The Pomegranate Principle: Exploring Black Excellence & DEI with Rory Verrett

Have you ever considered the impact of being birthed into Black excellence? Join me, Langston Clark, as I engage in riveting discourse with Rory Verrett, ex-host of the Prodigy Podcast and both a Howard and Harvard University graduate. We dive into Rory's experience of being birthed into Black excellence and its influence on his life. We'll also reflect on Rory's podcast years, discussing the crucial role of networking and the power of LinkedIn.

Our journey continues as we navigate  Black entrepreneurship within Corporate America. Hear intimate narratives about conquering career obstacles and the challenges of writing a book in today's swift-click culture. We underscore the value of maintaining one's integrity and the responsibility to uplift marginalized communities in the professional sphere. We then reorient towards diversity and recruitment, deploying the Pomegranate Principle as a metaphor to illustrate the organization of America's talent market.

Lastly, we embark on the discussion of sustaining diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) amidst the current political headwinds, especially within public institutions. We unpack the thorny issues inherent in upholding DEI, the false narrative of DEI as a win-lose proposition, and the urgent need for infusing diversity throughout organizations. We delve into the dynamics and duties of a mentor-protégé relationship and the significance of respecting time. Our conversation concludes by illuminating the unique experiences and hurdles black professionals face in Corporate America, emphasizing the critical need for support, comprehension, and meritocracy in the workplace. Tune in for this enlightening exploration of black excellence and DEI.

Transcript

Langston Clark: 0:00

What's up everybody. Once again, this is Langston Clark, founder and organizer of Entrepreneurial Abitite, a series of events dedicated to building community, promoting intellectualism and supporting black businesses. And today we have a very special guest, rory Verrett, and this is part of our series as highlighting entrepreneurs and authors who have some type of affiliation or relationship with historically black colleges. As you can see on Rory's shirt, he's a graduate of Howard University.

Langston Clark: 0:24

I'm a graduate of A&T and just to give you all some context for this, the inspiration for my podcast was his podcast. That is no longer. He's no longer doing new episodes, but you can listen to it. It's called Prodigy Podcast and it was my go-to show early on in my career as an academic, although a lot of what he was talking about dealt with the context of corporate America, and I just want to share with you all three of my favorite shows. So my number one favorite show from the Prodigy podcast was the Six Kinds of Black Booji People you Meet. Now that may seem it was funny, it was comical, but there were some really serious nuggets and that podcast episode inspired me to be God. I can't remember what it was. It was like the black, it wasn't. I think it was blue collar, black, whatever one, they weren't flashing.

Langston Clark: 1:15

Blue collar booji, blue collar booji. These are the people that you could actually go to when you need some money, because the ones that are trying to be like Atlanta booji or something like that spend all their money on trying to look a certain way. But the blue collar booji are really the anchors.

Langston Clark: 1:29

That really help you out and do the uplift work because they're doing it in a more authentic type of way, and so that's my number one favorite. My number two favorite is using LinkedIn to your advantage. Linkedin is not like other social media. I actually reached out to Rory Villa LinkedIn in order to get this interview to happen, and LinkedIn has been my go-to for meeting authors and people that will be on this podcast. And then the other one is networking like a protege seven hacks to building your professional relationships and I think it was in that episode you were talking about going to was it Martha's Vineyard? And like your dream of having tea or lunch with Ken Chenol and stuff like that.

Langston Clark: 2:06

And you gave a strategy for how, if you want to meet somebody and build some mentoring relationship, take them to some restaurant that's in your town or their city that they never knew about before and give them some type of new experiences. So those are just examples of value and learnings and lessons that he gave on the protege podcast that I want to share with you all today.

Rory Verrett : 2:30

Thank you so much for listening and I'm so happy and proud that it inspired your own broadcasting journey.

Langston Clark: 2:36

So, as we begin, before we start talking about the book, the Pomegranate Principle, there's something in the book that you talked about that really stood out to me and this really is kind of anchored in your story growing up and being raised in a supportive black community and so talk about what it meant for you and what it means for you to have been birthed into black excellence.

Rory Verrett : 2:57

Yep, it's a profoundly important thread in my overall life and career narrative. I grew up in a family. My mother was a provost, a dean and a professor at HBCU's, dillett University, grambling, xavier, and a state school in Illinois, governor State. My dad was president of an all black union and they were both also civically engaged. We had a big extended family in New Orleans.

Rory Verrett : 3:23

I went to an all black high school, shout out to the St Augustine Purple Knights, where I had 675 black students, all men, all boys rather, around me at the time. And so every nerd that I met, every science geek, everybody that could program a computer back in the day, the person that was a music virtual soul, the scholar athlete, the history buff, the student political, all of those were black men, black young boys at the time. I went there when I was 13 in the Otters program in eighth grade. So all of those people were young black men who had wavy, kinky hair we all liked, wearing Ralph Lauren and drabos and and preppy clothing. And then I went to Howard University where I had, by scale, an even bigger platform. I had now 12,000 black students, got humbled real quick by black women at Howard that would dominate all the academic awards, brothers just couldn't compete with the sisters at Howard. And so when I got to Harvard Law School my first week, my mother called me. My mom and dad called me and they said you've had a Harvard banner on your wall since you were in high school. This has been a dream of yours for like eight years. What is it like? And I said it's been an amazing week. My head is still spinning and you know what? There are some really smart white people up here and they both laughed.

Rory Verrett : 4:43

Now I obviously consciously knew that white people were smart. I mean, I voted for Michael Dukakis. I used to watch Tom Brokaw. I really liked watching Peter Jennings on ABC News, so I mean, it was no diss to white people.

Rory Verrett : 4:53

But I knew most intimately the excellence of black people. That was what was proximate to me. I knew what that looked like. I knew that a guy that walked with baggy pants on, with you know Jordan's on and the sweatshirt and what not, could still be a science geek. I knew that the kid that smoked weed and was too cool, you know, for school could still be somebody that was a mathematical genius. And so I just knew all these different forms and shapes and shades of black excellence and it really did form my consciousness about all the different ways in which excellence shows up in the world. It's no surprise that I'm now a diversity recruiter, because I know that idiots and geniuses run an equal measure in every ethnic population, every gender segment of our society, every heterosexual versus homosexual part of our society, all of those segments, no matter how much you slice and dice identities in America, there is their idiots, their geniuses and their mediocre people infused through all of them. But I was introduced to excellence at a very intimate way and powerful way, through black people.

Langston Clark: 5:58

Let's transition from being birthed into black excellence until your hero's journey. You've had a number of positions. You went to law school. You went from Howard to Harvard. Talk about those transitions and how they led you through corporate America and then eventually into starting your own business.

