EP03 - Diversity Day

Hello everyone and welcome to Out of the Office, a podcast exploring the lessons learned from the hit TV show, The US Office, all about how we can create a diverse and inclusive workplace. I'm your host, Sara Chandran, and I'm going to be delving into the world of Dunder Mifflin and examine the kind of different characters that show up and also the scenarios presented throughout the series.(...) We're going to analyze the show's episodes highlighting the importance of respecting diversity, fostering inclusivity and creating that positive work environment. So whether you're a fan of The Office or you're just interested in learning more about how we can create a more inclusive workplace, hopefully this is the podcast for you. So grab your favourite Dundee Award and we'll tune into Out of the Office.

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Today's episode that we're going to be looking at is from the very first season and episode two, which is probably the one that a lot of people will be talking about and discussing in terms of the controversy around it and what happens and unfolds within this particular episode. So as a bit of a background, Michael, who is the regional manager, does an imitation, the Chris Rock routine, and then as a result, people complain and it forces the staff, the entire workforce to go through a racial diversity seminar.(...) Now, someone comes in, a consultant from a company called Diversity Today, and he essentially teaches the staff about tolerance and diversity and what it means to be a hero.

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But what happens is that Michael Scott, in true Michael Scott fashion, is trying to kind of step in and elbow his way through it and trying to impart his own knowledge about it. And as a result, he ends up deciding that he's going to create his own diversity seminar, which is where everything goes pretty, pretty wrong and it is quite problematic in terms of what happens afterwards.(...) Now, the final part of the episode, Michael Scott actually gets everybody to wear an index card on their forehead of different races and ethnicities on air and essentially get people to try and guess what's on each other's forehead, which he encourages people to lean into stereotypes. And then towards the end, one of the staff members played by Mindy Carling, she actually snaps and decides that it's best to slap Michael Scott, which kind of, I think, knocks a little bit of sense into Michael for sure. So that is a little bit about the episode and I am very excited for today's guest, which is Asha. Asha, would you like to come up and say hello and give all our listeners a quick introduction? Hi everyone, my name is Asha Hartkless, my pronouns are she, her. I am a proud queer, brown, neurodivergent woman, equity strategist, public speaker, trainer and founder of Indigo Inclusion. Indigo Inclusion is an anti-racist diversity and inclusion consultancy.

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Yeah, so my work centres on engagement, empowerment and education. It hopes to bring everyone along on the journey in each organisation, no matter what their background is, to really ensure that everyone in the organisation can thrive and grow and therefore businesses can thrive and grow and have an advantage. And yeah, it's really about building inclusion and by building inclusion, we have to recognise the inequities that we have and it's also very intersectionally focused as a very intersectional individual and yeah, have lots of learning around lots of different marginalised backgrounds as well. So yeah, that's me.

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Perfect. So basically, the very best person to talk about this very episode. I feel like you've got all the expertise and all the ideas and perspectives that will probably be helpful to kind of allude to what kind of goes quite wrong. It's quite funny because it's the second episode of the first season, so it's quite a strong start to the show. So it's quite a bold way to kind of introduce the concept of the office and it goes on for several more seasons so obviously it does not get cancelled. But before we jump into the episode itself, there's a question that I'm going to ask all my guests, which is essentially in the series, Michael Scott, the regional merger, has a mug that says World's Best Boss, which he actually bought himself. He wasn't gifted this by his team, which I always think is hilarious.(...) So in like that, if you had the World's Best Something mug, what would you all say, Asha?

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If I bought myself a World's Best mug in the spirit of Michael Scott and obviously the complete irony that comes with him having that mug, mine would probably be the World's Best Pug Wrangler, which is a bit of an inside joke. I have a pug.(...) He's nine and a half years old now. For anyone that doesn't know, pugs are very stubborn, very intelligent.(...) They can be trained, but they like to not follow what they know they should do because of their stubborn nature. And wrangling them, as is the term in my household, is kind of impossible. It's a bit like herding cats.(...) Sometimes you can, sometimes you can't. So yeah, I think that would be mine because I cannot wrangle my pug. He has a will of his own.

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I love that. I remember describing pugs nature. I actually was thinking, I feel like you're describing Michael Scott because he's so stubborn and doesn't do what he's told. Like, particularly in this episode, he needs to just sit down and be quiet and absorb the information that is being told to him. And he's just very much not being the best attendee in the workshop, for sure.

