247 - Inclusion Revolution with Daisy Auger-Dominguez

Mar 20

247 - Inclusion Revolution with Daisy Auger-Dominguez

Listeners, we're back this week with Daisy Auger-Dominguez

Daisy Auger-Domínguez has made it her mission to make workplaces more equitable and inclusive. As the Chief People Officer at VICE Media Group, Daisy leads a global team responsible for people operations, diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and social impact practices. Her TEDx talk Inclusion Revolution and upcoming book with Seal Press by the same title calls on everyone to take on the work of dismantling inequity in the workplace. Daisy has designed, led and scaled organizational transformations at Moody's Investors Service, The Walt Disney Company, Google, and Viacom, and founded Auger-Domínguez Ventures, a workplace culture consultancy. A dynamic speaker, writer and advisor, Daisy serves on the boards of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Brooklyn Children’s Museum, Robert Sterling Clark Foundation, and St. Ann’s Warehouse.

Buy Daisy's book Inclusion Revolution (This is a bookshop.org affiliate link, which means Pam gets a fee as a thank you for sending you to get the book and you spend the same amount while supporting a local bookstore!)

During our conversation, we talked about:

Growing up outside of the United States and being born here
Being the only woman/Latina/Woman of Color in the room
Changing roles
The importance of inclusivity
The importance of advocaty
And more...

Hello everyone. This is Pam, de Café con Pam, the bilingual podcast features Latinx, Latine and people of the global majority who break barriers, change lives, and make this world a better place. Welcome to episode 247 of Café con Pam. Today we have a conversation with Daisy Auger-Domínguez.
Daisy has made it her mission to make workplaces more equitable and inclusive. As the Chief People Officer at VICE Media Group, Daisy leads a global team responsible for people operations, diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and social impact practices. Her TEDx talk Inclusion Revolution and upcoming book with Seal Press by the same title calls on everyone to take on the work of dismantling inequity in the workplace.
Daisy has designed, led and scaled organizational transformations at Moody's Investors Service, The Walt Disney Company, Google, and Viacom, and founded Auger-Domínguez Ventures, a workplace culture consultancy. A dynamic speaker, writer and advisor, Daisy serves on the boards of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Brooklyn Children’s Museum, Robert Sterling Clark Foundation, and St. Ann’s Warehouse.
Listeners, this episode with Daisy was super, super fun. She was amazing. We talked about a lot of things. A lot, a lot of things, and it was really awesome because her and I share our upbringing. So she also grew, was born here, and then in her case, she grew up in the Dominican Republic. And in my case, I grew up in Mexico City, so we had that commonality and that we shared, and it was really fun to talk about it because it's something that I don't see happen often, especially, and people who are now adults, I guess.
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We of course, talked about her book and I really loved it, and you'll hear me say it in the interview, how I love books that are kind of like workbooks that give you exercises at the end or at the end of chapters, or they give you action items because that keeps me and my brain engagedso, that was really awesome. And as someone who one day will write a book, I'm taking notes on how to, as I read and as I come at it from the lens of a reader, I'm also looking at how I respond to certain ways of writing, which is super cool, and it's so amazing that I get to talk to incredible people doing amazing things. I sometimes don't even like believe it, but I'm so grateful that you listen because, because you listen I'm still here and we are still here. Pero bueno, aquí viene my conversation with Daisy Auger-Domínguez.
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Pam: Daisy, welcome to Café con Pam. I'm so happy you are here.
Daisy: Oh, Pam, thank you for having me.
Pam: Yes. So we'll talk about your book and I have all my notes. I dunno if you can see like.
Daisy: Wow. You read it? That's amazing!
Pam: Yeah. My little like notes. But first we'll talk about your story. So tell me what's your heritage?
Daisy: I am Dominican and Puerto Rican.
Pam: And where did you grow up?
Daisy: Well, actually I did the opposite migratory pattern. I was born in New York City. My parents were teenagers, my father's Dominican, my mother's Puerto Rican, and they could ill raise me at that time and my paternal grandparents in the Dominican Republic offered to raise me. So I grew up in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.
Pam: Oh my gosh. So, I'm also the opposite immigrant. I was born in LA, and I grew up in Mexico City.
Daisy: There you go.
Pam: So, I relate.
Daisy: Yes, yes. It's a very different identity marker. You don't hear about it often, but when you're trying to speak about the Hispanic experience, people often put you in a box and it's, you know, it's, it does not diminish our latinoness, but it certainly informs it differently.
Pam: For sure. How old were you when you moved to DR?
Daisy: I was barely two when I moved to the DR and I was 16 and a half when I moved back. I came at the beginning of the junior, my junior year, I should say when I lived in the Dominican Republic, I lived with my grandparents and I attended an international school, which is where I learned English. I come from a working class family, but they were able to, you know, todos los chelitos, collecting all the money so that I could go to one of the most preeminent private educational institutions in the island, which meant that I grew up going to school with kids from all over the world, and my best friends growing up still to this day are Danish, Chinese, Israeli, Dutch, and so I grew up with that rich sense of national heritage. We all knew the countries that we came from, and I write about this, it's, it's actually one of my acknowledgements, three of my school friends who taught me what it was like to straddle different cultures because they were Chinese and Dutch and Danish in the Dominican Republic where I was the majority.
Pam: Right.
Daisy: They were not the majority, but yet we built these really beautiful bonds as children do, and you know, and discovered ourselves through language. We had a shared language, which was first English and then Spanish because we spoke English at school and then Spanish at our homes. And I like to say both Ria who is Danish, Chi Wai, who's who's passed away was Chinese and Anneke[?] , I, I loved to hear them speak Spanish. Their Dominican accent is far better than mine.
