Tara met Shervonne Cherry in Baltimore in 2012. At the time, Shervonne was working as a designer and social media strategist, but today, she's the Director of Community & Partnerships at Spark, a growing Coworking organization with spaces in Baltimore and Kansas City.

Shervonne gives incredible insight into how to build local community resources that support Black entrepreneurs (without tokenizing or making it some sort of quota-filling exercise). Her comments on urban design were particularly poignant.

Shervonne on social media:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/srcherry/

https://twitter.com/NoOrdnryCherry

Spark:

https://spark-bmore.com/

This week, Tara and Stef speak to Nate Nichols. Nate is the founder of Palette Group, a commercial creative agency that focuses on community, which he runs with his life partner. He's also the co-founder and creative director of Allyship & Action, a collective that works with vendors and agencies to actively promote diversity within the industry. 

For Nate, everything he’s passionate about is deeply rooted in empathy and the circumstances of his upbringing really influenced how he sees the world and his approach and the importance of what he calls decentering. This episode on empathy and decentering is essential listening if you want to be an effective leader and really bring about positive change.

Nate on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thenichols/

Nate on Twitter: https://twitter.com/thenichols

Nate on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the_nichols/

This week on the podcast, Tara and Stef sit down with Danica S. Nelson, Senior Product Marketing Communications Manager and travel enthusiast. But Danica does multiple jobs with her organization. She not only has a senior marketing role, she also works on the DEI (diversity equity and inclusion) initiatives. She balances all of these with ease...but found herself burning out last year and took an extended leave to recharge. Unfortunately, this was cut short by COVID-19.

In this conversation, Stef and Tara discuss the multiple hats Black professionals need to wear as well as the importance of representation.

Links:

Danica on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danicasnelson/

Danica on Twitter: https://twitter.com/danicasnelson 

Website: https://watchdanicawork.com/

Tara has known Ian for well over a decade and she's never had a conversation on race with him. This isn't because of a lack of opportunity. They've shared many a deep conversation, but never about race.

This is a problem. It's one of the biggest problems that White people have, in fact. You may have heard "your silence is violence" and this episode is all about unpacking that.

We also talk about data portability and data ethics, which is crazy fascinating! Ian has been involved in personal data and the quantified self for a long time and has opinions on AI and data that may just surprise you. We had a bit of a mind-blown moment!

Notes:

• Ian’s blog: https://cubicgarden.com/

• Ian on Twitter: https://twitter.com/cubicgarden

• Ian on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cubicgarden/

• Ian at the BBC: https://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/people/ianforrester

• Building a Public Service Internet: https://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/projects/public-service-internet

• DataPortability.org: http://dataportability.org/

• Ian talking about Perceptive Media: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJNClpe-XL8

• Bechdel test: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bechdel_test

• Bechdel tests for race: https://www.the-unedit.com/posts/2018/8/20/7-tests-that-arent-the-bechdel-test-that-measure-movies-for-gender-equality-and-representation

"How can we say that politics shouldn't be a conversation on a business platform when it is the politics, the lobbyists, the things that are happening behind the scenes that govern how business operates?"

Indeed! In this episode, Stefani and Tara speak with the epigrammatic Cher Jones, a social media and brand development expert, and LinkedIn influencer, about many eye-opening subjects. However, the core of the conversation is that, as Cher says, "we don't normalize things that should be normal, and we don't address things that have been normalized that shouldn't be normal."

LinkedIn is particularly fraught with the stifled apoliticalness that perpetuates these ideas and Cher soundly shreds the idea that there is no space in business for politics.

You won't want to miss this episode. 

For the past few months, between COVID-19 and the Black Lives Matter protests, we've opted to put a pause on AoaS to create space for other conversations (with the exception of the episodes with Laura Fitton and Joe Jackman, which we thought were relevant to the COVID-19 discussion).

Now, we see that our silence on the topic of Black Lives Matter was akin to saying, "This is not our problem." This was wrong and it took a Diversity, Equity & Inclusion facilitator, Karlyn Percil of KDPM Consulting Group, calling me (Tara) out on this silence to knock me out of my comfort zone (and white fragility).

So, Stef and I sat down and decided that we need to do the work and speak up about it and that this podcast was a fantastic place to start. This episode is the introduction to a series (which will be as long as it needs to be) of conversations with Black professionals in various parts of the marketing industry on their experiences, perspectives and insights into how marketing - as an industry, an institution and as a practice contributes to the perpetuation of white supremacy and anti-Black racism.

In this episode, we mentioned the following resources to check out:

• Adweek article on the lack of Black representation in the advertising, PR, and communications world: https://www.adweek.com/agencies/a-brief-rundown-of-racism-within-advertising-and-why-its-still-happening-today/
• The Publicis stats (Adweek): https://www.adweek.com/digital/publicis-groupe-us-diversity-data-7-actions/
• Open Letter to the Ad Industry from 600+ Black professionals (Adweek): https://www.adweek.com/agencies/600-black-advertising-professionals-demand-meaningful-action-from-leadership-in-open-letter/ 
• The original letter: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yVH9y0geSyJmpqUH2utaK7x1Salq5CE5IIkx0HHCGuM/edit
• Nathan Young of Periscope Group (founder 600&rising): https://twitter.com/notnathan
• Bennett D. Bennett of Aerialist (founder 600&rising): https://twitter.com/BennettDBennett
• 600&Rising: https://600andrising.com/
• Nate Nichols of Palette Group (founder of the Allyship and Action summit): https://twitter.com/thenichols
• The initial Allyship and Action summit recording on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6s3vhTLXDM
• Register for the upcoming summit on August 4: https://www.freelancercybersummit.com/events/allyship-and-action

All the way back in February, Stefani and Tara sat down to speak with Joe Jackman, founder of Jackman Reinvents and author of The Reinventionist Mindset, about the need for retail to reinvent itself if it was going to keep engaging a very digital-minded consumer.

Oh boy, did that escalate quickly! Though they spoke with Jackman in February, he has covered this topic a bit since, so they discuss what reinvention looks like now as opposed to what they discussed in February. 

Show Links:

• Joe Jackman - https://joejackman.com
• Phlywheel - https://phlywheel.com