Rory Verrett : 6:15

Protease search this is something that I haven't actually talked about a lot. I've been on a lot of interviews but no one's asked me that very powerful question about the hero's journey. I think at 53, I understand that in retrospect there are certain threads in the narrative that are thicker, bigger and stronger than others. When you are going through your career you think you understand oh, I want to go to Harvard Law, then I want to be a corporate lawyer, then I want to be White House aid, then I want to run for politics. You have these projections and predictions you make and some of them right now, when I look back on them, seem silly, but they were based on the best available information I had at the time. And a lot of what informs your career moving forward are things that you don't even know you're conscious of. There are unconscious things when you fit in.

Rory Verrett : 7:05

The birth order of your family is a powerful determinant. Where you are generationally. We have an expression in executive search it takes three generations to make a dynamic career. We think we do it on our own, but it's our grandparents or the grand uncles and aunts that actually put it in place. Academic excellence that got my mother to be really focused on school and then pushed us to be really focused on school. That's why I have four national merit, national achievement scholars in my family. All four of us have been hyper successful in everything we've done. My sister, who has perhaps the least identified success she's a French teacher is by far all through. All four of us would say she's the smartest one in the family. It's not even close. I have a Harvard Law degree. My brother, stan, has been a celebrated sportscaster and ESPN for 25 years. My oldest brother is a foundation president. So all of us have been extremely successful. And so you project onto your future what you think you want to do, but in retrospect you understand what threads actually endured, what ones actually shaped how your career turned out. And there are a few things that shaped my career. Number one is a commitment to excellence.

Rory Verrett : 8:10

Now, the dirty little secret about being a person of color in corporate America, where I spent most of my career, is that excellence is not always rewarded the way you think it will be. Excellence doesn't always mean if you do your best and objectively perform, you're going to get paid fairly. You're going to get promoted, you know, in a transparent and equitable way. You're going to be awarded achievements. That doesn't always happen. Some cases that happen. In some cases it made my boss really insecure and that created another set of challenges I wasn't really prepared for to deal with. So excellence has been one thread. The other thread has been something that I think you know I don't know if this is going to convey, but it is so powerful in how I think about myself is a commitment to uplift the marginalized.

Rory Verrett : 8:55

That has been something that I have done in my career. That was not always part of my job and it was not always something. The people I worked with and for needed me, wanted me or cared that I did. You understand what I'm saying? It's like if you hire somebody to come clean your house and they say, oh, by the way, I noticed in your study you had some documents and bills out. I went online and balanced your checkbook. You'd be like what, what? I didn't ask you to do all that and I told you that you know to sweep and clean and dust and you're.

Rory Verrett : 9:24

So when you bring these extra elements into the workplace, sometimes they can cause some problems for you. When you are paying homage to values, traditions and obligations that you are not being paid to pay homage to it can complicate yourself, but it turns out in the longer arc of your career. That thread in my career has been powerful, has been redemptive and has been lucrative. For what the business that I'm in? And then I would say, lastly, that integrity.

Rory Verrett : 9:52

My wife, who knows my career story intimately well because we dated when we were both 30, and we've been married 18 years, has said you know, she calls me Mio, the scene from Matrix, when he sort of avoids the bullets that all the different ethical scandals that I was, I was proximate to. Very close to that. I said, no, I'm not doing that. And people like what do you mean? You're not doing that, I'm not asking you to do it, I'm telling you that's what you have to do and how I've avoided that over and over in my career that we would not be talking about my podcast inspiring you because I might have been in jail, I might have been bankrupt or I might not be able to look myself in the mirror had I not paid homage to integrity. So I would say excellence, integrity and a commitment to help mark last communities have been the threads that have run through my career. That has not always been. I can give you scenarios where none of those were really required in my job.

Langston Clark: 10:47

Before we get into talking about your author's journey. In the book you talk about some of the difficulties that black people working in corporate America face and I remember you talking about one company you were with that had all these people from state schools. And the state schools that you talked about weren't the flagship schools either? Correct, but then they had all these black folks there working who had degrees from Ivy League schools.

Langston Clark: 11:14

So, can you talk about how you overcame some of the difficulties in your work before you became an entrepreneur and an author and navigating corporate America?

Rory Verrett : 11:26

So the way I like to talk about it is that race primarily in some cases gender, but in some cases LGBTQ status but I think I have realized it primarily as the heterosexual man I can speak to. This race is looked at in corporate America in some companies not all, in some companies Through a funhouse mirror, like if you ever see the old-school carnivals and you go to a funhouse mirror, they make your face, why? They make your body look misshapen, and so somebody looks at you that way. They're like hey, man, you need to lose weight. And you're like wait a minute, I'm five, nine hundred eighty pounds. My BMI is pretty decent, I don't know, but the way I see you, your, your body is distended. So you are. You are seen in corporate America sometimes through a fun house mirror, and so, if that's the case, you're constantly in this dialogue about how you're seen versus how you view yourself. So in the case of some companies I worked at, it was as if you should feel lucky to be here and the decision matrix I had before I joined those companies is man, I don't want to join this, this organization. This doesn't seem like it's prestigious enough for me, but I think sometimes people are like, surprised that.

Rory Verrett : 12:38

You know black and brown people have Entitlement complexes and I will own up to the fact that when you're born in excellence in any kind, you grow up with an entitlement complex Like I expect it to be a certain way.

Rory Verrett : 12:50

I mean, you know when? When my mother, as I say in the book repeatedly, is the smartest person I've met, you know everything is downhill from there. Everything is that nobody's as smart as my black mama. No, I'm not saying that because my mom, I'm saying she got a PhD, she's twice a four-bar in scholars of the dog toying three times. I mean it is, the data is there that she is brilliant. And so you walk around and people are looking at you through a fun house mirror like no, you're, you're not, you're not worthy, we can make this right, or we're fitting you in, or we're giving you some grace to be here, and you're thinking to yourself, well, I don't know if this is even big enough, reputable enough, prestigious enough for me and that having that kind of dialogue, I think black entitlement against against privilege is a very, very difficult conversation to have.

Langston Clark: 13:33

There's almost no language to bridge that gap and that's a story that you included in the book and, as I follow you on LinkedIn, I get several posts that said. Of all the things you had to do in your career starting a business, starting a podcast, working in corporate America the hardest thing was writing this book and share with us your, your, journey.

Rory Verrett : 13:55

So, number one, the world in which we live in right now is a swipe and delete. I said something last week on social media man, I was tripping delete, it goes in a trash. I said something in a group chat on WhatsApp man, I was tripping, delete it. Awesome history. A book is permanent. It is permanent, and so the cultural backdrop of writing a book is just so different now that it might have been even 15 years ago, before social media it really took hold. Secondly, I may have a lot of thoughts about something. Writing a book requires you to distill that thought into this is what I feel about this. This is the thought that won the Olympics. In my mind, this is the gold medal thought. And so figuring out, do I think, is that really what I think, because I can't delete it again. Back to the first point. And then, thirdly, the editing process itself is just very arduous. So, writing the book, I got a co-writer, I paid someone to basically help me architect the book, and that person and I did 40 zoom sessions over about 15 months, like every other week on average, and he comes back, peter Birkeland, who's cited in the book. He comes back. Here's your book. It's a very rough draft of about the book is 225 pages, was probably 275 pages. So then I have to take to the editing process. Did you know? I need to say it in a way that sounds like my voice. I need to say it in a way that is my truth. I need to own this particular principle, or this particular idea this is the gold medal winner of the Olympics of that thought and so that took about four months to get that down to. This is what I mean to say. Then you got to get the book ready for Publication, and that editing process, in conjunction with the good people at Wiley, took another three months. So I still caught, I still.