Pam: Oh my gosh, how fun!
Daisy: They were great. So I grew up there, but the, the intent was always that I was, would come back to the US to study in university. So that's why I moved back when I was 16, my father bought a house he could Ill afford in New Jersey, and my grandparents came with me to help with the transition and they stayed.
Pam: I have a lot of questions. We'll break that down.
Daisy: Yes.
Pam: Okay. So you grew up in the DR in this international school until you're 16 years old. You always knew that you were a US citizen.
Daisy: At that point I was a dual citizen. I was a US and Dominican citizen.
Pam: It's so fun, right? Yeah. I'm also both and like it's, it's a privilege for sure. Did you ever question why you live with your grandparents and notyour parents?
Daisy: Oh, absolutely. I write this also in my acknowledgements. I knew that I was growing up in a very atypical household, but it was so full of love that what I didn't question was like, not all of my friends had tías that were their tía madres, right? Like my, my father's very close to his sisters. He's the middle child. And I was raised by my grandmother, my grandfather, but I was also raised by my two aunts, and I was raised by my great-grandmother. I was raised by everybody around me, and I should say this. You know, my parents were teenagers when they had me. My grandmother was 35 when I was born.
Pam: Wow.
Daisy: That's the same age I was when my daughter was born. So, I was technically, their, their last kid, I was their youngest kid.
They had already raised, grown children, but they were still in, in this stage where they could raise another child and do it, I think a, a slightly better way. They had a few more resources than they had when they started out. My grandfather had been exiled from the Dominican Republic, that's probably another story. And so, so they had come back home because they really wanted to be home and they were, in many ways, we've never even spoken about this, but I, I think about this often. In many ways it was kind of their, their restart was with me as their child. They were able to, after having raised their children in New York, because they had, like I said, they had been exiled to New York and my father and my two aunts were raised in New York City and then came back to the Dominican Republic. They did the migratory pattern as well. By the time I came back with them, they raised me as their last child, so I, I grew up knowing that it was different than everybody else. But I also grew up with just such a close-knit family that for me, the biggest challenge was I wasn't raised by my mother. And so for me it was more the distance of not having my mother who birthed me. But I very much had so many mothers. That was always something that was in the background for me. And then there was also this, and you mentioned it earlier, this tremendous privilege that I had of being able to go to great schools. You know, having a household that I came to every day that was safe and warm and welcoming. And so I, you know, I had the best of that. And as an adult, I can think about it and say, goodness, how grateful I was, but as a kid you're just, this is all, you know.
Pam: Right. For sure. I mean, I so resonate cuz my mom was a flight attendant. And so my grandmother raised me, because my mom was always flying, like the safety of the grandparents' household because there was always warm food and you always had, you know, the sopita, and like all of the, the nurturing things, and I've had to do a lot of mother wound work. Because while like on paper, let's say it looks like it was a nice and happy childhood. Internally, we all create stories that--
Daisy: Oh, absolutely.
Pam: To the surface, they don't look as anything, but that's the humanity of ourselves. Right? And so I resonate with like, on one end you have all of these awesome things, and then on the other end it's like, well, where is she? You know?
Daisy: Yeah. Oh, I grew, I grew up, I mean, I'm sure you and I could have another talk about this, but I grew up wondering and, and I actually, I, I met my mother when I was 15. I think it was, it was around that time that I started feeling a little bit more brave about being asking about her. I always asked about her and my father always had very silly stories about how hot she was. I was like, I was like, I was like, she was great, but, but there was always this absence. My husband grew up in a very traditional household, but I, you know, whenever we watch or read stories about children who have been adopted, I always tell him, I was like, I, I can relate to that feeling a lot, even though I, you know, certainly that was not my experience, but I can relate to the feeling of feeling an absence. And I'm not knowing exactly. I happen to look a lot like my father and my father's family. So there was so much about me that I saw everywhere, and I think if, if that wasn't the case, For example, I had been more light-skinned or whatnot, you know, I think that would've mattered, but there was, I could always place myself, you know, I have severe allergies, which so does my grandfather, and so I was like, oh, papi has allergies, so that's why I have allergies. I had, you know, my hair is thick and long, and that's because my aunts, but when I met my mother, I remember going, oh, I was like, this is also why I, you know, I, I actually do not lookat all like her. Yeah, I'm, I'm sure I, I do, but not physically a lot, but I have asthma, like she does, I have, you know, I have all of these things that--
Pam: You saw the traits.
Daisy: You feel yourself, you know, you, you feel connected and I didn't have that. And so, so yes, there was very much that, and I also, I think for a long time felt really guilty about saying it because I felt so privileged that I was having a life that I probably wouldn't have had with her. And you know, and so I felt the guilt of knowing, you know, I'm growing up with a household and an experience that's a lot more privileged than it would've been without her. It was still working class, but it was, it was miles apart from how my younger sister, who I have a younger sister, grew up. And so I think that guilt carried with me for a long time. And so I didn't talk about it. And when I did, I, I did it with my grandfather and my grandfather in his typical way he just, he didn't tell anybody. He picked up his bags. He came to New York City and he found my mother, and he was like, we're gonna find her. And then he called me from New York, said, we found your mother and she's gonna come and visit you. I was like--
Pam: To Dominican Republic?
Daisy: Yes. Yes. My grandmother was terrified and everybody was terrified and it, it worked out fine. And she's a kind, loving woman, you know, who made mistakes like many other people who also felt, grew up with a lot of shame. You know about not reaching out and not connecting with me. But yes, and I say all of this because, you know, it wasn't until, I think it was I was in college, or maybe it was after college, and I was talking to one of my aunts about the reason why I do the work that I do, and I connect with people the way that I do. And she just kind of out of nowhere said, well, of course you connect with people's pain and spaces because you grew up with a lot of that yourself.
