2.19.26 | Allyship Townhall | The Future of Allyship

And what I often see is, and I was actually speaking at an all boys boarding school recently to the faculty about the responsibility that faculty have as role models for young men. But one of the bullets that I had is in my slide was that systems, masculinity is often shaped more by systems than beliefs and value systems. And by that I mean that systems often tell us what is acceptable, what is not acceptable in terms of how we can show up as men. The flip side, these systems were created by men. And so it's why my belief is when we can start to engage men, understand the impact that systems are having on men and on leaders, and as those men start to heal, transform, then we can start to transform systems and then raise everyone up where and moving away from the ways that the intention and the ways organizations and systems have been designed.

Thank you. We'll open that up topic to the group. Does anyone have any questions for Sean about this topic? Yeah.

Sean, what have you think about changing systems?

Hold on one second. I think we're gonna.

Yeah, I can't.

Yeah, then it's the AC. It's not your fault.

Hi, Sean. Alessandra, thank you for participating. You talk about needing to change the system, and I'm wondering, as individuals within the system, do you have any best practices or advice for how we can participate in that change, especially for those of us who are not men? And who in our own ways are participating to supporting the system as it currently exists.

So that actually came up with the boarding school as well, where one of the female faculty members said, I'm just gonna bring the elephant in the room, which is, as a woman, what do I know about masculinity? And as we started to have the conversation, I said, look around the room, you have 75% of the faculty are men, let's stop thinking that you have to shoulder this alone. And how can we start having the conversations around men, around men's engagement, around maybe the resistance that men have, especially to issues and initiatives around equity and allyship, and start to unpack together as opposed to women holding this, those that aren't men, and then as well as men, how do we start to come together and have different conversations especially the elephant in the room conversations around these topics that are either creating division across gender, that are part of how systems are designed that are oppressive in whatever ways they might be, and being able to say, now how do we start to reimagine what these are? But you have to start with what are the uncomfortable conversations sometimes that we never give voice to? To start giving voice to them so we can start to actually take real action.

That's great advice. Thank you. Does anyone else have any follow-up questions for Sean on this specific topic?

No?

Sure.

Hold on one second. Just for our people on Zoom so they can hear you.

I think the word system is so loaded. You know, and as a technologist, I

would say, I use the word system one way.

Can you give some examples of what

you mean by systems that are part of this infrastructure?

So when I think about systems, I'm an organization development practitioner by training. So I think in terms of organizational systems, which are what are the collection of policies, procedures, culture, models that come together around what makes an organization. So that's one piece. The second piece of that are what is the patterning that we have and what is the collection that starts to inform how we think about gender, how we think about masculinity around the feminine or femininity and the roles that we play around gender. And so I think of it as the systems thinking that we have, how do we navigate the complexity, from a place of systems thinking. And then from my perspective, it's the organizational, the components of an organizational system, the culture levers, and often the culture levers that we don't tap into that actually could start to help propel organizations in different ways and activate the culture in different ways.

We're gonna follow up again, yeah.

Hey, Sean, I've got a follow up. So you gave me an answer that was great and somewhat theoretical. And I probably should have said, I'm co-chair and co-founder of this committee. I'm also the mom of two boys. So I raised them to be ultra feminist until they hit middle school. And I have no trouble talking about the elephant in the room. I have no trouble having difficult conversations. But what I get and what I'm looking for practically for anybody who's attending this and who will watch it in the future is, I get a lot of, you're making this a gender conversation again. It's that whole, you're being a hysterical woman again, you're making this about something it isn't. So I'm wondering when we're facing people who on the surface feel very reasonable about the topic but actually are skewed, any advice on how to break past that without actually going into hysterics, which I'll be honest is eventually where I go when I don't feel heard or I don't feel effective.

