.

Whether it’s your spouse, like how Seema and her husband – a white man - talk about what they observe and experience moving through life together, or with friends and colleagues, like the conversations Hannah Drake and I have about our experiences with work and life outside of it, being able to share those moments allows us to move beyond just existing, to being co-conspirators with each other. For many of us, we also develop internal “hacks” to make it through the uncomfortable times. “You describe the things you don’t pay attention to because you wouldn’t be able to navigate,” Seema said, reflecting on our conversation. “I resonate with that. Growing up here, going to the State Fair, everybody was staring at us. I felt so unsafe.

My mom would be like, ‘Here’s what you do when this happens, because it’s gonna happen your whole life. Just think, They’re staring at me because I’m beautiful. Not because they want to kill me.’ And I’m like, trying to get gas in Kentucky, and I’m thinking, they’re all staring at me, it’s because I’m beautiful.” 

Learn more about my Uncovering Our Value series along with my public speaking at www.joshmiller.ventures and join the conversation by Following me on LinkedIn and engaging on TikTok and Instagram with at @JoshMillerVentures.

Uncovering Talent: Deloitte and NYU report that 74% of respondents said covering affected them negatively

Josh · Uncovering Our Value featuring Deloitte and NYU’s Uncovering Culture report

I first encountered Deloitte’s “Uncovering Talent” report (released 2013) over four years ago. What stood out to me was the prevalence of covering, and how little I had heard about it - which was nothing at the time.

For me, this topic explained things about myself I didn’t have language for, and also served as a foundational experience that a majority of people in the workplace shared even if the way it manifested was different. From straight white men to Black women, LGBTQ+ folks, people with disabilities, and more – covering was present. Flash forward a decade since that original report was released, and the stats haven’t changed. Neither has the subject of covering become a major focal point in America’s corporate efforts to shift people’s sense of belonging, ability to contribute and innovate, and show up authentically and as their best selves in the workplace.

The initial report built on Erving Goffman's concept of "covering," that "describe[s] how even individuals with known stigmatized identities made a 'great effort keep the stigma from looming large,'" and looked at it through the lens of Kenji Yoshino's four axes: Appearance-based covering, Affiliation-based covering, Advocacy-based covering, and Association-based covering. My definition, inspired by their work and developed through conversations and interviews with people over the past few years, defines covering as “downplaying, hiding, filtering or masking parts of ourselves at work, with social groups, at school and with family.” The new report, Uncovering Culture (2023), by Deloitte and NYU School of Law defines covering as “ways in which individuals downplay known disfavored identities to blend into the mainstream.”

The new report included a more inclusive sample of corporate employees including trans and nonbinary people, along with collecting qualitative data that gives additional context to the experience and impact of covering, similar to my interviews from the past few years.

Some of their key findings highlighted by Fast Company include:

• Employees with more marginalized identities are more likely to cover: 71% of employees with five more or more marginalized identity affiliations reported covering compared to employees with 1-2 marginalized identities.

• Younger employees tend to cover more than older employees: 66% of millennials and 65% of Gen Z report covering, compared to 56% of Gen X and 49% of baby boomers.

• People who aren’t marginalized also cover, especially if they are perceived as having privilege: 51% of people who don’t have a marginalized identity say they cover at work, and 54% of white men reported covering. “As a White man I try to avoid sharing any ‘struggles,’” one respondent wrote.

• Covering comes with a cost: 74% of respondents said covering affected them negatively. Fifty-four percent said it impacted their ability to do their job and 60% said they were emotionally drained from covering.

A few examples that embody those statistics and speak to the experience and impact of covering from my interviews over the past few years include:

• Even as an extrovert, Senator Cynthia Mendes found herself isolated from others, “which was not healthy at all,” she said. “It left my friends feeling like I was gone. I felt like I was gone. That isolation manifested in this feeling - am I losing touch with who I am? We all covered in our own ways that caused disconnection between us…. Over the past few years, people have expressed isolation, burnout, depression, and anxiety,” she explained. “I heard a phrase this week that really captured what the through line was – we’re asking people to bring themselves into compromised spaces that were not built for us and were not designed for how we present and conduct ourselves in the world.” Isolation is just one way covering has impacted Senator Mendes. “I've realized there is really no institution that exists right now where I would not have to enter with some level of covering,” she said. “Because they all started without us, without me. I'm a cog in the wheel that they didn't plan for. I understand in talking to friends in academia, medicine, and economics; these are feelings that many of us feel.” Explore my full conversation with Senator Mendes.

• Lori Fisher of Ready or Not! Media, said that, “For me, covering has been a big piece of who I am, and watching myself unfold from my childhood years, to my teenage years, to my adult years, and now, as a business leader, and the work I'm doing. I've masked my disability and disguised it in ways that, you know, I just had to deal with it. I didn't want to have to explain to people, my differences, even though some may have picked up on it, just from knowing that I'm sitting in front of a room and need to be in front of the teacher. I was always missing out by covering. It wasn't helping, it was hurting, deep down in my soul that I wasn't sharing as much as I probably should have. But I was also putting myself in a position where I over compensated for my disability for a very long period of time. And, you know, I just felt that there wasn't enough awareness or empathy around me, the only empathy and awareness around me was my family, or my teachers, and you know, kids can be cruel - you are always trying to hide it, whether it was hiding my hearing aids and not wanting people to see my hearing aids and not wearing my hair up.” Explore my full conversation with Lori Frisher.

• As Erik Eaker, an LGBTQ+ corporate leader shared during our conversation in 2019, "When I first got into the corporate sector, over 20 years ago, I wasn't out at work. I had the behaviors that I learned over time around trying to be as conservative as possible. Trying to fit in - not talking about things that were really personal to me, not talking about relationships that I had. And even doing things behaviorally like lowering my voice and being really careful about the way I walk and talk. It's really debilitating. As I entered the corporate sector, thinking that I had to cover or hide something about myself that was my true self. Those behaviors over time become who you are... When I joined Humana 19 years ago, I was luckily out to the person who brought me into the company. And he put me on the stage immediately as being a gay male. I was introduced to the Diversity Committee and then started serving in an Inclusion & Diversity capacity for the company representing LGBTQ+. And that really helped me start to shed some of those behaviors and coverings that I developed over time. But they still show up from time to time. And I think one of the latest coverings that I'm conscious of and still have not shed is that one around being legitimate through marriage. And so as I've learned, over the past few weeks, I've been thinking deeply about this wearing a wedding band. Sometimes I put it on in certain instances, because I feel like that will make me more accepted that I am a legitimate member of this society because I can get married and I can wear a band." Explore more from these conversations here.

Part of my goal in doing this work has been to support a culture of uncovering, something that Uncovering Culture also highlights. I encourage people to practice introspection, to understand the parts of themselves they are covering, the impact it has on them, and to create a strategy for bringing forward – and uncovering – those parts of their identities. By providing language and spaces for sharing those stories and experiences to model what’s possible, we can shift the cultural norms in the places where we work.

Two of my recent interviewees modeled this and spoke to the process of uncovering.

• Actress and nonprofit leader Marija Abney said, "I actively work in my personal life - outside of being an artist, outside of being a producer - to uncover, to be myself in my fullness as a Black woman as I navigate the world. To know what that is and to better understand what that is. I think it's something that will always be active. For me, it's something that will always be a process of uncovering. And I look forward to the me that is tomorrow, the me that will be five years from now, me that will be 10 years from now and my understanding - that person's understanding - of womanhood and Blackness, which I know is going to be different than this person's understanding of womanhood and Blackness. It's always a process, and I am excited by the process." Explore my full conversation with Marija Abney.

Uncovering isn’t usually a one-and-done scenario. It’s something that can take a lifetime to undo, to unlearn, to process through and overcome. And, sometimes we uncover in stages.

• “It’s like a brick wall, it’s so difficult to climb over and push through. And when finally, you’re able to remove those bricks and walk openly, there is nothing like it,” said event professional Dev Cleary. “…For a portion of my professional career I lost who I was. I felt like when I walked into work I would be one person, and the minute I would leave I’d have a sigh of relief. I said, ‘I want to work in a place where I can be my authentic self and have a picture on my desk of the person that I love the most in my life.’” Explore my full conversation with Dev Cleary.

Beyond just recognizing covering as an issue a majority of people grapple with, I continue to invite leaders to consider what an uncovering movement would look like in their workplace. Leaders of companies and teams all have the responsibility to dismantle a culture of covering if it exists, recognizing how much it can impact not only individual employees but the organization at large.

As Deloitte and NYU said in their report, “Despite the increased attention on diversity, equity, and inclusion over the past 10 years, covering is ubiquitous and continues to negatively impact workers and therefore organizations’ capacity to thrive.”

I encourage each of you to delve into the new report, and if you’d like to read my interviews with leaders from across sectors about their experience with covering, checkout my Uncovering Our Value newsletter on LinkedIn. You can also watch my talk from earlier this year, The Courage to Uncover from DisruptHR Denver to learn more about the topic in just 5-minutes.

Dev Cleary on self-love, uncovering his pride, and servant leadership

Josh · Uncovering Our Value featuring Dev Cleary

For many of us, the reasons we cover (downplay, hide or filter parts of ourselves) track back to childhood. Fittingly, my recent conversation with Devin Cleary, Head of Global Events at Vimeo, began with his experiences in middle school. A time when our bodies are changing, our identities are becoming more pronounced and we’re forming deeper friendships. Dev said when he first started thinking about covering, “I reverted back to my adolescence.” He saw that it was during his preteen years where covering really started to take place. “It brings feelings of anxiety and stress,” he said.

“I’ve been covering most of my life truthfully.” 

For Dev, covering meant hiding or masking things by trying to wear clothing to blend in with his peers, and not speaking up during class or doing things would put him front and center. It was a mentality of show up, get the A, and then go home and “be my true authentic self with the people I had real relationships with, like my core friends and family,” he shared. This mentality followed him into high-school, where he was an avid hockey player who was also grappling with the fear of acknowledging his identity as a gay man. “Even what my peers were thinking was hindering my performance, it was restricting me from being my best – whether it was in the rink itself or even outside in social settings.” Covering still meant being more timid, trying to blend in, rather than playing a leadership role. Internal questions plagued those years – “Do they know who I am? Do they know my true identity? Are they going to uncover what is going to be this big scandal or will my parents find out? It was all running through my mind,” Dev recounted. 

Later in life, Dev reflected on those experiences, thinking, “I have wasted so much time [covering], when I could have focused on my professional development, on health habits, on living my best life.

In every stage of my upbringing, 50% of my day was consumed by emotions and thoughts of worry and anxiety, not knowing how to navigate, and what my next turn would be.” 

Traumatic events were also part of that journey. A bully during art class who physically assaulted him, forcing Dev to seek medical treatment for injuries. “It was really scary,” he said. “It has never left me.” That experience, and another where a student with mental health issues was planning to bring a gun to school and whose digital diary included a target list of students he planned to shoot. Dev’s name was on the list – based on the assumption that he was gay. That time was both scary and comforting. “As a result, that document had a lot of visibility,” he shared. “My name was associated with a word (gay), and I’ll never forget my parents sitting me down and having a very comfortable, but honest conversation with me. I still covered; I still wasn’t comfortable. That was a moment where two things happened. I was immediately scared, but I was also relieved. It [people’s responses] was a turning point, maybe the world isn’t as scary, negative, toxic, and abusive as I was afraid it was.” 

College provided the space for Dev to begin coming into his own, a place where he could begin uncovering his identity as a gay man. “I drummed up the courage and pledged a fraternity,” he said. “I was selected and went through the whole process. It was surprising how open and supportive the ‘brothers’ were. But, I still didn’t come out until my sophomore year. I had a distinct fear from years and years of hiding and covering, not being comfortable with who I was. It really held me back. But I met someone, for the first time in my life. I was over 21 years old when I had my first date and experienced my first connection” Before then, Dev had gotten to observe other people living life, enjoying their first romantic crushes, coming into their own. “It was really a turning point for me,” he said smiling. “This individual was more experienced, more open and very out themselves, it really inspired me. I came out to my family over the holidays that year, and it was a really beautiful moment.” 

For many of us, college is the time where you really get to start exploring who you are. That was the case for Dev. “My junior year of college is when I started truly uncovering,” he said.

“I was proud, I was out, and really felt like a weight had been lifted… I felt alive, like I had so much life to live and I didn’t want to squander it.” 

But like I’ve shared in previous pieces, covering isn’t usually a one-and-done scenario. It’s something that can take a lifetime to undo, to unlearn, to process through and overcome. And, sometimes we uncover in stages. “It’s like a brick wall, it’s so difficult to climb over and push through. And when finally, you’re able to remove those bricks and walk openly, there is nothing like it,” said Dev. “The minute I was able to come out to my parents, my mother and father looked at me and said, ‘We love you, we’re always going to love you, we are going to support you. We want you to be happy. We know this is who you are, you were born this way. You are exactly the person you were meant to be,’” Dev shared. “We just want to make sure you are happy, healthy, and safe, that’s it.” 

