Natalie Holder

▶0:01HostWelcome to the Built by People podcast, where we share the stories and insights of the world's top HR leaders. Join us as we dive deep into the minds of HR executives, uncovering their strategies, challenges, and triumphs in shaping today's workforce. I'm excited to welcome Natalie to the Built by People podcast. Natalie, thank you so much for joining us. And as a starting question, I always love to ask if you could share a little bit more about your career journey.

▶0:54GuestHi, good morning, and thank you for inviting me. It's not really a career ladder anymore. It is a very circuitous path to getting to a place where you eventually find happiness and joy with what you're doing professionally. I started out as an employment attorney, litigating cases of discrimination and harassment. I got really lucky by attending this American Bar Association meeting in a very nice location where I met a professor who was interested in moving forward with doing some training around diversity, equity, inclusion, and compliance. Clients were. That was the beginning of me looking at diversity, equity, and inclusion as a true practice, as opposed to, you know, a spinoff or just something that, you know, organizations look at as a nice-to-do. Because it was the first time that I saw the opportunity to really be on the front end of looking at policies, being able to identify and examine areas that had previously not been considered by an organization. And so, you know, after a few roles as a chief diversity officer, I landed my role within a tech organization, the Slack National Accelerator Laboratory, which is managed by Stanford University.

▶2:01HostHow do you define the role of a chief diversity officer, and why do you view it critical for organizations today?

▶2:10GuestWhen organizations are looking at new and different ways to be competitive and to stay relevant, it's your chief diversity officer who oftentimes is going to be that person to help you examine evaluate, and execute on new and different initiatives. So we are the people who are oftentimes looking at your business with a very different lens. We're looking at it upside down. We're looking at it sideways. We're looking at what's attracting people, what's not attracting people. We're asking the questions that people oftentimes either have been afraid to ask or just didn't even know to ask. Then we're evaluating what works well for the business, what's happening in the industry, what are the threats and opportunities? And then ultimately, we're looking at how do we take advantage of the partnerships in the community that surrounds to make sure that we can actually move forward with implementing some of the issues that we're seeing, can move forward with an organizational mission.

▶3:02HostCan you share examples of how organizations can ensure they're fully utilizing their chief diversity officers to drive organizational effectiveness?

▶3:13GuestSo I'm actually writing an article about this right now. Or a business journal around, you know, how are we making sure, especially in these times, that we're fully utilizing the talents, the skills, and the capabilities of today's chief diversity officer. We're talking about people who oftentimes have law degrees like I do, people who have MBAs, people who have PhDs and have studied extensively in the areas of organizational dynamics and psychology. People who really have a deep-seated, you know, uh, bench strength when it comes to looking at, um, organizational talent, how businesses are run, and ultimately what does it take to keep an organization nimble and agile. And so oftentimes organizations might just simply say, oh, let's just stuff the, you know, chief diversity officer, or let's just put them into the talent acquisition area. And that might work well for the organization,, but there's so much more that oftentimes the chief diversity officer can bring to an organization. When I think about within my organization, and I wanna be transparent that I am the former chief diversity officer of the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, as I have stepped down, one of our greatest strengths is that we have an alignment with the Department of Energy, and the Department of Energy had these requirements for the past few years that the scientists, in order to get funding, you could have had the greatest scientific idea, but if you didn't have what was called a PIER plan, a Promoting Inclusive Equitable Research plan attached to your proposal, you most likely were not going to get funded. And so being that person in the organization who could help my scientists to understand how and where they could source new and different talent, how could they make sure that their teams were getting the training and development to ensure that they were proactively looking at what oftentimes detracts from teams being able to collaborate with each other. And then ultimately figuring out who are the partners within the Bay Area, because that's where my laboratory was based, you know, who are the organizations within the Bay Area that we could tap into to ensure that the work that we were developing and the science that we were developing really would be relevant and would be meaningful, not just for the community that surrounded us, but ultimately nationally? How would we make sure that that would be something that would be meaningful?