Pam: Yeah.
Daisy: And so you wanna take that away from people and, and it was the first time someone articulated that to me, I said, oh, yeah. She's like, of course you, you searched to connect with people because you wanted to connect so much when you were younger and you didn't know what you were wanted to connect to. And so I, I have that empathy. My husband laughs at me cuz I cry at commercials. I cry at everything. I have a 13 year old daughter and my daughter was like, oh, mama . Like, why are you so, like, why do you have to feel so much?
Pam: Otra vez!
Daisy: And my husband just turned to her and said, he was like, no, your mama's really empathetic. She feels that connection and I think it's as all of us, you know, it's, and you said it beautifully, it's, we carry different wounds and we heal those wounds in different ways. And the way that I healed mine was by trying to take away other's wounds.
Pam: So good. Has your relationship with your daughter now?
Daisy: Oh my goodness. She's my love, you know. Well, she's a teenager, so I love her. She, you know, questions it every once in a while with me. She's sweet. She's sweet.
Pam: Depends on the day.
Daisy: Yeah. Yeah. It depends on the day. Um, no, we have a wonderful relationship and when I had her, was a really powerful moment for me, and I think it defined, it defined a relationship with my mother that we hadn't been able to define up until that point. Because for me, it was very clear that I would've never, and I would never abandon my daughter, and I for a long time felt also guilty about saying my mother had abandoned me, or making her feel that she had done that because she, in her sense of the world, she didn't right. She, you know, she did the best that she could. You know, she, she gave me up and gave me the biggest gift in the world, but ostensibly she abandoned me. And so, you know, when I had my daughter, I remember holding her really fiercely and saying, oh my goodness, this may sound inappropriate, I was like, I could kill for you [laughs] I was like, I would, I would walk over fire for you. I would do anything for this child of mine that I have, you know, that have brought into this world. That fierce love is, is just marked my life so deeply. And I know I mess up all the time, and I'm sure I say things, you know, that, that she will have to go to therapy for someday. But she knows that she's deeply loved and that's, that's important to me because I grew up knowing that I was deeply loved.
Pam: For sure. Is your mom still around? Do you have a relationship with her?
Daisy: No, we don't. We've been distanced and I have a sister that I connect with very rarely, but I think it was the healthiest for all of us.
Pam: For sure. So you're essentially an only child?
Daisy: Well, no, because my father remarried.
Pam: Oh, there's another side.
Daisy: I have two, I, I always call them baby brothers where they're grown men. I have two brothers who are 23 and 26 who are my loves, who are the coolest uncles ever and, uh, whose births I both watched because my father made me.
Pam: Oh my gosh.
Daisy: And we are as close as you can be when you are 22 and 25 years older than your siblings.
Pam: I'm six years older than my sister, and I feel like now I feel like we've leveled. You know, the gap. But when we were little, I was like, you little thing. So I couldn't, I couldn't imagine 25 years older. The older brother, the 26 year old is blonde with blue eyes. My stepmother is Puerto Rican also, and she's from the northern side of the island. She's a redhead with blue eyes. So my brother looks a just splitting image of her family and then the younger one, looks just like, actually my daughter and I and him look exactly alike. We have such similar [inaudible] types. And so when he was younger and I would, you know, take him around, people would often go like, oh, your son and I would immediately react. I was like, no, he's my brother. But we look so alike and when the three of us are together, just, you know, our profiles are so alike, and my daughter loves that. She looks so much like him and it's very sweet. But yes, it definitely is. I think the youngest one once, um, drew a family picture and it was very sweet cuz he drew my father really big and my stepmom and my little brother, his brother and then me also really big. And the teacher was like, does he have a much older sister or aunt? I was like, she was like, and my father was like, yeah, he sees his sister as much, much bigger. Yes.
Pam: That's awesome. Okay, so you're living in the DR, 16 years old, you're like, let's go back to New York.
Daisy: 16.
Pam: 16. Yeah. And then that's when you meet mom?
Daisy: I met my mother when I was still in the island, so I was about 14, 15, yeah.
Pam: Oh, so she came to you?
Daisy: Yes.
Pam: And then you decide to go back to New York?
Daisy: Well, it was decided for me. So my father bought the house in New Jersey so that I could come and do my junior year of high school because someone told them that I had to come and take my PSATs to be prepared for college.
Pam: Okay. How was that for you? Because I feel like Dominican Republic is, is tropical and it's warm and you know, like.
Daisy: All of that.
Pam: Yes. And then you get to New York, which I love New York City climate wise, it's very different.
Daisy: Oh goodness, Pam. I always remember this, I moved in early October because I think a couple of weeks later, it was Halloween, so it was my first Halloween in the US and it was starting to get cold. I remember going to the Salvation Army with my aunt to buy furniture for my bedroom and to get coats cuz I needed to wear coat. And to this day, my husband and my daughter, they can go outside in like a light t-shirt in the middle of New York City winter and they're fine. Mama has to wear layers and layers, and they know it and they make fun of me. I'm Caribbean. Caribbean at heart. The weather was different, but you know, it was, you were a junior in high school and you know, I, within the first couple of weeks of being in school, I remember feeling, you know, so othered in different ways. You know, I, I had this amazing guidance counselor who introduced me to the school. You know, this is the experience that we have as women of color. Like our entire lives are about making it easier for other people to accept us, right? And I spoke English fluently. I made it so easy for them, like they literally would. Oh my gosh. It's so great that you speak Englishbecause--
Pam: Oh my gosh!
