Episode 19 : Importance of D&I Conversation During COVID-19
Fetch error
Hmmm there seems to be a problem fetching this series right now. Last successful fetch was on August 03, 2024 11:26 ()
What now? This series will be checked again in the next hour. If you believe it should be working, please verify the publisher's feed link below is valid and includes actual episode links. You can contact support to request the feed be immediately fetched.
Manage episode 297057139 series 2949162
I don’t know about you, but it’s been a very busy week. But I’m extremely happy to have with us the founder of a company called story boat. And I want to welcome Nassim, Abdi, with us today. How are you doing?
So hey, Monica, so I’ll put it in the chat.
So story bolt.com. And for me what you’re saying
courageous conversations, talking about diversity inclusion.
filmmakers never comes together. Like, what do you mean bringing those courageous conversations? And, and having, um, Bill, how does that work? Like, what does that look like? Because I am really intrigued by those two things marry together.
inspiration ignite to dig into a topic. That is very important. When you hear stories, your human’s brain is wired, to understand stories better than anything else, right. So when you have a short documentary that has story of someone, and I will give you an example.
They have more than 3000 short documentaries from hundreds of countries around the world. And the fascinating thing about these films is they’re all stories and personal stories, either of the filmmaker that was so passionate to these who decided to make a short documentary or someone else that he or she was passionate about to share that story there.
So a short documentary, for example, about topic of LGBTQ and the challenges and or stories that people at workplace
faced with Vic in that community. And when you have a short documentary that tells someone’s story about
this specific topic, and then you can talk with the filmmaker who has hours of behind the camera stories. It creates a powerful moment, it creates an I would say magical moment, that safe environment that everybody can start talking about that topic.
and inspiration, but how does it work like, is it I’m having an issue in the workplace?
As an employee, do I come to storyboard? Or am I DNI, diversity inclusion practitioner or director? And I want to talk about different parts of intersectionality. Whether it’s for women, people of color, LGBTQ, like how who, who is coming to storyboard calm? And what should they expect?
But we do also receive requests from employee resource groups, which are specifically, for example, focused on women at workplace or veterans or minority groups, for any RG that are passionate about the rights of that group. They can come to our platform and
make a request and have a demo and pick their favorite topic.
As you said, especially for organizations starting out starting their er G’s, let me ask you,
for COVID-19, specifically, what are some films that you have already that you’ve worked on that are resources right now, that would be really helpful to employers, and, most importantly, for their employees, but take some of the heavy lifting off of DNI teams that are really inundated right now and trying to support their employees.
And I can share with you how this all got started later. But basically, the idea is to have all these unheard voices to this conversations, which means we don’t, we should not have geographical boundaries on that. And we should not be limited by that. So the model that we had even before COVID-19 was a virtual model that they could book your screen. for employees, even remote employees could watch the documentary all together at the same time. Of course, different time zones sometimes make it like, difficult to have one specific time, they want a bit more than one time to watch the film. But having a live q&a with the filmmaker, no matter where that the filmmaker is geographically located. So we have filmmakers from India, Turkey, Japan, all different part of the word connecting, um, specifically after COVID-19 situation and be forced to be remote employees and directors who are trying still even harder now to
create the community feeling and the resiliency that is needed for this specific time that you’re all experiencing. We are having some specific collections. One that is coming up and is probably a really great one, which we are getting a lot of requests for is next month, month of May, which is mental health awareness. And it’s a perfect time to sort of check in with our community and make sure that you’re understanding conversations around mental health and the the stigma around mental health and specifically in this time of isolation, it’s really important to have that kind of conversation. So mental health, you have specific collection, then the month after is Pride Month LGBTQ
series there. So like short answer to your question is right now the directors can go to our platform, book a demo and
get exactly what they need for, for their organization for their community and they submit their requests of topics and you’ll have meetings with them and making sure that you meet exactly what they need and they can provide it there.
Mexicans a lot. And that shows how much you’re all connected. I’m originally from Iran, actually. And I’m Iranian American now. And I came to us in 2003 as a graduate students, and I got my PhD in international education, intersection with movement studies. And, and I was not in the field of platforms and companies and startups and that that field. But I was very much into the conversation around diversity, equity and inclusion from the very beginning. That was my field.
But then started as a faculty member, teaching at the universities,
to the idea of storyboard came to me when I was teaching you my class.
And I was teaching a talk about a topic that was very close to my heart.