So I had this conversation recently with a friend of mine who is, she's a Air Force officer and was talking about her son, who she's like, I think my son might be a misogynist. What do I do? And as we started, we, we, we, she came to me and we started talking about, okay, so first, start with compassion and start with curiosity. To understand where some of these ideas might be coming from, be it are they coming from social media, are they coming from peers, are they coming from the Joe Rogans and the Andrew Tates, and to not be in a reactive state but be in a responsive state, to be able to start to just have a conversation around One, not how we should be thinking about gender, but really starting to ask men and young men, how do you feel about gender? Because I don't think we ask men how they feel about gender, or even these topics, what's uncomfortable about it? And the whole premise of what I bring into this is, especially when I work with, because some of my work is directly working with extremists, those that are on the path to radicalization, and how do we engage on any number of topics, including gender, and what are the starting places to both listen, to validate where we can validate, to separate the views from the humanity, and really challenging ourselves to see the humanity of the person in front of us, asking the deeper questions, and at the same time, Getting curious about what the views are about, where they come from, and what might be underneath them, and have the conversation from that place.

Yes. Hold on one second. We got a mic coming. Art.

On a basic level, what do you

think the differences are between men and women?

Now we're talking.

I mean, I think there's, there is a, and I'm gonna open this up to all of us on this question. But I think, I mean, obviously we have biological differences, and then we have conditioning, and we have from the systems, from all of the different influences that we've had, ways that are telling us what's acceptable, what's not acceptable in terms of how we are supposed to be aligned to our gender, to our sex. So I think the, but in terms of what are the actual differences, you know, I think it's, you know, there may be some ways that we process and think, about some of the ways of our processing and really navigating how are we following into how we've been conditioned. And then as we come into a place of thinking about breaking some of those norms, that's I think is where we start to see the magic of coming into who are we authentically, not who we've been told. So what's the script we've been given? And the script that we start to write ourselves.

This is one of the reasons why I got involved in this area is when I was in Silicon Valley in the 90s, working for a company that was at the top of their industry at the time, they've fallen now, that's for sure. But at the time, and I worked for a guy that was the CFO at the time, a guy named Andy Bryant, he went on to be chairman of the board there, which is kind of unusual for a big public company to go from CFO to chairman of the board, Intel. He largely surrounded himself with women. All the senior controllers there at the time were women. Not all of them, most. And so I worked for these women and they were the hardest bunch of people I have worked for then in since. And that's when I was starting to get into more leadership roles, running bigger teams. I had a team of 40 people scattered around the globe. And I was young, I was in my 20s. I was very fortunate. So I was trying to find my way on what leadership things do I want to emulate. And when I looked at the leaders that I wanted to emulate, they were a few of the men I was working with or with.

And then I thought, well, why? And the conclusion I came to is the reason I was so committed and I was, by the way, the definition of a leader is they have followers. A lot of leaders forget that. They think it's the title. You can have a CEO title and not be a leader. You actually have to have some followers. So, okay, well, what's going to cause people to follow me? And why did I follow these men at the time? It was because they were exhibiting what we would call traditional female values. So I think saying how who, what makes a woman, what makes a man, I think that's like a debate for something else. But as a practitioner and leading business organizations, I do think the framing of traditional female behaviors versus traditional male is more applicable into how you apply some of these concepts. So I chose to emulate the leaders that I saw that were empathetic as an example. I can think of a couple of people. I'll name one here, Greg Valdez. He's not listening. I wish he was. But absolutely led with empathy. By the way, the women that worked for Andy did not have the choice.

They could not lead with empathy. They would have been chewed up and spit out and crushed. These are like factory managers for silicon manufacturing in the 90s. Those factory managers were hard people. It was a hard place, you know, by swearing in the workforce and like all kinds of crazy behavior. It was a hard place to work. There's no way those women could have gotten to the position they were if they exhibited what were traditional female type of behaviors. And so therefore, they had to fit a mold and they, I still love many of these women and I keep in touch with them, but they didn't have the luxury. So I don't think the question is how do you describe a man versus a woman? Like that's a debate that just doesn't lead to a good place, especially this day and age. But talking about how do you have a diverse set of behaviors on your leadership team? How do you recognize those? I do think it's fair to say, hey, that set of behaviors, as I think, Sean, I don't know, I'd be interested in your opinion for somebody that studies masculinity. But I think when Sean talks about masculinity, what I see is a set of behaviors, not a gender.

So art, to answer your question, the way I look at it is, Masculinity is a set of behaviors, not a gender. Let's not even talk about gender. That's such a loaded thing lately, but that's just one person's opinion. Sean.

Any follow-ups for you, Sean?

