The Future of DEI in Corporate America

[00:00:00] Calan Breckon: Today’s episode is sponsored by Kit, Formerly known as ConvertKit, the email marketing platform for creators. I’ve been using Kit for years because I found that it is the most efficient and easy to use out of all the email service providers. Kit simplifies your email marketing by combining powerful automations with an easy to use interface. I love the Visual Automations builder because I am a very visual person and it really helps me to organize all of my automations in a very simple, simple and easy way. And let’s face it, automations is a must have in order to succeed in any business today. Kit also integrates with all of your favorite e commerce platforms, lead generation services, and much more. The best part about Kit is that it runs on a sliding scale for payment so that you can get started for free while you learn all about Kit systems and how to grow your email list. So to get started today for free, head on over to calandbreckon.com/kit or just click the link in the show notes. Now let’s get on to today’s episode.

Welcome to the Business Gay podcast where we talk about all things business, marketing and entrepreneurship. I’m your host, Calan Breckon, and on today’s episode I have Jim Fielding. Jim is a respected leader and C suite veteran in brand strategy, consumer products and experiences and storytelling. He has worked at some of the world’s largest media and retail companies, including Disney, DreamWorks and 20th Century Fox. He is a passionate advocate and philanthropist for the queer community, higher education and diversity, equity and inclusion. As author of “All Pride, No Ego,” he is committed to safe and authentic spaces for all individuals and communities. Jim now spends his time as an executive coach, speaker and advocate and gives back through his work with Braven mentoring the Indiana University Foundation Board, The Point Foundation and various local community efforts in Atlanta. Today we’re going to be jumping right in and getting super political with the attacks on DEI and the future of equal rights in the United States. So, let’s jump in.

Hey Jim, welcome to the podcast. Thanks so much for joining me.

[00:02:15] Jim Fielding: Thank you, Calan. It’s. It’s great to be here.

[00:02:17] Calan Breckon: Yeah. You have such a colorful background and a history of specifically what we’re going to be talking about today. So I really just, I want to dive right in. You’ve been in rooms with like some of the biggest decision makers at some of the biggest tables at one, at some of the most recognizable brands around the world. Do you think DEI has been a net positive or net negative for those brands? And then why I Mean, I am.

[00:02:46] Jim Fielding: Definitely a net positive person. I, I, because, and regardless of what it’s branded or DEI, what I always found, because I particularly managed in creative industries and led in creative industries is what beyond the diversity, like the visible diversity and like, you know, the, the race and gender and sexual identity and all of that.

I love diversity of thought and I love diversity of experiences and especially when you’re creating and to your point, I worked at places like Disney and DreamWorks. You’re creating for a very broad based consumer base. I always wanted my employee teams and those decision making rooms to feel like our consumer base.

I worked really hard to get diversity of thought, which often comes from just diversity in general and trying to create environments where people felt safe to share their best ideas and their talent. That really is what it was about.

[00:03:50] Calan Breckon: Yeah. Because when you have a silo of thought and that’s happening right now in certain parts of the world, when you have a silo of thought of like this is the only way it can be, you lose out on this lush, beautiful, expansive like process of all these different experiences and ways of being in ways that other people have experienced the world. And when you can bring those to the table and everybody can share that, you have so many more options that actually helps build up a company and lift up a company and financially supports a company. Because we’re seeing all the boycotts and everything happening, you know, not sporting. DEI clearly has its backlashes. So it’s just been very interesting and I knew you were going to say yes because we’re on the same, we’re on the same side when it comes to the.

[00:04:36] Jim Fielding: Yeah, I mean, and I’ve been super consistent about it. And to your point, I wanted to avoid the echo chamber. Right. I wanted, I never wanted a group of people that worked with me or around me that were just saying yes to everything I said because that, first of all, I don’t think I have all the best ideas. I’m definitely a two heads are better than one person. And I, I just kind of love to be surprised by what can come out from a truly engaged group.

