Previously, she served as Senior Vice President and Chief Inclusion Officer for Children’s Hospital Colorado – the first African American woman to hold that position in the organizations 100+ year history. She also is the former Executive Director of the Office of Human Resources for the City and County of Denver – the first African American woman to hold that position in the 63+ year history of the agency.
Dr. Mosby Tyler, a consultant accredited by the Georgetown University National Center for Cultural Competence, is nationally recognized for her equity work with non-profit, community, government and for-profit organizations. In her work, Dr. Mosby-Tyler specializes in the development and delivery of leadership, equity, diversity, cultural responsiveness and inclusiveness training programs and strategies. Some of her clients and collaborative efforts include the University of Colorado Hospital, The Aurora Police Department, The Center for Trauma and Resilience, Agency for Human Rights and Community Relations – The City and County of Denver, The ACLU of Colorado, Denver Police Department, and more.
In the second installation of a two-part series, Dr. Mosby Tyler discusses her vision for the Equity Project in fueling a movement that is focused on systems change toward equity.
Click here for the first portion of the interview.
How do you incorporate your cultural background to the work that you do at The Equity Project?
My blackness comes with me at all times, literally and conceptually. I talk about coming from the segregated South. I talk about cross burnings at the University of Alabama. I talk about “Negroes Not Allowed” signs. I talk about these experiences as having been a part of my life, and I talk about them as a framework for how I see the world.
I always fold in real stories that I’ve lived through, so people understand that these are not stories that came out of a history book. These are my lived experiences.
It’s important to me to be talking about this now. When I was growing up, I told myself that I didn’t want any other young person to go through what I went through with race. It’s disturbing to me to see young people going through this today, in 2017. I’m more motivated than ever before to make sure that this is the last generation of young people to ever go through the nastiness around racism and other types of biases that are being used against people of color, especially young people.
I’m very intentional about my storytelling. What has been powerful is to have people understand that we’re not that far from slavery. I’m fourth-generation "free." We have people who are alive right now who are one generation away from having a grandparent or a great-grandparent who was a slave. These are still people who are still alive and among us. We’re in pretty close in proximity to one of the worst parts of U.S. history, and those stories have to continue to come forward.
People have heard stories for so long, and it’s those same stories that have caused diversity fatigue. “Here we go, here’s another story.” It’s that fatigue that keeps people from being able to hear the power of the story. We have to think about why and how we’re telling the stories so that they have the impact that they are intended to have. I am very careful and intentional about how I tell those stories.
What do you find most challenging about leading The Equity Project?
The most challenging thing for me is knowing when to say yes, and when to say no. The demand is great: everyone wants to do some equity work, but not everyone’s ready to do equity work. So what I’ve learned as a newer business is that I need to have a way to assess readiness to do actual equity work.
There are organizations that have decided that they want a full-on equity strategy, but they have done nothing to address diversity or inclusion. It’s evident that they’re not ready to do bigger systems work – which is what equity work is – if they haven’t even done the institutional work that’s necessary to make that happen.
That’s the complexity. You do want to support organizations that want to get into the work. But you also have a responsibility as a business – fiscally and ethically – to not just go into contract with people because it’s money, when you know they’re not poised to be successful in the work.
I’ve already had scenarios in the first year of my business where I’ve had to say “no” to potential clients because they are not ready for the work. I give them tools and recommendation s about how to do that. I would never engage clients that haven’t put the infrastructure in place to be successful.
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| Dr. Nita and the Rev. Timothy Tyler facilitate conversations on race and equity at Shorter AME Church |
Why is a focus on equity important to advance the goals that diversity and inclusion set out to do?
Equity is the only way you could really get at systems change. You could do diversity and inclusion work and never actually impact systems. Equity, in its pure definition, means creating systems where everyone can thrive. To me, that gets you closer to challenging major systems, such as healthcare, education, and criminal justice.
My fear is that if we don’t describe equity and what it’s supposed to be doing, then people will see diversity and inclusion the same as equity. For example, you could have the most diverse hospital and still have systems of inequity, when you look at the way that patients are served and the outcomes for those patients.
There isn’t a 1:1 correlation between equity and diversity. A great example is hospitals that serve Spanish-speaking patients. Patients can get it; that’s access. They can be seen; that’s access. But there is something different about their experience. Their wait times are longer, and their outcomes are different. What they experience because of language is different. That’s not equity. If you aren’t intentional about equity, then you’ll always have challenges. You may have diverse workplaces, but they may never get at the different experiences that patients from different backgrounds have within the system.
To make change happen, diversity and inclusion are important, but equity is where we can go in to chip away at systems that don’t serve our needs. Most of the time, we’re in diverse systems where we are not really included. Systems where we don’t have a voice, we’re not at key tables, or we don’t get to make decisions.
What do you find most enjoyable about the work?
In my 30-some odd years of profession al experience, I’ve loved everywhere I’ve worked, but I think this is the first that I’ve felt joy – the kind of joy where I can hardly sleep at night, because I can’t wait to get back to my office. Or I’m constantly thinking about what I want to do next.
I’ve never felt that sort of pain that you get in the back of your next because you don’t want to do something. I’ve never felt that. I am always excited about every move that I make at The Equity Project.
It’s a dream to be able to say that I feel complete joy in this very complicated work. It fuels me to do more and more of it. Because of the way I feel, the doors have opened up across the country for me to continue the work.
I’ve never had to look for the work; it has just come. Now I know that when joy is present, more joy comes. I don’t know that I’ve ever experienced that.
The Equity Project is continuing to evolve and grow. We’re designing offerings that go beyond me, as a national speaker and key consultant. I’m excited about bringing in other talented people who can talk about this topic and can do strategy work around equity.
In terms of our current societal climate, what gives you hope?
We’ve been through horrible things before. Every 30 to 40 years, we go through something that’s insurmountable, and we win. I would venture to say that during the Civil Rights Era, there are people sitting around the table, asking “What give you joy in all of this?” Somehow, we’ve prevailed out of that part of our U.S. history.
We are in another part of our history that has a defined purpose. We have become complacent, silent, asleep and arrogant, and we took our eyes off the things that we needed to be working on.
Racism didn’t just pop up. We should’ve been on it from the Civil Rights movement forward. When rights were “bestowed’ upon Black people, we should’ve asked “Who else doesn’t have rights?”
I think this is the shakeup: everything we could be upset about is happening now. We have climate change, racism, sexism, transphobia. Everything’s happening at once, because many of us have been asleep on these issues.
I’m hopeful, because I get why it’s happening. What we’re going to have to do is mobilize differently than we have in the past. This is bigger than a protest: I’ve done plenty of those. The movement must be relationship-based, and calls for relationships we’ve never had before. When we say young people have to carry the torch, we have to mean that.
Everything is televised now. One of the most important about this work is that we have to be authentically interested in what we’re talking about. If we’re doing this work because we want credit or we want to be seen, or we want to be a headliner, then the work will be doomed. Authenticity is at the core of a successful movement, and we got be able to hold each other accountable.
At IgniteDenver, Dr. Nita delivers her powerful talk“What Water Fountain are you Drinking From?”