Daisy: The few Latinos that they have had before that were immigrants. There were actually two Dominican kids siblings in the aisle in the school when I got there, and when they first came, they didn't speak English, right. You know, by the time I got there, they were speaking English fully, but, and that was a burden for the school, which it shouldn't happen. You and I both know that. But I was, I was so easy and I was a good kid that was placed into all of the, you know, advanced courses right away because I spoke English so well, so I was in the advanced English course. I came from this tremendous educational background and so I was used to doing 45 minutes to an hour of homework for every one of my classes. That was how I operated. All of a sudden I come to school and, and kids are like, maybe we'll do our homework, maybe we won't. I was like, wait, that's allowed? I was like, that's-- not in my house. That's not how we do it. It was really wild and, and all of a sudden I also became a foreigner, which wasn't my experience. I had grown uparound foreigners and foreign experiences, but we never made anyone feel like a foreigner because, you know, like this was all part of the community we had built, but I was very much a foreigner. I was put in this box right away, the Hispanic box, which very much seemed to place me in this monolithic group of people that could not speak English well, that were, you know, had low socioeconomic status, that had low educational attainment, criminals, you know, all of those negative perceptions. And I came from a knowing the good, the bad, and the ugly about our people, right? Like there's everything. Just like there are for white people and black people. But that wasn't my only definition of my identity and I struggled with it. I struggled with the language, I struggled with how to respond. I struggled with, you know, being a good kid and so not you know, not being rude, but feeling othered and less than was hard for me. And it was examples like, you know, my English teacher with the best of intentions, he used to chastise the class when they messed up by saying, even the foreigner speaks better English than you. You know, that, like that was his way of showcasing that I was a good student and showcasing that they weren't, but it was so othering of me. I would call into my seat. I, I should be like, okay. Everybody laughed. You know? I remember when I was accepted to colleges and at that point I was taking the same AP classes as several of my colleagues. And one of my colleagues, I remember, I'll never forget it, in the bus turning to me, he's like, what schools did you get into? And so I told him, he's like, well, of course you're gonna get into all the schools you want to. And he's like, you're gonna get there because of affirmative action. I actually was so naive that I didn't even know what affirmative action was. I, I did not know what that framing was. I was like, I remember just turning to him and you know, I've gotten better at retort since then. But my response was like, well, of course I got in. I'm smarter than you. I was like, you know, you know, like that was the only thing I could say to him. But when I think back on it, I was like, that was so hurtful. And he was repeating what he knew from his household and he was repeating his own insecurities and his own concerns. But that kind of messaging, you know, I suspect you felt it too. That's the kind of messaging that I heard repeatedly in school, in university, at work. It's those messages and you know, and you start seeing a bit of a universality to it, today it's me because I'm Hispanic, but tomorrow is you, because you're Asian and next to you is because you're black. And those patterns have always, I've been really curious about those my entire life, and it was being that other, that I think sparked that for me.
Pam: For sure. Fascinat-- I mean, I'm resonated with all the things because I went through them in my own way and it's so prevalent in our community. And I think it happens even for like whether people grew up here, it's still, you know, because of the last name, it's because I have friends who grew up in certain parts of the city and so they sound a certain way.
Daisy: Yes.
Pam: And so they are othered because of how they sound.
Daisy: Oh, absolutely.
Pam: So much. Okay, so you go through this, you get into college. And then what happens?
Daisy: I was accepted to several schools. Bucknell University was the one school that invited me to come to this minority weekend. And I was like, and again, I'm learning all these things, Pam. But I figured it's a free trip to the university. Why not? For some reason that was the weekend that I saw only black and brown people,all weekend long. Because they're catering to you. They're trying to get you excited to come to the. I knew the stats, but you know, like the naivete of being a kid. I remember coming back and telling my dad, that's the school I wanna go to. I was like, it's in the middle of nowhere. It's in Pennsylvania. God knows what, but it's a good school and I wanna go there. And, and it was a three hour drive, so that was ma manageable for my dad. As sad as he was to see me leave, he really wanted me to go to Rutgers, which is also where I got accepted, and it would've just been, you know, living at home. But I, I go to Bucknell and I was accepted a, and I asked to join a residential college. We had several residential colleges, and the one I joined was the Social Justice College. You know, there was something about that theme that really resonated with me, but I can't even tell you that I knew how to contextualize it. It just felt like that's social justice is a good thing. I was like, let me learn about this. And when you joined the, the residential colleges, you were living in some of the nicer dorms in the building. So my first interest in it was like, well, I wanna live in the nice new dorms. And so I applied to Social Justice and International, and I think Environmental is almost the other, in that order and I got into Social Justice, and all of a sudden I am in this place again where, oh wait, like all the black and brown people that I saw that weekend, they're not around. I was like my, my floors, there's one black woman, woman, and this whole floor, I, like everybody else, is white, lovely, thoughtful, really great kids, but different. And I always joked that at Bucknell is where I realized that I was a person of color. That's where I became a person of color. Right? When I moved to the US I became Hispanic. When I went to Bucknell, I became a person of color. And it was, I will always cra-- it was Cecil Boone, big, huge black football player. We were one day in the, in the quad, all the kids hanging up with the residential colleges and there was a corner of the quad with a lot of the black and brown students. And Cecil got up and in his way of bringing people together, came up to me and said, Hey sis, come and hang out with the people of color. And I remember going like, um, I don't have