While he was uncovering in his personal life, he was still covering in his professional life. “I worked in a very male-dominated industry (B2B tech),” he shared. “That was a space, especially 10-15 years ago, that was incredibly overpopulated with white cis males that were at all stages of leadership, they were calling the shots and setting the cultural tone for the organizations where I worked.” 

What he can now trace, is a through-line from the hockey team bro culture to the boys club of those organizations. “If you didn’t cooperate and contribute at the water cooler, you were not part of the inner circle,” he said. “As a result, you’d be sacrificing career opportunities, raises, and elevation through new projects. Those things didn’t happen unless you had strong camaraderie, and I would say I 100% got good at mimicking those behaviors. For a portion of my professional career I lost who I was. I felt like when I walked into work I would be one person, and the minute I would leave I’d have a sigh of relief.

I said, ‘I want to work in a place where I can be my authentic self and have a picture on my desk of the person that I love the most in my life.’” 

Covering also included his mannerisms and vocal tone. “I associated that volume and pitch with being more masculine,” he said, describing how he tried to deepen his voice during certain conversations. It reminded me of the recent conversation I’d had about my own experience growing up, and being called “ma’am” on the phone over and over, because people thought I was my mother. That was something that meant that for years, I attempted to speak with a deeper voice – which often meant sounding very monotone. It limited the emotion I demonstrated when I talked and my familiarity with what my vocals can do. A process I’m working to undo to this day.

Dev’s reflections hit on something many of us long for and need - psychological safety. And, after being with the company for a while, Dev started to slowly uncover. “I was more present in meetings, more vocal in presentations - my mannerisms and vocal tone,” he said. “That original company had a workhorse culture, it was 365 days 24/7. As a byproduct of that, emotions were not something celebrated or acknowledged at work.” Thankfully, over the past decade or so, there have been movements across our nation to shift some of that, to recognize and celebrate the human. To see people’s intersectional identities, health and wellbeing, and humanity beyond just someone’s function at a job. 

“A lot of outside macro circumstances have really contributed to helping me find the strength within myself to say, ‘I am exhausted trying to play different parts. I’m exhausted having to act, versus focusing on being happy, on my profession, on growth, and just being who I am,” Dev shared. “If I want to move my hand a certain way or participate in a certain way, I shouldn’t have to think three steps ahead or strategically with a game plan.” 

Those skills, learned from covering, from trying to fit into a mindset and mode of operating that was in conflict with who he was, gave him skills that make him great at his job. “I can scenario plan and forecast and think about different situations and outcomes better than anyone I know,” he said. “So, I’ve gotten a lot of training on that, I wish it wasn’t as the result of covering who I was.” 

Some of those macro influences that supported Dev’s uncovering journeys included news and social media. “I started to see imagery and storylines and to identify with the people I was watching in movies and on television,” he recounted. “That was something that really helped me and made me feel comfortable to start uncovering because I wasn’t alone. Because I didn’t feel like I was the only person that lives in this town or state that is going through this.” 

Having that type of lived experience modeled also became really important at work. “I’ve been very fortunate to have some really empathetic and supportive managers,” Dev said. “Their goal was not to focus only on work, but they understood the importance and need for investing in and supporting the human who was on their team. For me, it was groundbreaking, because every single interaction was slowly rebuilding my confidence in a way that I never felt before.” 

All of these experiences and their impact on Dev became visible to him one morning in his late 20s or early 30s. “There was a part of me that finally achieved self-love when I woke up one day, and it was like a weekend moment, and I'll never forget it,” he recounted. “The sun was shining into my bedroom on my bedspread. I was really living the life that I always dreamed of and never thought could happen. I was dating someone and having a really quality, healthy relationship for the first time. And it was just so eye opening. I just remember like, basking in that moment, waking up on a Saturday morning, and just saying, life is beautiful. Life is amazing. Look how far you've come. It was almost my own TED talk - my own moment of realization. And ever since that moment, which I've never forgotten, I've never looked back.”

Dev described how that moment continued as he walked down the street in Boston. “I saw someone wearing a t-shirt, and I read what was on it, and I almost felt like it was a sign from God,” he said. “It said, ‘You deserve to be loved, without having to hide parts of yourself that you think are unlovable.’ And I never forgot that. It was a turning point for me where I was like, ‘oh my god, I was meant to read that shirt.’ A light bulb went off in my head. And again, with my self-love, accepting myself for all the parts of me - good, bad, whatever. It was a really big milestone in addition to those mentors.”

That intersection of seeing the human in himself, and each of us and having strong mentors who created teams with psychological safety all impacted his leadership today at Vimeo. “Servant leadership is a practice that I’ve always adopted,” Dev said, after I asked how he approaches creating inclusive cultures, especially while building and leading a team. “From my point of view, I work for my team, not the other way around. We spend more time with the people that we work with than sometimes our significant others or our family, so I look at it like another community in my life. A subset of people who I care about, celebrate and support.” 

One way he does that is by asking the same set of 15 questions to everyone he’s in business with. “It really helps me know people on a human level first, before we dive into any project for work,” he said. “I want to understand who they are, where they come from, what makes them tick.” His questions range from more work-related questions like, Are you an early bid or a night owl? to What is the most important thing I can help you with outside of work? “I really like to tailor my working practices individually to everyone,” Dev shared. “The style, cadence and communication I might provide to one person, I do something completely different for another because that’s what they need.” This includes understanding how people like to receive feedback.

“Meeting people where they are is really important to me,” he notes. 

With the deluge of information always coming at us like a firehose with no off valve, and the pressures at work to accomplish our ever-growing To-Do list, Dev uses his 3-1-1 rule to stay grounded and accountable to himself. “I write down three things everyday that I’ll do, so that I’m setting accurate expectations and holding myself accountable,” he said, outlining the three actions. “I do one that each day that brings me self-joy or self-love. So, that could be going for a walk, listening to my favorite album, going to the gym, etc. Second is having a conversation with a friend – calling a loved one and catching up. And finally, I do one that each day that brings someone else joy, a different person each day – so that I’ve impacted 365 lives every single year.” 

As the Head of Global Events at Vimeo, I was interested in hearing Dev’s take on how the platform can support uncovering. What it enables users to do that let’s them tell their story, and have agency when it comes to how they use video to engage with the world. “I think so many people are afraid to record and make a video because it's intimidating,” he shared. They may be asking themselves,“How do I use the tools? How do I edit? What if I make a mistake? Whatever the circumstance or use case might be, our platform is so easy to use, where you can drag and drop. And it's very intuitive based on other core technologies, like your cell phone that you use.” He added, “everyone should leverage the power of video to amplify something they are really passionate about, because you never know who will be on the receiving end of that message and what that level of impact can be on someone else who needs it.

Ultimately, video has the power to make you think differently and open up your eyes to something that you might not have been exposed to.” 

As we closeout Pride month, I hope you’ll consider Dev’s story as you think about how to support LGBTQ+ people of all ages (with a special focus on today’s kids and young people) and whose intersectional identities may mean they need your support now more than ever. Think about how you can use your voice and your platform to combat the hate and anti-LGBTQ+ and specifically anti-trans legislation that is sweeping our nation. And, use your influence and your human connections to help create a world where covering isn’t the payment we make for safety and acceptance, when so many of us want to be loved and celebrated for who we are.  

Disability Empathy and Access featuring Lori Frisher

Today on the show, guest host Josh Miller of Josh Miller Ventures and IDEAS xLab talks to Lori Frisher as part of his Uncovering Your Value series.

Frisher is a leader, an advocate, an entrepreneur, an athlete, a two-time cancer survivor, and a public speaker who dares to dream beyond her present circumstances to discover what is possible. She was born with severe hearing loss and relies on two cochlear implants and lip-reading to communicate. Through her company Ready or Not Media!, Lori offerings immersive disability empathy trainings, keynotes and more.

In this episode, Miller and Frisher discuss:

• How navigating the world with an invisible disability can lead to covering,

• Disability empathy and the importance of listening to and learning from people’s stories and experiences, 

• The role experiential learning and immersive workshops play in expanding people’s understanding about accessibility,

• Working to make physical workplaces more accessible while recognizing the role that remote and hybrid jobs play in expanding access to employment for people with disabilities.

If you are interested in learning more about the topic of covering, delving into Miller’s Uncovering Your Value newsletter or getting in touch to share your story or about public speaking, visit www.joshmiller.ventures or connect with him on LinkedIn!

Click here to listen to the episode.

Quotes from the conversation have been condensed.

On covering her disability.

Fisher: For me, covering has been a big piece of who I am, and watching myself unfold from my childhood years, to my teenage years, to my adult years, and now, as a business leader, and the work I'm doing. I've masked my disability and disguised it in ways that, you know, I just had to deal with it. I didn't want to have to explain to people, my differences, even though some may have picked up on it, just from knowing that I'm sitting in front of a room and need to be in front of the teacher. I was always missing out by covering. It wasn't helping, it was hurting, deep down in my soul that I wasn't sharing as much as I probably should have. But I was also putting myself in a position where I over compensated for my disability for a very long period of time. And, you know, I just felt that there wasn't enough awareness or empathy around me, the only empathy and awareness around me was my family, or my teachers, and you know, kids can be cruel - you are always trying to hide it, whether it was hiding my hearing aids and not wanting people to see my hearing aids and not wearing my hair up. Those are examples of how I was, you know, hiding it, you know, growing up.

Building empathy through immersive workshops.

Frisher: [Through Read or Not! Media] we create that experience and that feeling with leaders to come into the immersion and to be really open minded. Each of these individuals are given a disability - a mobility impairment, a visual impairment, hearing impairment - to live in that moment, for that hour and a half, that 90-minutes of understanding. They may not get the full scope of disability, but it will definitely heighten their experience of going from that uncomfortable feeling to more comfortable and being more considerate and more compassionate. Understanding to not only just disability, but people of all differences, bring that perspective of saying, 'Wow, it really is crossing over so many different areas of discrimination.' And, in that work environment, you know, that it becomes relatable to someone who may have a difference. We educate them on the fact that this is a market that people can join at any given time and their life. I mean, it's the only demographic that pretty much speaks to all different audiences, and everybody is impacted by disability, whether it's their aging parent they are taking care of, or, you know, someone has an accident, or somebody who comes into a hotel, may come in from the outside and be coming from a skiing trip, and they had an accident. I mean, it could be a permanent disability, it could be an invisible disability, and we we try to show and share through the storytelling experiences... I think stories are powerful. And we show that there's success beyond disability, that we just don't focus on the stereotypes that we see in the media.

Making environments – both in-person and remote – inclusive.

Fisher: And your point, Josh, about remote work, there were a lot of people who were being hired and doing their jobs, and doing their jobs really well outside of the offices. Leaders didn't even know that they had a difference, or a disability. And the work doesn't stop just because people were getting the remote access, it doesn't mean that we stop in the work environments where we're going to get people back to the offices and work and people are going to be in each other's presence. And it's still very important that these leaders don't just assume because someone has worked remote, it's been successful. We still have a job to do and bring them in the office and create an inclusive and diverse environment where people will feel comfortable coming into work, but it's also how do we get to work, we need transportation, we need access to get up there without that we can't go to the office. In all industries that we need to lead with accessibility and access and universal design and create this environment that's inclusive of all.

Standing in our “No” featuring Marija Abney - Inclusion Catalyst Podcast

Today on the show, guest host Josh Miller of Josh Miller Ventures and IDEAS xLab talks to Marija Abney as part of his Uncovering Your Value series. Abney is a community organizer, the arts curator at The Soapbox Presents, a Broadway performer and actress having starred in movies including both Black Panther films and Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame. Learn more about her work at The Soapbox presents here.

Covering: downplaying, hiding or filtering parts of ourselves at work, with different social groups, at school and with family.

In this episode, Miller and Abney discuss:

• The ways we are encouraged to code-switch or cover from a young age,

• The role of imagining and creating change for future generations,

• The importance of accomplices and collaborators in the workplace, and

• Standing in our “No” by putting in place boundaries that embody our values.

If you are interested in learning more about the topic of covering, delving into Miller’s Uncovering Your Value newsletter or getting in touch to share your story or about public speaking, visit www.joshmiller.ventures or connect with him on LinkedIn!

Click here to listen to the episode.

Quotes from the conversation have been condensed.

On the process of uncovering.

Abney: "I actively work in my personal life - outside of being an artist, outside of being a producer - to uncover, to be myself in my fullness as a Black woman as I navigate the world. To know what that is and to better understand what that is. I think it's something that will always be active. For me, it's something that will always be a process of uncovering. And I look forward to the me that is tomorrow, the me that will be five years from now, me that will be 10 years from now and my understanding - that person's understanding - of womanhood and Blackness, which I know is going to be different than this person's understanding of womanhood and Blackness. It's always a process, and I am excited by the process."

About her work through The Soapbox Presents.

