Dr. Yasmin Davidds: Empowering Latinas and multicultural women to become leaders around the world

Inclusivity Included: Powerful personal stories

Dr. Yasmin Davidds joins John Iino and Iveliz Crespo to share her personal stories of empowering and developing multicultural women leaders. An organizational psychologist, Dr. Davidds has helped develop over 2,000 corporate leaders in more than 200 blue chip companies in 22 countries; by teaching, instructing and developing negotiation skills and leadership competencies, and focusing on women in professional, academic and corporate settings.

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Transcript:

Intro: Hi, I'm John Iino. And I'm Iveliz Crespo. Welcome to the Reed Smith podcast. Inclusivity Included: Powerful Personal Stories. In each episode of this podcast, our guests will share their personal stories, passions, and challenges, past and present, all with a goal of bringing people together and learning more about others. You might be surprised by what we all have in common, inclusivity included.

John: Hey everyone, welcome to the podcast. It's great to be back. Hey, Iveliz.

Iveliz: Hi John. How are you doing today?

John: Oh, great. So today we're really fortunate to have as our guest, Dr. Yasmin Davidds. Yasmin is the CEO and founder of the Multicultural Women's Executive Leadership Foundation, and in fact, had the opportunity to speak with her cohort of many fantastic students as part of her multicultural executive leadership and entrepreneurial forum. Welcome to the podcast, Yasmin.

Yasmin: Thank you so much for having me, John and Iveliz. I'm super excited to be here today.

John: You, you've done so much over the course of your career empowering multicultural women leaders. I know that you're an organizational psychologist originally, but you've worked with corporate leaders and companies really across the world, instructing and helping women in particular with respect to leadership, competencies, negotiation skills, and in the professional academic and in corporate settings. It's just been so fantastic. Thank you for all your amazing work. So you've really had a great impact on so many women. The title of our podcast is Powerful Personal Stories. So tell us a little bit about your background and what inspired you to really lead so many powerful women.

Yasmin: Well, first of all, I love the title of your podcast because personal stories is what it's all about. And actually our probably entire podcast process today, I would be going back to everyone, women's owning her personal story. But mine comes from my personal story. When I was five years old, I grew up in a very dysfunctional family. There was a lot of abuse. My father was very abusive towards my mother, a very machista kind of mentality, and I didn't know any better. And I said, mommy, I asked her in Spanish que, why do we stay? Daddy does all these things to us, I don't understand. And she said, mija, that's just the way things are. I don't have an education. I don't know the English language. If we stay, we'll be taken care of. If we leave, we'll be homeless. And I said, oh no, mommy, when I grow up, I'm going to change the world and make it better for women. Just watch mommy. And I didn't know at that time that I just made a commitment. And literally since the age of five, my entire career and everything I've done has been towards the empowerment and development of women. And at that time I realized that I wanted to save my mother, but I couldn't. I was too young, but yet I committed my life to helping other women own their power and transform their own lives. So that's where my life work came from.

John: Fantastic. I know you studied at USC and now have your own company where you're helping people for so many years. What got you into studying organizational psychology and then applying that really towards your passion for helping other women?

Yasmin: Well, it all started from, I launched my first book called Empowering Latinas, breaking Boundaries, freeing Lives actually 19 years ago about my personal story of tragedy and triumph and my life story. And it took a life of its own literally all over the world and in English and Spanish and many different countries. And so I was asked to come in and be a speaker, and then I was asked to come in and help Latinas own their power in different organizations. So I wanted to go back and get my PhD at that time in organizational psychology to understand the culture of organizations and how to help them navigate different cultures and be able the psychology aspect to really help Latinas flourish. However, as I was going into organizations, I realized that Latina women did not feel safe to really explore, do the inner work I call, which is really owning their power by owning their life story. And so there was many barriers within organizations and not on purpose. It was just for the culture of the organization didn't allow them to really be Latinas and owning it. So I decided after several years that I needed a safe space to create for women First Latinas. Then it transferred into multicultural women to come together and share stories and share strengths and go through leadership development. And so that's when I decided to launch the Latina Global Executive Leadership Institute in 2013 and started with Latinas in partnering with USC Marshall School of Business. And the dean there was very supportive. And actually our institute was the first personal kind of partnership they've done. That wasn't like a billion dollar kind of deal. It was literally them supporting and believing in me because I had a 25 year relationship, a friendship with the dean at that time, since I was an undergraduate student there. He's seen me build what I did over the years and became very supportive. So we launched it there and with 25 women and they came together, it was incredibly successful. And then year after year, we continued to have it until one of my sponsors came to me and said, these are not just Latina issues, these are women issues, and here's $50,000. We want you to launch the multicultural one. And so we did. 2018, we had the multicultural program and the Latina program, and I didn't have a life because it was lit, and then I had other programs. So I had to make a choice on whether to keep the Latina or merge the Latina into the multicultural. And because we want the greatest impact, the greatest reach, we decided to keep the multicultural.