Rory Verrett : 15:35

I was scared to read the book because I was like I'm a catcher typo, not a typo, it's not gonna be like two commas, but like I caught something where I'm like that that turn of phrase should be in quotes. That's a colloquial phrase. Nobody caught that. The reader is not gonna catch it either. But it's like you catch it like, oh, I should. It's like you go out and you put an outfit on for like a formal event or something we're a suit and the picture gets taken. You're like I didn't mean to wear that that particular Pocket square. It didn't really go with the pie I should know what had, those shoes I should.

Rory Verrett : 16:04

So you start with a fragile ego as a writer. Everybody I don't think anybody writes confidently. Everybody writes thirsty, insecure, hopeful, optimistic, scared. And then you, the book comes out and Everybody was great, like I read the book. You know, I bought the book and I'm thinking myself Did you read it? Not that I don't care if you bought it, it is a commercial exercise. I'm gonna get you bought it. But until people told me oh, my god, I read this, this is brilliant. Somebody told me I couldn't put it down. Now I'm like, oh, thank you guys. Oh, thank you God that it makes sense because I've been I've been wrestling with these ideas now for five years. I wrote the first version of it was 30 pages long and I didn't have the discipline to get through Architect in the book. Thank God for Peter Birkeland who said we're I know how to structure the writing of a book. He's almost like a writing coach.

Rory Verrett : 16:53

Yeah and, and that was extremely helpful. So it was, it is. It is the hardest thing I've done. I've been a single-digit handicapped in golf. I have produced on my own every single one 250 podcast episodes. I've been in management at the National Football League. I have been a startup entrepreneur twice. Nothing like writing a book man, but it's. It's a. It's a an Incredibly intoxicating form of pain, and I'm already working on my second book.

Langston Clark: 17:18

Okay, so it's like once you hit the first one, you got the bug, and the next one is coming out.

Rory Verrett : 17:23

Yeah, because because the it's like that movie fight club when people say what is the movie about? The movie is not about fighting, the movies about the joy of healing, and you can't heal until you have pain. So the feeling of like a chef, I guess you do all that work, you're chopping up onions, you're chopping up pepper, you're putting all this up to your bacon, you're sauteing, and then somebody says, oh my god, this is incredible, on one bite. It takes one bite and you're like thank you so much. And the chef is comforted that all that work the marinating, the, the grilling, the sauteing, flambé, whatever you did that one bite, boy, it really makes it, makes it all worth it. That's what it feels like when people, when I I've spoken about this twice I've given to public one was a webinar, one was a public in-person discussion and you know the Responses were extraordinarily powerful and positive and that makes all the pain of writing the book worth it. So you're like okay, what else do? I think that I can tell people.

Langston Clark: 18:16

I have the book right here. Before we get into some of the content, I need to be protege podcast, rory verette, okay, and I need you to talk about why is it strategic for you to write a book great question.

Rory Verrett : 18:29

So I'm in professional services, which means I lease my expertise for time. I'm a consultant, not unlike a management consultant, a lawyer, an accountant. Someone pays me for my expertise. The world is getting that expertise client by client. So if you're not a client, you don't know how smart I am or how dumb I am or how great I am or how knowledgeable I am. You don't get it until I'm a client.

Rory Verrett : 18:52

What if I could show you that I have some interesting ideas that might resonate with you and you're not a client and it it makes you think about wanting to be a client. So a book for a professional services provider, a thought leader, is just that. It is great Leadership through your thinking that provides an opportunity for people to sample what you're doing. Or the low price of $30. I mean I, the search work we do on average costs about a hundred thousand dollars for a company to hire us to manage a recruitment process. We're hiring senior leaders, presidents. These week leaders are companies. That's very expensive work. So what if I could say let me show you that I have some interesting ideas that might be relevant and it costs you $30. So for us, for our professional services provider, this is not a fiction book, it's not a comic book, it's not a romance novel. It is trying to give away for a very, very low price some Expertise that I think could be helpful in the market.

Rory Verrett : 19:45

And then, secondly, I think it's I think every writer thinks, whether true or not, they are giving a gift to the world. They're giving what they, they know and what they believe at a fraction of what it costs them. Like you know, somebody might read it. They might be transformational for them. They might be a talent acquisition professional or a chief diversity officer, and they are not moving the needle in DEI and they read this book and it changes the outcomes for the company and it changes them. They get their bonus. Their bonus is fifty thousand dollars that year and if this book was one of a few things that did it and it cost $30, what a great investment that is. So part of it is is your gift to the world. It's not free, but it is something you hope Transforms the small corners of where you're trying to influence so you talked about markets, and so I think that's an interesting segue into the grocery market.

Rory Verrett : 20:33

Mm-hmm and for you to explain what the pomegranate principle is so I am a former HU English major and one of the most powerful things I took from being an English major is the power of metaphor and Simile. I took a class once called vocabulary building and never forget this. This is 1991, 2032 years ago, and it was the story behind words. So you learn why words are spelled and why they mean what they mean. So, for example, the same root of the word monster is also the root of the word demonstrate, and demonstrate is the thing I am trying to talk to you about is so big, it is so amazing, it is so monstrous. I have to demonstrate it to you. The way a monster is something that you can't quite explain. So it is this whole inability to talk somebody through something that is the basis of it. But metaphor and similarly, in a similar way, are powerful constructs to explain things to people that words sometimes don't carry the meaning I often believe. For example, in DEI there is cancel culture. In DEI, there are people that say the wrong things or use the wrong language, because this is what I call a crisis of vocabulary. So the Povergrina principle is a way of giving you a metaphor that we all understand. Diversity, recruiting is to quote David Thomas, the president of Morehouse, who is the foremost scholar on DEI in the world.

Rory Verrett : 22:14

Dei is based on one powerful principle among many things it is the concept of risk. It is the concept of risk that the hiring managers of the world, the people that hire, vendors, all the people that have to contract or hire somebody, they are assessing risk. Is this candidate going to be right? Is this person better than the other one? In some ways, all I do as a recruiter is I assess and hedge risk with my candidate. This person is the least risky to hire in the form of competencies and interviewing, all that kind of stuff. So when we talk about race, though, everybody gets very nervous and very kind of. They clam up, and you can't have conversations about difficult, nuanced topics if you start climbing up because everyone's afraid of saying the wrong thing, because again there's a crisis of vocabulary. So you go back to metaphor. So the metaphor of the Pomergrina principle is that the talent market in America is set up like the produce section in America in supermarkets. You take your cart in a grocery store, you go to the right, typically, and you're launched into the land of produce and you typically see almost always the produce section organized fruits first, vegetables aligned along the wall. I mean there's reasons for that related to refrigeration and that kind of thing, but I had to study this. But fruit that can survive without being cooled are typically the first thing you see because of the space, and you typically see the apples on the first row, the citrus fruits on the second row, the pomegranates are typically on the fourth or fifth row and they are organized around dragon fruit, kiwi, star fruit, the so-called exotic fruits.