Abney: "In Harlem, I love what I do for community because it works against all of that. It celebrates Black people and all that we have done and the brilliance of all that we have done, and our cultural contribution contributions not just to American culture, but to global culture... I love that I'm able to take to the streets and celebrate, that I'm able to show little brown girls and little brown boys what we look like in all of our forms, and to celebrate the brilliance that that is. One of my favorite images of us activating on the street is, you know, we work with this incredible bassist, her name is India Owens, for little kids to engage with and see this beautiful Black woman on this bass, on an upright bass killing it. And to see this for the first time. That to me is magical. And then the impact of that, the ripple of that is huge... So I'm very thankful for what I do in the community."

Whose imagination are you working in?

Abney: "I think that's a very interesting question... I think for me, it's dual. I have to simultaneously realize the reality that we are in, and for me, that is also recognizing what happens if I don't act, which is living in somebody else's imagination. If I don't participate in building something new, something different, if I don't execute what's in my imagination, then I'm allowing somebody else's imagination to become the reality. That - to me - is a very dangerous situation. I am unwilling to be a non-active participant in my own future. I'm unwilling to be a non-active participant in my nieces future, and in the future of any prospective children that I may have, or you may have. That's too much of a risk. For me, it's very important for me in all aspects of my career to actively participate by building if you want to see something changed, do it, change it, participate in changing it."

Inclusion Catalyst Podcast Episode 1 by Josh Miller

Covering at Work and Uncovering Your Value is the first episode in a multi-part series I've created for the Inclusion Catalyst podcast.

Below is a condensed summary of the episode.

Click here to listen to the full episode or download it wherever you get your podcasts.

Episode 1:

Today, we're going to delve into the topic of covering through my personal story and interviews I've conducted over the past few years. What I want you to leave with is an understanding of what covering is, its impact and how it can trigger coping strategies and even lead to burnout. I want you to see how these elements intersected with COVID-19 and the socio political environment over the past few years touching every person. And, to consider the opportunity we have now to imagine new ways of working, and how we can impact people's sense of belonging and develop meaningful, trusting cultures for the future of work.

When I was in my early 20s. my now husband Theo and I started a nonprofit IDEAS xLab in Louisville, Kentucky. I started wearing makeup my senior year of high school and wear a mix of men's and women's clothing. For years, I looked in the mirror and saw a beautiful man. But I didn't think that man could step into the workplace and be respected and taken seriously the way he wanted to present. There was a fear that being too gay might limit our funding options, might limit who would partner with us, maybe even what communities engaged with us. There was an internal message of ‘tone it down, that isn't professional.’ So instead of platform shoes in a tunic, I'd wear a blazer and wingtips. Instead of eyeshadow and earrings small flourishes like a custom bow tie at the beginning.

You don't necessarily notice the toll it takes when you cover - when you downplay, hide, or filter parts of yourself at work, with different social groups, at school, or with family.

But over time, the evidence becomes visible. A few years in and I could feel the impact covering was having on me. Mentally, I was depleted and I wasn't enjoying our work like I could because it wasn't me doing the work. It was a watered down and assimilated version of myself. My creativity, my leadership, and even my health were all being impacted. Coping mechanisms, including drinking large quantities of alcohol had gotten a firm hold in my life.

I can remember a day when I took a mental inventory, asking why I wasn't feeling fulfilled. Why I felt so depleted. I didn't have the words for it at the time, but covering was the primary culprit. The question was, ‘Was it worth it?’ And, it's a privilege to lead an organization and to decide overnight to start presenting differently. I started slowly switching in scarves for ties and remembering the joy I felt expressing myself through makeup. One thing I'd always wanted to do was grow my hair out, and I hadn't because I knew it would further contribute to me being misgendered - called ma'am instead of sir. But I took that step too. And I could talk for days about how often I get misgendered - from airports to bathrooms and restaurants. But we'll save that for another time.

For the past few years, I've been showing up as a far more authentic version of myself. And it's one of those things that will continue to evolve over time, the more I'm able to rewrite outdated mental models about what it means to be a man and what it means to be a professional. My colleague at IDEAS xLab, Hannah Drake says in one of her poems that, “Someone is waiting for you to be all that you can be, so that they can be all that they were destined to be.” And those words always stick with me. That's part of my why - the possibility of what can be unleashed within ourselves and with others.

I was introduced to the concept of covering through Deloitte’s Uncovering Talent report, where more than 3000 corporate professionals were surveyed. I'd heard of code switching - most often used to describe how people adjust the way they talk or how they present with one group versus another to make people feel comfortable. And the concept of covering was even broader, and that's what the report delved into.

Through Deloitte’s report, work by UCLA Williams Institute and others, along with the interviews and work I've done over the past few years.

I've heard examples from straight White men, Black and women of color, LGBTQ+ folks, people with disabilities, and more who have all covered. It could be changing how you dress or style your hair, intentionally not mentioning a same sex partner, a disability, your age, that you grew up in poverty, a divorce.

Those are a few examples. Covering is something that touches every group in one way or another, and the implications for that are huge. So why do we cover? Safety and self-protection could be one reason, the fear of being fired, or not getting a promotion, cultural norms of the groups we are a part of, limiting mental models and stereotypes about specific groups or types of people or identities.

For me, it was a mix of cultural norms about being a professional in Kentucky. It was limited mental models about what it looks like to be a man. And it was fear - not of being fired - but of people being unwilling to work with us and value our contributions and expertise. Over the years, there was an external message and internal ones too - all encouraging me to downplay or hide parts of who I was, in one way or another. In early 2020, a month before the pandemic disrupted life as we knew it, I did a live stream series of interviews called Uncovering. Once COVID-19 struck, the conversation went virtual.

I'm going to share a few excerpts from those conversations where my guests talked about the different ways covering presented for them in different parts of their lives. [Quotes have been condensed for the written summary]

First up is Erik Eaker, formerly with Humana and now with Let's Get Checked, who talked about how covering presented for him as a gay man in the corporate environment.

Erik: When I first got into the corporate sector, over 20 years ago, I wasn't out at work. I had the behaviors that I learned over time around trying to be as conservative as possible. Trying to fit in - not talking about things that were really personal to me, not talking about relationships that I had. And even doing things behaviorally like lowering my voice and being really careful about the way I walk and talk. It's really debilitating. As I entered the corporate sector, thinking that I had to cover or hide something about myself that was my true self. Those behaviors over time become who you are. But I think there's still a level of discomfort with that, because you still feel like there's something going on.

When I joined Humana19 years ago, I was luckily out to the person who brought me into the company. And he put me on the stage immediately as being a gay male. I was introduced to the Diversity Committee and then started serving in an Inclusion & Diversity capacity for the company representing LGBTQ+. And that really helped me start to shed some of those behaviors and coverings that I developed over time. But they still show up from time to time. And I think one of the latest coverings that I'm conscious of and still have not shed is that one around being legitimate through marriage. And so as I've learned, over the past few weeks, I've been thinking deeply about this wearing a wedding band. Sometimes I put it on in certain instances, because I feel like that will make me more accepted that I am a legitimate member of this society because I can get married and I can wear a band.

Kristina Newman-Scott joined me for a virtual conversation during the early days of the pandemic, while working at home with her family. Kristina was leading BRIC in Brooklyn at the time, and now leads The Greene Space in New York City and talked about her experience with covering, especially coming from another country and another culture.

Kristina: There was a shift when I moved from Jamaica to the United States. In my experiences the idea of professionalism is very much this construct that you aren't professional if you don't behave a certain way, speak a certain way, look a certain way - you don't kind of assimilate to the kind of power structures and dynamics that are at play when they think of something like professionalism…

It was harder for me when I moved to America, especially as a woman of color. I felt more like I couldn't be my complete and authentic self because I was striving to be accepted, you know what I mean.

Well, I'll give an example of when I moved to the States. It was interesting when I was in meetings, and I've always worked in the arts, right? And I think one of the things that I noticed as I continued to grow in my career was that when I wore my hair curly, the reception that I received from the people or the meetings that I went to, was a completely different one than when my hair was straight. My mother is Southeast Asian, she was born in Jamaica, but she's Southeast Asian. And when my hair is straight, I read much more Southeast Asian than Black. When my hair is curly, much more Black. Right? So it's been interesting for me to just take notice of that, and I have to say that, I'm definitely guilty of strategically blow drying my hair, for certain meetings.

Jason Jones, disability specialist with University of Kentucky's Human Development Institute, talked about his experience with covering.

Jason: It was something that has sort of ebb and flowed over the years. I know, early on, I didn't want anybody to think of me as different. So I would not associate with any other people that had disabilities. I remember, I lived in Somerset, and there was a group on there that had a lot of people with intellectual disabilities. And you know, we would go to the movie theater, and they would have a bunch of people there. And I didn't want to be associated with that, I didn't want people to think just because I was in a wheelchair, that I had an intellectual disability, and that's a horrible thing for me to think now. You gotta remember that I was 15 when I got hurt. So you know, I was still dealing with a lot of those rites of passage, and, kind of trying to figure out who you are, and all that kind of stuff. So, it was a little different. But you know, over the years, I have really come to super appreciate having those outlets to talk to other people that are going through the same thing you're going through.

 I don't spend much of my day every day thinking about disability, I think about what we can do what I need to do with my, you know, I have a wife and two, two sons, and you know, we try to live life like everybody else. But I think a lot of the ways that people, especially when you have an obvious disability like me, I mean, I'm not gonna hide my disability. But there are a lot of aspects of my disability I can hide, you know, I think that affected me in dating a lot of time. I didn't want to let somebody get too close to know how difficult life can be, because I was afraid that would scare them away. And then sometimes when they would get too close, I would maybe even push them away, because I couldn't imagine them having to deal with all the things that I have to deal with on a daily basis. So depending on when you would have asked me if you'd asked me the same question about covering, 10 years ago might have been a little different today and I don't know if it's an adjustment thing or a maturity thing or what it is? But now I don't tend to cover as much.

One of my most recent conversations was with Senator Cynthia Mendes's for my Uncovering Your Value newsletter, she talks about how covering was present in her life and how it impacted relationships and those she serves with in the Senate.

Like I said, I was lucky enough to not get an office alone. I went in with a lot of amazing people and found over the time that we all covered and protected ourselves in our own way that cause disconnection among us, even though we knew and said that the thing that was keeping us going, and the thing that kept us safe, was our connection. And yet, I think we all - because of the stress of it - and of being in that environment and having to cover in different ways that caused isolation. And in moments of vulnerability, almost every single person that I have been in politics with, over the past few years that I've had relationships with expressed a level of burnout, isolation, depression, anxiety, in ways that we have not experienced before.

And I heard a phrase this week that really captured what the through line was. Someone mentioned asking people to bring themselves into compromised spaces. And we are in one of the most compromising spaces - that was not built for us, was not designed for us to be there. The way that we present in the world, the way that we conduct ourselves in the world… knowing that they're going through their own thing, but also not knowing where they are anymore. So not only losing ourselves but losing our sense of where each other are. And knowing that other people are stressed out, and you can't get to them because they're protecting themselves as well.

Just like their stories demonstrate, covering presents in many ways and can impact each of us differently.

It makes me wonder, have you ever covered? Have you downplayed, hidden or filtered parts of yourself at work? Maybe with different social groups, at school or with your family.

Can you think of examples of how covering is present in your life now, and how it's impacted you?

Like you may have noticed through those examples in my story, when you're covering for whatever reason, it's another form of mental work. It's a constraint on your capacity, and there's a cost. Covering can impact everything from innovation to productivity and ethical decision making. It can change how you lead and impact the health of your workforce. 

Click here to listen to the full episode including more on how covering can impact coping and burnout.

I hope you'll join me in creating an uncovering movement to shift what it means to be a professional in your workplace, and a human living authentically.

If you're interested in learning more about the topic of covering, delving into my Uncovering Your Value newsletter or getting in touch to share your story or about public speaking, visit joshmiller.ventures or connect with me - Josh Miller - on LinkedIn.

You can find more episodes of the Inclusion Catalyst podcast across platforms and by visiting inclusioncatalyst.com

I can't wait to see where this journey takes you and hope these conversations inspire you to take bold steps to explore new frontiers, and to create a more inclusive world through action.

The argument against “authentic self” is a scare tactic, grounded in fear of the unknown.

The way professionalism has been defined and how many, if not most, corporate and governmental cultures and systems we operate within were designed are grounded in racism, homophobia, ableism, and other isms. They were imagined by people with a specific view of the world and created for them, and those who look like and move through the world like them, believing what they believe and valuing what they value.  

The argument that embracing an uncovering movement or using words championed in recent years – to show up authentically – will give people license to bring hatred and bigotry into the space are scare tactics. They are used to permit inaction and are often grounded in fear of the unknown and fear of change. When in reality, those mindsets people are worried about are often what shaped the written and unwritten rules and norms of spaces as they exist today.

They are already there and already inflicting harm. Covering - downplaying, hiding, or filtering parts of ourselves and our identities - was for all of the people who fell outside what was imagined; the Black and people of color, the LGBTQ+ community, the disabled, the elderly, the women, those who grew up in poverty, speak English as a second language, and more. The way it manifests has evolved over time, yet, the negative impact is felt nonetheless. 

