Journey along with Juan Taveras, the HR and diversity champion with a heart as big as his expertise. Juan shares the rich tapestry of his Dominican roots and New York City upbringing in a candid conversation that traces the intricate pathways to creating workplaces that not only welcome diversity, but thrive on it. Throughout his narrative, he speaks about the resilience he inherited from his parents, which drove him toward cultivating environments where every voice is heard and cherished.
We wade through the strategic waters of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), as Juan emphasizes the importance of cultural audits and genuine listening to anchor an organization's DEI strategy. We look at how DEI can be controversial and how it could be used to include all while not excluding others. His original idea, DEI Profinder, matches companies with consultants who resonate with their cultural frequencies based on the qualities that make an outstanding DEI consultant. Designed to strike a chord with those eager to transform their workplaces into a mosaic of talent and perspectives, this episode offers a masterclass for HR leaders looking to weave DEI into their company's very fabric.
Juan discusses psychological safety as a cornerstone of employee engagement and retention. His leadership strategies can propel a workplace from just productive to profoundly inclusive. As we conclude, Juan shares his blueprint for leveraging platforms like LinkedIn to facilitate meaningful conversations and share knowledge, including the role of social media in amplifying DEI. Anyone trying to navigate the rough waters of professional inclusivity will find this episode useful in guiding them in making meaningful changes in their organization's culture.
With 4Freedom, all your communications, internet activity, and app usage are encrypted using multiple layers of robust, military-grade encryption algorithms that surpass the standards used by the NSA.
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https://www.4freedommobile.com?ref=bridgebuilders
Journey along with Juan Taveras, the HR and diversity champion with a heart as big as his expertise. Juan shares the rich tapestry of his Dominican roots and New York City upbringing in a candid conversation that traces the intricate pathways to creating workplaces that not only welcome diversity, but thrive on it. Throughout his narrative, he speaks about the resilience he inherited from his parents, which drove him toward cultivating environments where every voice is heard and cherished.
We wade through the strategic waters of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), as Juan emphasizes the importance of cultural audits and genuine listening to anchor an organization's DEI strategy. We look at how DEI can be controversial and how it could be used to include all while not excluding others. His original idea, DEI Profinder, matches companies with consultants who resonate with their cultural frequencies based on the qualities that make an outstanding DEI consultant. Designed to strike a chord with those eager to transform their workplaces into a mosaic of talent and perspectives, this episode offers a masterclass for HR leaders looking to weave DEI into their company's very fabric.
Juan discusses psychological safety as a cornerstone of employee engagement and retention. His leadership strategies can propel a workplace from just productive to profoundly inclusive. As we conclude, Juan shares his blueprint for leveraging platforms like LinkedIn to facilitate meaningful conversations and share knowledge, including the role of social media in amplifying DEI. Anyone trying to navigate the rough waters of professional inclusivity will find this episode useful in guiding them in making meaningful changes in their organization's culture.
With 4Freedom, all your communications, internet activity, and app usage are encrypted using multiple layers of robust, military-grade encryption algorithms that surpass the standards used by the NSA.
You can start your secure account today:
https://www.4freedommobile.com?ref=bridgebuilders
My guest today is Juan Tveres. Juan is a human resources and diversity, equity and inclusion consultant and a leadership coach. Juan is over 18 years of professional work experience in his field and spent 13 years in a nonprofit sector. He is passionate and about fostering inclusion and psychological safe places and helping leaders deepen their self knowledge Through practice, by practicing empathy and leading with humility. Juan was born in Dominican Republic and raised in New York City. Differences from a very large age surrounded him. His personal and professional experiences navigating life in New York City taught him to appreciate and value people's uniqueness, which is a lens in which he brings to his work. He's also passionate about creating spaces where everyone can feel welcome, included and cared for. He has drawn a career in HR because he thought it was the best way to have the greatest impact on people's experiences in the workplace. We welcome Juan to the podcast. It's so good to welcome Juan to the podcast. How you doing today, juan.
Speaker 2:I am doing very well. Thank you, keith.
Speaker 1:Good to have you on. I'm looking forward to talking to you.
Speaker 2:Same here. I'm excited.
Speaker 1:One of my favorite topics. That causes controversy, but so we should have some fun.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I'd like to ask my guest this question what's the best piece of advice you've ever received?