Yeah, I would agree about the focus on behaviors. And what I've seen often is Based on what is acceptable and with these systems that have defined what is acceptable behavior. And so many women in particular who have taken on the masculine behaviors to succeed in business. I think what was interesting working at Eileen Fisher was that women were not asked to act like men to succeed in business. And the behaviors and the permissions were allowed in the culture for a true expression of one's full self in the workplace. And so I think there's often when we look at these distinctions, it's what's permissible and what's acceptable in the cultures.

Yeah, please. Hi.

So I actually wrote my question. One perspective on equality is that we

should see each other simply as people, right?

Judging one another by your character and actions rather than by gender, sexual orientation, who we identify with.

That said, what data have you come

across that suggests misogyny is still a

real factor in the workplace?

And how can I tell whether feedback

I'm receiving is genuinely about my performance

or whether it's being shaped by the

fact that I'm a woman?

I think I'm gonna open that one up to the whole panel so we can give Sean some breathing room. If anyone else wants to jump in, or Sean, you're more than welcome to.

It's not you, it's him. There you go, because usually it is.

To just hear the last part of the question was you facing a manager, right? And whether they're directing their own opinions versus something about your performance.

Yeah.

Gosh, it's the inverse of the position I'm in, right? Because I'm a manager and I issue performance reviews. A lot. I think that objectivity is super important. I'm just putting myself in the position of giving performance reviews to people. For you to assess whether something is skewed, to me, is really based on the objectivity of what's being received. If you're working with a good manager, I think the antennas usually you can tell based on how they're setting you up to succeed. And so I think on the basis of receiving reviews and performance on the basis that you know what the expectations are as part of your relationship with your manager, and that those are tangible things that have been outlaid. And really there should be no surprises in terms of how you're performing relative to those expectations. And then hopefully you have a manager if they're male, that is being really considerate to the fact that this employee relationship is one that's really being nurtured and cultured with best intentions there. But yeah, if it's out of line and out of scope, those are really pretty obvious traits, I think, to look out for, that this is actually not objective and probably not quite right.

Sean, do you want to cap us off on that one?

Yeah, I mean, I think we also do have to look at what is the, you know, have these real discussions around where there may be misogyny or gender bias for leaders or the fear that may be unconsciously in place. As I'm gearing up to teach this course on the way we're seeing what we're calling the new misogyny that is more insidious, I think it is something that where are we having these conversations? Where are we checking in with our biases? Where are we checking in on the dynamics? Because I still think there is polarization across gender. And so when you're thinking about leadership training performance, are these part of the conversation to be able to address and understand where this might be unconscious and how it may be showing up?

Thank you.

Yeah, please.

One more?

No, we love the questions.

Thank you.

I was just actually going to suggest

a potential practical tip that could help to reveal.

I speak as an HR professional, spent 14 years at Qualcomm, went through that trial by fire. And while it may not be perfect, and I don't know the composition of your team, asking that manager, who might you suggest I model or strive to be like? Who would be a good mentor? And assuming that there is some diversity of identity, if the answers are always men, that's not absolute, but it might help to lead to, is this potentially a biased leader? Do they have a bias? So that could be one way to get a little more without saying, I

think you're being prejudiced against me, yes

or no, because they probably won't answer yes.

Don't forget the concept of the micro inequities and my advice for what it's worth is to all feedback is a gift. Take your feedback. Decide how you feel about it. Go talk to somebody else. Get additional advice and yeah, sometimes Somebody you trust will say, yep, that was good feedback. You need to work on that. Somebody is going to say, it's not you, it's him. I have this discussion all the time.

That's great. That's good practical advice. Did that answer your question?

Good.

Does anyone else have any follow-up questions on this topic? We can go to the next one. So our next topic is going to be the inner work of allyship. So a little bit about what Brian and Nima were talking earlier. Brian, this one is going to be for you. And I think you touched upon this a bit already, but how can leaders think about the inner work required for allyship when gender equity challenges men's identity, status, or sense of belonging?