It's important to name that championing uncovering in the workplace does not mean allowing people to be insensitive or hurtful to others. Nor is it about treating your colleagues like your therapist and sharing every detail of your personal life. It is about changing cultural norms that perpetuate bias and inequity to actively create an environment where people don't have to hide the parts of themselves that could help bring solutions into the world, improve their health, and strengthen their connection to the work they do every day.  

There may be discomfort as the culture shifts and colleagues meet new parts of their co-workers – something which is unavoidable. Right now, comfort is given to the designers of corporate cultures and governing systems while inflicting ongoing harm on those who feel they must cover to survive. The ramifications of covering are clear. I’ve spoken with corporate leaders and politicians, nonprofit executives, and employees on the frontlines, and covering made people feel isolated, stressed, burned out, depressed, and anxious. One leader talked about how covering stifles imagination.

There is a reason 97% of Black knowledge workers want to keep remote or hybrid work options as we look at the future of work in 2023 and beyond. In part because they feel they cover or code-switch less when not working in the office five days a week.

And from a cost perspective, it is estimated that employee burnout generates a 34% loss in annual salary for a company. joshasdfafasdfasdfas

I equate generating this type of culture shift and embracing uncovering to hiking up a mountain in Colorado. When I first moved here, I had to acclimate to the altitude, build up endurance before tackling higher peaks, and do research about equipment and trails. It was challenging and uncomfortable, and there was fear in what I couldn’t predict or didn’t know - storms, hydration, altitude sickness, what equipment to bring, and getting lost. But it was working through the discomfort and building up those muscles that let me summit 14ers to experience the world from that vantage point. It is awe-inspiring and beautiful from that height.

Similarly, having this new lens through which to see our colleagues can enhance our work. We won’t agree on everything, but we can develop a new understanding of who people are and where they come from. 

Want to bring people back into the office more while increasing productivity and their sense of belonging? Want to decrease the prevalence of burnout? Consider how supporting an uncovering movement focused on effective communication, openness to experiences, and management across domains of life can play a role– recognizing that change and new ways of working will impact individuals, teams, and the company at large. 

So, the next time you argue against uncovering or being your authentic self because a few people may bring hatred and bigotry into the space, please think again. Remember that you’re advocating for the status quo and inaction. Those mindsets shaped the places we are in now, and protect a specific set of people (often White, straight, abled people) while alienating the rest, reinforcing power dynamics that cause harm while undermining the potential of the workforce to innovate and hurting the company’s ROI in the process.

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Further reading - exploring the question of meeting people where they are, uncovering in the workplace, and questioning who should carry the burden of discomfort. 

When it comes to the question of who carries the burden, should it fall on the shoulders of the person sacrificing their Blackness (like in Sovereign’s example from my Uncovering Your Value newsletter) or covering their queerness to be accepted by the “dominant culture” or should the burden fall on the dominant culture who may need to feel “uncomfortable” (unfamiliar, uncertain) as they expand their understanding through education and challenging old assumptions?

How this manifests for me: I present as a very androgynous (skewing feminine) queer man and 98% of strangers I meet think I am a woman. People question me everywhere I go - restrooms, airports, restaurants. They physically stand in my way, saying things like, “I don’t know what the f*ck you are,” passing judgment, and making assumptions because of my appearance.

“Meeting people where they are” for me is showing up as my uncovered queer self while doing my best to recognize that people make quick decisions based on outdated mental models, not out of hate. It means continuously educating people - even if I didn’t come into those spaces to be an educator but just to be, and knowing the discomfort generated now paves the way for future generations to step into these spaces (ideally) without having to cover. 

Jonathan Salazar on covering his Latino heritage and embracing his culture

“I did not have familiarity with the term covering,” said Jonathan Salazar during our recent conversation. “But I began to understand that it's something that probably a lot of us experience in many different shapes and forms, including myself.” 

Having met Jonathan in the summer of 2007, when we worked together at Rocky’s on the River in southern Indiana, I knew facets of his story. Since our days at the restaurant, he’s held global positions at Brown-Forman, led a brand-advertising firm, and now oversees integrated marketing and analytics at INXEPTION. I appreciated the opportunity to learn about his experience as a Latino man who moved to the U.S. in 1996 and to better understand how he approaches leadership and inclusion in the workplace, raising kids, and uncovering as part of his journey. 

Jonathan shared, “I have done certain things where I was covering my true self. You know, I'm from Mexico originally. I moved here when I was nine years old. And for me, covering - historically - has really been about that aspect of myself. Being Latino, being Mexican.”

He described his first year at school after moving to America. “When I started elementary school [4th grade], there was no Spanish speaking teachers, staff – nothing,” Jonathan said. “I remember my first day of school. I got lost because I couldn't find my classroom. And I couldn't ask anybody for help, because I didn't speak English, and nobody spoke Spanish. I just went from classroom to classroom. And, back then they had the rosters posted right next to the classroom doors. Eventually, I found my brother's name on one of the rosters because my brother was a year older than me in school. And I was just like, ‘I'm just gonna go in here because I don't know where to go.’ So I went in there, and my brother wasn't in there. I knew he was probably lost too.”

“I tell you that story because the school’s solution for us not speaking the language was to assign us an English tutor that didn't speak Spanish,” he said. “So for the first year of my schooling experience here in the U.S., I really couldn't communicate with anybody at school.” He said the experience at school and with their tutor was a “sink or swim”  scenario. And, “it kind of triggered something in my head where it's like, I want to be American. You know, I want to be White like everybody else. Throughout my life, there are experiences where I really kind of shoved down or covered the fact that I was Latino.” 

By looking at Jonathan, you wouldn’t necessarily assume he’s from Mexico. “I hear all the time, you don't look Mexican, you don't sound Mexican. And there was a point in my life where that actually kind of made me, I don't wanna say ‘proud’ but, like I accomplished it [being White]. And it wasn't till I started getting older when I realized, that's not me. I am from Mexico, I have Mexican roots. And, I need to live that truth.” 

Jonathan described how affiliation-based covering also took place when engaging with other Mexican students. “I remember one time I was in high school and we were at a soccer game. I was in the stands, and there was a group of Mexican students, and they started singing a traditional Mexican soccer song,” he explained. “I felt kind of, not embarrassed, but I knew the song and I didn't want to sing it. I didn’t want people to think that I was like those students. Looking back at it, covering had a negative impact.” 

Since then, his understanding of self and his journey helped him see the value in his Mexican roots and culture. “I'm 35 now, and I'm still discovering who I am. But I have a better sense of what's important to me, and not hiding those aspects of my life or caring that somebody is going to think of me differently, ” Jonathan shared.

It’s these types of evolutions of self I appreciate hearing about. How we can, throughout our lives, reorient ourselves to different facets of our culture and past, seeing new value and our deep connection to it. For Jonathan, this included being able to facilitate an invitation to his colleagues to celebrate his Hispanic culture with him, something he was “really proud of.” It made me wonder how this new relationship to his heritage enhanced or impacted his interpersonal relationships with colleagues and sense of belonging within the companies he’s worked for. 

He said, “I think that the culture of the organization has a significant impact on your sense of belonging, right? I think that if the culture is such that bringing your true self to work is not only encouraged, but it's admired, then I think that's going to be reflective when you actually do bring your true self to work out, that's going to be received.” Jonathan went on to share, “I've had the fortune of working at organizations where the culture was very encouraging and very accepting of all employees bringing their true self to work. So once I did that, you know, once I was able to showcase that … I think that really did enhance the relationships.”

We went on to discuss the critical role leadership plays in setting the tone and expectation regarding celebration of culture and creating an inclusive environment. “When I was there, I think that really kind of helped me understand how Brown-Forman does an exceptional job of creating an environment for all employees to feel safe in bringing their true selves to work. I really do believe that,” he said. “Because I was at Brown-Forman for so long, I think that also kind of served as a way for me to understand how it should be, right?, like how an organization should make you feel. It's okay to be who you are here at work because not only are you going to be accepted, you're going to be celebrated. And you're also here because you do a great job. So when I took on more leadership roles in the other organizations, I made sure that that was true. And I made sure that it was known, and that people were aware of my approach, and the way that the culture that I was bringing with myself was exactly that, right? Like, to me, you feeling safe enough and vulnerable enough to be your true self at work is success in the culture, right? That's really what we're striving for. So doing things like implementing certain things about restrictive dress codes, or addressing different holidays, or why people can take time off, I think those are all elements for ensuring that the areas where people can feel safe and being themselves are being addressed.”

Jonathan evaluates a company’s practices and existing culture before entering it. This includes using the interview process to understand the current climate. During interviews, he said he asks about “things that you normally wouldn't particularly think to ask an interviewer like, ‘Tell me about your diversity, inclusion, and equity initiatives. Tell me about how you're helping the community. Tell me about what leadership thinks about what's happening in our political and economic ecosystem.’ I began to ask and I wasn't ashamed to ask those questions, because those are things that are important to me. Those are things that when I think of an organization, I want to make sure that I'm working for an organization that may not necessarily be fully aligned with everything I believe in, but that I feel proud to say I work for.” 

As advocacy continues for uncovering and culture where people can be their true selves, it raises questions about what that tangibly means. Jonathan offered an example of how people’s self-expression has evolved over the past few decades.

“Twenty years ago, you were in an office, and you had a tattoo, like, you better cover that up. Now it's like, no, you can still be a VP of Marketing and be covered in tattoos, and that doesn't exclude or disqualify you from doing what you need to do.”

His examples and experiences at work made me wonder how Jonathan brings his approach to inclusion home, working with his wife and engaging with his kids to create an environment of cultural pride. “I have a nine-year-old and a five-year-old, and I think for them, it is similar to how I approach the culture at work. I'm really just allowing them to feel safe to be who they are, right? And if they're starting to express interest in something, not to suppress it or to shut it down – to let them be curious in exploring something or understanding new things,” he said. 

As we talked about his family and that mindset of safety, our conversation came full circle. “I think the effects of covering, for me, wanting to be non-Mexican for so long made it so I was kind of stuck in-between worlds,” Jonathan shared. “When I'm with Mexican friends, they hear me speaking Spanish and they know that I speak Spanish with an American accent. Right? Even though I'm fully 100% Mexican. And then when I'm with my American friends and they hear me speak in Spanish, they're like, ‘Oh, you speak Spanish really well, like you're a native speaker.’ So my Latino friends see me as this American that’s part Mexican, part Latino, and then my American friends see me as like, well, he's Mexican.”

He continued, “I think that's a result of me just believing the cover so much. It has made certain tough situations for me, feeling like I don't really belong in either group, right? The group that I was trying to belong in at first and the group that I'm now proud to be part of. When I was at Brown-Forman, we had an Employee Resource Group (ERG), and we did a series of ‘real talks’ and I talked about this experience, and I got a lot of positive feedback from different Latinos, including people that have young kids that are growing up here in the U.S. Because that's a reality, right? I'm dealing with the impact of trying to belong in this group so much. And then I was like, proud that I was part of this other group.” 

As we wrapped up our conversation, Jonathan shared, “I'm getting more comfortable and confident in who I am - I don't need to try to fit in into either one of those circles, I need to be me. And then whoever's in those circles will fit around me.”

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Sovereign Oshumare on Uncovering, Connection, and Microdosing

The topic of connection is something I think about a lot when it comes to covering. How does feeling like we have to cover impact our relationship with ourselves and others? How does covering impact our sense of belonging–  at work or in social settings? That intersection is where a large part of my recent conversation with Sovereign focused. 

Sovereign Oshumare is a catalyst, curator, educator, and alchemist of systemic change based in Denver, Colorado. I was introduced to Sovereign through a panel discussion hosted by Rocky Mountain Public Media (RMPM) on microdosing mushrooms. During our conversation, we discussed how their ongoing uncovering journey has intersected with the different parts of who they are – being Black, queer, and keenly interested in healing and restoration. 

“I can remember a time in San Francisco, where I was with a bunch of [gay] friends,” Sovereign said as we sat at their dining room table. “There was someone that came into the space – another Black, queer, dark-skinned person. And I just remember having this aversion to them. I didn’t want to look at them and didn’t want to interact with them.” This happened at a time when they were starting to learn more about identity, social norms, and written and unwritten rules of the groups they interacted with. Sovereign remembered thinking there was a quota for how many people of color could be in a group – and the quota was one. “It’s like we were breaking a rule,” they said. “And I felt really bad about it. I started thinking, ‘Where is this coming from?’

And then I started thinking, in order for me to be in this group, these are the parts of myself I have to sacrifice in order to be here.” 

Sovereign described the genesis of some of those feelings and beliefs. “Growing up, my mom was like, ‘Well, if I want my kids to be successful, then I need to get them as close to whiteness as possible,’” they said. “That proximity to whiteness, it impacts how I speak, the way I dress, the way I carry myself, my temperament, all of these things. I have been cultivated to survive. So I was covering these parts of myself and not really knowing what that was.” 