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's so many good nuggets that I've gotten from mentors and coaches in my life, but one that stands out right now is something I've been trying to remember daily pretty much in the last few months Is that the difference between where you are now and where you want to be is something you don't yet know, which is always. It's really powerful. I heard that from a mentor a few years ago and, yeah, it just makes me think of there's just so much. You don't know what you don't know, and if you're trying to achieve something that you've never done before, then it's going to require you to do something you haven't done before. So you have to build up your skills or your knowledge or you got to fill that gap. I like that, I know to get there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's very true too. I'm always curious when I talk to my guests. You know, when we think about our life and the people that have made impacts in our life, who are some people that come to mind for you that have just been influential in your life, maybe serve as a mentor for you that you want to kind of give a shout out to?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean I'm going to get cheesy here and I have to say my parents are at the top of that list. So, like I said, I've been I've been blessed with some really cool mentors and sponsors, even in my corporate career, but my parents stand out just because they. So I'll share a little story about them. They're were originally from the Dominican Republic. I was born there and my parents immigrated to New York City when I was three years old, roughly didn't speak the language, didn't have a job, didn't even have an apartment when we first moved here and they figured it out. They just made it work, made it happen. They kept the faith, you know, and that was.
Speaker 2:I saw that growing up and I and I and not to say that it was easy, it was a lot of challenges and some some tough times Tough times but my parents were just so resilient and they never lost sight of their ultimate goal.
Speaker 2:So they wanted to come here to give my little sister and I a chance of a better life. But they always plan to go back to the Dominican Republic and retire there. So when my I went off to college and then my sister shortly after, a few years after I did that's so. We were out of the house, they were empty nesters and they went back. So and that was 15 years ago now so they haven't. They haven't worked a day in 15 in the last 15 years, which is for for immigrants here in the US. You know that's that is. I know people with a lot more privilege and access that still have to work into their 60s and 70s, so they inspire me because they figured it out, they made it work and they never lost sight of their goal, all while giving my sister and I like an awesome, pretty awesome upbringing too.
Speaker 1:What an inspirational story. That's so neat. Thanks for sharing that. Yeah, so I'm curious. You gave us a little bit of your journey, but tell us the rest of your story. So what lessons have you learned along the journey you're on right now?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I feel like I'm learning every day. There's the journey continues. Let me see. I'll share.
Speaker 2:The most recent transition I've undertaken is when, a year and a half ago, I decided to leave the corporate world. I left my full-time job I've been an HR leader in the nonprofit sector for 13 years and decided to start my own business. Basically, it was born out of a need that I had as an HR leader and I'm sure I'll get a chance to talk about that later but the transition was not at all what I was expecting. We sort of dream up this vision of we're gonna build this business and you take the time and invest energy and some resources and it'll take off. But what I'm learning is sort of the lessons I've learned is the journey. You just don't know where it's gonna take you.
Speaker 2:And the business that I thought I was building a year and a half ago is very different than what I'm doing today, because and it's a combination of being open to opportunity. So, as things as I engaged more deeply with this idea and connected with more people, I remained open to where those opportunities led and where the connections were being made, but I also found myself. The lesson I learned is that my initial vision and that dream wasn't big enough, like what I'm doing now is so much more than what I had originally envisioned and that's exciting and really inspiring, because I'm sure there's, even when I think about a year or two from now, how much bigger our platform is gonna be and I get excited about that possibility. I don't know what it's gonna look like, but I'm looking forward to it. That's great.
Speaker 1:I like to talk to people who are working with DEI because it has become a lightning rod for a lot of conversation in our culture. Being people with diverse backgrounds who don't look like the norm, we probably look at it different than some people do, and I kind of want you to. This is your chance to kind of explain to people what we're getting wrong about DEI and that there are some positives. All we hear are the extreme negative parts in society and we don't understand that there is a good place to talk about. How do you create an atmosphere where everybody feels like they belong without diminishing anyone else in the circle? Cause, if you do that, you really aren't doing DEI. If you are diminishing someone else to lift up another group, then you're not really doing DEI. That's my opinion, of course I am.
Speaker 2:I'm totally aligned with that and that's where I see a lot of the negativity coming from.
Speaker 2:Unfortunately and this is sort of human nature, like the drama gets a lot of attention, but the goodness, and where DEI is being done well and actually providing positive impact and results, we don't hear about that as much, unfortunately, which is why we developed this platform.