Yeah, I think it's not just important but incumbent upon men that are in a leadership role and women. To figure out your why fundamentally. Otherwise, if you're trying to make a case for gender diversity and you really don't believe it, you don't have your own good reason why, then it's not going to be powerful. So as a leader, I actually think it's incumbent upon people to develop that. I'll share a couple of my whys. One has been a long-standing one. One is a relatively new one in response to the current environment, I would say. My long-standing one is, you know, if somebody's discriminating against somebody because of their gender, that just feels wrong. There's this moral thing that everybody seems to get behind and understand and By the way, there's plenty of data on how diverse teams get better results. All the data is there. We wouldn't all be sitting here today if people listened to the data. Then we have this moral argument that when pretty much everybody can get behind. I always added the economic one to it, which is another reason that I got involved in this. It started with a quote that I read.

Gosh, not one of my favorite people now, but Sheryl Sandberg wrote the Lean In book that really resonated with me. History, we'll see how that treats her. But that part of her career, I'm all about that. She cites all the studies and everything. Then I read a quote, and I don't know if it came from the Lean In book, but it's from Warren Buffett. He said, I had it easy in my career. I only had to compete against half the population. And I do fundamentally believe because I've seen it play out with empirical evidence that gender diverse leadership teams at companies get a better answer. I can tell you why. I give you real examples why. I'm not going to bore you with that now. You can ask me later. But so one reason of my why is in addition to all those other things, it's a purely economic argument. If we tapped into the potential of the women in this country, I bet we would increase our GDP by 10% or something outrageous, because I know we would get better answers. That's just Warren Buffett said it best. I can't say it better than he did.

Same concept. I've seen the legacy of bad decisions by men group thinking or doing man think or man's planning to each other. So that's one. The other part that I think for me as a leader, especially this day and age, is there's this notion that focusing on gender equity, specifically gender equity, is discriminatory. It's unconstitutional. I think I shared with the microphone that my customers, US federal government, I had to scrub all the pronouns from all of our email addresses to make sure our contracts didn't get canceled by DOGE. It's a real, so this is a real issue. And then you have, I mean, I'll just talk about the elephant in the room. You have Charlie Kirk. He had a whole schtick on this. I wish he was still here so I could debate him on the topic on a college campus. I would gladly do it. Well, here's my why on this. If you believe, if you believe that a gender equity program like all of us spending time here is wrong because it's discriminatory against men, and we should all have spent our time on something that was for all the genders, then you also have to believe that the system wasn't broken to begin with.

Now, I'm not a huge fan of affirmative action, but I am a fan of a lot of programs, and I am a fan of some of affirmative action. But if you believe that affirmative action was wrong, then you have to admit that the system was right to begin with. You can't hold both of those at the same time. And it's not. The system is not, it is broken today. So we have to do something. We can argue about what we should do, but we have to do something. And for example, I get involved in what's the gender of our next board member? That brings this issue into a real debate. Well, the system's broken today. We need to do something. Again, I think there's an economic issue here. I also think the system was broken and as a leader, you've got to have the strength to say, if the system's broken, it's broken. We have to do something to fix it. That's one of the things that I think that leaders need to do. Is have your belief as to what drives you to invest in this. And then that gives you the strength to have the conversations that are difficult that you need to have with other leaders and with your employees and future leaders.

And Sean, can you add a little bit about a systems or psychological lens to what Brian just described?

Yeah, as I've been listening and just thinking about this entire conversation, I think there's what's spoken, but I think what's equally important is to talk about what's unspoken. And so one of the things that I do in organizations is lead corporate men's circles. And one of the topics that we often bring in after what does it mean to be a man today is how are you navigating the shifting rules and rules around gender, or if it's modified to how are men navigating the shifting expectations of men. And what I find is when given the space to be asked the questions, some of the unspoken truths come out in terms of what is not corporate speak, but what is real speak and where guys are in relation to their thoughts on the rules and roles around gender, how it's evolving and giving space to, okay, if we can start to uncover some of that, and get into some of the root causes of some of that understanding and views and feelings, then it becomes an opening to start to think about gender bridge building in some new ways. And then to bring men, women, and those beyond the binary together and new types of conversations.