▶5:39HostHow do you approach the challenge of avoiding the glass cliff for diversity officers, and what strategies can organizations implement to prevent it?

▶5:49GuestSo the glass cliff is, you know, often known as when we hire people who are historically underrepresented, you know, namely women, African Americans, Latinos, Native Americans. And we put them in these high, high-pressure and very, you know, rarefied places in an organization to help resolve some issue. It's oftentimes a very public-facing, you know, decision to put these people into a place. You know, for instance, back in 2020, after the murder of George Floyd, you saw so many corporations that were naming chief diversity officers and making these, you know, public statements about how and what they were planning to do now that they had a chief diversity officer. But statistically, if you look at many of the, many of these organizations that had these pronouncements of, you know, moving the chief diversity officer into the C-suite, even hiring one, many of those organizations have now backtracked and those chief diversity officers have fallen off of the glass cliff. And some of them were even pushed, meaning that these were individuals who were not given the resources, given the support that they needed in order to get the work done. And so that oftentimes is, you know, what's termed as the glass cliff— hiring someone, not giving them the resources, and then seeing them falter. And, you know, it's very easy to fall into the trap of having a glass cliff employee, because once again, you're talking about an area that is new to many organizations. Having a chief diversity officer or even a diversity, equity, and inclusion office was new. Many organizations didn't even know how they wanted to define diversity, equity, and inclusion, and they didn't understand how it could further their businesses and what it would mean to their businesses. So that right there is the essence and core of it, understanding how and why do you even have these offices? How and why do you even have these professionals who are working in these spaces? So I'll answer your question in two different ways. Number one, for the organization to ensure that they're not pushing people off of these cliffs and setting them up to be on these cliffs, but then also I'd like to give some advice for the individuals who may be in these positions where they could potentially fall off the cliff. As we're looking at, you know, a very changing dynamic for chief diversity officers and the whole notion of diversity, equity, and inclusion in organizations right now, it's really important that organizations are clear about how is this impacting their work and making sure that they have a very clear sense of where are the benefits. So for instance, in my organization, as I mentioned, funding was something that you would have to make sure that you were very clear about how you were actually creating inclusiveness in your science in order to get funding. Similarly, for many other organizations, I recently spoke with, you know, a professional over at Microsoft who spoke about new technologies that they were creating because they were tapping into pockets of their organization that are historically underrepresented to help identify new and different technologies and products and opportunities. For instance, being able to have dictation software. Oftentimes, organizations that launched that kind of technology a few years ago did so because they were informed by members of their team, members of their organization who were not able to see and who might have been vision impaired. And the dictation helped out with being able to write notes and being able to communicate. Freely and easily. And so for the organization, like I said, it's very important to dig deep and understand how and where do your products, your services, and even your ability to, you know, engage in better reputational brand awareness with the talent market, how and where do you have opportunities there? And that's oftentimes where your chief diversity officer can help out. Because like I said, these are people who have all sorts of degrees and all sorts of connectivity to the business. Now, the other end of the spectrum, people who see themselves on the cliff. I often say to people, don't take a role unless you know who your stakeholders are. So, if you're taking a role in where it's a nice-to-do, where the organization has said, oh, this is something that we see as a value, but you don't see any stakeholders, in other words, boards of directors, shareholders, you know, government agencies that are going to see that this work happens, you don't have strong stakeholders.. And so that right there is the first part. But then also, I do think that the HR community has a responsibility when it comes to making sure that people are not pushed off of the glass cliff, namely, you know, your chief diversity officers, you know, HR professionals, your chief people officer, your chief human resource officer. These are people who oftentimes are sitting at the table of strategic decision-making, and they can help to inform the CEO of what sort of cultural changes and shifts will happen in their organizations. If they make too dramatic a change and too dramatic an elimination of something that has been incorporated into the bedrock of the organization within the past few years of looking at, once again, how historically underrepresented groups have been brought into, have been encouraged to stay, and have been advanced within the organization.