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So yeah, let's dive in.(...) So there's actually a quote from Mindy Carling who plays Kelly in the series. And she was interviewed and basically said she believes that the series would be cancelled if it were to air now. And you've obviously never watched the show before. And I feel really guilty that I was like, I love this show. I want you to be on this podcast.(...) And then I was like, right, you're going to do diversity day, which is probably the worst episode of the series. So it's quite the introduction, I think, that you had to the show.(...) So I would love to just kind of get your initial reflections and reactions to when you were seeing this episode.

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Yes. So I'm not an office watcher. I've seen a bit of the UK, well, quite a bit of the UK one, not really the US one.(...) And yeah, this was one of the first episodes I watched. And to be honest, I was really triggered.(...) And I do not use this word lightly. I know it's a bit of a but can be a bit of a buzzword of a colloquialism.

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It triggered my nervous system and past trauma in a very real way.(...) I have worked in throughout my education, throughout my career, I have always learnt and worked in predominantly white spaces.

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And I have experienced a lot of different microaggressions,(...) discrimination.(...) And I know that I suppose the whole point of The Office is this massive, hilarious satirical irony piece. And it was a lot all in one episode.

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And for me, some of it, I suppose it's supposed to be inflated so that it's so unbelievably ridiculous. It's funny.(...) But unfortunately, some of my experiences, it didn't feel that inflated.

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Like sometimes things can be really subtle within the workplace. But sometimes they can really be, oh my goodness, did that really just happen? Did that person just say that or do that? How is nobody else reacting or recognizing this or saying anything?

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And yeah, the whole episode, I was just like, I found it really uncomfortable to watch. And was like, oh, like, I know it was triggered.(...) I had to rant to my husband about it afterwards.(...) Yeah, it was it was all of the feelings.

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Sorry for putting you through that.(...) I'd love to hear like maybe the specific moments where it kind of hit home a little bit in terms of the specific scenarios.

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Deep breath.

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Deep breath.

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Michael Scott in general,(...) we all know a Michael Scott. There might be multiple Michael Scott's working in our organizations or that we have worked with or encountered in the past. And I mean, yeah, where do I start this stereotypes section,(...) the fact that he tried to take over and derail the whole session, the the ego of Michael Scott and the being at the fore of everything and his complete lack of self-awareness for everybody else in in the session, not just

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the person of color and the black person who he seems to pick on a lot and the Mexican person as well who picks out. But even the white people in the room, like, there's so much discomfort and

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unawareness, like he obviously thinks as he's going through the session, like he's including or he he picks out other people as if to say, you know, you can join this conversation or you say a little bit about about this or I'm not looking at you because, you know, I don't see color, but actually everyone's uncomfortable and he's just so not aware. And yeah, just the I suppose the whole Chris Rock routine, which is the reason why they brought the trainer in. Oh, goodness, like it's I've never I've never thankfully experienced someone being so over and doing a routine like that. But there's people that have there's people that say things all the time that are inappropriate,(...) mocking other people's culture, saying sexist things, really sexist things without even realizing it. Like there's so many traumatic experiences that each little bit of that whole episode brings to the fore in one short space of time that there's too many to account, really.

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Yeah,(...) well, you mentioned the particular point where Michael Scott and for those that might not be familiar with the series. So Michael Scott is a white man and he points to the only black man in the room, which is Stanley and says, you know, this is a color free zone and turns to Stanley and says, I don't see you as another race, which obviously makes everyone in the room uncomfortable and definitely Stanley as well.

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So I'm curious to know, like, when managers have that perspective, they might feel like they're coming from a well intentioned perspective, like they want to see everyone as equal. But actually, is it quite damaging to have that perspective of, you know, I don't see color?

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Like, what does that do to the conversations around race in the workplace? It is damaging because when we're having conversations about race, we need to acknowledge that people that are melanated will experience life and the workplace differently to non-melanated people. And if we say we don't see color or we're color blind, that's completely ignoring all of those inequities and the differences between the two.

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And so this isn't the systemic barriers people will be facing. It ignores our own internal bias that we all have, whether I'm melanated or not.(...) And it stops progress being made because in order to progress inclusion within the workplace, we need to address inequity.