But I find that men are when they are given the space to give voice to and have permission to give voice to what's been unspoken, that's when we start to make headway with some of these ideas in terms of maybe what you're bringing into the workplace that's around your thoughts on gender, that you may not have been, you may speak the corporate speak and say what's appropriate in the culture, But then flip side of it is still holding other views. And I see this a lot when I started having these conversations of, this is what I say at the boardroom or at the core on the team. This is what I actually believe. And if we can start to give some of the space for maybe some of those ideas, then we can start to start creating some of the shifts in mindset and perspective.

I'm kind of piggybacking off of that, Sean. Our next one will be about translating values into practice for Nima. Would you like to share an example of how allyship was uncomfortable or unseen in a certain circumstance for you?

Yeah, sure. Yeah, it's been really interesting and privileged just to draw on my own personal experience and think sort of situationally about what things occur in my professional life. But I should zoom out a little bit and I loved what was just mentioned about talking about what you believe. I think it's so important where the current climate has shifted. It really does draw on leadership. Leadership means leading, not following. And I think that there's so much to be said for that if you want to be an ally or want to be a role model to other male stewards, whether they're coming into the workforce for the first time or part of your executive team. So to me, allyship and leadership are part of the same thing. Allyship and leadership, it's the same. And one of the most important parts, in my opinion, in this area, is the responsibility as a leader to ensure that voices are being heard. That's the belief part. I genuinely believe that you've got to be in a position where you ensure that voices are heard and not marginalized. And so when I think about, you know, allyship in this construct, it's not about trying to be charitable.

This is not about charity. It's not about trying to be like a nice guy. It's not trying to be kind situationally or when those moments happen. It is about being consistent and thoughtful and continuous as a leader. I think that's the program of allyship that, in my opinion, counts in the workforce in life. I draw on that. I draw on those questions, and that's part of my playbook. To go back to your question of being uncomfortable, I think there's a lot of tension that can arise in the leadership position. If I think about what makes or has made me uncomfortable in its most dominant place is that I have aspirations and ambition and the thought to influence or impact the sector that I'm in, I'm in the health and wellness and fitness area to succeed and have economic prosperity as a result for the for the things that I put forward. At the same time, you need to manage your ego as a man. That means checks and balances to not have the answer all the time, not to drive things forward, to set direction, not to take an idea that's come from somewhere else forward and be the face of that initiative.

Those are the things that I think are quite human. I would say that there's a tendency, a human tendency to do that. And those are the moments that I think that I purposefully set myself aside and to create space. That to me is one of the most, I think, impactful things that I've seen in my career with the high flyers that I have on my team that is just allowed to set a stage. If I think about some of the people that I work with in my career, they are people that have been able to share their voice, have their thoughts and ideas. How silly would it be for me not to invite that thought and that ideation and that voice through? People develop muscles there. That's how you grow talent. That's how people grow. That's how people get promoted. And so we need to listen, we need to surface the best ideas, we need to allow those voices to be heard, and then we can recognize those people for their great impact. That to me is the model that allyship should be built on from a male leadership standpoint.

It's not only those big moments, but the quiet moments in between.

Quiet moments, yeah.

Welcome to hear for a lot of us.

I'm sure.

Yeah, we have a question in the back.

Thank you. Do you, and this is the question for the full panel, do we think that the playbook for allyship needs to adapt to the current times or we lean in to the playbook even stronger precisely because of the current times? Great question, Luis. I do think my opinion is that the fundamentals of the playbook, I don't think have really changed. I think that, you know, that the, when I look back at the behaviors that I think were productive from an allyship perspective, those are some of the same things. I think from my perspective, what's different today is that a lot of the license to execute that playbook has been taken away, or at least people perceive that. Actually, to be fair, it has been taken away. I mean, it has. I'll use one of my favorite examples, Qualcomm, eliminated all of their employee support groups, all of them. Q women, Q vets, Q everything. They're all gone. Well, that's a signal that that diversity is not important, regardless of how people did interpret it, how they wanted people to interpret it. That certainly is how it can be interpreted. So I think it's what's changed is it's harder to be an ally.