Speaker 2:So I'll talk about, I'll answer your question and then say, like what we're doing today to sort of try to address that issue. So I think to your point, anytime right now that DEI is brought up, it's charged right, it causes division because it's been politicized and, in some cases, weaponized, and now we can't even have a conversation about it Like we don't, and what that creates is just a lack of clarity. We don't actually most times in conversations, even that I've been in, we're not actually talking about the same thing. When I say DEI, I'm talking about creating, like you said, workplaces where everyone can feel valued and seen and heard and everyone can participate fully and authentically as themselves and I mean everyone, right? So it's not about uplifting any one group or there's a word that I've heard, that I've seen a lot on LinkedIn that I dislike. I'm not sure that here is this idea of de-centering.
Speaker 2:I'm like why are we de-centering anyone Like? We need to be focused on our humanity right and connecting on the fact that we're all imperfect and we are all unique in our own way and it's those differences that make us who we are, right Like we're. We need to value that and leverage that to benefit the communities that we're a part of, and in most cases it's in business. So whenever I hear folks saying that ODI is causing issues or it needs to go away, I challenge them to think about what. Let's unpack that. What exactly is causing the issues? Because it could be that it's not being done well, it's not being done correctly or your understanding of it is not complete. I think DEI has also been. Oftentimes in some spaces it's synonymous with people of color or the LGBTQ community or these, again, very specific groups. That it's not the case. I think DEI benefits everyone. Does it benefit marginalized groups? Absolutely, but it shouldn't be at the expense of others. It should be a lifting of all individuals in an organization.
Speaker 1:I love that because what you just talked about, I just had an experience myself in a situation where I was working with a deaf population and I was coming in as a hearing person trying to help move them to a new direction for their for their church actually and I went in there not trying to tell them here I am the expert, let me show you exactly what you should do. But I came in to listen because I don't think they often are being heard. I came in realizing that there's a very strong distrust in the deaf community of hearing people, and so I came in as the only was one of the few people in the room who couldn't hear, in a situation where everybody else could not or had very limited hearing. And so to just be able to sit in that space and to hear from them without me coming in as this is what you must do and really play into their already fears of the hearing community took a lot of effort and it's like we spent. It took an hour to get this meeting done, but it was worth it.
Speaker 1:To hear from them and go here are concerns and it meant I had to bend a lot to do that. I could just walked in and said hey, I am who I am, we're going to do it this way and we just could have been done in five minutes and they would have hated me the rest of their life. But how did we show up, like you just said, in that space and be our authentic self? Because what we hear so often about this process is, in order for marginalized groups to succeed, we have to destroy the supposedly the white people, or white America, or people who are supposedly in power, and so they come back and they push back going. If that's the case, we don't want to talk about any DEI or a sense of belonging or creating a space where we can all show up and be our best.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I hear that and here's my first I want to mention. I thank you for sharing that story because that resonates with me, and I'll share a term that I learned recently called consultative coaching, because there's consultants are often hired before their expertise, so they're going to come in and solve a problem and then exit, Whereas a coach is more of a guide and it's longer term and there's more inquiry. But when you blend those two things, you essentially what you just described like. You are still an expert in this space. You still have this knowledge that not other people have and you want the solution to come from the group that you're trying to solve or support. So that listening piece is so important. So you take the time to. I'm going to take off my expert hat and put it aside Right now. We're just going to. I need to get to know you and build a relationship and make sure that you know that I'm human and that I am. While I have this unique privilege there isn't I'm still here to learn and to listen, and then I can bring in the expertise and figure out how to make that work. So I love that example.
Speaker 2:So going back to DI needs to be like the destruction of you said people I've seen I like to focus more on systems, right, like when we are doing DI work and when I work with HR leaders, oftentimes they come to me because they don't know where to go, they don't know where to start. They're like this is overwhelming, it feels important. So there's this heaviness to it. So I don't wanna get it wrong. So I say, okay, let's take a breath and let's just start with where you're at. Like what are your people telling you? Like what are? Have you talked to anyone in your organization about this? What are their policies that we need to review?
Speaker 2:So you know, like it's not about your, it's not always about the leader or the leadership team. It could be our processes and our systems. It could be the way that you're communicating or your internal comms are the language that you're using is not inclusive, any number of things that lead to a lack of inclusion and what is it called Like marginalization, right? So like you're pushing people out in ways that you are not even aware of. So let's start there. Let's start with a quick audit of your practices and your processes and your communication, and also hearing from people. I like to do listening tours. I love spending time just connecting with folks and getting them to share with being their raw you know experience of the workplace and you learn so much from that and that alone will give you many years of work without even involving you know, external experts or anything like that. You could just do some of that work on internally first.