▶11:01HostNatalie, in your experience, how does diversity impact areas like marketing, procurement, and communications within an organization?

▶11:10GuestSo your true chief diversity officer is that person who is going to understand that marketing, procurement, and communications, those are elements that you want to work with very closely because you're all a part of helping to define and to shape the culture of the organization. Your comms team, your communications people, those are people who are helping with messaging. And the messaging and the branding are helpful when it comes to what do you look like in the labor marketplace? What are people hearing and understanding about the products that you're using and how you're treating people in your organization? When it comes to marketing, it's your chief diversity officer who can be, you know, who has the ability to work with the people who can also shape how the market is looking at different products and services. And as I said, being able to examine, evaluate, and execute on how and where unsourced opportunities can take place within the marketplace. And then lastly, when we're looking at procurement, it's also looking at, you know, how and where have there been businesses who are, let's say, veteran-owned, women-owned, minority business enterprises that maybe have not been brought into the fold of your organization and have been historically underutilized? Where might we be able to find new and different solutions by working with those businesses that can help to advance the initiatives that we look at in terms of our mission as an organization?

▶12:32HostWhat are some successful strategies you've seen for increasing procurement opportunities for minority-owned businesses?

▶12:40GuestSo it all starts with intentionality and understanding which businesses are out there. So, you know, a few years ago, I found out at Slack that we had a relationship with the National Minority Supplier Diversity Council by way of our relationship with Stanford. That was going completely unused. Now, the MMSDC, they're the organization that certifies, you know, hundreds of minority business enterprises every year. They're the ones who do the vetting to make sure that these businesses can take on a certain dollar amount of business. And so it was a matter of working with our procurement and contracting office to say, we should actually be looking more closely at which businesses are in the Bay Area that can be, you know, a way for us to source products and services and, you know, other things that we need in the organization locally so that we're supporting the businesses around us. And, you know, to the credit of a really great procurement officer who we have, who's done a number of different forums, who's done a number of different meet and greets, and who's really made sure that we're getting our name out there to these businesses so that they know that we exist, but we also need to know that they exist. And so it's really, you know, once again, starting off with that awareness piece. But then really having the opportunity to have these businesses showcase who and what they are. So we've brought these businesses into our organization during some of these meet and greets to talk about what they do and making sure that we're inviting the people who can actually procure these services to sit in the room with these individuals so that they can hear and so that they can also meet who these individuals are. Within my office, we helped to surpass certain goals and initiatives that we were looking at when it came to making sure that we were doing a better job of identifying and working with veteran-owned businesses, women-owned businesses, and other businesses that have been historically underrepresented within our vendor pool.

▶14:41HostNatalie, what parting advice would you like to share with our community?

▶14:45GuestYou know, it's going to be a very interesting time as we look at many organizations that are making shifts around diversity, equity, inclusion. And I think it's important organizations are honest with themselves and have a very long-term view of how and where they're making changes, because the core of public opinion does not forget very quickly how and when people do state very strong values, but then back away from them. I think most recently we saw that within one of the major tech companies, they've decided to completely, you know, do away with their diversity office and, you know, even move their chief diversity officer into a whole different role where that person will no longer be the chief chief diversity officer. In the comments, one of their employees wrote on one of their platforms that diversity, equity, inclusion was not a value, it was a hobby. Your people are watching what's happening. People in the external marketplace are watching what's happening, and they're listening. As one of my fellow chief diversity officers said, the D&DEI should stand for data. The data tells you a lot about how and where you're missing market opportunities. And for any organization that is planning to make shifts or changes, I highly recommend, have you looked at your data to make sure that you're making the right changes?

▶16:06HostNatalie, thank you so much for joining us on the Built By People podcast. It was a pleasure to have you involved.

▶16:11GuestPleasure as well. Have a good day.