BONUS | Linda Devonish-Mills and Derek Fuzzell - D&I in the Workplace

Contact Linda Devonish-Mills: https://www.linkedin.com/in/linda-devonish-mills-cma-cpa-cae-mba-88534610/
Contact Derek Fuzzell: https://www.linkedin.com/in/derek-a-fuzzell-cpa-cma/

IMA's D&I Toolkit: https://www.imanet.org/about-ima/diversity-and-inclusion

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Mitch: (00:04)
Welcome back to Count Me In IMA's podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. I'm your host, Mitch Roshong, and today we have another special bonus episode relating to diversity and inclusion in the workplace during these challenging times. My cohost Adam spoke with IMA's Director of Diversity and Inclusion, Linda Devonish-Mills, and Derek Fuzzell CFO at a Federal Credit Union and Chair of IMA's Diversity and Inclusion Committee, Linda and Derek share their perspectives on recent tragedies. What that means to organizational leaders and its employees, and what IMA is doing to support these initiatives. For genuine and informative dialogue keep listening as we head over to the group's conversation now.

Adam: (00:52)
The killing of George Floyd has shaken the US and many communities around the world. We are sickened by this tragedy and many peaceful process, as well as riots have happened as a result. Can you share a little of your feelings and how this has affected you?

Linda: (01:12)
Sure. It's affected me, in so many ways where I shared some thoughts a couple of weeks ago with my, teammate and, you know, I was surprised in terms of how my emotions got the best of me. So, as to say time heals all wounds, so at least I can talk about it now without a whole lot of emotion, but what really upsets me about it is that, you know, when I think about it bad enough that, my parents, as I was growing up would talk to me about their struggles, their personal struggles with racial injustice. And it was like if it was a preparation for what they thought I would go through, and then unfortunately I have my own theories, experiences and yet, no, I think the saving grace for whatever it's worth that, you know, as I've gotten older, you know, to a certain degree, with certain things still, you know, coming into play with personal interactions, I may have with people I have gotten unfortunately accustomed to certain interactions that I've had with people I've gotten, you know, to the point where I've gotten numb over it, where it just doesn't affect me anymore. And just to position that as long as it's just affected me and not my daughters and their generation in general, I'm good. Whereas when my daughters were growing up, they could not understand since they grew up in a diverse population, in the town of Teaneck, New Jersey and went to schools that have diverse student populations, they could not understand why I seem to be so racially conscious. You know, I was always talking about, racial issueswith them and they just could not understand that. So now what really hurts me is that they're grown young, successful women I may add, and it seems like it's like they're playing catch up now in terms of how it's affecting them. And with my oldest daughter now being the mother of my grandson for her to say to me one time that she is frightened to raise an African American boy in this world. So it just provokes, you know, anger side of me that now is affecting my family and, you know, us to have conversations that we shouldn't even feel the need to have conversations about. So, you know, so that is where it really comes to the core of hurt for me for anger, but again, you know, time does heal all wounds and, you know, the way I'm trying to look at these thing now is what can I do personally to contribute, towards part of a solution and just have the mindset every single day, more so than ever of being hopeful, instead of relying on hopelessness.

Derek: (04:45)
You know, I would just say my perspective on this, on this question is a bit different. You know, I'm approaching this as a Caucasian male, you know, living in the United States. I understand from experiences of my friends and even some experiences where I've been in situations where I've seen quite frankly, police treat people who are Black or Latino or other race, other ethnicity very differently than they've treated me in that same situation. You know, I'll say it really, it really upset me. I thought we had come a lot further as a country. I had hoped, you know, this reminds me of a lot of the Rodney King issue in the early nineties in LA. And one would hope that we had progressed a little bit from the nineties, and I'll be honest, this and several of the other incidents that have led up to this over the last decade have really told me, no, we haven't progressed as far as I would hope. You know, I think that what I can see and where I do have hope in this situation is that people's response is very different than the Rodney King situation. Rodney King seemed to be very isolated to the Los Angeles area that people seem to pick up the banner and while news coverage picked up what was going on in LA. It wasn't the mass protest that you've seen throughout the United States and elsewhere for that matter. You know, what, what gives me hope in this situation is that there seems to be a shift in mindset of people, both Bllack and White and Latino and Asian who are willing to step in and finally stand up for creating a system of equity within our, in our criminal justice system, which wasn't there before. In the nineties, you didn't see that even six years ago, you didn't see that as events, you know, foiled, out in Ferguson, Missouri, you just didn't see that same kind of response, and so I think I am happy to see that people are taking this a lot more seriously, but it does disappoint me that we are still having this conversation about police brutality, especially with the African American community in the United States here 30 years later.

Adam: (07:04)
Thank you both for being open and honest with us, and I'm sure that many people listening to this conversation have very similar feelings and many of them may be even leaders. And if you look at an organization, what can leaders of organizations do at this time to support their workforce and be mindful that people are going through the same, having the same feelings that you guys are feeling even themselves are going through those feelings, what can they do to support their workforce during this time?

Derek: (07:34)
I think it's important as, as we consider our workforce, you know, not every organization is going to be as racially diverse as others. I happen to work for a very racially diverse organization that has a huge tie to the Hispanic community, but even within the Hispanic community, you, you do have a Black, Hispanic community and that White Hispanic community. And we have made it a point within our organization to reach out and listen to every single employee. Give them the opportunity to speak to us, to come to us, to talk with us about their frustrations, to understand what may be impacting them. I'll say one point of personal reflection on this was as DC started to impose curfews, and some of the curfews happened pretty early in the evening, and they lasted until pretty late in the morning, comparatively, I was often concerned about, can I get my employees out of the office and back home in time to avoid curfew, to avoid interaction with the police to be, to be blunt. One of my employees is a gentleman from the Dominican Republic who is Black, and my concern really was what will the police interaction be if he's caught out befo...