Rory Verrett : 23:55

And if you ever had a pomegranate you realize a pomegranate looks different. On the cover of the book I looked at hundreds of pictures of pomegranates. I want to look at a typical pomegranate. Even a fresh pomegranate looks dented. It is not a perfectly spherical fruit. It can look, with that dent that it's maybe rotten If you look at it. The way an apple looks. An apple, when it's darkened in certain areas, is most likely rotten. That's a sign that it's not a good fruit.

Rory Verrett : 24:19

When you open a pomegranate, the skin serves a different purpose. The seeds are arranged differently. The whole YouTube and TikTok videos about how to open a pomegranate effectively. But if you ever had a pomegranate you know that it's an incredibly versatile fruit. You can eat it, bite it, swallow the seeds, you can extract the juice from it. You can take the seeds themselves and put them on salads. It's a very versatile fruit.

Rory Verrett : 24:42

And the chemistry of the pomegranate? The pomegranate is an extraordinarily powerful super fruit, has incredible antioxidant qualities. So you ask yourself, why is the pomegranate sequestered on the side? Why isn't the produce section organized around the antioxidant qualities of the fruits, with the antioxidant, the highly antioxidant ones, in the front and the ones that are just flavorful and great to eat but not nutritious for you somewhere else? There are a lot of reasons that it's organized that way. One is there are agricultural lobbyists that make sure apples and oranges are there.

Rory Verrett : 25:14

There's the cultural primacy of fruit in American culture. An apple a day keeps the doctor away. You're the apple of my eye. If you love someone, a doctor tells you. You know, an apple a day keeps the doctor away. You give an apple to your teacher to curry favor. The orange has its own orange bowl. You got orange Julius, the longest standing freaking store in mall history, and you know if you go to any diner and ask for orange juice, they always have orange juice. They might not have pineapple juice, they might not have pomegranate juice. They all have orange juice. So there's cultural primacy.

Rory Verrett : 25:45

So the metaphor is that the talent market itself this way too. White men are the apples, white women are the oranges. People of color, indigenous, african American, hispanic, southeast Asian Typically those communities are the pomegranates. And if you have ever purchased fruit and you put a pomegranate in your basket and you've gotten over your biases that doesn't look like an orange or look like an apple or taste like a banana or cut like a kiwi, and you've actually used it, you're like it's not so bad. You go to the grocery store, you make a different set of selections. So we're talking about structural inequality in the form of a fruit analogy to get people's guard down, so they can understand this in a way that is not threatening, doesn't put them on the spot, and to, most importantly, say you have already done this, you have already made a decision like this, you have already gone against the conventional wisdom and reap the benefit. Do that by hiring people of color into your organization.

Langston Clark: 26:39

The setup for the book with that metaphor was perfect. It was a perfect introduction, I think, to the concept.

Langston Clark: 26:44

So in the book you talk about these four different phases that organizations go through, and in that process you talk about the hiring of a chief diversity officer, and so I want to get your thoughts on. Walter Kimbrough, who was a former president of Dillard University in Philander Smith College has said from an academic standpoint in higher education that the CEO should be the chief diversity officer. What are your thoughts on that, and how might that fit or not fit with the pomegranate principle?

Rory Verrett : 27:15

I think that is also a great shorthand for a principle that I talked about in the book, which is about diversity being infused and integrated and sustainable throughout the organization. What a phase for DEI company looks like. So I think what he's saying is the CEO is the chief marketing officer, the CEO is the chief risk officer, the CEO is also the chief sales officer or the chief fundraising officer and should be the chief diversity officer. That it should rise to the level of strategic importance where the person who is ultimately where the buck stops, that that person also looks at diversity as that strategically important to the organization. I tell a story in the book about how I was pitching a company. It was a utility company and the HR executive you know a mid-level HR executive says safety is a very important value for us at this company.

Rory Verrett : 28:15

I want us to stop, since we're all working remotely during COVID, and look at how our office situations are set up. And I want to look at your power strip to see if there are any fire hazards near your workstation. I'm like, really, is this guy really doing this? So I look down and I'm like, damn okay, mine is on like a basic power strip. It's not even on a surge protector from a power strip. I got this $2,000 computer on it, another screen and all these other things attached to it. Like well, I'm on this power strip.

Rory Verrett : 28:45

He said where is that power strip Brewery? I said it's a tech, is on top of this jute rug. He's like that's a fire hat. I want you to stop right now and take that power strip off the jute rug. I'm like okay, I might lose power for this computer. Depends on how long this meeting goes. He said safety is really important to our firm, our company. And so I thought to myself here is a mid-level HR leader that is extolling the virtues of safety when he's talking to a vendor. I'm not even an employee, I'm a potential vendor. I'm like that is when you have a value infused and integrated and sustainable within the operational and strategic elements of a company. So that's the goal of DEI to sort of have that level of primacy in the organization.

Langston Clark: 29:37

And you talked about phase four, where DEI is like it's like in the air, it's like the nitrogen in our air, it's like it's everywhere, it's just all in it, right. And so I want to get your thoughts on what this phase four DEI looked like in the era against DEI.

Langston Clark: 29:59

And just to provide some context. I work at a university in Texas. I graduated, I got my doctorate from UT Austin, which had been recognized as one of the best DEI, sort of like embedded DEI initiatives. Like they get a world, at least in the country and now all of that's being dismantled. So how do? You maintain in the current political climate, especially working in public institutions.

Rory Verrett : 30:30

So I would give you an example. So the example of a stage four company is the NBA, the National Basketball Association. The NBA has not pulled back on DEI. The NBA has not watered down its commitments to black organizations in the aftermath of George Floyd's murder. The NBA has continued promoting hiring people at the senior executive level, at the mid career level, at the entry level. It has still allowed freedom of speech for its players to express their social justice views. It has still continued its social justice philanthropy and it has still been an economic juggernaut. I mean, they have a mid-season tournament right now. That's been a fan favorite. So there's a lot of great stuff happening. And as they continue the DEI journey, they continue to make more money, be more commercially viable, attract more fans. So that's a great example In this moment.