Speaker 1:I love to ask you this question because sounds like what you do is different than what I hear. Being pushed sometimes in the world it becomes very toxic. If I'm a business and I'm looking for a DEI person, what are some qualities I can say this is gonna be a good experience or this is exactly what I feared. So you know, kind of tell me what I'm looking for if I'm trying to talk about the experience you're talking about versus what I hear in the media.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So and here's the challenging part of that is that the media isn't 100% wrong. Right, there are and I know a handful. There are plenty of folks doing DEI work that have an agenda, that have that are and that's not to say that it's a bad thing. I think they have an incredible passion for solving the inequity in our society, right, and they have a way of doing that that is unique to them and sort of their approach to this work.
Speaker 2:And that is not for everyone. Like, that'll work in some spaces if depending on the organization and the organization's culture, if they're ready for that kind of challenging work, because it's not easy. But the vast majority of folks are in that space where I just described it, where they're like unsure. Still they're like I don't, I'm afraid to cause more harm, so I rather not do it right. Or there's like a trepidation there, which I totally understand, and the role that I serve, because I come at this work through an HR lens.
Speaker 2:I'm not a DEI expert or a consultant. I really am an HR professional who has done enough work in the DEI space and now I have a number of connections in that world where I can be a bridge. I serve more as a bridge. So an HR leader can come to me and I am sort of a safe space where they can say, look, I'm lost, I'm confused, I'm scared, like in here all the reasons, and I can help them.
Speaker 2:Just take those early steps to start to figure this out, which is everything I just described as far as an audit or small focus group conversations and just starting to engage their population with these topics, and then, as that starts to develop, we'll find opportunities where we can plug in DEI consultants and professionals. So we'll say, okay, it sounds like you need at this point you might need some training on unconscious bias or microaggressions or privilege. I know exactly who to bring in here and because I've done that early work, I am familiar with the organizational culture. I know most of the leadership team, so I know how things operate in that organization. So I'm gonna find them, I'm gonna match them with someone who is gonna jive with that environment so that they can hit the ground running, as opposed to bring someone in that's gonna derail some of that progress. And again, not intentionally, but I've seen this happen and it's no one's fault really. It showed up just like the circumstance that they were in because some of those pieces were not in place yet.
Speaker 1:So tell me the story behind DEI Profinder.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I was an HR leader at a nonprofit and was charged with developing a DEI strategy. Now, this wasn't the first time, so thankfully I had some experience with doing that and developing strategy, especially in the nonprofit sector. It's very involved, Cause you have to get the board involved and strategy kind of touches every aspect of the organization. So that part of the work I'm very comfortable with. But once the strategy's in place and we've identified sort of the key pillars of the work, or like how we're gonna the phases of the work, how we're gonna move this forward, that's where I've always needed help, Cause, again like I said earlier, I'm not a DEI expert or consultant, so I've relied often on external support.
Speaker 2:Now I've done this a number of times, or I did it in my career, and every single time it was challenging. It was incredibly hard to find what I call that right, fit consultant. Right that not only that not only has the expertise that I'm looking for, but that also is going to connect and resonate with our organization and our culture. And I thought, you know, the last time I did this was in early 2022, and I thought, gosh, you'd think this'd be easier by now, but it just wasn't. You know, I reached out to my network. I did Google research and searching and, on LinkedIn, connecting with people, and it was just a very time-consuming process.
Speaker 2:We got it done, but I just always felt like there had to be a better way, Like why doesn't a directory exist for DEI professionals, when a place where HR leaders can go, search for what they need, engage with consultants and then cut that process in half like the timing of that and for the DEI consultants to have community and have a place where they can share resources and refer to each other and build collaborative projects together. So, yeah, it sort of nagged me in 2022, just kept eating at the back of my mind and I said, okay, I'm going to do this. So my wife is my co-founder, so she and I launched the directory together and in November 2022, I left my job and have been doing this full time since then.
Speaker 1:So tell me how you because you approached this DEI aspect from an HR perspective yeah, Tell me how that's different than maybe approaching from the other side. What uniqueness does that insight from HR bring to this whole conversation?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think and I've seen both sides of this, where DEI and HR are under the same umbrella, if you will that they're connected. And I've seen it where HR's over here and DEI's over there, where HR has seen more as an administrative function and the DEI work is more strategic and more sort of culture focused, and I believe that you get better results when those two things are married and not to say that one individual has to oversee all of it. But I think the functions have to be intertwined. So if they are too different, like if you have an HR leader and a DEI leader, then they're at least under the same wing of the business. They're working very closely together.