Iveliz: Absolutely. I mean, that sounds very impressive and it's really admirable that you were able to take your lived experience, which a lot of folks would refer to as a very trauma-based experience. And taking that trauma and using that trauma to further advance rights for women across corporate structures is really impressive work. I'm actually just really curious. You mentioned you merged the Latina group with the multicultural group because you wanted to have the largest reach. We recognize that because we're also different irrespective of being minorities, we all have different challenges that we face, whether it's through society or through our own personal challenges that we have developed as individuals. And I'm curious to know if you're seeing any trends in terms of some of the challenges that women are facing. Are you seeing any commonalities despite working with women across all different racial groups?

Yasmin: Yes. Actually, what's interesting is that when I first decided to merge the programs and I made an announcement, we sent a press release out. At first, there was a lot of pushback from some Latinas. They felt betrayed. They felt this is the only thing we have that's our own, and they didn't understand. And my thing is sometimes you have to experience it in order to fully understand. So that group of Latinas, or let's just say that small group that felt that way once they participated in the multicultural program or friends of theirs, it was like, thank God you didn't listen to us Yasmin. Thank God you went forward with the multicultural. We would never have learned from our fellow African-American sisters, fellow Asian sisters, what it is to be Asian or what it is to be. And so we do have an underlying kind of struggles and barriers that there are for us in organizations and just in the world. The whole intersectionality, which I know we'll get into of being Latina and being a woman or being African-American and being a woman, and usually the greatest barrier for each women regardless of ethnicity is themselves. And so it is their own limitations of what they feel their own limitations are at times. And it's only working through those self limitations and breaking through them that you then realize when you're ready to embrace the world, the world will be ready to embrace you back. And yes, of course there's discrimination and there's different organizational barriers, but I do think that when you fully understand how to navigate those, which is some things that we teach in our program and fully understand the power you have just owning all of your story, you really do go to the next level. Some of the, I would say, aspects that may be different for Latinas versus African-American versus let's say Asian or different women is for Latinas, a lot of it is family. Family. They can be families, great support, but also family barriers. And what I mean is for them to be able to, they have a lot of guilt in managing their time with their family and work time. And right now during Covid, forget it. It's like a whole different experience for our Asian women, A lot of their struggles is them being able to own their power as women in a way that they feel good about because they're still very much on family obligations. It's a little bit different as far as the family dynamics. And then the African-American women really, really struggle with perception of the world on them or just society of the angry black women. I mean, that comes up a lot in our programs and they're so tired of it. They're just so tired of it. And so Latinos don't deal with that really. That's not something that, but it's all culturally based and it's usually either family or society imposed on women.

John: I know Yasmin that you've moderated a number of programs, but more recently specifically about the Afro Latinx experience in terms of community organizing race and how communities really can come together as well. What have been some of your thoughts in terms of that intersection between the Afro and Latinx communities?

Yasmin: It's interesting because that's a really unique kind of position and it's really not discussed anywhere. And this is why it was so important to bring this webinar with USC Dornsife and have these dialogues about the Afro-Latino experience because there really is not a space for them to talk about it. And they really do feel neglected in a way where we're not fully accepted into the Latino community because we're Latino, so we're not fully Latina, and we're not fully accepted into the African-American kind of ethnicity or culture because we're not fully African-American. So we really don't understand what it's to be. So it's a struggle for them because it feels that their identity is always called into question. So they do have to do a lot of internal work in order to, especially during these divisive times too, who are they? And being able to stand strong and being part of two different cultures that really should be united anyways, a hundred percent. But as we all know, it's not always that way.