Rory Verrett : 31:28

I think you've got a couple of vectors, sort of bearing upon the moment. One you have in the public sector DEI being demonized by the far right. Now the far right has done this for much of its existence. I mean, you pick a vulnerable, underserved population and you tell people of privilege hey, the reason you're not getting ahead is because of them and the them changes. It's black slaves, it's immigrants from Europe at one point it's the Chinese, it's the gay and lesbian, and so now it's all the reason you're not getting ahead because there's all this DEI stuff. When Silicon Valley Bank blew up, there were articles that, oh, the reason they blew up is because of they were too focused on DEI. Now I think Silicon Valley Bank I know people there they did a pretty admirable job on DEI. I don't know that Silicon Valley Bank is considered like a leading best practices environment for DEI. I think they're good to very good. But certainly no one thought, oh, silicon Valley Bank is taking this DEI thing too far. I mean, nobody thought that. But it was used as a political weapon in this moment where you're trying to get votes by any means necessary and you know, one side of the political ledger doesn't have, you know, ideas, and so they pick ways of demonizing the other, which is a political trick that is undefeated in American history. So there's that.

Rory Verrett : 32:57

The second factor is some companies and organizations hire DEI leaders not knowing what great look like. It was not me too in the sexual harassment movement. It was like a me too in terms of, ok, we'll do that, we'll hire a DEI person. Why? I mean, there were companies that pitched us. We had 200 companies reach out to us in just over a year to do work. We went from four consultants to 10.

Rory Verrett : 33:21

And I would ask companies, when they were calling us about a chief diversity officer search, I'd be like why do you think you need this? And the answer sometimes was not inspiring. It was largely based on well, I think we should do it because our competitors are doing it. Like, what are you solving for? Well, I just you know. And so, equally, right now there are companies that are retracting. They don't know why they're retracting. They're just like, well, ok, it's a finger to the wind. It's like, ok, people are not doing this. I think I should not do this anymore. But you just committed 20 million to black social justice causes. Now you're not doing it. You don't know why you committed it. You don't know why you're retracting.

Rory Verrett : 34:02

And then I think there are there are forces in the economy that look at this as a zero sum game, and you know I'm not one of these people that takes a romantic view of DEI. It is a zero sum game. It is a zero sum game. If Ken Chanult is the CEO of American Express, it means a woman wasn't the CEO. It means a white man wasn't the CEO. It means that Hispanic lesbian wasn't the head of the. You know, it means a black man has that role. So it is. As you can't create four CEO roles, it is a zero sum game and there has been decades of exclusion of non-white males in the economy. We're coming to a point where now people think equity fairness is reverse discrimination, and it's not because you know privilege surrendered feels like discrimination, and it's not. I tell all of my clients what you're really trying to do when you, when you infuse DEI. What you are really trying to do on the hiring side is inject meritocracy into your decision making, because if your organization skews one way or the other, there's a chance that that's one been intentional and two quality did not guide your decision-making.

Rory Verrett : 35:18

Proximity to talent, comfort level with the talent. Look, I was a startup CEO, my first startup. Who were the first four people? I hired Four Treppy Black men in a diversity firm. The mantra of our business was diversity. The first four Treppy Black men they were in fraternities, they were married or in stable relationships. They went to church. They were just like me. Just like me because that's what I knew. Knew excellence looked like. No, that's the excellence I was most comfortable with at the time of my life, and so this happens thousands of times. People hire the proximate talent that they are most comfortable with and then justify that as that's the best person. That's certainly not the case.

Langston Clark: 36:06

Not the case. So my friend Daniel, who is in the audience today he may ask a question later he and I he's one of my academic brothers and so we write papers together with the same group of mentors. Now we just published a paper about DEI. We call it D-I-E and Black Death Because it seems like in order for these initiatives to get momentum, somebody has to die first. And so I even think back to the point in the story where you're like people think the chief diversity officer is something new, but it's really something that manifested in the seventies. So I'm doing my timeline.

Langston Clark: 36:48

I'm like well, king died in 68. So did that happen? Because King died, because we started to tear shit up and burn this stuff down. You know what I mean? And so how do we get beyond DEI being the thing that happens as a result of the new cycle, where the next Breonna Taylor dies, the next Trayvon Martin, the next George Floyd? Like, how do we get beyond? Just how do we get from DEI to real DEI?

Rory Verrett : 37:15

That's a profound observation. I think that it may not necessarily be death that is the triggering factor. It's the agitation around the tragedy of a race in America and how racism exists in America. And racism reaches its worst point in the unfair murder of someone, in the unfair murder of Dr King, in the unfair murder of George Floyd. I mean, none of these things were like self-defense. It's not. Like you know, derek Chauvin felt threatened by him. Or Lee Harvey, whoever was it? James Earl Ray? James Earl Ray killed Dr King, lee Harvey Oswald, I forget.

Langston Clark: 38:07

I think it was Lee Harvey Oswald.

Rory Verrett : 38:08

Yeah, the 60s are a blur. So you know those were unnecessary murders. In some ways they were gratuitous murder. It's the agitation that happens after that that is most pronounced. That, I think, creates the tension. That and the demand for redress. In the case of the 70s, affirmative action and other non-exclusionary policies to be dismantled. Exclusionary policies to be dismantled in terms of supplier diversity and whatnot.

Rory Verrett : 38:46

And I think in the case of George Floyd's murder, it was the outcry of people in corporate America saying this is sort of our reality, not to be overly dramatic, but you know we are denigrated and people observe it and nobody cares about that in corporate America. Like I'm not dying like George Floyd on the street, I have to be mindful of going to and from work and police brutality. But even here the degradation of my professional life is largely met with indifference. And that was the point I made in the book is that you know, derek Shorban put his hands in his pockets and it's like what are y'all going to do? What are you gonna do person watching? You're not gonna do anything. You're not gonna do anything, I'm gonna kill this guy. I can kill this guy. And that there's a lot of that indifference, that hostility that, unfortunately, the das dreams and hopes of people of color over decades. That have happened and people spoke up about it and demanded that their companies do something about it.

Rory Verrett : 39:52

So as long as there is agitation, there will be equality, because the status quo in America has not been around equality. I mean, the country was not formed to provide equality to everyone. It said that it would, but it kept, you know, a class of people in chains for hundreds of years, while the document about equality was, you know, brandished around the world, as you know, some symbol of open democracy, when you know, for a large part of its history, women and people of color in America could not vote. So the agitation and the advocacy has to remain. It's what I tell friends of mine that are on corporate boards that are elite senior leaders inside of companies that are CEOs themselves. You have to be an advocate for this, not a supporter. For this and the difference between an advocate and a supporter. I can support something. Hey, I support your run for office, friend of mine. An advocate is somebody that experiences some pain. They have skin in the game. That's when your wife runs for office and you know she's spending y'all money on campaign signs. It's not like you give somebody $500. So people in these elite spaces, people of color, women, gay and lesbian folks, we have to be advocates for DEI. We can't just be, when asked, supportive. So anytime a vendor emails me and I get a lot of these do you want us to help with outsource recruiting? We have a software solution that can help you assess candidates. We can redo your website. My response is thank you very much for your offer. I would like to see your DEI strategy for 2024 to make sure we are aligned on values. I'm not talking to you unless I understand we share the same values. You can be the best web maker in the world.