Beyond their upbringing, some of the messages that encouraged Sovereign to cover came from inside the LGBTQ+ community. Similar to working toward proximity to Whiteness is a focus on proximity to straightness or, for others, masculinity in the LGBTQ+ community - something we have both experienced in different ways. These conversations about covering have brought forward memories for me that I’d buried for years. One that we talked about happened during my senior year of highschool and freshman year of college after I started hanging out with a group of gay friends, most of which were pretty masculine. I’d started wearing makeup my senior year and  enjoyed experimenting with eyeshadow. There was no YouTube with makeup tutorials or IG influencers, so men in makeup weren’t as much the norm, even in queer spaces. I remember riding in the car with one of them and having him recommend that I tone down the eyeshadow. It was a comment “on behalf of the group,” and that comment and others like it over the years from gay men – “leave your purse in the car” and “you can’t be a professional and wear that,” all chipped away at the queer parts of who I was. Like I said to Sovereign, the “call was coming from inside the house,” so to speak. 

“As I’m learning and uncovering and realizing all the things that I was covering, I see in people the things I was mending, and I wanted to talk about it,” Sovereign said. Pointing back to their earlier example of having an aversion to another person of color entering the group, they continued the story, “I went up to him, apologized and named what happened, and realized he was also in it. ‘Girl, don’t worry about it,’ he said. And I was just like, ‘No, we should be able to come together, and it be ok.’” 

Something many of us know who have started to uncover parts of ourselves is that not everyone is receptive; not everyone is ready to be part of that journey, to question the systems that have made us feel that way, to expand their thinking, or to work on themselves internally.

“I became this mirror illuminating the problem,” Sovereign said. “Like how many of us have to cover and how a lot of us felt like we couldn't even get together and be in a place without everyone else having a problem. And they did. They had a huge problem with it. Going back to my group [of primarily white gay men], it was like, there's this [unnamed] social contract where I had agreed that I would be comic relief. I would be funny. I would let people say microaggressions and low-key racist shit to me. That was kind of our agreement. As long as I complied, everything was cool. But when I started to be like, oh, there are these other parts of me that need to be in this space, especially my Blackness - then it was a problem. And then, all of a sudden, they would call me Black Panther. I was learning all about this stuff, about how much I had to cover myself. I was angry. And I was like, ‘Hey, can we talk about how like, in order for me to show up in this group, I have to have a certain persona, and I have to allow you to make fun of my Blackness in order for me to belong? Ultimately I ended up getting kicked out of that group.’”

Sovereign continued, “I wanted to uncover and reclaim those pieces. Like, is that okay? And the answer was no. And so I went through a whole period of just being alone: my whole entire network was gone. Because they weren't interested in stepping into that journey in a true, ‘we have to confront all the shit’ way.” 

It was these experiences in the LGBTQ+ community, experiences working in nonprofits, and seeing a need for spaces that supported healing, uncovering, and community building that inspired Sovereign to create XRYSALIS, a retreat to activate, empower, and heal LGBTQ People of the Global Majority. “Folks were emerging who wanted this retreat, and also this ecosystem, that's just for queer folks of color to explore the things that they are covering,” Sovereign said. “I wanted to take people on a journey that I had had to go through by myself, which was like, ‘Oh, this shit is crazy.’ Like, the things that we have to deal with and cover is debilitating. It's crushing us. I wanted everyone to kind of come to those epiphanies together versus separately. The first one was like a collective journey. And then the second one had different tracks for people to go on because some people wanted the art and the creativity and like the fun, sexy time. And then others wanted the deep connection and authenticity and community building. So going back to the first one, we started with an opening ceremony to get people's mind prepared for integrating new information. We had this facilitator come in to lead conversations around how we create our reality, about how the world is built.

They asked us at the end of the session, ‘Are you prepared to experience something different?’ The first part was about connection and bridge-building.” 

It can be hard to go through an experience like that – one that opens your mind and understanding, shifts your relationship with yourself and those around you, and then step back into your daily life. “Once people saw that something like this could exist (spaces where they could be uncovered), they wanted it in their world,” Sovereign said. “That’s when I started getting in trouble. Because people were like, ‘Wait, you’re breaking the code.’” People who participated in the XRYSALIS retreats were coming back changed, naming things that bothered them in the world and wanting to do something different. “A lot of folks, especially White, gay men were really upset with me,” they said. Not only was Sovereign disrupting the systems that depended on things staying the same, but people [White people] felt excluded. “You have the whole world that you get to live in,” Sovereign said. “I just carved out four days on this little piece of earth for queer people of color.” 

A hostile environment not ready for introspection, asking those questions and creating a new world encouraged Sovereign to come to Colorado. “Thank you, Colorado, like, for real,” Sovereign said. “I feel like there's a reason why I ended up here. I went to Naropa University [in Boulder], and I got my Master's in Resilient Leadership, and I met some really incredible people who were into psychedelics. I was just like, ‘I don't think that's for me.’ I finally gave in, and I went to a talking circle. And I watched that talking circle heal a deep conflict between two people. And I was like, ‘Oh, shit, like, word.’ I started building trust with them because I saw how they navigated conflict.I watched this whole magic of a circle, just like, pull out what needed to be said and watch the facilitator and the weaver just kind of like, deal with that. It was so beautiful to watch a circle work. It's magic. So, then I was like, ‘All right, what is this? Tell me more. Now I'm ready to know; now I'm listening.’” 

Their first experience, an Ayahuasca journey, provided healing and was “really incredible,” Sovereign said. With legislation in the works to decriminalize psychedelics in Colorado, they started microdosing rather than taking large doses of Psilocybin [the naturally occurring psychedelic prodrug compound in mushrooms]. “I feel like my stable self is psychedelic in a lot of ways; I'm very intuitive,” they said. “I don't need the big doses, but the microdoses in combination with what I've learned from Naropa, andBuddhist practices and stuff like that has given me like this incredible inner landscape and relationship to it. And to me, microdoses are just like little kisses that allow me to really see how my mind works. That’s the gift that microdosing has given me, and psychedelics has given me, this deeper relationship with my mind and myself beyond it.”

Sovereign talked about their experience with microdosing and how it expanded their relationship to self, including how they identify and their connection to their body and nature on the RMPM panel, which was one of the things that  piqued my interest in talking to them. 

“Coming to Colorado and having relationship to psychedelics, I was able to understand the spectrum of being,” they said. “I consider myself agender because I feel like there's maleness, there are all the things, and I feel like none of them describe me. In connection to some people, I come off as more feminine. And then, to some people, I come off as more masculine. To some people, I come off as something else. It’s given me the space to inquire, to inquire about my gender expression and gender identity. You don't have to show anyone anything. You don't have to prove anything; you can just be it. And so, like, that's why we're a lot alike, right? I'm like; I am more than what you see. That didn't come until I did a bunch of mushrooms and a wilderness solo, and where my name Sovereign came from. I understand why I'm in this vessel.”

That expansive mindset pervades their work and is something I appreciated seeing embedded in how they view themselves. “You know, I use they/them pronouns. Sometimes people will feel like a different one and call me by it. I get why because that's the part of me that you need to connect with in order to feel or hear what I'm communicating to you. And I get that, you know, but again, that's just me, not to invalidate anyone else's journey or anything like that. Going through this journey in this body has been really interesting because it's just like, for years, I didn't feel like it was mine.

For the moment that we're in, a Black queer, shape-shifting body is what's needed to build bridges. I can traverse those worlds looking the way that I look and getting people to talk that wouldn't ordinarily talk.”

That work to bridge worlds continues through their role at SPORE, the Society for Psychedelic Outreach, Reform, and Education, where Sovereign is the co-ecosystem director. “Our role is to make sure community voices are heard, indigenous wisdom is heard, and to build community that informs how all of this legislation [related to psychedelics] is going to come out,” they said. What’s the current landscape look like? From places like Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research to Stanford University, New York University, and more, research into the use and impact of psychedelics continues to inform what we know about it and the many implications for how it can support people in their health and wellbeing journey. Research and the work of groups like SPORE will also inform where and how it can be legally utilized. In November 2022, possession of psychedelics, including “magic mushrooms,” was decriminalized in Colorado. 

My conversation with Sovereign was educational and empowering. As we wrapped up our time together, they said, “I love this topic and having that framework [language, questions, etc.] to ask people, ‘How are you covering?’ Being able to name the ways in which we cover ourselves, like the things that I've talked about around covering my Blackness, covering my queerness, covering my gender expression and identity. Being able to talk about these things in the hopes that other people can see themselves in it and relate to it, and figuring out the ways in which they cover themselves and how to uncover and reclaim those pieces? I don't know; I just think that's incredible. And I'm so grateful for this conversation.”

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Senator Cynthia Mendes on the Suffocating Impact of Covering and the Role of Imagination in Politics

Josh · Uncovering Our Value featuring Senator Cynthia Mendes

After my presentation on covering and inclusion at the Imaginator Summit in fall of 2022, a political leader shared that they “couldn’t uncover who they were and be in politics.” That statement and the conversations that followed inspired me to reach out to Senator Cynthia Mendes of Rhode Island District 18 to learn about her political journey and the role covering has played in her life.

• Covering – downplaying, hiding, or filtering parts of ourselves at work, with different social groups, at school, and with family. Through my work and research done by organizations including Deloitte and UCLA Williams Institute, women of color, straight white men, LGBTQ+ folx and people with disabilities, among others, have all named ways in which they've covered parts of themselves and their identities at work.

“As I have navigated the world, I’ve seen covering as a necessary part of survival,” said Senator Mendes during our conversation over Zoom. She described how covering offered protection at times, “like a soft blanket,” and how at other times, felt suffocating. “It's interesting when I let myself feel all the feelings, recalling covering moments and what it’s looked like within all the places of my life – it’s both,” she said. “Sometimes it was that soft fuzzy blanket I needed at the moment, and sometimes it was the most suffocating feeling in the world.” 

Mendes is many things beyond her role as Senator – a mother, a bi-sexual woman, an artist, a community advocate, and the child of Puerto Rican and Cape Verdean parents. She grew up within an organized religion that instilled messages about covering who she was. “I got a lot of messages about what it meant to be a woman that I struggled with. I started challenging and questioning it at a young age,” Senator Mendes explained.

“Growing up in organized religion prepared me for the messages I face being in politics - about my voice, body, and identity.” 

In talking to Senator Mendes, her passion for the community she serves is immediately evident. “I had such a sense of community growing up,” she explained. “The nugget I held onto from my upbringing was fighting for those everyone else has forgotten about. I was a single mom and worked two jobs – one in the dental field and a side job cleaning million-dollar mansions in Newport to put myself through school. When I wasn't doing that, I worked in the community - serving folks who were unhoused, working with domestic abuse survivors, youth and people of color, and doing some activism.”

Right before her career in politics began, Mendes was experimenting with sharing her writing at poetry slams. It was an “act of vulnerability,” she said. “Just as I was equipping myself to do that [get to a gritty, raw place], politics landed in my lap.” It was over a 48-hour span that her journey into politics began, starting with coffee with a former Secretary of State. During the visit with her father in his nursing home following that meeting, she asked for a sign of whether or not to jump into the political arena. “I was reading him a book about Martin Luther King Jr.'s leadership,” she said. “I thought, ‘I dare you to make it ridiculously clear about what I need to do.” Then, she read the line, “If they believe I can, then I will serve.” It was her sign to forge ahead. 

“I won my election with a slate of working class multi-racial queer people getting into office, and that didn’t really fit these strict norms that have been in place for hundreds of years.”

She described how the senate is governed by old archaic written and unwritten rules - norms one must navigate. And one of the first rules they voted on? Dress code. The clothing she stepped into the room wearing “was intentionally subversive. I had on an old man jacket and old man suitcase, a wooden pipe, and heels,” she explained. “I amped up my ability to express myself… it was my way to take up space in this really old and confined space… my makeup and earrings were my war paint.” Beyond the rigid dress code that targets feminine-presenting people even more masculine-presenting ones, “it’s traditionally not safe for women of color to run for office or to be in office,” Mendes explained. “A week into my first office, I had a stalker. A friend that ran for senate was physically assaulted by her GOP opponent.”

As we talked, Senator Mendes detailed how her journey to understand her sexuality intersected with her campaigns. “During my first campaign, when I ran, I was still figuring out who I was (a bi-sexual woman), and I had a really hard time claiming that,” she said. “Running for Lt Governor, I felt like I had to hide and downplay that side of my sexuality. I felt that if I brought it up at this point, people may have thought, ‘she was playing a political game,’ because she wants it to help her campaign. I had to hide a large portion of myself. It became tremendously suffocating. I worry for folks who want to be authentic and vulnerable and how they do that in public office.” That sentiment echoed throughout the conversations after my presentation as well. 

“One of the ways I find it suffocating is that there is your public life and your private life,” she said as we talked about the impact covering and politics can have on relationships. “You need to have a separation, and that's where it felt very suffocating. I didn’t know where I could just BE.”

Even as an extrovert, Senator Mendes found herself isolated from others, “which was not healthy at all,” she said. “It left my friends feeling like I was gone. I felt like I was gone. That isolation manifested in this feeling - am I losing touch with who I am? We all covered in our own ways that caused disconnection between us…. Over the past few years, people have expressed isolation, burnout, depression, and anxiety,” she explained. “I heard a phrase this week that really captured what the through line was – we’re asking people to bring themselves into compromised spaces that were not built for us and were not designed for how we present and conduct ourselves in the world.” 