The perception is that it's and it probably is really harder to be an ally. So I think because of that, it's because I think there is more risk. I mean, so we're talking about gender allyship here largely, but if you expand that even a little bit, you can see that, you know, you can get yourself shot these days for being an ally. That's no joke. So I do think that there's real risk. But I also think with that risk comes opportunity to lead. And I'll share one story. Now, I can share 100 stories, but I'll share one right now. The company I work for is a woman-owned business. Very strong, powerful, successful woman. Successful legal career, started a business. Her and her husband done fantastic. I like her husband's name is Ben, her name is Nicole. And I like to say, yeah, when Ben and I violently agree on something, we can almost outvote her. Not quite, but almost. And we had the occasion to, we produced a couple of TV commercials recently, and I was going through the B roll and going through a couple of voice actors. And I'm like, oh, this is the one I really like.

And I put it forward and had them market. Fern put it together. I bring it as Nicole and Nicole's like, Hey, Brian, don't you think we should have a male voiceover? No, Nicole, now is the time that we're absolutely leaning into the woman-owned part of our business. And no, we're not going to. She's like, oh, you're right. Well, see that, you know, even Even the strongest, most independent, one of the most strongest independent women I've come across, even she doubts occasionally. Well, she needed somebody to say, Absolutely not! We are absolutely not doing that. And so, Luis, I think you ask a really good question. I think I try to rely on the same things that I've always relied on. But I just have to realize it comes with some risk and you've got to be willing to take that risk sometimes. That wasn't a risky one. I have other risky ones I can share.

Well, I think to lean in to answer your question, because I think that even by nature of us being here and by invite to speak about allyship is part of that leaning in. It's a conversation that I think is just so important in the current climate. And I think that, you know, my, my view is, yes, these things are difficult. There could be some social costs. I can see if I post something on this topic right now, the number of likes and where they come from is different to what it might have been maybe five years ago. So it's telling. But, but I get, I do just fall back on, look, are you, are you a leader or a follower? If I'm a I go with the times if I'm a leader, I stand up for what I believe in. And I don't claim to be an author on allyship, but my background is in metabolism and physiology, and I'm a science person leading a scientific organization. But I think that maybe the most difficult and thoughtful part of this process has been this topic in terms of what does it mean for me to be a leader?

These are not tools that come from my PhD, but they're coming from life lessons told from, you know, my wife or my sister or my mother, you know, things that I've exhibited and seen and that I, you know, I believe in that model for everybody, right? And so I think that as we talk about leaning in, there is no doubt, right, in an organization like mine, If I don't lean in on women that are my partners and genuinely people that are improving the productivity and performance of our company by nature of their ideas being heard, their thoughts and insights being put forward and seeing that ideas in real life and products that we sell that are number one in the country, we're out competing our competitors and maybe they're having a predicament in terms of who they're leaning in on. So I think that it's only fruitful and one needs to just sort of capt in it and whether the storm, it's better to be in this position and the consequences are not real, I think they're perceived.

That's great.

A quick follow-up in terms of talking about tactics, and we've debated this extensively within the LSU Committee of Athena, And Reverend, we'd love to get your thoughts. Do we need to change the messaging, adapting to the times that we're living in? And not only from a, let's say, marketing perspective, I'm talking about the tactics of engaging with other men. Do we need to change that message, recognizing that the system, the environment is not as positive about having these conversations?

So what I was going to, what I, my first thought was if organizations have built strong culture around inclusion and allyship, that even if you take it away based on what's coming out of Washington or the directives, it's still going to be living and breathing in your culture. It just may not be named in the same way. But I think the current moment is also giving us a moment of pause to say for those who, because I often get pushback or just the real talk from folks of, well, this is what I say, but this is what I actually think or believe. And they start to give me their resistance to some of the initiatives that have been in corporate America. Around inclusion, around DEI, around allyship. And so I think there's an opportunity to be in an inquiry of what's really at the heart of this for some of the folks when they're honest. And by bringing them understanding what may be at the heart of this, can we bring them on, bring them along as this work evolves. So I'm probably more in the camp of this is an this is a moment to reflect what's worked, what hasn't worked, and how do we create more engagement.

And then to the question that was just asked, I often say the work never changes, but the invitation has to be modulated to the audience. And so the messaging, the invitation, the permission, and getting creative about how do we engage how do we engage different audiences, different perspectives? And I'm, you know, I may, in my own work, I may be with White Dudes for Harris one day and the Heritage Foundation the next day, talking about the state of men and boys and going across the spectrum of men and the political spectrum to say, what's real for the folks across the spectrum? And how do we start bringing people along and how do we engage? So I do think messaging does matter. I think the invitation matters and context is important.