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And if we don't acknowledge that there's a difference there, and specifically what those differences are, we can't make a change and we can't move towards inclusion. We may as well just say, there's no problem here. That's basically what he's saying. And in the episode, like you say, he literally points Stanley out. So in saying, I don't see color, so he obviously does see color. And we always have these inbuilt biases within us. It's part of human nature that we have our kind of in-group, out-group biases, a core part of survival that we have developed since, you know, pre-historic times. We are safe with the group that we know, but it's really harmful.(...) And, you know, it's kind of step one is acknowledging this work that we need to do is not comfortable. And we are going to get uncomfortable. And we need to acknowledge what these different inequities and biases are that we all have. We need to understand them to be able to move forwards and address them.(...) And we also need to always keep in mind intersectionality because just because so Stanley, I think in the episode in the office, he's the only black man in the room.(...) But we have different people,(...) melanated people in the office. We have un-melanated people. Just because there's white people in the office doesn't mean that they aren't going to have their own barriers that they're facing. So, you know, it's like when we say when people or research in the past has said has called people of color or BAME people as one category, black Asian minority ethnic for BAME. It's completely lumping us all together and not acknowledging that as a South Asian woman, I might face different barriers in the workplace to an East Asian woman. So black woman, so a black man.(...) And that's, yeah,(...) acknowledging those differences and those barriers is the only way again to move forward. A metaphor that I use a lot in my work is that we don't all come to work and open the office door or open the Zoom camera or whatever platform you use.(...) We don't all come to work each day with the same starting point. We might have all had to face a lot of different barriers, even say on our commute to work, if we are commuting in,(...) be it due to neurodivergence, be it due to race, ethnicity, sexuality,(...) gender.

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We might have had to face a lot of barriers and experiences, even on our commute on the way into the office that will affect our ability to even show up when we first greet our coworkers. It might affect our mental capacity and our energy levels. It might affect our nervous system and how regulated we are in approaching our work day.(...) And people that don't have those experiences or aren't aware of those experiences won't be aware that that's what's been going on for a certain person.

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But it's a really important point to bring into focus. We're not all starting our work day from the same position.(...) I think it's such a valid point because even when we think about the office itself, Michael always seems to come to every single episode. He has just high energy and he is always pumped. He sees the office as his family and they're all such a close-knit family and all those wonderful things. But he might have such a simple commute in the morning where he doesn't have to think about things. But obviously, depending on your identity, as you navigate the way to get to work, there may be small microaggressions you face on the way. So you might come in just exhausted and you haven't even started your day yet. And then you have to be confronted by a manager like Michael Scott. And then you're just like, God, is this really what I'm having to deal with today, having just experienced everything that I have to experience? And yeah, I think the lack of self-awareness for Michael Scott is a big deal because he just doesn't seem to pick up on the cues in the space when he's clearly just trying to take charge. He almost sees himself as separate to the issue, right? And everyone's kind of rolling their eyes, but he just doesn't seem to pick up on those cues.

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Or just even within himself, listening to what he's saying and what he's doing in terms of derailing the trainer that's obviously come in.

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And I guess, you know, Michael Scott does seem self-separate, even though, as it comes to light later on, the very reason the trainer is in there is because of this Chris Rock routine that Michael Scott was trying to imitate.

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I feel like there's quite a few managers and leaders out there that, you know, there will be a diversity inclusion consultant that comes in or there will be a training session. But they almost see themselves as separate to the issue. Like they don't see themselves at fault and they might kind of either try and take charge or sit on the edge or like on the sidelines watching their employees do the training because they don't see themselves as someone that needs it.

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I guess, have you also seen that kind of type of behavior with managers and leaders in your line of work? There's like a curve, isn't there? Like a bell curve of knowledge. Once you start to really acknowledge that you have some work to do within, say, inclusion space and finding out about different marginalised communities,

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you realise just how much you don't know.(...) And it's that realisation point. And a lot of people may not have got to that point yet. They might just think, yeah, I've read some of this. I've heard some of this. I've seen this. I know this stuff. I know what you're going to say. Or I did it 10 years ago, had some training and, you know, I know all this. That stuff is moving forwards all the time. Even our use of acceptable language is moving forwards all the time.

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And, yeah, we, I do see this quite a lot. And it can be people that really sit back from the conversation,(...) don't even look at you as you're presenting,(...) don't get involved in the workshop.

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Tasks don't, yeah, very much standoffish and think, this isn't for me.(...) And then you get the people that purposely try and, I suppose, assert themselves in the space and ask challenging questions or even just make statements that are meant to challenge you as the specialist and as the practitioner.

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It can often, I'm going to say it's often white people, not always, but often is, that will challenge and almost, almost like they're questioning who are you as a brown woman to tell me anything.