Isolation is just one way covering has impacted Senator Mendes. “I've realized there is really no institution that exists right now where I would not have to enter with some level of covering,” she said. “Because they all started without us, without me. I'm a cog in the wheel that they didn't plan for. I understand in talking to friends in academia, medicine, and economics; these are feelings that many of us feel.”

As she reflected on the presence of covering and how she’ll continue to lead as a Senator and uncover parts of who she is, Mendes said, “I’m acknowledging and moving from a place of resentment to a place of acceptance and then to a place of - so, What do I want to do about it?” For her, that has meant “giving people that are entering politics for the first time a listening ear and permission when they feel they need it about who they need to be in that space. I need to do that by example, to live that unapologetic authenticity,” she said. “I’ve found that really rewarding and helpful. Now, I’m on the lookout for people with shared experiences. I have to trust them to take this information [that could be used against me] to liberate themselves in this space. It’s empowered me in some ways.” 

I asked, as we wrapped up our conversation, what I often ask when speaking to people about the intersection of covering and their professional lives, “Whose imagination are you working in?” For Senator Mendes, imagination has been top of mind. “One of the other side effects [of covering] is that it stifles imagination,” she said. “Once I'd gone through those stages and got to this liberated space it allowed me to imagine what didn’t exist…. Not only do I have to imagine it, I have to live like it exists, and share community with other people doing that. When you start doing that other people emerge - you emerged - that are authentically doing that and looking for ways to help other people do that. I'm excited to live into that - sharing vulnerably some of my experiences over the past four years.” 

As she forges ahead in her role as Senator, Mendes wants to spark people’s imagination by asking, What does living in a care society look like? “Even in political organizing spaces, which are all about moving people to action – we can’t move them to believe without imagination,” she explained.

“Don't tell me how you're going to move them to action until you tell me how you've connected to their imagination.” 

You can follow Senator Mendes’ journey on IG, Linkedin, Twitter, & Tiktok. 

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Q&A with Geoffrey Roche on covering childhood trauma, public health and higher ed

I met Geoffrey M. Roche, MPA, the Sr. VP of National Health Care Practice and Workforce Partnerships during our National Leadership Academy for the Public’s Health Fellowship a few years ago. As someone focused on healthcare, higher education and health equity, I wanted to hear how Geoffrey related to the topic of covering and how he saw it impacting work and public health.

To recap, covering is "downplaying, hiding or filtering parts of yourself at work, with different social groups, at school or with family.”

We got to meet IRL in 2022 at CU Denver's Imaginator Academy's Imaginator Summit organized by my husband Theo Edmonds in Denver, CO, where Geoffrey heard my talk that focused on covering and imagination. He said, "Prior to your talk, I had not actually heard as much about covering and particularly as we envision the future of work; the awesome opportunity we have as leaders committed to a culture of belonging and inclusion for all have to make sure individuals can be who they are without fear."

That is one of the reasons for doing these interviews and continuing to share these stories. It provides us with new tools, including language, and a broader understanding of the many ways people are experiencing covering, and uncovering throughout different parts of their lives and journeys.

Q&A with Geoffrey Roche:

Are there examples from your personal life where you covered parts of who you are? Why did you feel like you needed to do that?

• Yes, as I reflect on covering there are many aspects of my life where I have covered. This includes experiences in my childhood, losing my only brother to a heroin addiction, as well as many other circumstances. From a point of reflection, I must admit that I have covered so that I did not face judgment from others that ultimately may have impacted their view of me and my family. However, it is clear to me that I must rise up with courageous imagination to share my experiences because together we are stronger when we share in these stories.

When it comes to work, have you felt the need to cover throughout your carrier? What type of impact did it have?

• Yes, and it pains me to admit this to be honest because I have always strived to be the same person whether personally or professionally. However, I have without question covered in the workplace as noted above. This covering most certainly led to stress, burnout, and even anxiety. I have also experienced other colleagues also covering, which is why your work, Josh, is so critical because it proves that we as a nation and as a workplace whether in person or virtual have a lot of work to do to truly develop, create, and sustain a culture that values and ensures accountability around belonging and inclusion at all levels.

Are there parts of yourself you have actively uncovered or would like to uncover? What process brought you to that understanding? 

• Yes, I have realized that it is more important than ever to lean into my experience as a child where I faced emotional abuse from a former family member that without question impacted my entire K-12 experience. Additionally, I have been inspired to share my brother's tragedy and be more open about it because there is so much work to do to help other families not have to experience death from a heroin addiction. Furthermore, I have learned that if I am critiqued and judged for any of this; then it is clear that those are not individuals or organizations that would be where I choose to spend my time, energy, or resources. 

When it comes to public health – what role do you think covering plays in undermining the field of public health, and the impact public health practitioners want to have? 

• Covering without question, impacts all facets of public health and the last three years; we have seen this firsthand unfortunately where many public health leaders and officials have been threatened and attacked for simply doing their job to help and protect others. I recently had dinner with an inspirational leader involved in providing access to quality healthcare for the Trans community and as we were speaking, I was so sad to hear how their clinic has had to invest in new forms of security to simply protect the patients, staff, and providers due to threats from others. 

As you think about higher education, how/where do you see covering happening? What impact do you think it has on high education’s ability to support future generations of leaders?

• In reflecting on my time in higher education and healthcare, I have without question seen covering occur at all levels of organizations. This can include students at a time when we are seeing mental health concerns at levels so challenging to truly manage, as well as leaders and staff because I would argue that covering is another aspect to mental health and therefore, so many others experience this in ways they do not truly understand or recognize.

Have you witnessed covering in the workplace and how did you respond?

• Yes, I have witnessed this particularly in the workplace. Throughout my career, there are several examples that come to mind where a colleague seemed like they were trying to not have something impacting them come out to others. In these situations, I have always learned to just let them know that my door is always open to listen and be there intentionally to help them to the best of my ability. Many times, this resulted in them sharing with me their life challenges and concerns and then I was able to be there to help them through it.... because if we can help others be able and willing to share what they may be facing in their life and have psychological safety in doing so, we can truly make inroads in addressing the mental health epidemic in our society. 

Learn more about the topic of covering and delve into past Uncovering Your Value newsletters here.

Whose imagination are you working in?

Whose imagination are you working in?

When the pandemic disrupted our lives, it disrupted the systems and practices that had been imagined before. Not only the broader world in which we lived but the places and ways in which we worked. It showed very quickly that much of what had been “impossible” before – mobilization and flexibility of funding, working remotely, vaccine development, and healthcare access – was, in fact, possible.

During the pandemic, people evolved and changed. Some people used that time to transition medically. As Deke Wilson told The New York Times, “’ You’re trying so hard to avoid getting this one sickness,’ he said. ‘Why? Because you want to live — you want to experience life fully to the best you can. For me, that means being comfortable in my skin.’”

For others, remote work experience increased their sense of belonging and ability to manage stress. As reported by TechRepublic, The Future Forum found, “A majority of workers don’t want to go back to five days in the office, but this preference is very strong among Black workers. The research found that 97% of Black people currently working remotely want a hybrid or full-time remote working model. Only 3% of Black workers want to return to full-time in-person work compared to 21% of white workers in the United States.” Why? In part because remote or hybrid work options decreased the feeling that they needed to code-switch or cover who they are.

Those are just two examples of how the past few years have shaped people’s experience, and why asking ourselves the question, whose imagination am I working in? is even more important.

This is a window in time – an opportunity for change – that my generation may never see again.

Given those experiences and findings, and so many others I have heard about, what’s been interesting is how leaders and companies think about “coming back to work.” Because for many, it's a push to get back to pre-pandemic work as usual as quickly as possible.

I was one of those people during COVID that tried out new ways of showing up – like wearing more dresses and different types of heels; I even started creating Wearable Photos. Through the past few years, I found a new work-life harmony through a hybrid work model, and I appreciate the flexibility it gave me to explore, work, plan and strategize, refuel, and imagine. But not everyone took that approach or recognized how much of an intersection there was with covering (or uncovering) and COVID, the socio-political environment shift that began in 2020. How much each of us changed our preferences, ability to engage in person, and even our values.

There was also a shift in how we socialize and our social stamina. I’m an extrovert – I recharge by being around people. But COVID’s impact on me and many others changed that too. I’m still extroverted, but I also need quiet and personal time more. My husband Theo and I spoke at the Cross-Atlantic Creativity Congress in Salzburg in early 2022, a full-day in-person convening he co-curated. By the end, I was utterly exhausted. That day would have recharged me in the past, but my social stamina isn’t what it was. Talking to another friend who went to a meeting and to work at a co-working space, she described how tired she was when she got home. The noise, the many inputs, all coming at her. We aren’t accustomed to it anymore.

Social burnout in a post-pandemic world is something we must consider as we think about the future of work and planning events, conferences, and travel. We must create more responsive environments and build in time to strengthen some of those muscles or understand that the pace we lived before isn’t the pace we want for our future.

During a recent conversation with a nonprofit leader, I asked if they had considered people's need to recharge and if they allowed for more personal time when planning a week-long trip with donors and collectors after they described a "very packed schedule." It hadn't crossed their mind. While at a recent conference that offered both in-person and virtual viewing sessions, some people stayed at the hotel to watch some of the sessions privately before coming to the busy, high-input IRL location. These are just a few more examples of what has shifted and its impact on how we plan and create meaning together.

These changes hold profound implications for how we work and use this moment to create what's next.

We have to recognize that over the past few years, people may have -

• Uncovered parts of who they are and who may look physically different than before

• Redefined what professionalism means to them

• Developed new working preferences and systems, and

• Evolved as people who value their time and personal agency differently.

At the end of the day, work culture is built on relationships. Our relationship with ourselves, our relationships with others, theirs with us, and our collective relationship. We must consider all those areas.

So I want you to consider this question again.

Whose imagination are you working in?

Seeing how many leaders and companies choose to look at the future of work, I wonder if they realize how much people have fundamentally changed. I wonder if they’ve asked themselves, whose imagination are we working in? And does it serve us now? Do they recognize this as an opportunity to fundamentally shift how and why we work?

That question is the one I posed during the Partners in Philanthropy award ceremony for the 2022 Nonprofit Visionary Leader Awards hosted by Louisville Business First. It is one people hadn't named or conceptualized yet, and it resonated. One of my fellow award recipients came up to me after and said, finally, I am working in the world I imagined!

Like my husband ✨Theo Edmonds✨ said in a recent article, "Imagination opens up a world of possibilities and helps us see beyond what we already know or believe is true or possible, allowing us to come up with novel solutions and approaches that would otherwise not have occurred to us if we had stayed within the bounds of traditional thinking patterns or conventions."

Someone imagined a way of working that made sense to them in the past, and in most cases, that "world" [or workplace] didn't include queer people like Theo and me, people of color, disabled people, or neurodiverse people.

During her keynote at the Creating Healthy Communities Convening in the fall of 2022, my friend and colleague Hannah Drake said, "In my imagination, we are living in a space where our differences are celebrated, everyone’s opinions and thoughts are valued, and everyone has a seat at the table. In my imagination, Black lives matter so much that Black people don’t have to point out that our lives matter too. What if we lived in a world where people could go to the bathroom without the signs? In my imagination, women can make choices about their bodies without government oversight… What would this world look like if today we recognized that we have the power to create the world we want to live in?"

Why bring this all up?

Because you can imagine how we work anew for the world we are in now and for future generations.

What does the question "Whose imagination are you working in?" make you think or feel? I'd love to hear what comes to mind or how this post resonated with you. Feel free to comment below, send me a DM, or email me at connect@joshmiller.ventures

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About: Josh Miller is a queer changemaker, public speaker, photographer, and outdoor explorer. He is the owner of Josh Miller Ventures and the co-founder + CEO of IDEAS xLab—an organization that uses the art of storytelling and community collaboration to impact public health. Miller’s work has been featured by The New York Times, the Aspen Institute, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. He is a Soros Equality Fellow, received the 2022 Nonprofit Visionary Leader Award from Louisville Business First, and was selected for Business Equality Magazine’s Forty LGBTQ+ Leaders under 40 and Louisville Business First's Forty under 40. Miller is a two-time TEDx speaker and has been described as a "force in our community.” He holds an MBA from Indiana University and an undergraduate degree from Bellarmine University. Previously, he served as an advisor to the Derby Diversity & Business Summit and co-chair for the Louisville Health advisory board’s communications committee. 

Covering (and uncovering) during the holidays.

Many people face a dilemma as we head into the holiday season to close out the year. What parts of themselves to bring home? What aspects of themselves to cover? What parts of themselves to uncover and share for the first time?

Family and community dynamics are interesting things. We can love our relatives and fundamentally disagree on certain things. Have fond memories with neighbors we grew up with but who harbor different beliefs than we do. We can know that parts of who we are - like being LGBTQ+ or holding a particular political view - won’t be embraced. There can be stress on both sides of the coin. To hide it and fear being found out and feeling like we’re not being authentic. To share it and fear it changes relationships forever – sometimes for the better and sometimes not.