Good question, Luis. Anyone else?

Sure.

I'm going to say something that might be controversial. I'm Sanjay from ATAR. I think it's easier to be an ally right now because we washed out all the performative players. Maybe some of you heard me say that about five years ago, that there was a lot of performance going on. Those who have this in the core DNA don't need to name it, advertise it. You just have to be consistent. So it's even not a question of leaning in. Everyone leaned out. You hold your position that says something. But let's remember that five years from now when the pendulum shifts the other way. Second thing is, Again, just to be controversial, don't do it for the likes. That's our ego. Just do it because it makes sense. Did civil rights make sense? Yes, they didn't do it for the ego. Did the abolitionists, did women's suffrage, you just know it's right in your DNA. So be consistent. The fears that I think people have as CEO, I get it. Maybe I'm naive. I am one and I'm not fearful

because

I'm trying to let go of that ego portion because that's just fear. And if my external counsel says we should scrub things, I'll say, you know what? We're just gonna leave it. And if they want to come at me, okay, they'll. They'll come at me. I said this on a panel with Holly, we work in a disease that mostly kills black women. What am I going to do? Change that. So my view is stand tall, be consistent. Five years from now, there's going to be three times as many people in this same conference, in the same meeting, but just remember who was consistent. Because it takes that consistency and belief that if this is right, just do it. Keep our heads down, keep moving.

What's the disease?

Sarcoidosis.

The disease of sarcoidosis, that was the question.

Yeah.

All right. Thank you, everyone. So unfortunately, the Congressman is not going to be able to make it. Due to his other plans. But we are very grateful for you all for making the trip out in the rain. We're incredibly thankful for our panelists, Sean being our North Star and our moral guide up above, Brian for his vulnerability, and Dr. Neimeyer for all of your practical advice. We're extremely grateful for all of your presence. So thank you again for being here. Great.

I just want to just acknowledge I'm going to offer a kind of a roundup, if I may. You know, as I'm listening to the questions and the engagement and the honesty and the vulnerability, you know, what excites me the most is that we're having the frickin conversation. And I wanted, I almost, I almost wanted to jump to my feet because that's the ADD in me. A little bit older now, I can kind of contain my impulse, but. There was a level of discomfort. I've been running Athena for almost nine years. This is what we do. We hold uncomfortable conversations. That's what leaders do. That's how we get to the other side, is we sit there and wrestle and bathe and gargle with discomfort. Because when we don't have the answers, the ego that hasn't died yet is running the show. And it's got to be in control and have all the answers and know

what's going to happen.

And so I just want to just acknowledge the fact that if I'm having that level of discomfort, and I'm going to save space, I'm with a bunch of people who are enlightened, who are innovative, who are leading companies who care genuinely. And all of us have the most common genetic structure, which is human decency at the most molecular cellular, I mean, oh my God, what happened to that? What happened to human decency? And that's what I'm really excited about recapturing so that it's not something we lean into. It's not something we pick up at an Athena leadership program. It's not something that we put out there so we can get 10,000 likes or a TEDx invitation. So I just want to honor all of you again for coming here and I want to leave you with a challenge. Because that's what we do at athena. We love to challenge. And I would love for you to take this conversation forward, because I think the point of this entire exercise and having these folks come and share their head and their heart space with us is that we might continue it. This is not a one-off this is really intended to continue that momentum.

That's so critical, because in my mind, when somebody tells me to shut up and let's keep that elephant in the closet, what do I want to do? What do you think we want to do? Yeah, I'm taking that elephant. We're going to have a big ass parade. We're going to have a... Anyway, Congressman, you know, at the detention center down at Oside Mesa aside Oside, take this is all about continuing to have the conversation. And when we get muffled and when we're told to feel that fear and to choose isolation over community, that's... That's not leadership and I'm not following that. So I hope you'll take that challenge and I hope you'll continue to do this. Before we wrap up tonight, I want to acknowledge a couple of some of my partners and leaders. The chairman of the board, Jay Connolly, is with us. So thank you, Jay. Dr. Leslie Nangle, also one of my partners and board of directors, is with us. And then Dr. Alessandra Wall, who is the co-chair for the committee, the allyship committee, and my And then I'm gonna hand it over to Alessandra, 'cause nobody is gonna have anything complete without the clinical psychologist to wrap it up.