It was impact of war on people in my transnational feminism class, and I was very passionate to engage my students with the topic because
it was very personal to me. Unfortunately, I grew up during the brutal war, and lost my fiancee due to the chemical attacks on Iran. So you can imagine when I try to talk about this topic, or teach about this topic, how much I want to engage my audience. And I had so many dreams that I was thinking, I’m going to share my personal stories, they’re going to get engaged, and they are going to want to learn more, we are going to talk about theories. And then they want to take action, they want to do something about it. And none of those happens. I didn’t even get proper eye contact with them. Probably because they couldn’t relate to my studies. They’ve never lived in a real war. So that day was very frustrating. And I went home. pretty sad. And I even thought maybe I should not teach maybe if I can’t teach about the most important topic of my life. What else can I teach about. And then I had an idea, I decided to use another experience that I had, which was I happen to be the leading actress of a film that was featured on Netflix, and was awarded in international film festivals, like
many small festival and many other places, not because of me because of the brilliant director. But the year that I came to us as a grad student, the year before it was on a tour in US and Europe, movie theaters. And then the year that I arrived here, it was on Netflix. So wherever I went, they want to have a screening and a q&a with me. And at first I was a little shy about it. But then I started really loving that because I found that film doesn’t magic creates a very safe environment to have a deep, engaging conversation. And honestly, I made my best friends through those Q and A’s. So I started thinking maybe I can use that experience in my class. And I showed them a short documentary about the issue. It was a perfect documentary made by by a documentarian in New York City. Anyway, that’s her on screen for video chats. And my students would gaze on the screen and ask brilliant questions and wanted to take action. So they were really passionate and my dream came through. It changed everything for them. And also for me, I decided to quit teaching and be the brilliant team that with barback, my co founder we created we started building this platform. Once the
what do you see some additional needs for a diversity and inclusion practitioners? Like, um, I know when we, when I first thought about putting together this virtual summit for diversity, equity and inclusion, it was specifically seeing the changes in the issues that were coming about from across the world. And this was March like so it was six weeks ago or more.
I know and it seems like a lifetime ago, but it’s only six weeks. exactly what’s in. So what are you seeing now that we we are six weeks further into COVID-19? Some digital ease from current or previous clients that they’re coming back to you for that summit? other employees have not thought about or started investigating on right now right now in their workplaces?
so many important things that we need to pay attention specifically in these remote communities that now we are having conversations around diversity and inclusion are even more important these days. And believe it or not, I was reading an article by Harvard Business Review that the companies who are going to be the successful ones out of this era of COVID-19 are those who are more diverse and more passionate about inclusivity. Because this is the time that you could see that even more than before how important it is to have different approaches different perspectives on board.
As we are making decisions in our teams, as we are considering the next important path with our
venture every company or specific team decision making. And if you don’t have that diversity of approaches onboard, it’s really hard to go
to the right direction.
This isolation also created another need of checking in with each other and making sure that we are understanding each other really well. Before it was like you’re in hallway and passing each other or having lunch together. And having all these different conversations, which could create that connection and
ally ship somehow in the workplace. Now, we don’t have that. So if we don’t intentionally create space for conversations, using all these innovative models that are out there,
it is really hard to continue with the situation. And we are getting requests on specifically of an ally ship is a topic that we created a collection curated series on that. And
next week, we are going to have a webinar to explain what we got for mental health and LGBTQ and
love to share that with the directors the idea first, and we’re adding to that based on requests we are getting from different companies out there.
So as far as a story bolt and the resources definitely definitely everyone if you’re even if you’re not in DNI but your employer really is looking for a way to continue to support employee ease. This is a great resource that they can utilize to help
I’m address some DNI issues, especially as the workplaces have restructured for many of us and other places, is looking at what we’re calling now essential workers who are generally lower paid.
Frontline, meaning they are literally caught high contact, and what will that be as immediate impact to communities of color, as well as to the overall us like, what will that have for all of us in the long run? But definitely, definitely, what do you need to do, because that is still very stressful, they’re going to work more so because they have to, yeah, they have to pay their bills. And they really, really need to. So that is a whole other level of mental health and stress that I think employers have yet to really delve into, and that they’re going to see not only from their direct employees, but their entire families
that I foresee coming that hasn’t that isn’t really being addressed right now. The address on mental on mental health is distress we’re feeling right now. But what comes after this for for so many families and co workers is going to be important as well.
Sure. Actually, LinkedIn is a great place that brings connections. And definitely any comments under this
broadcast that the link that you’re going to share on LinkedIn would be a perfect place to connect and my profile on LinkedIn
is exactly my name, Missy mathy, my email nessim
dot abdi@storyboards.com.
And our platform also, we are we are a team that is really working hard to reach out to anyone who needs
our service these days. And definitely if they submit their request to our platform.
The you’re going to be more than happy to help but my personal email messing up Appiah storyboard calm.
67 episodes