There was a reason I didn’t plan to come out as gay until after graduating high school (I got outed my junior year, so that didn’t go as planned) and why I spiked my coffee and hot chocolate during winter visits home during undergrad. I grew up in a conservative Christian community where being gay was "a choice and a sin." The person I am and the values I hold don’t fully align with theirs. But once the truth was out, it wasn’t going back into the closet for storage.

Growing up, I remember the pressure and perfectionist tendencies around the holidays, learned from our family to always look put together and ready for photos. Always be prepared to smile and display a face of joy. There were the things we talked about over dinner and the things we didn’t. In recent years, we found that even after some family dynamics changed, including my parents getting divorced, my mother getting remarried, and gatherings with extended family evolved, those older ways of operating still crept in.

Over the past few years, during conversations with my siblings, we talked about how we might do things differently. We proposed a more relaxed atmosphere so people didn’t feel the need to change clothes between family visits for photo ops. We also proposed a schedule that offered more downtime and built-in sibling-only time. No matter how much we want to shake the old habits of our teenage selves, our conversations shift dramatically when our parents are and are not present. With these newfound boundaries and ways of gathering in place, we adjusted our outlook on the holidays and family gatherings in general.

Like Adam Grant says, “Authenticity is not about being unfiltered. It’s about staying true to your principles. The goal isn’t to voice every opinion you hold. It’s to stand up for the ideas that are that are consistent with your ideals. Being genuine is closing the gap between what you value and what you express.” Having those conversations and proposing alternate ways of gathering while setting clear boundaries helps to narrow that gap.

During a recent conversation, someone shared that they would visit their grandpa over the holiday and introduce him and their extended family to their non-binary partner. “My grandpa is pretty old,” they said, “it may just be easier to tell him we’re gay.” It was an interesting comment– the idea that being gay might be the easier option.

That story and the conundrum many people face around the holidays made me think about something Justin Patton 🎤✍🏼🌮 shared on LinkedIn. “If the space you’re preparing for people this holiday season doesn’t make them feel safe and able to show up as their authentic selves, then you’re doing it wrong. It doesn’t matter what meal you make, what gift you buy, or how many prayers you say around the table. What matters is how you show up and make people feel. Your unconditional presence is the best gift you can give. That’s all they’ve ever wanted.”

As we head toward the busiest travel season of the year, how are you approaching the holidays this year? What parts of yourself do you feel the need to cover, or are you considering uncovering for the first time? I'd love to hear from you! Comment below, send me a DM or email me at connect@joshmiller.ventures

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About: Josh Miller is a queer changemaker, public speaker, photographer, and outdoor explorer. He is the owner of Josh Miller Ventures and the co-founder + CEO of IDEAS xLab—an organization that uses the art of storytelling and community collaboration to impact public health. Miller’s work has been featured by The New York Times, the Aspen Institute, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. He is a Soros Equality Fellow, received the 2022 Nonprofit Visionary Leader Award from Louisville Business First, and was selected for Business Equality Magazine’s Forty LGBTQ+ Leaders under 40 and Louisville Business First's Forty under 40. Miller is a two-time TEDx speaker and has been described as a "force in our community.” He holds an MBA from Indiana University and an undergraduate degree from Bellarmine University. Previously, he served as an advisor to the Derby Diversity & Business Summit and co-chair for the Louisville Health advisory board’s communications committee. 

Being misgendered at the airport ✈️ and how Virgin Atlantic's approach to inclusion is paying off.

“I’m not a ma’am, and I’d like two cups of water, please,” I replied to the flight attendant on my recent Delta flight from Denver to Cincinnati. I was flying in for a funeral - my husband Theo’s grandmother passed away on the last day of her 103rd year on earth. She went peacefully, and the service was a beautiful tribute to her life. 

Thirty-six hours after arriving in Cinci, we went back through TSA for our return flight home. I heard a loud voice say, “Ma’am, ma’am.”

My husband touched my elbow while turning to correct them, “He’s not a ma’am” Theo said.

It's 4 am ET (2 am MT - the time zone my body thinks I’m in), so I'm exhausted. Thankfully I didn’t have to correct them again. 

A few months ago, Virgin Atlantic expanded its dress code requirements to allow employees to choose the uniform that best fits who they are; this led to a 100% increase in applications! From dress code requirements to the training of employees, it takes a comprehensive strategy to create long-term change when it comes to inclusion. And although I’m talking specifically about airlines while sitting on my flight home, this should be a focus for all of us and across all sectors. There are many ways to be polite without gendering someone, and that’s only one part of creating an inclusive environment. This isn’t a new conversation or the first time I’ve written about this - people have been misgendering me for years.

So why haven't gender-neutral greetings been more readily adopted? As ✨Theo Edmonds✨ said during CU Denver's Imaginator Academy's Imaginator Summit, "It’s the readiness of the culture into which the idea is being introduced that matters most." From cognitive bias to people wanting to stick with the status quo and being resistant to change, it can take consistency and priming the pump to make change happen over time and at a broad, systems-wide level.

So, what helped fuel Virgin Atlantic's decision to make these changes? They engaged 3Gem to conduct research with their employees, and the findings showed that:

• Enabling employees to express their true selves at work boosts happiness (65%), increases mental well-being (49%), creates a more positive workplace culture (36%), and provides a better experience for customers (24%).

• Employees reported feeling more accepted and comfortable when able to be their true selves at work (26%) and an increased sense of loyalty to their employer (21%).

• 25% of Brits have felt pressure to hide their true selves at work, and (38%) covered up parts of their personality, all in an attempt to fit in.
  

Virgin Atlantic also created “mandatory inclusivity training [that] was also rolled out for its people at all levels across Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Atlantic Holidays as well as a series of inclusivity learning initiatives for tourism partners and hotels within destinations such as the Caribbean to ensure all our customers feel welcome despite barriers to LGBT+ equality.” 

These are great steps toward shaping an inclusive travel environment. One where employees don’t have to cover who they are, and one where customers don’t feel disrespected or uncomfortable. Their approach also addressed a broader change with partners in the travel industry.

I hope their newly developed training goes beyond a PowerPoint and includes activities, discussions, and time for introspection as participants work on revising outdated mental models and developing new mindsets and approaches to do their work.

If we’re being honest, the way our language was structured and the focus on pronouns was designed to reinforce a belief by some that there are only two genders, which is false. Historically, indigenous communities celebrated two-spirited people, and there is evidence showing the ever-present nature of trans, queer and gender-nonconforming people throughout the centuries - and the structure of our language sought to erase that. The expansion of singular pronouns to include they/them (and others) serve a role for now, but I believe that they are a placeholder. They are the step between what our language was - and what it will be. In the long term, they’ll go the way of dial-up internet and pagers. If we think long and hard about it, we are all humans, and we should restructure our language to prioritize names or other ways of identifying each other without gender being part of the equation. We should embrace people’s autonomy to tell us who they are without assuming how they present correlates to their gender identity or sexual orientation. 

I don't expect perfection, but I hope for a mindset open to learning, evolving how we relate to each other, and being gracious as people make their way through these changes. It is sometimes challenging for me to unlearn and relearn people's names and pronouns if they've transitioned or started to identify differently. There are many times I've gotten it wrong. I apologize, correct myself, and move forward. Sometimes, I’ll repeat a person's first name over and over if I continue to mess up their pronouns. We're all learning how to communicate differently in a way that honors who people are.

I hope that people will ask themselves what it means to create intentionally inclusive spaces and ways of working, from the greetings we use to our focus on accessibility. What does that mean for you, and how do you greet people and design spaces? What does it mean for those training to offer consumer experiences? Wouldn’t it be better for me to remember the positive facets of a flight rather than the negative? To recall the stage performance of the concert I attended rather than how I was addressed in line for the bathroom and the laughter that ensued around me?

And while we are on the subject of restrooms, this is a friendly reminder that you are not the bathroom police.

I can read, and I can see the signs, and I’m choosing the restroom that’s best for me. Don’t worry about it - worry about you. I laugh a little inside every time someone does a double take and leaves the bathroom to re-read the sign outside after spotting me at the urinal or the sink washing my hands. You can see the question like a sign above their head - Did I go into the wrong bathroom? At the Kentucky Derby a few years ago, someone opened the door to the bathroom, saw me washing my hands, and literally threw themselves backward, knocking someone else over. It was comical. After looking at the signage again, they returned through the door and dashed for a stall without making eye contact. 

Ok, so after that detour, back to greetings and language. If you need ideas for what language to use instead of ma’am or sir and ladies and gents, here are some recommendations: 

• Use they or them until you know someone’s pronouns 

• Describe people by something they are wearing (For example, I can help the person in the striped shirt next) 

• Greet people with "Hey y'all," or “Welcome friends and family,” or “Hey folks!” 

Do any of these experiences resonate with you? Are there questions that it brings to mind? I'd love to hear from you!

Feel free to share your thoughts, questions, and responses in the comments, send me a DM, or email me at connect@joshmiller.ventures 

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About: Josh Miller is a queer changemaker, public speaker, photographer, and outdoor explorer. He is the owner of Josh Miller Ventures and the co-founder + CEO of IDEAS xLab—an organization that uses the art of storytelling and community collaboration to impact public health. Miller’s work has been featured by The New York Times, the Aspen Institute, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. He is a Soros Equality Fellow, received the 2022 Nonprofit Visionary Leader Award from Louisville Business First, and was selected for Business Equality Magazine’s Forty LGBTQ+ Leaders under 40 and Louisville Business First's Forty under 40. Miller is a two-time TEDx speaker and has been described as a "force in our community.” He holds an MBA from Indiana University and an undergraduate degree from Bellarmine University. Previously, he served as an advisor to the Derby Diversity & Business Summit and co-chair for the Louisville Health advisory board’s communications committee. 

Laura Campbell on covering her divorce, self-awareness and reshaping parts of her life and relationships

“The pandemic was an unfreezing of things,” Laura Campbell said. “In one way, we were shut down, but in so many ways, things got unfrozen.”

I met Laura Campbell in early 2022. During the pandemic, we both relocated to the Denver, Colorado, area in 2021 and were introduced by a mutual friend. Laura is a Senior Partner and Vice President with InspireCorps, also a leadership and transformation coach.

Laura and I worked together throughout the year. During the Colorado Culture First event she co-hosted in October, where I presented my Uncovering Your Value keynote, she shared that an area covering presented for herself was in being Jewish. Hearing that, I wanted to learn more about where she has seen covering within her own life, what uncovering has looked like, and what she learned about herself and is seeing with clients as we continue to “unfreeze” and imagine different ways of working.

“It was interesting to learn much more about uncovering and then to say, ‘Where have I been covering?’” she said over Zoom.

“I don’t know that there are many people who are truly living an uncovered life and I think you are opening a door with your work for all of us to ask ourselves the question ‘Where have we covered?’ and the conversation is so important. Two things came forward for me - being Jewish and being divorced.”

As I’ve been interviewing people and hearing about their experiences, it’s become more evident just how multi-layered covering is. To refresh, my definition of covering is “downplaying, hiding or filtering parts of yourself at work, with different social groups, at school or with family.” During the Out & Equal 2022 Workplace Summit, I heard from a participant who said, “in the neurodivergent community, we call that masking.” Just like covering is layered, the language we use to describe it varies, as does how it presents in our lives and its impact on who we are, how we show up, and our health and wellbeing.

Those layers, and to use a term Laura incorporates into her coaching, the “unfolding” of who we are, take time to recognize and name for ourselves, to process what’s at play, and determine how and if we’re going to address it.

“Outside of being a woman, my areas of covering are invisible,” she said. “My maiden name is Weisbart, and I married a Jewish man who had the name Campbell, which is not a particularly Jewish name. It’s interesting because people make assumptions when they think you’re not part of it [being Jewish]. You can almost hear the noise in their head when they find out that you’re Jewish.” Laura talked about terms she heard when looking at colleges, like “the Jew schools” and how people would take “something that was of value [education for example] and turned into something derogatory and something you feel shame around.” That shame might impact what you shared of yourself and which school or vocation you chose.

I found out my parents were getting divorced as a young adult and saw how far-reaching the ripple effects were – both with my siblings (I’m the oldest of five) and with relatives and social circles. “Divorced covering came differently to me,” Laura said. She got divorced over 18 years ago, a time when there was far less support and acknowledgment of what divorce entails and much more stigma around it. “What doesn't ever get talked about is that you lose credibility in many ways. When you go through a divorce and are unable to sustain your marriage, you’re viewed as less credible, less responsible, and less capable.”

She described how covering showed up, saying, “You kind of hide that you're going through something significant because you want to be seen as credible and capable. [I was] hiding it professionally even when it was such a significant thing happening. Wellbeing, wellness, self-care… these conversations weren't really happening then, no open conversations about any of that.”