any brothers. I was like, why is he calling me sis? You know, there's all terminology that was new to me as I was still pretty much foreign to this, and I was like, who, who are these people of color? I was like, you know, I was like, I know I'm colorful, but what is this? You know? He was so sweet and warm and my, my friend Lana, who was next to me, who's also a black woman, we were both like, okay, well let's go. Apparently that's where we're supposed to go and went and befriended, Pam, the people that would become my family for the next four years, and the place where I would find my safety, the place where I would discover my sameness and my otherness throughout. The place that I connected. Right? Because while most of my social time was spent at Seventh Street or eHouse, which were the, the House for African American women in the house for African American men on campus, most of my social life was there. I still was, you know, connecting with, I also had a lot of white friends in college, you know, throughout college. And so that's where I made those connections of where I learned about what it, the black experience was in America. I didn't know that. And so being able to sit down and listen to my black girlfriends and you know, and guyfriends. And hearing about their pain, hearing about what it was like to grow up in, some of them grew up in privileged neighborhoods, some did not. Some grew up going to very mixed schools. Some grew up only going to black schools. Some grew up only going to white schools. That was being able to experience that, that's where I really became somewhat obsessed with identity and culture and connection. That's where I decided I created a, I graduated from Bucknell with an International Relations and Women's Studies degree and the Women's Studies degree I created with a friend of mine, another, you know, young white woman and I, who were just really just sat down one day and we were really upset that we were taking all these women's courses, but nobody, you know, they were kind of like these side courses. And we were like, well, let's create our own major. And our teachers were wonderful. They were like, sure, here's what it takes and, and so we did. And within those, within my Women's Studies major, myconcentration was Latin American female writers, and I chose all these things because they weren't there. They were things that were interesting to me, but they weren't being put in the list of classes like every other class was there. So I said, well, I'm just gonna do it. My international relations majors is for the concentration in the Caribbean and Latin America, not that many people were doing that. I was like, well, that's an important part of the world. I was like, I was like, you know, I wanna emphasize that. That's the place where I also started finding slowly my courage and curiosity and discovery of what was different and whether it should be different or not.
Pam: I love it so much, and I think at college it's one of my favorite experiences in the US because exactly what you mentioned, the, the openness of other people. And for me it was, it was black women who taught me all the things that I like, even speak in English. When I showed up, I went straight to the Center for Multicultural Education and, and the director who's a black woman, and to this day we're still friends. I don't know if she'll listened to this, but shout out to Tay. She gave me a big hug and she's known for her hugs because,
Daisy: Oh, I love it.
Pam: She just gives, you know, these warm hugs that just embrace you and she was like, you're home. It's a lot of exploration that happens and when you're that age, it's is the openness of people to share and be open and, you know, I learned a about hair and a lot of things.
Daisy: Oh my gosh. I learned how to play spades. I, you know, I learned--
Pam: Spades. Oh my gosh, yes!
Daisy: You know, there were all these things that were not available to me before that, but that are such important and critical cultural connections and that I would've probably not learned that had I gone to another school or maybe I would have, but it was, it was so beautiful and I credit that experience and it, and it is why race has always played essential part of my work.
Pam: For sure. I resonate so much and I think, I mean, I don't know. I'm thinking now it's because maybe we both grew up in a place where we were not othered, I guess. And so then you show up in a place where you're like so different.
Daisy: Yes.
Pam: And then it's like, whoa, let's explore. Why are we so different? You know?
Daisy: Exactly.
Pam: I remember when also had greens for the first time, and I was like, what? What? What? And grits.
Daisy: Greens and grits and also PB and J. I was like, who would've thought of putting peanut butter and jelly together and white bread? It's like, but this is actually quite delicious. I was like, okay. I'm like, I'm having rice and beans at home, but this is not bad.
Pam: This works, I guess. All right. Let's take a quick coffee break.
***
Pam: Daisy, do you drink coffee?
Daisy: Tea.
Pam: Tea?
Daisy: Yes. I, you do not wanna see me on coffee. I have enough energy.
Pam: But did you grow up with café con leche though?
Daisy: I did. I grew up con café con leche and mucha mucha leche. Y mucha azúcar. So it was café con leche, lots of sugar and I would dunk my, my bread in it. That was my afternoon snack.
Pam: Oh, my. Afternoon snack?
Daisy: Yes.
Pam: Para que despierte.
Daisy: Yes. That was my afternoon snack. We drank it all, all hours of the day, but then as an adult I stopped and it was, but it was never a large amount, right? So it was like a little bit of coffee and a whole lot of milk. And then as an adult, when people would offer me coffee, first of all, American coffee doesn't taste like coffee, but when I would be offered coffee, the caffeine just makes me too jittery.
Pam: So what kind of tea do you drink?
Daisy: Herbal, ginger, combinations. Chamomile. But I still, I have to admit, when I go home to the Dominican Republic, el cafecito after lunch, I still have it.
Pam: Yes!
Daisy: So I, I do, I do have it, and then there's just, it's a connection to my childhood, the smell of it. My husband's an habit coffee drinker, and he only likes espresso. Really strong coffee. I don't drink any of his coffee ever. But when we're home, I drink coffee.
Pam: Okay. Okay. The nostalgia, right? When you go back and you're like--
Daisy: Yes, it brings you back, you're like instantly transported to when you were six and eight years old.
Pam: On my end, I am in Colorado, currently in the land of the people of Cheyenne. I looked up how to pronounce it and I haven't been able to explore local coffee shops because it's been snowing. So I know, I don't know if you'll empathize, but it's 25 degrees, we woke up at zero.
Daisy: Oh, it's, it's about that here in New York too.
Pam: Yeah. So soon I'll be able to explore local coffee shops. We'll see.
Daisy: Nice!
Pam: But I'm not going out right now at this time. Total bear hibernating.