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What are your credentials? What do you really know? Oh, yeah, but just playing devil's advocate. What if X, Y, Z and those situations can be really challenging. And it's such a shame because it can derail the whole conversation for everybody.(...) And it means that we're not getting to the learning and the tasks, which I've carefully, expertly, lovingly put together for a very real purpose to meet and aim of the session, of the work we're doing to fit into a wider piece.

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So, yeah, that's often the challenge of the work we do.

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Yeah, the devil's advocate thing is so frustrating. I've done so many workshops now where there doesn't happen as often. And it always depends on the size of the group as well.

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Because I feel like the larger the group of people, the fewer people feel like they can stand up and kind of, you know, say something that they're really thinking because they don't want to ostracize themselves from the majority. That's why I kind of prefer like smaller workshops with fewer people because you actually get to the crux of what people are thinking and feeling about this kind of subject. And then you do get the devil advocates. And it's like really difficult to navigate those conversations because they themselves are trying to derail the conversation and almost like take you off on a tangent to almost discredit and devalue the work that you're putting in and the things that you're saying to the rest of the group. Because, yeah, essentially they don't see what you're doing as worthy in some regard.(...) And there'll be lots of people, you know, even if you've been in the industry for decades, you know, there's some devil's advocates where you might have all the energy and time to talk to them and have a debate. And there'll be other days where you're just like a little bit like you're on the back of doing two other workshops that week. There's been a devil's advocate in every single one. And you come to this one. You're like, I cannot deal with another one. Like how many devils are there out in the world? Like, please put it. Just come on. Just calm down.

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But I feel like I don't know if you have any advice for people like us, you know, DEI consultants, DEI trainers, when they do come up against somebody in a session like that and they're just like kind of stuck because it is really tricky because it's almost like they've, I don't know, watched too many YouTube videos about how to debate and make someone like trip over their words.

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And suddenly you're like, oh, I can't, you know, can't quite get my point across because they're just completely derailing it. Yeah. Do you have any advice for people?

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Yeah, those times are tough and definitely you always remember, especially if you are a person with a menstrual cycle, that throughout your cycle, there will be different times of the month where you might be absolutely fine to deal with the person.

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You might be able to deal with those people and there might be other times where it can give you a little bit like even if you've experienced it, like you say so many times before,(...) it might give you a bit of a punch in the stomach and you think, oh God, like, are we really going here again?

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I can't deal with this right now. The thing that I always try to do is to set myself up for success from the start of any session I do. There's always going to be people, as we as we've mentioned, that have different ways of engaging with the topic.(...) It's also important to remember,(...) it's normally, it's normally always fear based. It's coming from a place of I'm, I feel personally attacked either because I feel like I'm being told something that I know I should know, but I don't know. That makes me uncomfortable.(...) I don't really want to engage with this work because I don't want to get it wrong. Like there's lots of different reasons why it's never normally malicious or bad, badly intended. So I always like to start my sessions by saying, letting everyone know today we are probably going to get really uncomfortable.(...) That's good. Because if we end the session and we felt comfort throughout the whole session, we're not going to be in a position to make progress because this is not a comfortable topic that we are going to be discussing.

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And for a lot of people, it's a privilege as well that they don't have to feel that discomfort in their everyday lives. As we've just been talking about, even just going about commuting into the office, I might feel uncomfortable for many different reasons.(...) And a cis white person may not have experienced that,(...) for an example.(...) So yeah, it's an important, it's an important place to start is to set that scene and let them know we are going to be getting uncomfortable. And just to, I suppose, preempt them in their mind that if they do feel this discomfort, it gives them permission to be like, "Ah, I am feeling uncomfortable.(...) Asha said this was going to happen. It's probably because I'm learning something new or it's because I'm being challenged or some thoughts are being challenged." And they might then not think, "Oh, I need to say something. I need to stop this discomfort." They might be able to sit with it. And I will always also say that absolutely we want to hear everybody's, we want space for everybody's voices and opinions to be heard. This isn't a question of, "We're going to get through the content and I don't want anyone to challenge me." We want to have open discussions because that's really important because then you really get to see where different people within the room are in terms of their knowledge levels. But it is also really important that we also want to get through the content because it is carefully curated and it's following a journey for a purpose within this session.(...) So there will be space for questions at the end. You can always add questions as we're going along as well. But if, you know,(...) I might even say at the top of the session, you know, we are going to be conscious not to go into anything in too much detail if it's not relevant to the conversation. But of course, you can always come to me after the session, email me afterwards if there's any more questions or concerns you have.(...) I always like to have space before and after as well in kind of anonymous written format in terms of survey where people can put their fears forward or anything they really want to learn about or anything that they feel like their teams, they really want their teams to learn about so that my sessions can address that. And we don't have to discuss that in the room and maybe get into something like we see with Michael Scott where everybody knows that something really inappropriate has happened. And then we have to relive that again in the space. It's not helpful for anybody to do that.