[00:05:02] Calan Breckon: Yeah, definitely. So from your experience and where you worked in saying yes to the previous question, do you have any like measurable examples that you can see direct success tied to the DEI initiatives or those DEI initiatives that you’ve worked?

[00:05:19] Jim Fielding: Yeah, I mean, listen, I mean at Disney and yeah, I’m going back a little bit, but I’m really proud of what we did at Disney. When I look at Disney Store, when I was president of Disney Store and I look at who, just who my direct reports were, right? Forget about everybody else, but I had teams. I had people that reported to me that lived in Europe, that lived in Latin America and lived in Japan and California with me. And so by nature, I had geographic diversity right away. I had cultural diversity, I had language diversity. And how people viewed Disney and Disney Store in Japan versus how they viewed it in Germany or Italy or California or Florida, it was very, very different. Then. When I look at the makeup of those direct reports, what their education was, their background, of course, they were all retailers at some point in their life. They all came from retail. But I think what we did for those four years at Disney and reinventing Disney Store and the flagships we opened around the world at Times Square and Oxford street and Champs Elysees. Now, I’m not saying they’re all still there, by the way. Some of them are.

I think it came out of that team that I was able to build, right? And not only them, because we embrace that diversity at our level. Their direct reports. Like, if I go down a level to my direct reports, direct reports, and down further, I really think not only did we create a team, but we created a culture of good ideas can come from anywhere. As I said earlier, two heads are better than one. Reinventing Disney Store in 2008-2012, it was not a great time in retail. We were in the middle of the global housing crisis, the growth of E commerce, all of those things. And yet we were able to grow revenue, we were able to grow operating income, we were able to grow roi, because, let’s face it, I worked at Disney and I was the president of Disney Store. I had goals to hit. It was not a charity. I had to remind people, right? I had to hit numbers. And I was also a Disney experience, or I led a Disney experience that you did not pay a ticket to visit. You know, different than going to a Broadway show or on the cruise or going to the park.

Our team was actually paying for rent and to build out a store that then people got to come and visit for free. And so we. But we had qualitative goals and we had quantitative goals. And I can’t go into the exact numbers, but let’s just say we took a business that was losing money when I started to a business that was making money. And that is a direct result of the team that we were put in place. I mean, it took a village. It took a massive global village, and we were able to do it.

[00:08:11] Calan Breckon: Yeah, and I think you brought up A really interesting angle and point is that Disney’s this multinational corporation, like it goes around the world. And so when, you know, we’re not going to tiptoe around the US and what’s going on right now when they’re using the word DEI and DEI hires and all these different things, they’re so hyper focused on us and US hyper fixation, that when you think about the world at large, if you’re going to open a store in a different country, you have to play by that country’s rules. They have different social norms, different cultural norms, different things and that.

[00:08:46] Jim Fielding: Different hiring ages in some cases. Right?

Different wage laws. Very different.

[00:08:52] Calan Breckon: Yeah. And so that in itself already creates that need for difference and different experiences. And that can only benefit a company to mix that around all levels, not just in these little silos over here. And so when you do create that, it’s clear that you and your time there made a difference by embracing these different things and bringing everybody to the table instead of saying, oh no, we want it to just look like this or to just be like this.

[00:09:18] Jim Fielding: Yeah, we want. I mean there was. There’s a couple things you brought up that I think are important for your listeners. One, we came up and we didn’t come up with this word. Other people have used it, but we used the word global, which was global and local smashed together. So if you taught to anybody that worked at Disney Store at that time, they would know the word global because we were always talking about global standards, goals, expectations that were adopted for local, local reasons and for obvious reasons.

I think you’d also hear, you’d also hear people say, again, it’s so interesting because it’s in the news right now, like H1B visas, right? The so called business visas. I used H1B visas the whole time I was at Disney. I had a global head of stores operations job that opened during my time because the person left to pursue another opportunity. It was all positive. I brought the person from London who was running the stores in Europe to run all the stores globally. I could only do that because the H1B visa, but that completely changed the culture because I brought a British man over to Los Angeles to report directly into our group that was running global stores operations for me. So that was possible because of the H1B visa visa process.