Rory Verrett : 41:39

I went to my cleaners, my dry cleaners, and I said I want to make sure we are aligned on values. Tell me what you're doing to advance equality in your profession. And he said it was a Jewish guy. He said I am. You might not know this about me. I am the OG of the dry cleaning business in DC. A lot of black business owners. I helped them set up shop in the 80s and 90s. I helped them show how to do you know how to do payroll and how to set up systems and the whole bit and I was like, wow, great. But you know, until we do that, until we demand that people treat us as fairly as we treat them, we're not going to have any movement.

Langston Clark: 42:24

So I want to go back to something you said, and it was profound, because I didn't know. I didn't know it. You said it takes Was it three generations, mm-hmm ones who To ascend into, like a certain level of such?

Rory Verrett : 42:38

yeah, to have a dynamic career?

Langston Clark: 42:40

Yeah, right, to have a dynamic career, okay, okay, all right. So I'm wondering how do you see de eyes in a generational as as as intraracial and Intragenerational, because I think there's.

Langston Clark: 43:00

I'm gonna make this person like I got issues with elders, like in terms of and this, this is not all of my experience I had great mentorship, you know, I graduated school and all of that stuff, but, like, once you leave school, the mentorship, the sponsorship and all of that stuff doesn't exist in the same way. And so how does how does someone who's a millennial or gen was a gen z Get, get, get access to black elders who are able to provide opportunity, mentorship, sponsorship, what have you?

Rory Verrett : 43:35

So that's a that's a very complicated question. I would try to you know, answer it as quickly as possible. I think in the mentor protege relationship the burden and onus is on the protege. So you have to drive the relationship. You have to be the one that is In the face of the mentor asking for lunch, asking for dinner, asking for a call. With a company called protege and with a podcast called protege. I have a lot of people asking me for career advice and the one piece of micro Advice I would give, in addition to the thematic issue of you got to drive the relationship, is when you do reach out to that mentor, be specific. Be specific, like, for example, if somebody reads out to me says, hey, I want career advice, you're the 25th person this week. That's done that. Okay, you're the hundredth person this month, right? So Somebody actually emailed me and said Roy, I love some career advice. I I only need an hour of your time. I Only need an hour your time.

Rory Verrett : 44:45

Now as an executive coach, I coach executives primarily at corporations. The corporation pays me. My rate is 2700 dollars an hour. I Do two calls a month. It's 5500 dollars a month. That's what a company pays me to coach, an executive.

Rory Verrett : 45:06

So when someone says I just want an hour anytime, like that's 27 and it's not like you're shooting a bull with me, nor would you want to, but you're asking me specific advice. So my point is be mindful of the time requests you ask and Be specific. People by. Hey man, can I bend your ear and they'll give a phone. Hey man, how's it going All right? How's it going what you've been doing, man? I'm like my day is jam-packed. I have anywhere from 8 to 11 interviews and client meetings per day, per day. So I try to schedule what I call courtesy interviews. In my private time I'm usually at a cafe, I'm riding my bike, I put on different set of headphones, because I put on these headphones you can hear the wind when I ride my bike. So I put on wire headphones is the whole thing.

Rory Verrett : 45:54

So be respectful people's time and be efficient. Be specific. I have a question about this. Most times I can handle it over email. I Can't let me do you like people calling you? Right? You know most people don't even get on the phone anymore. But people think, if I get them on the phone, as if something magic will happen and it's like no, you're not gonna be like oh my god, I didn't realize you wanted to be Senior vice president Disney. Great, I'm glad we talked on the phone. Like that's not, that's not gonna happen, that's not. So be respectful of the time, be efficient, be specific when when possible, handle it over email. I Help people negotiate compensation over email, like what are you asking for this?

Rory Verrett : 46:37

What do they offer? This, say this, say this, say that. Oh my god, great, thank you, it took that, took two minutes. As I was locking my bike up, I did voice dictation, but if I get on a call, god, do a zoom with you. That's. That's not realistic for a senior executive to devote that time because chances are, if you think they offer some value, hundreds of other people think that same way and they are Asking for the time.

Rory Verrett : 46:59

If I did that, for everybody to ask me, I would never do any fine work. Now, I love y'all, I'm available, but you know, people ask me questions that are literally part of a podcast that I did Like hey, I have a question about this. You know how can I? Somebody asked me how can I use LinkedIn effectively like Podcasts about that, why I gave it to you for free. I didn't charge you for it. It's for free. That means you know you didn't do research and it's like I can't, I can't. You know, I don't have the cheap code to life. I have Crumbs that can lead you to the cheap codes, but I don't, you know, I don't. You know. You're not gonna magically change your career with a, with a 20-minute conversation. So that's just some, some, some insights about that. I am that way with my own mentors. I'll call them. I have this question. I'll text them what do you think about this? Do this, do this, do that? Great, thank you, appreciate it.

Langston Clark: 47:55

Yeah, I Feel like this podcast episode is worth $2,700. No listen, I am always.

Rory Verrett : 48:04

Available, particularly to you as a protégé. I'm available, but you know you can't. I look, I'm not sitting here saying I don't take time. I clearly do, but, and I probably do five to ten of these a week, right, but so when, when somebody's reaching out to me it's like okay, you are, you are within the 25. I gotta assess One, can I help you, two, can I help you in an efficient way? And, and you know, and three, can I do it? That is respective of my time, given the perhaps urgency of the information you need. So that's Five to ten people a week. By the way, that's every week. That's every week I'm doing this.

Langston Clark: 48:44

Yeah, um Last, last um. This isn't the last question, it's one of them. Um, we, we have this uh, I don't want to say this in our group of black men who are in higher ed and we, we got this, we have a I have a great academic family. It's like 20, 25 of us, all black men, got our paz's from ut austin. Um, and we're. We're not talking academic, we just talk like regular black knit right.

Langston Clark: 49:14

Mm-hmm, so let me go talk about like yo Listen, don't become a chief diversity officer if you want to be the ceo, because there's like a what do they say? A concrete ceiling you are not going to get. You're not going to be able to go from cdo to ceo and I'm just wondering can you share your thoughts on that and have you been able to get somebody like From being like the chief diversity offer to be in the ceo somewhere?

Rory Verrett : 49:41

Um, I don't know if I've I've played somebody who was in a diversity role who became ceo. I have placed somebody in a. I have placed somebody in the diversity role who became ceo, who is on their way to being ceo. Um, the the key. Again, if you demystify this, it's the same as any other function. So there are companies where the cfo is never going to be the president Never and there are companies where the CFO is the exact route up to be president. There are companies where I mean I was at a utility company the route up at a utility company is either the CFO or the head of regulatory affairs, because utilities are regulated in the country and so if you get income and revenue for the company, it's because you negotiate with your regulators really well. So the person that has that skill set is better than the person that's the marketing director, the CMO. The head of marketing at a utility company is rarely ever going to be the CEO.