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It's really good to have that background knowledge. And I suppose, yeah, if it does happen that someone is being really disruptive, just try and bring it always acknowledge, always acknowledge and make sure that they know that they've been heard.

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Take a deep breath and a pause if you need to,(...) especially if it's that time in your cycle or you're in your workload where your patients has run very low.

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And it's the fifth time you've heard it that week.

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Allow yourself to pause, allow yourself to have a breath, be human.(...) And yeah, we can't react emotionally. We can't react how Mindy Carlin's character did and slap the person, although we may all want to.

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But take that pause, take that breath and then just acknowledge them, make sure that they've been heard and bring it back to the content. As we were just discussing, we were talking about equity.

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Do you have a comment around that? Like, what's the question we've just asked? Let's bring it back to that. If not, okay, let's have this discussion afterwards. And if it gets really bad, I'm not against removing that person from the session

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and giving them a chance to call down. And when it's relevant to do so, going out and saying, you know, this isn't okay behavior for XYZ reason, everyone's trying to learn here. Would you like to rejoin the session and, you know, apologize, you know, if this is something really bad that they've said in front of everyone?

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Or would you like to leave the session today? You won't get the benefit of the rest of it. But it means that they're not, you are telling everyone in that room, this behavior is not acceptable. And we're not going to have that person constantly in the room derailing the conversation and affecting everyone else's learning.

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So yeah, those are really helpful tips. And actually, yeah, sometimes it might be best to just remove someone from the room.(...) And yeah, while we might not be someone that's slapped another person, I can't help but enjoy that moment when when Kelly, the character, so Mindy Carlin's character, just gives Michael Scott the biggest slap.

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Even the contact, the sound of it on the show, it just sounds so satisfying, because it's almost like throughout the episode,(...) Michael Scott just keeps just like the lack of self awareness and nothing seems to get through to him of like, this is what you need to do or just sit down and listen and just this is about you. This is because of the incident around you and what you decided to do.(...) And it's almost like some people just need to be shaken and just be like, wake up and see that this is what's truly happening. But of course, you know, before the slap arrives, Michael makes things worse because he then decides, right, this this external trainer that came in, their session was completely, you know,(...) not impactful, it wasn't helpful, it didn't do anything, it didn't help. So he decides to lead the diversity session himself.(...) And I feel like, you know,(...) some organizations,

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rightly or wrongly, but they might see somebody who is visibly minoritised or marginalised and decide that they're probably the best person in the space to maybe lead a D, D and I workshop to educate people.

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But then there might also be someone like Michael Scott, who thinks, actually, I'm just going to do it myself, even though they're probably the most privileged person in the room, because they think quite highly of their abilities.

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But I think there's kind of a danger with kind of unqualified individuals leading these kind of sessions and can actually lead to maybe outcomes that make the initial situation worse.

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I don't know what your perspective is on that in terms of just anyone and everyone deciding that they're just going to lead a training session.

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Yeah,(...) absolutely. It's not, not a bias, not the way to go at all.(...) Even just having people from like ERGs or internal employee resource or support groups, having marginalised people even just be the main people to do the work within the organisation.

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Normally unpaid,(...) normally, you know, they are self appointed within these groups because they care, because they've had bad experiences, they are marginalised in society and the workplace, and they want to make a difference. But you should never put this kind of work on someone that's not experienced within the space because it can do a lot more harm than good. Specifically,(...) if it's someone within the workplace, it will affect their standing within the workplace, how they're perceived by their colleagues. And, you know, this is hard work, as we've been talking about. Lots of things can go wrong if you're not experienced to deliver training, for example, you don't know how to create and hold a safe space for different people of different backgrounds or realise when the space is becoming unsafe. You have no experience of just facilitating people within this way. We're not just, you know, giving a talk or a presentation. We are looking to really engage people and evolve their mindsets, work together, discuss things, problem solve, apply theory to real life and our own

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experiences within society in the workplace.(...) And quite often, you know, people might think that they can do this work and they may have a real, I suppose,(...) external confidence, shall we say. But once you really get into it, that's a real problem because it normally indicates that there's a severe lack of knowledge there. If someone's overconfident within this space, it's probably they haven't reached that point on the bell curve where they realise, oh, there's so much more knowledge that I have to gain within this space. And it just means that they are coming at this situation with a really limited mindset and knowledge.(...) And even if there's other people within the space that don't have as much knowledge of them, they will know within their gut, this is not right. This is not the conversation we should be having, I suppose, like in the programme,(...) how Michael Scott delivers the sessions.(...) Just like this, none of this is helping. It's just re-forwarding people.(...) We're not getting anything out of this.(...) So yeah, it can be really, really harmful.