And again, I looked for the best and brightest talent around the world. And I think the last thing, when you run a global organization, the worst thing you want to hear is you’re too American. Right? Like, because especially at a company like Disney that does so much of its revenue, to your point, outside the United States, like if somebody said to me, you’re being too American or you’re looking at it with too narrow of a filter, that was like a slap in the face. Because I really wanted to be a global leader, I really wanted to be a global manager. And, and I thought, oh my God, am I, are my filters so American? Like if I looked at an idea and said, oh, that won’t work, was I being too American? Right. Was I not looking with Japanese eyes or Italian eyes or Australian eyes? And I would catch myself all the time because I am American. Right. So my filters sometimes were a little skewed.

[00:11:26] Calan Breckon: Yeah. And I’m glad you brought that up because like, as somebody who’s been a patron of Tokyo Disney and went to Seaside and it’s such a different experience culturally, but still enough of the same experience of what I expected from Disney that it married those things beautifully. And you can’t have ever achieved that without embracing difference and embracing different culture and embracing the, you know, what they’re calling the woke dei. That’s not what it is. It’s just play. Leveling the playing field so that more people have opportunities so that these things can come up.

[00:12:01] Jim Fielding: Yeah, more idea and then more ideas rise. Absolutely.

[00:12:04] Calan Breckon: Exactly. And so what? Talking about what’s going on in the US right now, because it’s not stopping and it’s continuing, we have to.

[00:12:13] Jim Fielding: Right.

[00:12:13] Calan Breckon: Because we have to, we have to talk about it. What do you think are some of these like potential economic consequences that are going to come from the scaling back of DEI initiatives in corporate America and in public institutions?

[00:12:26] Jim Fielding: I think, I think we’re already seeing it happen. I mean, you see these organized blackouts or boycotts or I mean, I think socially responsible, like corporate responsibility shopping, there’s a class of consumers who are choosing not to shop with companies who are vocally and visibly rolling back. I think the other thing is, is they will become uncompetitive for hiring the best and brightest talent. Because if you talk, I mean, listen, I have a niece that’s 24 and a niece that’s 22. They’re kind of entering the workforce, right? Well, one’s in the workforce already. Their filter for deciding where they work is completely different than what my filter was.

[00:13:08] Calan Breckon: 30 filters. Very, very different.

[00:13:11] Jim Fielding: I mean, they are socially aware. Literally my 22 year old niece is like, I will not work in a state where women do not have the right to control their own body 100%. So clear right. And you know, when I was getting hired again, the 80s, I’m much older than they are, it was how much are you going to pay me? Am I going to have benefits? Right. It was completely different. I didn’t think about any of the social filters when I started. I wasn’t even out of the closet. So I didn’t think about employee resource groups or mental health services or any of that. My whole thing to people that I coach, people that I talk to is that’s fine. If you say you only want to hire cisgender, straight white people, where are you getting them? Because if you look at the demographics of the United States and just these are all facts. Look at the census, look at the Census Bureau projections for the year 2030.

The hiring pool is only getting more diverse. And I’m talking about diverse in the way the census counts it. Color, age, gender. Right. You look at Gen Z’s sexual identity and how many of them refuse to label? Right. They won’t even choose a label. They’re just non binary or queer or just refuse to answer because they don’t want to be labeled. This is who you’re going to be managing. Not only is this your workforce, this is your consumer force. And so what I say to the older people that I coach, because I tend to be coaching people that are in the C suite, is regardless of where you feel about this socially, ethically, morally, which by the way, you should be socially, morally, ethically on the right side of this discussion, it’s an economic imperative that you are setting up systems and environments where people feel physically and psychologically safe to bring themselves to work. Because if you don’t, you’re not going to get the best and the brightest. And to me you need to have the best of the brightest. It is so competitive out there.

[00:15:08] Calan Breckon: Yep.

[00:15:09] Jim Fielding: You have to as a C, you know. Yeah, totally.

[00:15:12] Calan Breckon: Sorry, go ahead.

