Someone said to me when I was in my 1st year of HR that I was "going to be trouble" in response to my wondering why we weren't trying to hire anything other than White cis men. The "someone" in question was the White cis female head of HR at the tech startup I was working for.

The head of HR let it be known that she openly viewed me as troublesome because I wanted to address hiring biases and inequity. And she said this to me with a smug smile and disdain in her voice for me even thinking I had the right to question things.

Funny thing is she was right about me.

I am "trouble".

I'm the kind of "trouble" that makes White people with power who like to let me know they "don't see color", "have a Black friend" and "saw The Green Book this past weekend" deal with who they are and what they think.

So here I am five years into my career and I am still, and will always be, "trouble". And the real trouble is not me but anyone with power and privilege who would view me as trouble because I want to make companies better and legitimately equitable and inclusive places to work.

FYI: that tech company went under. And their head of HR doesn't even work in HR anymore.

So I am proudly always going to "be trouble" because one thing I know from experience is that trouble can prompt change.

It's often intriguing to me that in my personal and professional lives I have talked about and shared information like this and graphics like this way more than I feel I should have to. The normalization and casual integration of racism, White supremacy, and White privilege affect me personally as a person of color but also professionally as an HR professional who works very hard to make sure hiring practices, management practices, and work cultures are devoid of this pyramid and its building blocks. You cannot imagine how many interactions with directors and hiring managers are rife with indifference and minimization or how integrated veiled racism is in the work culture and fabric of higher ed. It's daunting...but I've never been one to lay down. I'll keep sharing this info and educating and checking people and their supremacy personally and professionally because without challenge there is no change.

I spent this past Saturday morning representing Reed College at BEAM’s 6th Annual Black Student Success Summit at Portland State University. Equity, equality, inclusion, community, and opportunity don’t take weekends off and neither do I.

This Week's Featured Guest on Kornercast!

Many of you may not know this about me (but you probably do now because you’re on this website) but outside of my work in human resources and equity and inclusion I am a big ol' comic geek and pop culture nerd! I make comics, talk about comics, live a life immersed in pop culture, and own way too many action figures for a man my age to own. So I was honored when Khalil Quotap of Kaster's Korner asked me to be on this week's episode of Kornercast! Khalil and I talk race, gender identity, reading and creating comics, and artist alley. It's a hoot! Click here or on the image below to listen!

The #1 advice I can give to folx wanting to pursue a career in Human Resources is that if you are unable to empathize with folx - even racist/sexist/homophobic/transphobic/xenophobic folx - you probably shouldn’t pursue a career in Human Resources. This work is about humans first and empathy is paramount even against ignorance, hate, misinformation, naïveté, and ingrained societal and cultural behaviors.