Cook on Monday Morning #60: The Bryant Marks Story

The Cook On Monday Morning Podcast

Dr. Bryant T. Marks, Sr. is an ordained minister, the founder and Chief Equity Officer at The National Training Institute on Race & Equity, as well as, a Psychology Professor at Morehouse College. For over twenty years Dr. Marks has provided unparalleled diversity, equity, and inclusion training. He served on President Obama’s Board of Advisors with the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African Americans and as Senior Advisor with the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Dr. Marks was a contributor/trainer with the Obama Administration’s My Brother’s Keeper (MBK) and 21st Century Policing programs. Dr. Marks has provided implicit bias training to over 2,000 Police Chiefs and several thousand patrol officers, including the entire Los Angeles Police Department. Dr. Marks holds a B.A. in psychology and a minor in economics from Morehouse College, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Social Psychology from the University of Michigan. He conducts research in the areas of diversity and implicit bias, Black male psychology and development, and the academic achievement of minority college students. When Dr. Marks is not pursuing some of the most important work of this era, you can find him spending quality time with his wife and three children. During our interview we discuss the meaning of implicit bias and how it affects us all, why the concept of defunding the police is problematic, and what it's like to be the one you call for diversity, equity, and inclusion training.

The National Training Institute on Race & Equity Linkedin Twitter

Topics discussed in this episode: [00:00] Introductions [02:43] Implicit Bias [05:20] I’ve been doing diversity training for 20 years [07:18] Defunding the Police, I knew it was going to be problematic [10:50] Not old enough to drink, but old enough to take somebody’s life [15:10] These are good problems [21:13] Are you serious or not? [24:54] Institutionalize it [27:06] Sort of like Master Class [29:41] A person of faith and of facts [31:58] The secret sauce [34:39] Inherently racist or evil [37:23] Rapid Fire: “Perfection is the goal, but excellence is acceptable”

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About The Host: Stevon Cook is a small business owner, policy maker and media personality. He is the founder of The Luther Harris Holding Company, a strategic advising company that focuses on creating partnerships, diversity recruitment and helping companies drive impact in the communities where they do business. As the host of The Cook on Monday Morning podcast, he interviews high capacity leaders in a variety of industries. The goal of the podcast is to build a community of people creating lives that make them excited about Monday morning. At Cook on Monday Morning we believe that if we can own Monday morning, we can own the week, if we can own the week then we can own the year and if we change your year, we can change your life. Cook is the former President of the San Francisco Board of Education. He was elected in 2016 with over 150,000 votes. He also served as CEO of Mission Bit, an education nonprofit focused on ending generational poverty through coding education for high school students.

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