I was going to say as a C suite, as a company like Runner, it is your fiduciary duty to make sure you are performing the best to your capabilities and bringing in the best people to do that for the company and the company’s future. Because if you are a company now, I can only assume most companies want to be those hundred plus long running companies. You will not be able to do that if you are looking at the next generation that will be the ones taking over and they’re saying fuck you, we will not shop with you. Like where, where is the thought process of the long term on that? And it drives me crazy.

[00:15:52] Jim Fielding: Well, I always say, because Listen, I’ve consulted. I’ve been an operator. I’ve been a consultant. Now I’m a coach. I always say that companies change out of vision or out of pain, right? If they don’t have the vision, then they’re going to have to feel the pain, right? They’re going to have to feel their numbers dropping. They’re going to have to feel that they have open positions that they cannot find candidates for. Like, I feel, in a weird way, as much as I hate what’s going on right now, the way that some people and corporations and older people learn is they have to learn it through experience. Because I can sit here and squawk all day and post on LinkedIn and do my speeches and do podcasts and, you know, it takes the average adult learner 12 to 15 times to hear something, to learn something, right? So, you know, I mean, I love, obviously, when I coach or I do speaking or team facilitation, I love working with companies that are already, you know, kind of destined to be friendlies. But I also love the challenge of, you know, someone who isn’t, but is willing to listen and is willing to learn and is willing to grow. I mean, I think that’s the entire history of the LGBTQ movement, right? I mean, it’s how we got through the AIDS crisis. And I know we still have AIDS issues, but I’m saying the heart of the AIDS crisis, it’s how we got through the civil rights issues. It’s how we got the right to marry in 2015, and now how we’re going to have to defend the right to marry in 2025. You do that through education. You do that through storytelling. You do that through repeating stuff ad nauseam until people are like, okay, I get it. Yeah, it’s not. It’s not going to be one time. And for. For younger people in our movement, this is where I feel like an elder in the community, but I’m like, for younger people in the movement, am I happy with the way things are? No. Am I scared? Yes. Do I feel vulnerable? Yes. Do I feel more exposed now than I did six months ago? 100% freaking lutely. However, we have to educate, we have to resist, and we have to do things like you and I are doing. Call. And if we don’t, the world’s not going to change.

[00:17:59] Calan Breckon: Right? But we have always been here. We will always be here. Whether I look at this, what’s happening right now, as a last, last dying gasp of the darkness that has always been there, and it needed to come to the surface to get healed and to move on and move through.

But, yeah, I fully agree with you on a lot of that. So having been somebody up at the top and what’s going on right now in the conversation we just had, how can people who are in places of or in positions of power or organizations and businesses still continue to prioritize DEI while navigating these kind of political and legal challenges ahead?

[00:18:39] Jim Fielding: Yeah, I think. I think it’s about how you as a leader, the kind of cultures you want to build and the kind of teams you want to build, regardless of. If you’re counting, you know, like the perform, you know, kind of the performative part of dei, like, not counting the number of black people or the number of women or the number of lgbtq, Forget about that part. But just. Are you creating an environment again where all kinds of people come to thrive and bring you their best and brightest? And you can do that without having a mandate, without, you know, without having any rules to follow? It’s like you literally, to me, it starts so much in the hiring process. I said. I said this all the time. It starts so much in. Where are you advertising when you have a job open? Right? Where, like, what job boards are you using? Are you using a recruiter? Are you telling the recruiter, you want to see people from lots of different walks of life, you want to see different ages? You can say diversity without saying the words dei, right? Which become negative words. When I was at Disney, we started to recruit heavily at the HBCUs. That was amazing. That had never been part of the recruiting before. Right? So you. You can walk the walk and talk the talk without having a mandate from the top. And you don’t have to sit there and say, I’m doing DEI now. Look at me, I’m doing dei. It’s not about, like, holding a mirror, you know, or a spotlight on yourself, but if you literally say to your recruiters or your HR team or your outside recruiting agency, I want the best and the brightest, bring me a wide array of candidates. Do not edit down too soon. I used to tell, you’ll laugh at this calling because you’re younger than I. I used to tell when I was at Fox, which is my, quote, last big corporate job I’ve done small corporate since then.