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Yeah, and makes things worse and, as you say, contributes further to that unsafe environment. So, you know, people obviously complained about Michael Scott in that moment and people complain in the workplace about a situation. There's a training that's implemented as a result and then you're not putting someone who's best suited to facilitate that session. And actually, it just breaks down trust and people stop bringing it up. That's something, of course, you know, someone has(...) exhibited a certain behaviour or has offended them. There's a discrimination and they'll end up just leaving the organisation. That obviously doesn't happen in the office. Everyone sticks around because they're all great characters and we learn so much more from them.(...) But I think in the real world, you know, it's not far removed from the truth about this particular episode in terms of how everything happens and, you know, people's response. I think the outcome would probably be far worse. I think it wouldn't just be a slap. It would be people leaving or Michael, hopefully, at some point getting fired for his inappropriate behaviour.(...) But as we know, people that should be fired aren't always fired and end up growing up enough in the ranks and getting less accountability for their actions and just more power and influence.

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Absolutely. We're coming towards the end, which I'm really sad about because I think, yeah, we could talk about this particular episode for hours. I feel there's just so much content there to kind of unpack. Before we kind of finish off, is there anything you want to impart, you know, key takeaways or further reflections for our listeners about this particular episode and your reflections or even just wider DEI kind of wider D&I issues?

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I suppose the main takeaway for me is there's always going to be Michael Scott's in the world, in organisations.(...) But it's important that we can counteract that in any small way we can, you know.

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It's a really tricky one. People,(...) we talk about microaggressions a lot and this episode is just full of macroaggressions, really. When we are experiencing that in the workplace,(...) it's really tough and you might feel like your only option is to leave. You might feel like actually in this economic climate, I can't leave this workplace. I need this job.(...) I'm not going to be able to get another one.

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So if there's any way that you can, I'm just thinking from the perspective of if I was a marginalised person within an organisation and this stuff was happening all the time,(...) I would want to reach out and try and get some experts involved to come and help within the workplace.

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And that can be really hard, especially if you are the only person like me in so many workplaces. I've been the only person of colour,(...) the only woman of colour.(...) And especially early on in my career, not feeling like I have any power or influence within the organisation.(...) But for those people, I would just say try and find, even if it's not your direct manager, try and find people within the organisation that have more power.

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And find people with more power in terms of their place within the organisation. So managers,

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leaders within the organisation, even if it's leaders within employee resource groups. And find those people that you know are true to allyship and they want to make a difference within inclusion and see if they can have, you know, have any influence over the powers that be to get some experts involved because this episode has shown us that you need experts to be able to move the dial on diversity, equity and inclusion.

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And if you're not in a position to leave the company or slap your boss,(...) which you obviously should never do,(...) then yeah, get some expert advice. That's my kind of lasting thoughts. Love that. Thank you so much, Asa. So the final wrap up is hire an expert, so someone like Asha.

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Definitely get in on me.(...) Indigo Inclusion or Fresh and Fearless or both of us together, get a power duo team together to help you with your business.

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This has been a wonderful, wonderful discussion and I always value your perspective on all matters of DEI. Asha is someone that I feel when I'm either feeling like imposter syndrome or I'm feeling a little bit low or hard on myself, or maybe I have those moments and there's quite a few of them where I have a devil's advocate in the room.

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I'll mix between venting to Asha and then also just getting Asha to just like coach me through it. So I'm like, don't give up. Keep going. It's OK.

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So thank you for making time to be on the podcast today and unpacking probably the most controversial episode of the series.(...) Hopefully all our listeners have enjoyed that. If there's any particular episodes or questions that you have for us that you want us to share,

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we'd love to kind of cover in future sessions then do let us know and we'll keep all the details around how to follow us and also how to find out more about Asha in the description of the podcast.

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And yeah, we look forward to having you join us in a future podcast episode. Thanks again, Asha and thanks everyone for listening.