What were the ramifications for you? I asked Laura. Did you feel the physical and emotional impact of covering your divorce? “I've never been so exhausted and depleted in all of my life,” she said. “Not only was the transition to being divorced a massive shift on a million levels, on top of all of that change, I had to present as if everything is fine, I've got this. I remember working, not wanting to leave before I needed to leave, but sweating as I got in the car to drive to a game while worrying about what to buy for dinner. Not only was I making sure the kids were ok, I needed everyone else to know I was keeping all of the balls in the air so I could maintain my image of responsible adult professional and parent. It was exhausting, really exhausting.”

So what did uncovering look like for her? “It’s so interesting,” Laura said with a smile. “My journey since the day I got divorced wasn’t under the language of uncovering, but it became about owning the truth of who I am and what I want. Shaping my life around what I wanted and what I didn't, and being honest about what is working and isn't.”

As she and I have talked about, uncovering is an ongoing journey. “I [still] cover myself around my kids. If I’m thinking about truth or what uncovering really looks like, there is a filter - how much do I want my kids to know? How much of my reality or truth do I want to share with them? I find when I write or speak, asking myself, 'Would I be ok if my kids read this?' Its insidious… layers and layers of filtering and covering of truth, of our real truth.”

Laura’s reflection on how she covers with her (now adult) kids reinforced how ever-evolving parent-child dynamics are. Parents often feel the need to cover their challenges, necessities, or parts of who they are to present a strong front to their children, which can reinforce ideals of perfectionism and skew a child’s view of their parents when they grow into adulthood. Talking to a friend late last year, they expressed frustration and hurt with their parent’s behavior. “I’ve had to remind myself that just like me, my parents are flawed human beings who were raised by other flawed human beings. They may be doing the best they can based on their experiences and the resources they have, and we can also recognize that it’s not enough for us and who we are now,” I said.

“At the end of the day, everyone is flawed, they were never perfect, and there is no ‘one way to parent.’”

“I have an opportunity to enlighten my kids that there is an uncovering journey that can happen,” Laura said. “And having open conversations about that journey can then build into things that are more uncomfortable [to talk about], things I may have covered.” 

“The biggest thing for me in the past three years was this journey of self-awareness,” Laura said. “It was recognizing my own level of introversion. It was eye-opening. I love engaging (like this – one-on-one), and I realized I don’t really want to be around a lot of people. I could feel it in my system how much more comfortable I am when I’m not in the presence of lots of people. Zoom doesn’t bother me so much. It's physical presence. It is so fascinating and has caused me to reshape parts of my life and relationships—some things I don’t want to do anymore. I don’t want to be in the room with lots of people - I did a lot of that before. Now, not so much. I’m doing different kinds of work that I love that is also impactful.”

So, what do parts of that uncovering journey look like? We talked about how at a foundational level, part of it is about identifying who you are and what you need, which can take a long time. “It takes starting to peel back the layers,” she said. “You internally know, but maybe can't speak it/name it for yourself. You have to bring it forward to consciousness before you can take action on it. We have to get comfortable internally about being truthful with ourselves about what we need.”

The unfreezing Laura mentioned can manifest in many different ways. “The more we uncover, and the more we show-up as who we are and who we want to be, there is this incredible loss journey,” she notes. “People fall off and things fall off [that no longer align with who we are] – there is shedding - for the good in the long term, but it is still loss.”

The past few years encouraged many of us to reflect on who we are, what we truly need and value, whether through the great resignation or people relocating to find environments that suit them better. “It has caused people to think carefully and in new ways. I don’t think we’re done; we are in the midst - in the swirl- of it,” Laura said. “It's uncomfortable, but ultimately it’s really good that we are asking the hard questions and seeing the deconstruction of what hasn't worked for a long time.”

Does my conversation with Laura resonate with you? Have you thought about areas in your life that you may be covering or have actively uncovered over time? I'd love to hear from you!

Feel free to share your thoughts, questions, and responses in the comments, send me a DM, or email me at connect@joshmiller.ventures 

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About: Josh Miller is a queer changemaker, public speaker, photographer, and outdoor explorer. He is the owner of Josh Miller Ventures and the co-founder + CEO of IDEAS xLab—an organization that uses the art of storytelling and community collaboration to impact public health. Miller’s work has been featured by The New York Times, the Aspen Institute, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. He is a Soros Equality Fellow, received the 2022 Nonprofit Visionary Leader Award from Louisville Business First, and was selected for Business Equality Magazine’s Forty LGBTQ+ Leaders under 40 and Louisville Business First's Forty under 40. Miller is a two-time TEDx speaker and has been described as a "force in our community.” He holds an MBA from Indiana University and an undergraduate degree from Bellarmine University. Previously, he served as an advisor to the Derby Diversity & Business Summit and co-chair for the Louisville Health advisory board’s communications committee. 

What does it mean to feel alive at work?

When I think broadly about the workplace and corporate cultures, the first word that comes to mind isn’t usually “best friend.” Deficit mindsets and a focus on colleagues as competition don’t always reiterate the value and role that the friends we work with play in shaping our experience, how we show up, and our impact.

As I was examining the intersection of social belonging, mental well-being, and courageous imagination in preparation to speak at the 2022 Imaginator Summit hosted by CU Denver's Imaginator Academy in Denver, CO, I read that, according to Gallup, only 3 in 10 people report having a best friend at work. (Harvard Business Review) They note, “Consistently talking about best friends at work makes relationships part of how we do things around here -- in other words, part of the work culture.”

Only 3 in 10 people report having a best friend at work.

I don’t think we all need to have a best friend at work to accomplish a job well done, but I know it can impact how we show up in the workplace, how we contribute, our sense of belonging, and our social and mental well-being over time.

I was recently in Orlando, FL, where Hannah Drake (IDEAS xLab's Chief Creative Officer), my husband, Theo Edmonds (CU Denver's Imaginator Academy), and I were all speaking at the Creating Healthy Communities Convening. Hannah and I were saying one night over dinner that we no longer have the right language to describe our relationship. It’s more than friends and more than colleagues at IDEAS xLab; it’s something more profound, significant, and impactful; it’s where 1+1=3.

During the Out & Equal 2022 Workplace Summit, I heard a quote by Dr. Bertice Berry that really summed it up.

“When you move with purpose, you collide with destiny.”

Our collective journeys together from Louisville to Senegal and beyond, the willingness to be vulnerable and to learn together about what we don’t know, and to find new ways to support and uplift each other all reinforce what Dan Cable refers to as the role of the "best self" at work.

In his book Alive at Work, Cable writes that companies should focus on onboarding an employee’s best self. He reiterates that our “best self” is just a story we tell ourselves and can directly shape our contributions and productivity at work. These stories can include our purpose and connection to the company's goals, the value we bring and what parts of ourselves we share, our self-efficacy, the work we are doing, and our feelings of connection with colleagues.

If we change the story we tell ourselves, we change our behaviors.

The flip side of our best self being present is what US Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy talked about during the 2022 Concordia America’s Summit, including the negative impact of loneliness on people’s creativity, productivity, performance at work, and overall retention of the workforce. Murthy noted that feeling lonely can negatively impact the people around us.

In Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace: 2022 report, they found that:

• 60% of people reported being emotionally detached at work

• 19% reported being miserable

• Only 21% of respondents reported feeling engaged — which is even lower than in 2020

• 33% of employees are thriving in their overall well-being.

Think about those statistics for a minute. We've talked about covering, coping, and burnout in my past few newsletters. I see a direct link between the environment that's created when we have "best friends" at work (impacting our sense of belonging) and can be our "best self" (when we don't have to cover) and what can happen when those elements don't exist.

Since our launch almost a decade ago, our team and culture at IDEAS xLab have continued to evolve. We remain focused on mental and emotional wellbeing, questioning our “best self” narratives and building connections with a sense of belonging that makes our work possible and impactful. It has shaped our organization and allowed us to grow and engage partners and clients through comprehensive and inclusive approaches as we each uncover and imagine new ways to work and live.

How do these areas resonate with you?

Do you have a best friend (or friends) at work? How does it impact your connection to the company and what you do?

Are you showing up as your "best self" at work and with your team? If not, what is the story you're telling yourself, and are there opportunities to rewrite it?

When you look at the stats from Gallup, which responses resonate with you? Do you feel emotionally detached, miserable, engaged, or thriving?

Feel free to share your thoughts, questions, and responses in the comments, send me a DM, or email me at connect@joshmiller.ventures

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About: Josh Miller is a queer changemaker, public speaker, photographer, and outdoor explorer. He is the owner of Josh Miller Ventures and the co-founder + CEO of IDEAS xLab—an organization that uses the art of storytelling and community collaboration to impact public health. Miller’s work has been featured by The New York Times, the Aspen Institute, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. He is a Soros Equality Fellow, received the 2022 Nonprofit Visionary Leader Award from Louisville Business First, and was selected for Business Equality Magazine’s Forty LGBTQ+ Leaders under 40 and Louisville Business First's Forty under 40. Miller is a two-time TEDx speaker and has been described as a "force in our community.” He holds an MBA from Indiana University and an undergraduate degree from Bellarmine University. Previously, he served as an advisor to the Derby Diversity & Business Summit and co-chair for the Louisville Health advisory board’s communications committee. 

The cost of burnout.

Over the past few years, I’ve thought a lot about the intersection of covering, coping, and burnout. This intersection was brought further into focus with how many people experienced the disruption of COVID-19 and changes brought on by the socio-political environment and push for racial justice.

Today, I want to focus on burnout.

When my husband Theo and I were in Berlin in early 2022, he found the book The Happiness of Burnout at an art museum. It’s the case study of an artist’s life – one who built a name and career for themselves and then burned out and worked to find their way back, with boundaries and new ways of working.

There is a quote by psychotherapist Dina Glauber that resonated with me.

"When we burnout, it is our old personality that burns itself out. It is our old way of living that turns into ashes. It becomes evident that a new style of life is necessary. The self needs to be better cultivated. Burnout is the last form of resistance. The body collapses."

Whether it’s been work or other life events, I think most of us can relate to this feeling. There are times and situations that we cannot push through. Where we mentally or physically collapse. We recognize that a new way of being – finding harmony – is necessary.

During a recent talk I gave for the Colorado Culture First community, I asked participants how *covering made them feel. “Inauthentic, Fake, Exhausted” were a few of their responses.

They were the type of responses and feelings that lead to burnout. It is a cyclical process with covering, coping, and burnout slowly impacting each other over time. Sometimes the cumulative impact can take years to identify.

Burnout can range from low energy and exhaustion to disengagement and even quitting to find something more fulfilling – like what we’ve seen through the great resignation.

And, just like covering can negatively impact a person’s capacity to contribute at work and their mental and emotional well-being, there are costs to burnout.

The World Economic Forum estimates burnout’s global cost to be $322 billion. 

We also know that burnout isn’t only impacting frontline employees and middle management but the c-suite as well. And it’s estimated that burnout can generate a loss to a company of 34% of someone’s salary annually if that employee feels burned out.

So, how do we prevent and mitigate burnout within ourselves and with others?

• Laura Campbell of InspireCorps said that one of the prompts they use is to ask people, “What do you need to be at your best?”

• Harvard Business Review notes, "Situational factors are the biggest contributors to burnout, so changes at the job, team, or organizational level are often required to address all the underlying issues."

• University of Colorado Denver’s Imaginator Academy takes a cultural analytics approach, looking at how factors including hope, trust, and belonging impact people’s experience in the workplace.

• One of the things I recommend asking yourself and your team/leadership is, "Are there cultural norms and expectations that may be contributing to covering in our workplace that could lead to burnout?"

Within our organization, we encourage people to unplug and take personal time to recharge. My colleague texted me on the first summer vacation day and asked, “Are you working?” It was a friendly reminder – GO OUT AND EXPERIENCE THE WORLD!

We’re also cognizant of moving meetings or deadlines when the team feels depleted.

It’s when you can talk openly about how schedules, travel and world and life events are impacting you that you can find a way of working together to prevent burnout from impacting what you’re able to accomplish.

Do you have an experience with burnout or processes that you and your team use to prevent burnout from impacting your company? Add it in the comments or send me an email at connect@joshmiller.ventures

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Covering – when we downplay, hide or filter parts of ourselves at work, with different social groups, at school, or with family. [Read more here]

Coping - adjusting to or tolerating adverse events or realities while trying to keep your positive self-image and emotional equilibrium (Cleveland Clinic). This can include self-isolation, self-soothing, use of social media, and searching out external support. [Read more here]

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About: Josh Miller is a queer changemaker, public speaker, photographer, and outdoor explorer. He is the owner of Josh Miller Ventures and the co-founder + CEO of IDEAS xLab—an organization that uses the art of storytelling and community collaboration to impact public health. Miller’s work has been featured by The New York Times, the Aspen Institute, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. He is a Soros Equality Fellow, received the 2022 Nonprofit Visionary Leader Award from Louisville Business First, and was selected for Business Equality Magazine’s Forty LGBTQ+ Leaders under 40 and Louisville Business First's Forty under 40. Miller is a two-time TEDx speaker and has been described as a "force in our community.” He holds an MBA from Indiana University and an undergraduate degree from Bellarmine University. Previously, he served as an advisor to the Derby Diversity & Business Summit and co-chair for the Louisville Health advisory board’s communications committee.