Speaker 2:Because, like I said earlier, a lot of times the lack of inclusion or the lack of or the inequities that exist in organizations live inside of policies and procedures, and a lot of that is HR, it's owned by HR teams. So when you think about benefits, the benefits that you offer, how you hire and fire people, how you manage performance, who has the power in the organization Like, is it hierarchical, is it more flat, is it matrixed All of these things that live within the HR function are directly connected to a lot of the DEI work. So I think that is very important and that's my unique, my secret sauce, if you will, that I bring into the space, because it also and I'm learning or have experienced that it also makes it safe for people to start doing this work, because when it's done and this is again some of the examples that I've seen a play out in publicly is a big corporation hires this big name DEI person to be their head of DEI and they're not connected to HR. So they start doing all of these initiatives and doing the training and doing everything that you would do under a DEI strategy, but it's not embedded internally in everything else in the organization. So it feels like it's been bolted on and there's this disconnect.
Speaker 2:It's like, okay, so here I am learning about privilege, but I can't. You know, as a new dad, I only got two weeks of parental leave. You know why is that? You know anyway. So those kinds of things are existent and when those contradictions live in an organization, then that's where those issues start to come from, where people now associate oh DEI is this performative thing that is not really addressing my concerns, right, or my issues, and so that's the disconnect that I've experienced. So when I do this work, I like to really start with where you're at. Before we do anything new, let's review what you're currently doing.
Speaker 1:So I know you're passionate about psychological safety. As I hear that term, I am thinking about some of the things I've seen when DEI goes awry. So how do you in an organization make sure that the DEI doesn't create psychological unsafety?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, or lack of it, absolutely, because what happens when you don't have it is the fight-flight-or-freeze response, right? And when we're operating, we're no longer thinking logically at that space. We're trying to protect ourselves, which is what our brains are wired to do. So forget having a logical conversation or trying to think about something other than yourself, because you're just trying to protect yourself at that point. So that's why it's so important to have to foster psychological safety and I use that word intentionally, because psychological safety is not a switch, right, you can't just, it's not. You have it and you don't have it.
Speaker 2:It's really, it's a daily practice to ensure that your team has what they need to feel safe. And some of those things involve clarity, right. So I need to be clear of who I am and what I do in this organization. What is the value that I bring? How am I contributing to the mission or the goals of this organization so that I can feel safe, knowing that, okay, I am a contributing member of this team. So there's job security, right, because that's especially right now, with all the layoffs that are going on. That's, people are thinking about that, even if it's not, even if there isn't any reason for them to think about lack of job safety. It's on their minds, and so you have to do things as leaders to remind folks as much as you can there are times that you can't do that for legitimate reasons but as much as you can reinforce that they are there because we need them there, they add value and we want them to be engaged.
Speaker 2:The other piece is about expressing a number of things like questions or concern or opposing views. Right, people, if they don't feel safe, they're not going to do that, and there are some. Really. There are books that I can recommend. There are some really great examples in history where there have been work environments that lacked psychological safety. That ended up horribly because people didn't feel safe speaking up or saying something to a manager about an issue that they observed or something that they thought would happen if something didn't get fixed. But in order to preserve themselves, they decided not to say something and then something catastrophic happened. Right, and those are just. Those might be on the extremes, but that's happening at a micro level like every day, right?
Speaker 2:So I kind of went on a tangent there. Sorry about that, but I'm passionate about it, because this is sort of my brand of HR. It's about being inclusive in every aspect, right? So as a leader, you have to be hyper attuned to your team. So things that I like to do is notice behavior, even in a virtual environment, if someone isn't. If you can tell that someone's not engaged or they're not fully present or that they're withholding, check in with them Like there has to. There's something there, especially if you saw a shift in their behavior right From one way to the next, or one check into the next.
Speaker 2:And then, as leaders, there's also things that we can do to ensure that everyone knows that they can contribute, right? So I'll give you a quick example here. When you're leading a team meeting, if you want to ensure that everyone has an opportunity to speak, then do that Like intentionally, say here's the question, keith, what do you think? Thank you, keith. Susan, what do you think you know?
