Episode 51
Facilitating Difficult Conversations
The last few weeks have been extremely difficult for us as a nation. At NextUp, one of the most common questions we’ve been hearing is “How do I talk about this with my team? How do I make sure they have what they need when these issues can be so polarizing?”
This week on Advancing ALL Women, we’ll discuss best practices for supporting employees and fostering candid conversations on the difficult topics and tramautic events unfolding around us.
Guests
Karen Jones
VP, Learning & Partner Solutions
Karen leads the Learning, Development, and DEI&B work at NextUp. Her team manages the design and delivery of the leadership development programs and assessment processes for Partner organizations. Karen has worked within the Organization and Leadership Development disciplines for more than 20 years. She has led at the executive level within the corporate sector for Fortune 50 companies. Her experience provides a keen ability to design and deliver optimal solutions for Members and Corporate Partners alike. Karen has a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from Grambling State University and a Master of Arts in Organization Leadership from Gonzaga University.
Brandi Greene
Managing Director, Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion, Work & Co.
Brandi Greene is a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) leader, strategist, and coach working to advance non-traditional approaches to DEI. She is currently the Managing Director of Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion at Work & Co, where she practices a progressive, developmentally focused approach to cultivating just workplace cultures. She is the Founder and Principal of NúBlack Consulting, a boutique consultancy helping organizations minimize harm by thinking innovatively about DEI change. Currently, Brandi is serving as a DEI strategic advisor of NextUp’s Ascend Program, where she is helping organizations utilize equitable design thinking to improve workplace experiences for Women of Color (WoC).
Brandi’s work focuses on the intersection of identity development, cultural competency development, anti-oppression, and wellness to help individuals, organizations, and industries create culturally adaptative equity-mindful institutions. She delivers award-winning solutions that drive continued DEI and antiracism development and ongoing organizational evolution using concrete, creative, and unconventional approaches. She specializes in cultivating intersectional racial awareness and improving racial competency in dominant, non-dominant, and blended groups, and operationalizing complex global strategies at the local level.
Brandi holds a BA in Psychology from Medgar Evers College (MEC), City University of New York, with summa cum laude distinction. She serves as a board member of the New York Association of Black Psychologists and Pink Lily, Inc., a Brooklyn-based nonprofit community advocacy organization serving single mothers and their families. Brandi is also an active member of the Delta Rho Omega chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated™.
Brandi is a psychology enthusiast and aspiring happiness guru. One day she hopes to put all her effort into advancing her passion project, Happy is the NúBlack, a critically conscious and culturally sensitive approach to happiness for victims of racial and other forms of oppression.