John: Yeah, no, absolutely. As we talked about our Reed Smith's racial equity action plan, it's been a constant topic of discussion specifically. We are obviously focused on Black Lives Matters and our black employees, but other races and how through, whether it's intersectionality or just through generally how we can support black employees, but the Afro Latinx folks and then more broadly people of all races. And so the Latino experience is unique from the black experience, but it's not to say that we don't have a lot of the same challenges as well. And the Asian American experience, we recently did a podcast on the hate crimes and the hatred expressed towards Asian Americans, especially during covid. So it's something that it's walking that fine line that you're talking about certainly is important for all of us.

Yasmin: Yes.

Iveliz: So Yasmin, based off of your organizational psychology background, what would you say to our listeners are some of the top things that women of color can do to become the leaders they aspire to? We recognize that there are barriers that are put in place, right? Organizational barriers and personal barriers that we all have put in place. But what are some of the things absent of those barriers that you would suggest for women of color to be able to become the leaders that they aspire to be?

Yasmin: It's interesting because we as women and as individuals, will always go and develop our competencies, leadership competencies, which you can go to any university or leadership program and develop these competencies of how to manage better and all these elements which are great and very important and are needed. However, the areas that women or maybe society doesn't promote that are very, very important. And I always recommend for women of color especially, is really doing the inner work, the internal work, the identity work. And that is really owning your leadership identity, which really reflects on who you are, how have you become who you are? Because once again, most women or most people have some kind of shame in their life. And if they don't own that shame and are able to be able to say, Hey, I'm proud for what I went through and I've overcame it and I'm a survivor of it, you can't own all of your power because you have to own that part of yourself in order to own all of your power. The moment you don't own and are able to, and you kind of want to hide a part of who you are, you're hiding or you're basically eliminating some of your power because full power is owning your full self. So when I explain that to women of color, especially multicultural women, and we go through a process in our program of being able to identify those areas in your life that you may be ashamed of, and then you give them voice and women share in their teams and within the cohort about what they went through and all the women accept them and love them. And there's no judgment in our program. Actually, that's a strict rule. If you judge someone, you're out, you start realizing that we're all the same regardless if you're graduate from Harvard or not or wherever you come from, it's an equalizer. And so that is where we start seeing our women really grow as leaders within their own identity, owning all of who they are, and by the time they graduate, most of our women, one third will stay in their companies and move up. One third will leave their companies, they realize it's not a good fit and go somewhere else and move up, and one third will leave corporate America and really start their own companies. So that's the only model that I've seen of women of color that has worked as far as them really going to the next level. I have not seen any other kind of say competency building that has really helped them move to the next level. It's really they're owning their own stories and their confidence level to be able to say, you know what? I've worked hard. I need opportunities and asking for them. But even if you give them the tools to ask for opportunities to their boss, they won't have the confidence at time or they'll ask from a place of anger because they're frustrated. But once they own their story, they own their power, they'll come from a place of grace because they realize if they don't give me opportunities here, I'll just go somewhere else.

Iveliz: That's great. So I just had a follow up question to that because I hear the advice and I think it makes a lot of sense. We have to own who we are. We have to be able to bring our full selves to work, right? But for us to be able to bring our full selves to work, we have to shine light on the parts of ourselves that we tend to hide in these corporate settings. But how do you reconcile this owning yourself and bringing your full self to work with organizations that may not be ready to support?