Rory Verrett : 50:42

So what you're looking for is again back to your original question is this diversity function strategic to the organization? Is it indispensable? Is it vital to how the organization operates? If it is, then yes, I had a placement that I placed as the head of diversity at an Ivy League university, she was getting calls to be the president of a university. Why? Because her fingerprints were on diversity and retention of students, of faculty, of staff. That's hugely important to a college, especially if it's a historically black college, and they're like wow, you have experience in making sure a black and brown students felt welcome and black and brown faculty felt welcome and belong at a top university in the country. I'm guessing you could do well as the academic and professional leader of our organization. So it's not many roles that have that, but I imagine that there are somewhere. Dei is so integrated into the organization and so vital and strategic that it is a launching pad to being a CEO. There are companies where the head of HR has become a CEO and most companies. That is not a route to being CEO.

Langston Clark: 51:57

Can you tell us a little bit about how we can find and support Prodigy Search, Like if people want to use your services for hiring folks or even people want to use your services for executive coaching? How can they contact you?

Rory Verrett : 52:13

So prodigysearchcom, P-R-O-T-E-G-E searchcom. So sometimes say prodigysearch. I'm like prodigy was a rapper prodigysearchcom. So we do three things. We do executive recruiting, which means the company is a client. Somebody will call me and say, hey, I got a great client for you.

Rory Verrett : 52:32

A friend of mine is an executive looking for the next job. That is a contingency firm that represents executives. We are a retained executive search firm. We represent companies who give us the outsourced contract to manage a leadership hiring process. So the company is a client. So refer us to your company if you think they could use help with getting inclusive slates of candidates.

Rory Verrett : 52:55

Number two, if you are an executive coach, if you need an executive coach primarily and your company will pay for it. Because, look, it's very expensive to pay $5,500 a month out of your own pocket for three months for executive coaching. That's just a tough pill to swallow. So most times companies come to us for executive coaching. And then, thirdly, if you are in your company or your organization's ERG group, your employee resource group, particularly around Black History Month, I would love to come speak to talk about sustainable practices and DEI, which are that set of principles is the foundation of the Palma Granite Principle, To speak of Black History Month or for any other brown bag lunch or public speaker series you have.

Rory Verrett : 53:41

I would love to do a speech. I've probably done a dozen of these already. I've done two in the last month and they were extraordinarily well received. So I'd love to engage with your talent hiring manager, population, HR population. I spoke at one company to all of their chief diversity, all of their diversity staff, all the HR staff, and then spoke to their high potential leaders that are part of their industry in a separate presentation. So executive recruiting for your company, executive coaching for you as a high potential or leadership level talent, and then speaking to your company about best practices in diversity recruiting.

Langston Clark: 54:28

I got to ask this other question because before we get into the final question, what is it? It's first generation.

Rory Verrett : 54:37

Big time.

Langston Clark: 54:38

Yes, we have to talk about this, talk about first generation big time, what that means and how people have to navigate that and how organizations who are infusing DEI and their practices can support first generation big time.

Rory Verrett : 54:55

Before I do, let me ask you did you felt, seen or heard with that description? Do you think it describes you?

Langston Clark: 55:07

In some ways.

Rory Verrett : 55:08

yes, Okay, I think I mean that is how I described myself much of my career. Like I said, my mother was a provost. I'm not first generation college educated. I am not first generation to a sort of white collar career. I am first generation for someone that was in corporate America and wanted to be the CEO of every company I was an employee of. So for that, that's the big time part of it Not that my mother wasn't big time, but that I mentioned in the book. I called my mother when I had a very complicated bit of corporate politics and navigating. She was like son, I can't help you. This is beyond me. At this point I'm like what are you talking about? You went through all this. She's like this is not what you're going through. That's a whole another level.

Rory Verrett : 56:00

These are primarily professionals of color, although it could be anyone. It could be somebody white that comes to an organization without the social infrastructure or the mentoring or sponsorship to get through what I call the corporate tournament. So they arrive at the company. They're smart, they're credentialed, they're ambitious, they believe in meritocracy, they are motivated, but they don't get sponsored. They don't understand some of the nuances of navigating with what is typically upper middle class white culture inside these organizations. They don't understand how to manage some of the emotional triggers that happen when you're in corporate America. They don't always know how to negotiate well, whether it's compensation or a promotion or a stretch assignment. And so they're missing. To say, their soft skills make them sound like they're not important. I believe the soft skills are the most important skills, but they don't have some of those intangible elements that really, on margin, are what separate the winners from the losers in these corporate tournaments.

Rory Verrett : 57:15

When you get to the senior executive level, when we do executive searches, I have to call somebody and tell them that they are the successful candidate. They're usually euphoric, they're happy people grown people in their fifties have started crying. But then you got to talk to the person that didn't make it the second place candidate, the bronze medalist, the silver medalist and often those people are surprised. They're like well, I don't understand. I'm so qualified. I'm like there were 50 people that were qualified for this role that we vetted for the role.

Rory Verrett : 57:45

There were 24 that we interviewed. There were 12 that we presented. The client interviewed six. You got down to the final three. You're the runner up. You're like the person that lost to Flojo or the person that lost to Usain Bolt. You're faster than 99% of the world, you're better than 99% of the market in your particular function, but you ran against Jackie Jonah Curse in the Olympics and she's a freak of nature. She's just once in a generation and that's often. It's often on the margin that you lose. So what's in the margin? The margin is in relationship equity, navigating the tournament, controlling your emotions, putting up wins through stretch assignments, making sure you advance your pay by negotiating effectively. There's a bunch of stuff that goes into that that a lot of us don't even know. We're supposed to pack for the trip, and so second generation big time will be different, but the first generation big time we are largely climbing the mountain at the base of the mountain, with a couple of YouTube videos we've watched about mountain climbing.

Langston Clark: 58:53

I don't want to talk bad about my workplace. I may edit this out for my sake, but I feel like I feel like there are workplaces that have a large population of ethnic minorities where everybody is like first, not everybody, but the critical mass of people who are first generation, big time is larger there than it is in other places.

Langston Clark: 59:19

Oh yeah, you may have an entire organization of people's like yo. Why can't we get this done? Why can't we get this person here? Why can't we get the person there? It's the gap, it's the marginal gap. I work with some brilliant people, but moving and pushing and getting things done in ways that, like we see other people coming in and getting done is at times frustrating, and maybe it's that little nuanced millisecond that keeps you from first place Right.