So thank you, everyone. Appreciate you more than you know.

Thank you, Holly. Hey, we talked about taking this conversation to the next level and being actionable. And so I wanna let everybody here know that the Allyship Committee is recruiting people. So gentlemen, I am looking at you. I'm looking at you two years. I've been trying to make you show up right there, Sanjay. Madi, I'm looking at you. We need folks. We have folks here who are on our committee. They can tell you what's involved in it. But the thing that is really most involved is giving a damn, showing up, and putting your actions where your words are. So I will start with that. The other thing is, We love to know what you think about the programs we put out here. And there's this terrible, terrible statistic. Who knows what percentage of surveys are responded to? It's 6%. It's a little bit better. We would like to beat that today. 100 would be great, but I take 50. 50. So I've got a clipboard. Who else has a clipboard? Louise has a clipboard.

That's it.

I've got many sheets of paper in my clipboard. I need at least 10 people to come up to me to grab a sheet and tell us whether this sucked, whether it was useful, how it can be better, what you want from us next time. And if you don't, I'm going to be really disappointed and kind of angry, and I'm going to call you out on it.

How about that for some masculine energy? And by the way, I will just say this. Art is a very good friend of mine. I picked him up at a club. I picked him up at a bar last year and we became fast friends. I was moving, I hadn't eaten. I went up to the bar. Where did we meet? Outback. And I'm up there and I order a burger and I'm throwing down a beer. And he must have looked at me like I was some homeless person that hadn't eaten. And I looked at him and he was drinking a beer and I just looked at him and I was like, cheers. And that was the beginning of our relationship. I met his family. I met his daughters who are about my age. And they're like, so what do you want with my dad? Who are you? I was like, well, we have a lot in common. But I want to just, I just want to say this, that when we talk about very provocative questions that he offered, that art offered, which is, what's the difference between men and women? And I'm really moving into this whole concept about It's not the genders, it's actually the energy expression.

It's just energy. All of life is energy. I'm going to get very scientific with my scientific audience, so I'm going to be very careful about what I say. I want to be respectful of all of you. But the whole notion that we come out of our mother's womb and we have masculine and feminine energy, all of us do. That's how the whole constitution works. And through our personality and our constitution and our programming and our families and our environments, we get to express one over the other. But we all have estrogen. We all have testosterone. And some of you men get a whole lot more estrogen. You lose the testosterone. Jay knows a little bit about that from her ex-husband. And so we have these different balances. And then we have the hormonal. Anyway, I'm going to spare you that whole gynecological story. But the point is we just have options. Options to express these energies that align with who we are and what feels comfortable for us and what really gives us our identity rather than what the system or the. The culture dictates. So I have a lot of masculine energy. I like to get done, not to suggest if you have feminine that you don't get done.

But the way in which I get it done is very masculine. It's a very masculine orientation. And sometimes I can run people over and. Small children and elderly folks because I have a mission and I have to bring awareness to that. But because I can tap into some of the feminine energy that says, hey, have situational awareness. I don't think that was really appropriate. We could have taken a different approach. That's the feminine, right? And so if you can have that, so different between the polymodal and the unimodal, we can actually contemplate multiple scenarios at once in our head. So I just want to invite everybody to get away from the gender. And think about the way in which we express ourselves. And that is the sort of the masculine versus the feminine. I know there's a lot of dissolution of gender that's happening because of the LGBT, all of those kind of manifestations of a world that doesn't invite, that's not very inviting for the masculine, the over masculine. So I just want to round out that with my thinking, my thoughts on that topic. And then I also want again remind you to please continue this conversation with your community and your team and your network.

Can I get a hell yes on that?

Yes.

All right.

Thank you again for our sponsors at Enlight. Thank you, Debbie Day.

Love you.

Love you to the moon and back. And thank you. Kylie just came in off of 15 canceled flights from Colorado. Really, really glad that you took the stage and helped facilitate That's very timely conversation. Love you, girl.

Thank you, everyone.

Bye, Sean.