Yasmin: Thank you for that question because that is probably the epitome of the questions of all questions because I did a study for Latinas maybe about six years ago, about their greatest barriers moving up and the Latinas, we had about 500 responses, and the women said the higher they moved up, the less they could be themselves as Latinas because they had to assimilate more and more as they moved up. If they were in middle management, they can show up being themselves, but as soon as they moved up, they had to show up less and less of being themselves and more assimilating with the culture. So what I always say is there's call it the CDO plan, and there's three elements of really being able for your women of color to flourish in your organization. You have to have the inclusive culture, you have to have development for them, and you have to offer opportunity. So culture development, opportunity, the CDO equals success in my book of what I've seen, and I honestly always use, and I'm not just saying this because I'm on Reed Smith podcast, but I always use Reed Smith as an example of culture development and opportunity of what Reed Smith is doing because most organizations don't provide the inclusive culture, and maybe it's never perfect, but you have to always be striving for it and working hard and creating measurable results. But if you don't have that inclusive culture where women show up and feel that they can be themselves, I always tell women, leave create an exit strategy. We teach women how to create exit strategies if they're not comfortable, if they don't feel their organization is helping them grow. And so that's why we're very committed to the women, and we're not necessarily, we don't answer to the companies. And what I say is that if companies want to sponsor women to go through our program, they do, and they're very supportive and it's wonderful, but they have to be able to answer to women and provide support for women. And the women will stay and move up there and become advocates of that. But if they don't offer that for women, 33% of the women that graduate from a program end up leaving their organizations because they and go look for an organization that is promoting a more inclusive culture and working actively at it. So that's my recommendation to women. If you are an organization that you feel is not even striving or working hard to create an inclusive culture, you need to start looking. Do not ever leave with that, created an exit strategy and go to an organization that's going to help you thrive. And that is my honest recommendation for women is if you don't have the culture, you're not going to thrive or you're going to be miserable and it's not worth it.

John: Dr. Yasmin, I just love hearing you say that because for those of you out there, I was actually a guest at Dr. Yasmin's cohorts earlier this week, and she posed that same question to me and not knowing the response. It was that, yeah, and yes, you should be with an organization that supports what you being who you are. The additional point that I made was for corporations. And as I think about Reed Smith, as we see our senior women rising to the highest levels of our firm, I really think it's incumbent on them to also make other women and women of color and feel comfortable to express themselves authentically. You hate to put all the onus on the successful women, but it's really part of your being successful means to play it forward and help cultivate those cultures. And for the men as well to make sure that, look, we've gotten some women into great positions, but let them be empowered to express themselves and talk about the specific challenges they have. So that's just great. I also love that you talked about the shame and vulnerability. That's straight out like Brené Brown's studies as well. So I just think it's so important in order to be a really good leader is just to be vulnerable. And we certainly have been encouraging all of our leadership to express their vulnerabilities to just be better leaders. So I wanted just follow up briefly in terms of, we were talking about what the corporations can do. I don't know if you've worked with any of the employee resource groups, the women's support groups within corporations. What can they be doing specifically to help them support their women succeed?

Yasmin: Yes, actually, I work with many employee resource groups with all different, the African-American, the Latino, and especially the women ERGs. And what I always tell them, and what I help them usually build when I come into organizations and help them is I always say, it's great that it's a support system and a network, but it can never just be that or you have to be able to offer value to the organization. You have to be of value to the organization in order for them to give you a strong budget in order for them to support you. If not, you just be a networking group, which it won't bring enough value for you to move up or leverage the organization. So I help them be able to see how can you bring value? Sometimes they become product experts, so they're able to come together and give opinions or recommendations on products to the Latino market or to the women market or whatever it may be. Or how can they bring value as far as mentorship in their program? Can they create something? So they need to be of value more than a networking group to the organization and to each other, however, that may be for the organization. And that means maybe sitting down with their executive sponsors and asking the executive sponsors, how can women, a group of women, hundreds of women, bring value to the organization in a way that we would be taken more seriously than a networking group or something like that. So there's different avenues to go about that, which gets into a whole formula. But I would say find ways you can bring value to the organization.

Iveliz: I agree with you on that. I think one of the biggest mistakes that employee resource groups make is just being a networking group, and they have so much more potential in that, particularly when they can tie their goals to the business's goals when they can create professional development opportunities and leadership opportunities for their folks. So I think that's one of the biggest mistakes that employee resource groups make where it's all about giving, right? So they're relying on the employees to do all this work, but if they're leveraged correctly and they're tied into the business's goals, I think they have a lot more potential than just being a networking opportunity for employees.

Yasmin: Absolutely.

John: For example, with Reed Smith, with our employee resource groups, we call them business inclusion groups in their annuals, each of the groups has to come up with an annual strategic plan, and we ask the groups to specifically put into their plan how their activities and goals align with the corporations, with the law firms specific business goals as well.

Yasmin: That's great. That's wonderful.

John: So Dr. Yasmin, what do you see in terms of the future of programs within corporations or organizations with respect to empowering and developing women of color? As we've just spoken, it seems like it's evolved over the last few years. And just in terms of not just being networking groups, but being more than that, what do you think is in terms of the future of some of these programs?