Rory Verrett : 59:48

I mean for all of the like you know, the water cooler and crazy comments in support of the demise of affirmative action. I won have never, ever, for an Iota, a minute, a nanosecond of my life, thought I'm not qualified to be here. I feel insecure that I was hired or given you know this admission to Harvard Law School, like no, I'm talking about white colleagues, my black colleagues, major American colleagues. I'm like, okay, I understand why I'm here. I understand exactly how I got here. Not that I was better than them or worse than them, but I understood. I'm like y'all, this is my tribe. I'm not in here like, oh my God, these people are so impressive and I'm not. I'm like they're really impressive. I also understand how I must have been viewed as well. I understand why they picked me. Same thing and sometimes in corporate again, more often than not I've been like I understand why they wanted me. I'm wondering if I'm this is really my tribe. Half the time it's been, half the time it hasn't been. But I think the thing to think about in these scenarios you talk about the sort of the marginal difference you go through elementary school, middle school, high school, college, maybe work, then grad school, pretty much the first. Let's take grad school.

Rory Verrett : 1:01:12

I went all the way through law school, the first from five until 25, 20 years of my life have been a lockstep meritocracy. You got the grades, you don't have the grades, that's it. You got a ARB. Summa cum laude, manna cum laude, cum laude, thank you, laude. It is, by and large, a meritocracy. There is some stuff, you know, there are some bias in schools and who gets picked on and called on. I understand that. But much more so than organizational life post college, it is, by and large, a meritocracy. Okay, so you got 20 years of that In 20 years. Your psyche, your conditioning, your expectations are around. If I do the work, good things happen. I move to the next stage and you get to corporate America or complex organizational life, and that is not the case. That is not the case. You could do great work, be excellent. I had a white mentor of mine. Tell me you're not advancing in this particular group because your boss, who is also white, does not like black people. Okay, I can't do that. I can't change my skin tone, I can't change my cultural identity, but in particular, going to high school, college, right, all through that deep and black excellence, for somebody to tell me I'm the first time I've ever heard. You're not. You are. You are emphatically doing well in your career.

Rory Verrett : 1:02:42

I have the data because I was wondering why it is. She is always on your back and I understand what it is right now. It's because she's raised it. This guy tells me that. He says, by the way, I went through all of the information about you, every document, all the stuff you've done. You are extraordinary. Did you know? You have these rankings in the firm and you're this. I'm like no, nobody told me that. He's like you're, you're number two in this and number two and number three in that. I said no, nobody told me that. All I get in my performance review is I got to do better in making her like me. That's literally what performance review said at this place. And he's like no, it's because you're black. So what do I? What do I do with that? What do I do with that? I don't know what I do with that.

Rory Verrett : 1:03:24

Luckily, I'm hyper networked and I have the benefit of peer mentors, so my peers can talk to me and say, bro, I had the same experience, what, what? I was in this African American networking organization of really senior leaders and we used to meet and talk to CEOs and I came to one of the sessions we'd have drinks and then we'd we'd have drinks privately and then we'd have a session like 30 to 40 of us with a CEO of a major company. So I got to the drinks late and I'm at the group and one of the executives was like and then this such and such told me this and he had a couple of curse words in it and I'm like what's going on? He was like well, and he described the situation and he kept me up on the story and I'm like you got up blank and he blank.

Rory Verrett : 1:04:20

You report to the president of the United States. Like you report to the president of the United States. You got a insert expedive person in your life and we all understood, we all have this. No matter how high you go, you all have it. So it is better to learn how to deal with the tournament, because the jousting sticks just get bigger, the horses just get faster and the crowd just gets noisier. You better start learning how to joust as early as possible.

Langston Clark: 1:04:52

That's good. That was good, and I have another question, but that was a great way to end it. So I'm going to do my general final question and I'm going to ask this If there were another chapter of the book, what would it be? Or, since you're already starting your next book, tell us a little bit about what that will be.

Rory Verrett : 1:05:14

The next book is going to be a career guide for people of color. That's what it's going to be. But that is an extraordinary question that when you prepped me that you might ask that question, I was thinking about it kind of a little bit all interview long. It's an extraordinary question. So you write a book. This concept of mine has been percolating for about five years. I started writing the book in earnest in 2022.

Rory Verrett : 1:05:41

Well, you know, part of the world has shifted and I tell people who are in DEI DEI is not unlike politics. You want to think that, like corporate America, some island. It is not. It is a mirror society. So, like in politics, a third of the country is progressive, a third of the country is conservative and a third of the country is sort of in is centrist. So what happened with George Floyd is that the progressive folks got another 15% of that 33% and the the reactionary conservative folks you know maybe 5% of them lean into DEI and you know maybe over half the independence leaning to DEI. Well, now the conservatives are like we're not doing DEI, clarence Thomas, they don't have to do this anymore, which is completely ridiculous because affirmative action decision dealt with elite selective college admissions. It did not eliminate, even though it was a boneheaded, a historical decision that defied president. He basically said you can, you still can't, consider race. It just can't be the only consideration. The rubric for diversity in corporate America is a completely different legal framework. Now people conveniently forget that, but that's the that's what the law says. So you move the needle where the progressives moved over. It's like, you know, with DEI it's like when Obama won, he got a lot of moderates and he got some conservatives, okay, and then Trump wins and it's like the needle went the other way. So what happened in the aftermath of you know, the Santas and Trump kind of demonizing DEI is that the middle independence sort of paused and said I need to think about this whole. What does the affirmative action decision mean for us? And they so people, are pausing with this. The progressives, I think, are still doing it and the conservatives are like great, we have to do it anymore.

Rory Verrett : 1:07:35

My point is that my book was a moment in time before all this happened, so the chapter would be the other forward to the second edition would be about how to sustain DEI in a you know, in Trump, trump's America, which you know he is either going to be. He will. He will be a dominant figure in politics until November or he will be the next president of the United States. I mean he's, he's or both. You know both. So he is the down Trump as a leader of the anti DEI move. So you know a sizable part of the country believes in what he says, and so that chapter would be devoted to one.

Rory Verrett : 1:08:17

A little bit of a buck up speech to DEI practitioners don't abandon your career calling, like you are not in this to put your finger to the wind of what politics is saying about your profession and your purpose and your calling. You are in this to advance the freedom movement in America. Nobody wants to talk about it that way. It's always the business case. We are here to advance fundamental fairness in organizational life. That's what DEI is about. You can give me McKinsey articles, you can talk about innovation. That's all true. This is about advancing fundamental fairness in American organizational life as it is right now. As it is right now, in most cases, a lot of companies are unfair. You know it is not a fair shake, and so that chapter would be what it's like in 2024 and beyond in sustaining DEI.

Langston Clark: 1:09:12

All right, roy Verrett, thank you for joining entrepreneurial appetite. If you ever come to San Antonio, I have my blue collar bougie restaurant I'm taking. Oh my goodness, it's called Wayne's Wings and either the best wings you will ever have in your life, it's a whole of the wall. And then I got like my, like classic bougie restaurant I'm going to take you to do too. So thank you again for joining us and I appreciate your time.

Rory Verrett : 1:09:37

I'm proud of you. Keep shining and keep soaring.

Langston Clark: 1:09:40

Thank you.