Daisy: I hibernate in the winter. I, I always say that the pandemic is terrible and I don't wanna be home, but I'm okay during January, February not to leave my house.
Pam: For sure. Totally. Okay, let's go back to the show.
***
Pam: So Daisy, you go through this college experience and now we're gonna fast forward. To, how you got into what you do.
Daisy: Goodness. And I, I, I wish I could do it really quickly. I'll, I'll try. It's not very linear. Um, but like I said, I graduated with an undergraduate degree in International Relations and Women's Studies. Right after my undergraduate experience, I went to, uh, NYU to get my master's in Public Administration. The summer before my senior year in college, I was accepted to a program at NYU called graduate education for minorities, and it was a program created by Dr. Walter Stafford, who has passed and was a dear mentor of mine. And the intent of the program was to bring more young people of color into the public policy arena, and not just into the public policy arena, but into the academia of it. To get PhDs in public policy. And I became enamored with the concepts of policy, the way that Professor Stafford taught them because he taught them with a lens on race, class, and gender. Not everybody was doing it that way, but that was, that was the core of his work. And so when I went back my senior year, I knew I wanted to get a master's in Public Administration and you know, I wasn't gonna work. And so, I did that. I got accepted to NYU. I went straight after so the following September, I joined NYU. I did my master's. I did a dissertation on the educational system in New York City and the migratory patterns that occurred in the early 1900s and how they shifted and impacted the public school system. So as you would see, Jewish and Italian and eventually Caribbean communities moving into New York City. How, how the public school system changed, and I did that work with Professor Stafford. My first semester at NYU I went to a class on race, class and gender. So when people talk about intersectionality, I was like, yeah, I've been, I've been studying this and looking at this for a really long time. And near the end of my two years at NYU I was curious about this program that I learned about the Coro Fellows program, which is a fellowship in Public Affairs. And so I applied to that and I got in, and so I went straight after my graduate work to do this fellowship, which means, Pam, that at this point I have not worked. I have, I have an undergraduate degree, a graduate degree, and now I'm doing a fellowship. I am in my mid twenties at this point, much to the chagrin of my father who's like, why are you going to work? But I did a fellowship in Public Affairs that was essentially a nine month experiential learning program. And over the course of nine months, you're moving every three, every two to four weeks to a different assignment in the private sector, in the public sector. And it's, it's a program has, and it's been around for, oh my goodness, I'm probably gonna get this wrong, for more than 50 years, intended to, you know, help build future leaders that understand the intersections of different sectors. And it was amazing and such a wonderful experience that I, you're part of a cohort of 12 fellows, so you essentially have 11 mirrors for 9 months, dissecting your every move, helping you grow and shape and you know, in more ways than you ever want. Towards the end of that program, as I was trying to think about what I wanted to do and I knew I had to work,at that point, the one thing that I knew was that I had been in educational settings for so long that I didn't have corporate experience. And somewhere in my head, what I knew and thought I needed to know was how to navigate the corporate environment, because that's where everything happened, right? And so I started sending out my resumes and for me, I, I must say, this is again part of my naivete, I thought corporate America was finance. Like, you know, there's so many different sectors, but I was like, I'm gonna apply to finance sectors. Meanwhile, I had never done well in math and economics. I was like, I had taken those courses, but that was never my strong suit. So I was applying to all these, you know, Morgan Stanley and you know, Lehman, all of these companies, some of them don't exist anymore. And getting declinations. And my father, who's a doorman at the Grand Hyatt Hotel here in New York City, a good friend of his wWorked at Moody's Investor Service, which was my first job. And Ali Sistani, he's Iranian and he moved to the US during the Iran Culture[?] War where people did not want to hire Iranians. His first job in the US was working in the hotel with my father. But Ali has an advanced economics degree. This is, yeah, back in Iran. So eventually he was able to secure a job in his chosen profession and career at Moody's Investor service. And as my father one day is complaining about, you know, my kid doesn't have a job, like I don't know what to do, you know, and she's got this Master's in public administration. Ali simply said, it was like, well, get me her resume, because I know some people in the public finance department and I can put in the, you know, a good word in for her. And that's how I got my interview and several interviews later by the grace of Nicole Johnson, who was a senior credit analyst who was building a team that was intended to be, you know, just handling high, high volume deals. So they really wanted to just bring in young folks like me with Masters in Public Administration that would be, you know, these deals that were pretty much not really that critical in the market, right? They were low dollar amount, but high volume. So we were doing three to five ratings a week and you know, cranking them up and she's a white lesbianin finance at a time when, you know, you just didn't really talk about that. And she was married with children and all of that, with her partner. And Nicole just had the sensitivity to inclusion, having felt othered and excluded. And so she was really intentional about building a very diverse team. And she brought me and many others I used to always joke we're like the united colors of Benetton. You know, that's an ad that dates me. But you know, just like we were all from different parts of the world and different life experiences and she took a risk on me. I certainly had all the academic credentials that all my peers had. I was the only person I think, from my cohort that did not take economics. You know, I took like the, you know, the basic economics courses. I, you know, I was, I was one of the few people who did not, you know, was not on that trajectory of finance and economics, but she saw something in me and I worked at Moody's for 12 years.
Pam: Wow!