I used to tell, the Fox recruiters bring people that are going to scare me because they’re. They’re going to use words or like, you know, this is like, you know, when I was starting or social media, and I would interview like, my role when I was president at FOX was no one got hired on the team. Like, I would kind of interview the final two or three candidates. Like, there would be an interviewing process that went on, you know, in a screening process by the hiring managers and everything. I only wanted to spend 10 or 15 people, but I would literally say, is anybody on the slate gonna scare me? And people knew that that meant scare me because they’re super bright or they’re gonna talk tech language that I don’t understand. Because I loved that. I wanted to feel that, because that’s, again, the two heads are better than one. Like, and so I used to say, hire people that scare you.

[00:21:09] Calan Breckon: Yeah, hire people.

[00:21:10] Jim Fielding: Hire people that you think are gonna replace you, that hire someone smarter than you. That’s the true sign of leadership.

[00:21:18] Calan Breckon: Yes, yes. And it’s also this. It comes from the space of a growth mentality and not from an ego mentality of being like, yes, I want you to be smarter. I want you to do these things. Like, I want eventually for somebody to replace me. And I feel totally. I can be very wrong. But a lot of I’m millennial, an elder millennial, and a lot of other millennial slash youngers do feel like the kind of boomer generation is the first generation who are not willing to let go of their ego and not willing to let go and to pass it on. They’re the first ones who’ve not wanted to pass on to the next, and they’re just grasping on to, like, look at your Senate, your Congress in the US Alone. Like, they’re ancient. One lady was, anyways.

[00:21:59] Jim Fielding: But, like, totally, totally no. And I agree with you. And by the way, I’m born 4-65. So technically, I’m the start of the millennial, but I honestly was raised as the end of the boomers. Like, I always say, I was like, in womb as a boomer. Right. And my parents were definitely raising a boomer. There’s no doubt about it.

So to your point, I thought I had almost unlearned some of the stuff, like the entitlement and some of the stuff that I was entitled to. But the whole thing was about the way my parents raised me. And I think this is what boomers have to remember.

My parents wanted me to have a better life than they had. That was their entire motivation. They raised me. Yes. Did they take me to church? Yes. Did they make sure I had good schooling? Yes. Public schooling, but good schooling.

They raised me on the golden rule, do unto others as you would have done unto you. It was literally spanked into me. My dad was a spanker. Right. If I was not living by the golden rule, to me, that’s what we have to do as boomers. We have to make the world better for the next generations coming along, because we are going to exit this earth, and we are going to exit the corporate boardrooms.

And one of my mantras for anybody that’s read the book or ever seen me speak is, may we leave our corner of the world a little better than we found it. It’s literally in my head in every situation I enter this podcast. A new coaching assignment, a new consulting assignment, a new job. I want to leave when I’m done, 30 minutes, 30 days, 30 months, that I want to be able to look at myself in the mirror and say, you did good. It’s better than when you got here. Right? Somebody learned something. And to me, I don’t understand. And I agree. A lot of my boomers are the ones who are, like, holding on with these death grips, and I’m like, it’s time you’ve done your work. Do you really want to be 80 years old and still going and arguing in Congress? Like, I don’t understand. And to me, that’s ego, to your point. And that’s why I wrote the book. Have pride. Name my book. All Pride. No ego. Have pride in what you’ve done, but also be strong enough to let go when it’s time to let go.

[00:24:08] Calan Breckon: Yes. Thank you for saying that.

So true.

[00:24:13] Jim Fielding: I totally see it. And I, I, I know, Okay. I know we’re not supposed to, but, I mean, it’s something the Democrats have got to get a grip on. We are still, like, we need, like, where is our alternative to Donald Trump and the Project 2025 and the Maga movement? Where is it? Who’s leading it?

[00:24:32] Calan Breckon: Yeah.