Speaker 2:And go around intentionally and give someone the opportunity to say you know what? I need more time to think about this, but I'll pass my turn. But at least they have the opportunity to say something, because what often happens when we don't do that is the more vocal folks take up the time and the space, which is, you know, they're just doing them right. That's fine, but then the introverts or the folks that need more time to process don't end up sharing. There's not an opportunity for us to come back to them and then sort of that opportunity is gone. So, anyway, I can talk all day about this. Yeah, there's the mental wellness piece of psych safety, and then the very practical day to day things we can do as leaders to ensure we have it.
Speaker 1:As you think about the field you're in now, I'm curious what was the hardest thing you had to do professionally in this field?
Speaker 2:As an HR leader. I think the hardest thing and even in my last role when I did this, I had to do this once, it was still hard after 13 years is finding people. That was just never something I got and I've talked to colleagues in the space. They're like oh, you get used to it after a while. You know, it just kind of becomes part of the deal which I get. You know it comes with a role and I just never, it never felt I couldn't remove the emotion from it for me. So my strategy was to not I started to lean into that which actually worked out, really started to work out really well towards the end of my career, where I would really take like an empathic approach to this process, not a transactional approach, because that's what I was taught in school and in some trainings that I've had.
Speaker 2:When you're terminating somebody, stick to the script. This is what you say conversations over, they've got their papers and they're good, right, and that's a very legal perspective to protect the organization which I get. But I think there's a way to balance that with the fact that you're talking to a human and that you're about to change your life right and impact your life in a significant way. And there are folks and I've been in these meetings where folks are like, okay, and they just move on, they get it and they're ready, or they have no concerns and they're gonna land on their feet. But then you've got folks that are like they're at a complete loss and they don't know what's gonna happen or how they're gonna recover from this. And I don't treat those two experiences the same, like I really wanna be there and serve as a support and resource as much as I can within my role, but just recognizing that this is not transactional, this is hard stuff. So I won't lie, I'm glad I don't have to do that anymore.
Speaker 1:But that was some hard stuff. Yeah, well, you own your own business as possible. You may have to.
Speaker 2:In the future. That's right.
Speaker 1:I wanted to ask you this question. So what are you excited about in this season of your life?
Speaker 2:In this season of my life? That's a good question. So I mentioned earlier my wife and I started this business together. She is also an entrepreneur. She is a clinical psychologist and has a growing private practice here in Phoenix, arizona. So we're both business owners and we have three kids. We have three girls under eight, so full house. But this is it's a really exciting time.
Speaker 2:I think my wife and I have always been really, really good. We've been really good, solid partners and now that we're both business owners, there's been on both sides, there have been opportunities for us to work more closely together because there's some overlap between what we do. But there's also more challenges that we've had to face. We've like the ebb and flow of our finances and the availability of our. We have flexibility in our schedules, but there's also our businesses are very demanding. So balancing the needs of our family with the needs of our businesses has brought up some unique challenges. But what I love about it is that it's made us stronger. It's really helped us sort of re not reinforce, it's sort of like it's just it's helped us grow in a different way together. So that's really exciting to me and now we have we both have very big visions for our businesses in the next year and we also wanna take vacations with our family and those kinds of things. So we'll see what happens, but we're figuring it out as we go, that's awesome.
Speaker 1:I love to ask my guest this question what do you want your legacy to be?
Speaker 2:That's a good one. My legacy the first thing that comes to mind is my family. I think you can I can also answer that question like more broadly, like professionally, but for my family I want, I want my kids and my kids' kids to think of me and even sort of like I think about my parents right and the trailblazers of our family. So I would not be where I am today if my parents had made the decisions and the sacrifices and had faced the challenges that they faced and I, in a similar way. I want to set my kids up and future generations for even more growth and impact. So I would love for my legacy to be I created, I left my kids with knowledge and resources to help them achieve their big goals and dreams.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. So where could people find your DEI Profinder and connect with you on social media?
Speaker 2:And connect yep. So our website is deiprofindercom. That's where I do, where my blog and everything else is on there. And then right now, the only social media platform I'm on is LinkedIn. I have been told that I need to go get another platform, but right now it is LinkedIn for me. That's where I do most of my business and, again, a lot of my posting around DEI and things like that.
Speaker 1:Well, great, well, juan, thanks so much for, I think, enlightening us in this conversation, especially as we've had some I guess that's some misunderstandings, maybe some of them true, maybe some of them perceived, but at least you've kind of given us some idea of that space and what could be possible if we look at the idea of how can we be more inclusive and not leave people out in this experience, of how do we make sure everybody's voice is heard, valued and appreciated.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Thank you, Keith, for having me. This was an awesome experience.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you, rue'.