Daisy: I was a credit risk analyst for six yearsand then I manage our global foundation for three years. And then I was asked to be the company's first head of diversity and inclusion, and I did that for three years as well. I had a really tremendous career at Moody's, but it's also at Moody's in the early part of my career where I experienced and saw women, people of color, other non-normative colleagues of mine, marginalized and sidelined. I would see people come and go, really talented people and do really well in other places. But they weren't doing well where we were. I would see myself invited to certain meetings, but others not, or vice versa. And so that was the early part of my advocacy. When I was in the foundation, our grant giving, there was a, a portion of it that was designated for girls and people of color because one of our board members who's African-American, Cliff Alexander, very well known African-American executive, he yielded his power and influence in really positive ways. And so he would be at meetings going like, well, why are you not supporting the Apollo? And why are you not supporting these communities? And he was a board member what he said, you know, we did, and I loved it because we're producing or we are supporting the Future Geeks of America, and they're going to look very different. I was like, they're going to look like you and me. I was like, and I get to do that.I was the one that was going to the Black MBA conference, the Asian MBA conference, the Hispanic MBA conference. And so I was doing this because I believed in it, but not because I knew that you could build a career in it. Cause at that point, diversity and inclusion that that wasn't something that people did. But I was so driven and motivated to drive that change and I was collecting ways of how to drive change internally by doing all those different pockets of activities in the organization. And it eventually became the first head of diversity and inclusion.
Pam: How fun! You have now a book.
Daisy: Yes!
Pam: That's coming out soon.
Daisy: March 15th. So I love that because it's a, it's called Inclusion Revolution, the Essential Guide to Dismantling Racial Inequity in the Workplace. It's a workbook, so it's the Essential Guide, but I think it's a workbook that, when I first got it, I was like, oh my gosh, this is thick. And like I opened it and I was like, dang, this is like, I read, the Never Ending Story. I don't know if you've--
Pam: Oh my gosh, yes.
Daisy: It's probably one of the biggest books I've ever read. And I was like, oh my gosh. Reminding, it's a reminder of-- But it's so good because I think, not only do you address four companies, what could happen, there's a lot of exercises and context. That gives people, it's not just like, do this to improve on this. It's like, this is why, and I really loved it because as a former corporate executive, I o remember, you know, having to assimilate, having to straighten my hair, having to wear the clothes, having like, there's no way I would've shown up to a meeting looking like this. The way that I look with my tie dye shirt today.
Daisy: Which is a very cool shirt.
Pam: Thanks. Thanks. And having to deal with, I've shared this before, but like sitting in rooms with, I used to work directly under the CEO of my, of the company that I used to work at, and one of them, and he would invite me to CEO round tables. And one time this one dude sitting next to me, he was like, hey, can you bring me some coffee? And I was like, Hmm, nope.
Daisy: Not my job. Thank you.
Pam: Yeah. Like, you have legs. Yes, serve yourself. A lot of the things that you mentioned here, I'm like, yes. And so let's see.
Daisy: I'm so glad, I'm so glad to hear that, Pam. I'm so glad. Thank you.
Pam: No, it's so good. Okay, so I, I opened it on one of my bookmarks and we'll see what shows up. Oh, Roadmap to Revolution. So I love your, you have a frameworkto revolution. Which is reflect, visualize, act, and persist. One of my favorite pieces of action items that you provided was to craft an opportunity statement. And I think this could be also for employee, for like team members, for managers, for just not just for like the company as a whole, but perhaps for like a team. Tell me more.
Daisy: I, I love that you pick on that and of, of course I have, you know, a lot of favorites throughout. Um, and you're right, there's a lot of words in this book I, I recorded--
Pam: It's great though.
Daisy: The audio and I was like, oh my gosh, [laughs] I wrote a lot. But, you know, the, the book is intended and is designed for the audience of managers and organizations. And it was designed specifically for managers as a, you know, it's quasi a management book and a story driven book. Because I wanted the book to, you know, to share the context and the realness of what happens to the humans that you work with. Because, you know, there's a lot of these books that are just all like, and this is how you motivate people to do this. I'm like, well, why is, why, but why, why wanna motivate people? ? It's like, why does that motivate someone versus someone else? And in that particular piece that you're mentioning around action, the intention there was to give tools, practical tools for managers or individuals. You're right, it can absolutely be you. That's the beauty of this model, that it's intended to address inequities in workplaces, but it really is just about doing what's right in an organization, making workplaces work for everybody. And when you craft an opportunity statement, it requires you to have to do the first two steps of my model, which is reflect and visualize.
Pam: Yes.
Daisy: Right. Is really spending that time to think about, you know, what do I wanna do? What role do I want to play? What does change look like for me? What change is acceptable to me or not? Right? We all have, you know, different comfort levels and once you've spent that time, I call it, looking in the mirror. Right. Once you spent that deep time looking in the mirror, then it's about visualizing. Well, I was like, well, what does this look like? And does that mean that I want to be an ally, that I wanna be an accomplice, that I want to make sure that I'm helping my company recruit more diverse people, or that I want to help my company, you know, retain more of that diverse people that we work so hard to hire. And so when you craft that action, you know that that statement, that that action piece, when you're crafting your opportunity statement, that's when you start putting into, you know, sort of starting to put the elements of your action plan together. And that's when you can start realizing like what's possible for you and what's possible for others. And I think that that's such an important step. And we tend to jump, right? You know, companies and organizations we're always looking for shortcuts.
Pam: Yes.
Daisy: And it's not just that we're looking for shortcuts, we're also demanded. It has been demanded of me to secure shortcuts for systemic problems that I know cannot be solved with a shortcut, but that's what's been demanded of me in pretty much every job I've had. And so I've never, you know, I've created opportunity statements out of necessity, but I haven't always shown them to my leaders, quite frankly. They've just been my roadmap. They've been like, this is what's gonna keep me honest and this is what's gonna help me. You know, sort of every time that I feel like I'm wavering from where I'm going, I was like, let me go to what my opportunity statement was. What is it that I wanted to do and for what reasons? And if that has changed, I could change my opportunity statement. Right. But it became, it, it continues to become this roadmap.