Yasmin: I would say, I mean currently, I don't know of any internal, I mean, they may exist, but I don't know of any internal multicultural women executive leadership programs because they have to be gender focused, gender based and multicultural based, which means the teachings come from a multicultural perspective. It's through a multicultural perspective lens, which means the faculty is multicultural and they teach multicultural leadership. So there are certain elements, and that's a difficult combination to find. However, I think it's critical, and it has been proven to me as far as my experience, critical for women to, first, they may be part of leadership programs that are co-ed, but to have a leadership program that's all women that they can feel safe in because there's certain elements that women tend to say or not say in front of men only because that's just the way the culture is within the program. And so with all women there ly is a vulnerability, and women usually are able to grow much more in a safe space and then take on the world after that. But they need that feedback, that support from other women that really does make a difference. And that's what we've seen. And then being able to ask those questions. We have questions that are asked by our white women in our program to black women about, can you help me understand why I can't say these words? Can you help me understand why saying women of color is okay, but colored people is not? I mean, those are the kind of questions you can't really ask in an open setting unless you feel a safe space where people are not going to take it wrong or get insulted. They know the intention is pure and support. So being able to have those difficult conversations, being able to create that culture, if you can do it within your organization in a group of multicultural women, then that's wonderful. But sometimes that's very difficult and organizations tend to get a little concerned with legal aspect of it. If it's all women, can we get sued or not? I mean, you're a legal firm, so you guys are set. You guys can handle all that. But other organizations. But I would say focus on helping multicultural women go to a space or create a space for them where they feel safe enough to have these conversations between white women and African-American women that are safe and really have a foundation of principles before personalities, I call it. And that's when you really focus on the principle of support and no judgment. Instead of getting caught up on the personalities of like, well, she said it like this and she said it like that, which we all know women can get into if that's allowed. So safe space and having multicultural women have real conversations,

John: That's so important that you keep mentioning the no judgment rule. Like you say, if people bring judgment to your cohort, then they're out of the cohort. What an amazing but simple concept that we all can use. I think in terms of Reed Smith, this year, we recently launched our mastermind classes or mastermind seminar workshops for some of our up and coming women, but to have, like you say, those candid conversations amongst the group that will focus on a specific topic around being a multicultural woman and bringing to that discussion, the lack of judgment just really opens up to candid and open discussions really think. That's fantastic. So thinking about the future as well, what upcoming events are on your plate and your organization, and frankly, how can all of our listeners get in touch with you and sign up to some of your cohorts?

Yasmin: Yes. We are actually launching probably by the end of this week, probably Thursday, we're launching our open applications for our first ever, our 2021 multicultural women executive leadership entrepreneur, millennial programs, but all virtual. So we're doing all virtual from beginning to end, starting from January, 2021, graduation in June, 2021, and we are taking it global, which means we'll also focus on recruitment from women globally, from different parts of the country, and also bring in faculty from the London School of Business and different global universities so that we really get the global perspective there because now no longer is, we don't have any boundaries now taking it virtual. We really can go global. So we're really excited on bringing that dimension into the program. And so it's the leadership executive leadership program, the entrepreneur program and millennial program. And for millennial program, we only accept five millennials who then we bring into the cohort with the executive and entrepreneurs, and they become their mentors and really support them. You can go to www.multiculturalwomenlead.org, and you can email me at [e-mail].

John: Fantastic. Dr. Yasmin, thank you for coming in today, sharing all your work, all the amazing things you're doing with women. I personally just always enjoy speaking with you. It's a pleasure to come down to your cohort and speak to your great students, and thank you for sharing with our audience so much of what you do.

Yasmin: Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. It was wonderful.

Iveliz: Yes, thank you, Yasmin. It's been a pleasure.

Yasmin: Thank you, Iveliz. Take care.

Outro: Inclusivity Included is a Reed Smith production. Our producer is Ali McCardell. This podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play, Stitcher, PodBean and reedsmith.com.

Disclaimer: This podcast is provided for educational purposes. It does not constitute legal advice and is not intended to establish an attorney-client relationship, nor is it intended to suggest or establish standards of care applicable to particular lawyers in any given situation. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.

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