[00:24:33] Jim Fielding: Who are the key leaders?

[00:24:34] Calan Breckon: We need more AOCs and Jasmine Crocketts out there, and we need 100% to not block AOC. When she goes for something, they’re like, you’re not a future. When she’s literally the future, 100%.

[00:24:47] Jim Fielding: And we need Hakeem Jeffries to embrace them, and we need. God bless. Thank you, Chuck Schumer, for everything you’ve done. We need new leadership. Listen, I live in Georgia. I have two incredible senators that were elected in a otherwise red state, and Reverend Warnock and John Ossoff. John Ossoff, to me, who’s just turned 40, to me, is the future of the Senate, right? And. And I will work everything he’s up for reelection again in 2026. They’re coming after him with everything they’ve got because they’re trying to ensure the Republican control the Senate. Still, I’m doing everything I can do locally to get John Ossoff reelected because I think he’s the future. Definitely not the future. He’s the present, too. I mean, he is an elected senator, and he’s done. He’s done some amazing things already in his first term.

[00:25:38] Calan Breckon: Yeah, definitely. Okay, I want to wrap up the conversation we had. So if you had one last kind of word of wisdom or something, a space where people could focus on over the next coming months and years, as you face what’s going on, where would you say people could or should focus that energy that you think would make the biggest difference in context of the conversation we had?

[00:26:05] Jim Fielding: No, for sure. I mean, you know, one of the lessons in my book, it happens to be the last lesson in the book is lesson 10, and it’s authentic kindness is more important than being right or being first. And I. I have been asking people to try to focus on kindness and empathy as we have these debates, as we have these differences, as we have these confrontations, which we do. Can you try to approach it as a human being and not attack, attack, attack and denigrate everybody? Right. I don’t think that’s the right way to go. Now, listen, I post every day on LinkedIn. I use my platform. There are days that I go for it, and there’s days where I’m, I would say, more confrontational or more aggressive. But at the end of the day, I also am trying to move through this world with kindness and empathy. And the other thing I would say, if I could have is we need to be in community right now, particularly if you’re in a marginalized community, lgbtq, black, Latino, like, be in your community, because we’ve got to take care of each other because we are under attack. And it can feel very lonely and very isolating. And we. We all are feeling mental health impacts.

[00:27:17] Calan Breckon: So we have to take care of each other 100%. Those are perfect to end off on. Where can folks find out more about you, the book, all that kind of stuff?

[00:27:26] Jim Fielding: Yeah, I mean, the easiest is my website is hijim fielding.com h I, jim fielding.com my book is called I’ll Pride no Ego. I mean, it has a subtitle, but if you search All Pride, no Ego, you will find it LinkedIn. It is me. I tell people all the time, Jim Fielding, it’s so easy to find me. And people DM me and I think, they think it’s a bot, you know, And I’m like, no, no, it’s me. Like, I literally be like, it’s me. Like, if you want to test me, ask me a question.

And I do answer all the DMS and the comments on my LinkedIn post. It’s. That’s really important to me because again, I. That’s my way of being in community. That’s the virtual community. And then I do go on the road. I do do speaking events, so watch and see if something’s coming in your local. I always put it up on my website and I put it up on LinkedIn when I’m, you know, I’m fed. I’m in Des Moines coming up. I’m going to Wisconsin. There’s like, you know, I go in. I do physical events as well, not just virtual.

[00:28:24] Calan Breckon: Amazing. Awesome. I’ll make sure to have all those links in the show notes for everybody to check out. It has been a fantastic conversation. Jim, thank you so much for sharing your podcast.

[00:28:33] Jim Fielding: Oh, my God, thank you. Thank you for your sincere interest. It’s been amazing. Thank you.

[00:28:37] Calan Breckon: Thanks for tuning in today. Don’t forget to hit that subscribe button. And if you really enjoyed today’s episode, I would love a star rating from you. The Business Gay podcast is written, produced and edited by me, Calan Breckon. That’s it for today. Peace, love, rainbows.