Pam: One of my favorite ones that I actually highlighted. There's so many, there's so many, but that's the one. A paragraph. Can I read it?
Daisy: Please.
Pam: When employees have to expend boundless energy on their defenses to survive in their environment, what do you think happens to their output, to their relationships with colleagues and supervisors? They cannot give 100% because they're working from a deficit. They have to spend a large majority of their energy and emotional vigilance, corporate politics in managing fight or flight response. So good.
Daisy: And so real. Right. That's been my experience. I suspect it's yours. And it's the experience of so many, so many talented people. That's where my heart breaks is because it's so many talented people who just wanna do their work, who wanna contribute. Right. We all have a deep sense of belonging and of, of being respected and valued. And there's so many people who are just not allowed to do that. Right. It's like we're being barely invited in and we're just, but we're always being shown the door. It's like that you can like just any mistake. Any step, you're out the door. And that is just, it's painful. And I've seen it, particularly Pam, because as an HR professional, you know, I've had to exit a lot of people from organizations. And it's heartbreaking to see someone leave and for them to be just completely surprised by it. Right. But I've been, but I've been doing everything you've asked me to do. That's, that's painful. And it's, and I see it over and over again. And even in all the companies, you know, I wrote this book because I'm so tired of short-lived promises. You know, all these companies that made all these proclaimers and the, you know, two years ago after George Floyd was murdered. And you talk to employees in those organizations and they're all still suffering. And not a whole lot has changed.
Pam: Oh yes. So good. We can stay talking for so long, but I don't wanna take up [inaudible] [laughs] We're so past our time now. Tell me all the places and spaces where we can find the book.
Daisy: Oh my goodness. Everywhere. Um, so Inclusion Revolution, whether it's Amazon, Barnes and Noble, your local bookstores. I just had a good friend of mine who lives in Washington Heights here, uptown in New York City, who told me she was able to purchase it with a, in a local bookstore in the Heights.
Pam: Nice!
Daisy: Which, you know, which is a predominantly Dominican community. And I, I just, I couldn't be happier. It's also available in audio. It will be my voice because I recorded it. And yeah, so just if you look it up online, you will find all sorts of places where you can purchase it and hopefully read it and enjoy it and find good worthwhile tips and tools and hopefully some inspiration and hopefully some anecdotes that will resonate with you and others that will, you know, that you'll be able to share with others to do this work because it's gonna take all of us to do this work.
Pam: Oh my gosh, yes. Where can we find you?
Daisy: Oh, I'm a LinkedIn person. [laughs] It's like, you know, I'm in the professional sphere, so LinkedIn is my sweet spot. Instagram, you will see a lot less photos, uh, of my daughter now cause she does not let me post, uh, photos of her. Um, and then I, I like to say that I dabble in Twitter, I go in and out, but most of my time is spent on, on LinkedIn.
Pam: Nice. Nice. Well, thank you Daisy so much for being at Café con Pam and sharing your story and your awesome book. It's, it's one in the short shelf, like in the, in the Close Proximity Shelf.
Daisy: Oh, thank you so much, Pam, for having me, for reading the book, for validating my good work and for sharing it with your audience.
Pam: Yeah. No, thank you. Thank you. Last two questions.
Daisy: Yes.
Pam: What is the remedio that you wanna share?
Daisy: Oh my gosh. My, my favorite remedio is always, you know, chamomile tea. I actually try and drink tea every afternoon and I do it purposely because it slows me down, you know, my pace of life and work is so fast and a cup of tea because it's hot. It makes me have to wait for it to cool and it makes me have to take sips and that is my, my space and my moment of meditation.
Pam: I love it. Chamomille tea. Nice. Yes. Do you do bags or actual chamomille?
Daisy: I do bags. I have not gotten a strong, you know, I have, when, when I'm in the Dominican Republic, my aunts have-- do the actual chamomille, but here I do the, the easy, uh, bags of tea.
Pam: Nice! I love it. And do you have a quote or mantra that you live by?
Daisy: I have one that's right in front of me, and it says, Engage in this work as if change is possible. Because when I feel, when I have my moments and I have them often Pam, of, of wondering whether change is possible, I look at it and I remember I'm engaging in this work because I believe change is possible. And, and that's, that's what holds me.
Pam: Yay. So good. It reminds me of one of my favorites recently, or not recent, but kind of, which is, Who are you not to do this?
Daisy: Oh, I love that. Yes. Yes. And it's something that we need to remind ourselves often because we allow shame and guilt and other people's perceptions of us, you know, cloud our sense of, you know, why we are on this earth. And so we have to remind ourselves of that.
Pam: Yeah. The system wasn't created for us, but we still exist here. Daisy, thank you so much.
Daisy: Stay shining listeners.
***
All right, listeners, that was my conversation with Daisy. She's amazing. I think she's one of those people that will stay in touch, I think because her story, we have things in common. Like I really, when I find people that were raised in a different country and were born here, I'm like, oh my gosh, we're similar. And I don't often find that. So I tend to connect with folks who have a similar upbringing [inaudible] in that way, and I really hope, I can't wait to hear what your thoughts are on Daisy's story. On her, what she shares. Daisy's book just came out. Make sure you get it. Order it now, because remember it's really important for authors to show that there is a demand for their book, and so that's why pre-sales are so important, but we're still kind of within the window, I would think of the orders. So go ahead and order it. Order it from Bookshop, order it from your local bookstore, support local bookstores, and support a Latina author because it's important, everyone, it's important. The more authors of color are out there, the more the book companies, the book publishing companies will start looking at our stories. And so in order for our stories to continue to be represented, we have to support them.
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