In this world there are leaders, strategists, implementers, shephards, heroes...
And let's not forget, Kathleen Johnson!
CEO of Kreativ Culture Strategies where she provides Diversity Equity Inclusion, and Anti-Racism training to organizations across Canada. She is an innovative leader who partners with her clients to deliver heart-centred diversity training and strategy that incorporates creativity to arrive at practical solutions.
With a background in Film and TV as a makeup artist and DEI advisor for films and scripts, a background in literature, writing poerty and short stories, and being a senior Consultant of Diversity Equity and Inclusion with the Provincial Health Services Authority in BC, Kathleen Johnson is a powerful force who has the knowledge, the education and the skills to talk to us about DEI and the creative culture in corporate.
Tune in, learn something new and don't stay out of trouble!
Stay in Touch with Kathleen
https://ca.linkedin.com/in/kmjdiversity?trk=public_post_feed-actor-name
https://www.instagram.com/the_kreactivator/
https://www.youtube.com/@thekreactivators/videos
For more info on Kathleen and her work: https://www.kreativculturestrategies.com/
Scripts:
There's a long documented history of human rights issues.
The weirdos in the workplace are usually the most, some of the most open-minded, you know, willing to accept feedback sort of people.
There's a lot of ways where employers have realized, oh, this is actually, this is actually a benefit.
I can't fix what I don't know.
You will be supported. You'll be understood. I think corporate culture has a long way to go in that regard.
Welcome to Weirdos in the Workplace, a podcast that celebrates authenticity, transparency, passion, and purpose in our world of work. And I'm really excited to have Kathleen Johnson with me here today. Hello, Kathleen. Hello. Thank you for being on the podcast. This is awesome. I'm really excited about that. Thank you. Thank you so much. being on the podcast. This is awesome. Really excited.
Thank you.
Thank you so much. So I'll tell you a little bit about Kathleen. Kathleen is the CEO of Creative Culture Strategies, and she provides diversity, equity, inclusion, and anti-racism training to organizations across Canada. Kathleen partners with her clients to deliver heart-centered diversity training and strategy that incorporates creativity to arrive at practical solutions. And for those of you who are watching us on YouTube or, you know, Facebook or LinkedIn or whatever, and we can, you can see our background, you can see it clearly spelled there, but of course we will have it in the show notes as well. Awesome. Welcome to the show, Kathleen.
Thank you so much. I'm really happy to be here. And we've had these discussions before so it just feels like we're having a carrying our discussion onto YouTube.
Exactly we're finally just pressing record sometimes I wish we could just like press record on our conversations every now and then I'm like oh that would have been perfect on the podcast. Yeah I'm just getting into podcasting as well. And it's like, you get that podcast brain where you're like, I want to, I want to capture this. Yeah. Like that was such a good video clip. Dang. How can I remember this? For folks who haven't met Kathleen before, Kathleen is also a very proud humanist as am I. And we actually met, well, kind of because I sort of like stalked her slash introduced myself after listening to you speak Kathleen after you were doing a workshop with Humanist Canada and I thought you were just brilliant and it was about the topic of diversity equity and inclusion and yeah so are you still involved at all with Humanist Canada?
I actually didn't know that's where you first saw me actually so that's cool I'm not currently involved just because of capacity so I follow I amplify but I am not actively involved at the moment. Yeah. So just, yeah. And then like some light stalking afterwards on my part. And now, you know, maybe a little friendship that's bloomed. So that's very nice. Yeah, absolutely. I am still in, I am sort of involved with BC Humanists. I'm taking part in a book compilation that they are writing. And so I don't know when that's going to be coming out it's supposed to be earlier this year and now it's kind of delayed delayed because we're they're looking for the researchers with BC Humanists are looking for a university to publish to publish the work so that's a bit of a shop around but that's exciting yeah that's going to be coming out hopefully this year yeah I will I will hunt it down that seems to be what I do um so you know I know you're you know you're the mom of five kids we've talked before about both of us you know having had having ADHD and kind of feeling like kind of outsiders or rebels.
The first question that we've been asking folks coming on the podcast recently is, you know, the title of the podcast is Weirdos in the Workplace. And most folks who listen to us and people who are on the podcast kind of feel like a little bit of a weirdo sometimes. How does that resonate with you? I definitely resonate with that. I do feel as a neurodivergent person, having ADHD and learning disability, but also being coded gifted as a kid, there's all kinds of ways that my brain works that I notice other people's brains do not work. And I think especially within corporate structure, this is my first time being outside of arts fields or other environments. So it's been a learning curve for me to actually work within a corporate structure that is a lot more hierarchical, a lot more bureaucracy and structure, and that is the beast that it is.
And so I think it's unfortunate though, because I think that my aspect of how I just kind of, you know, have different ideas just all the time bouncing around in my brain um there's there's patience and appreciation for that in my position and because it's also a new department and a new position this position within phsa it's not to confuse people i also am a senior consultant in the provincial health authority here in bc that um uh my position has not been done before. And so there has been a lot of leeway in terms of what I'm able to bring to the organization, how we're actually able to make something happen. So there's probably more flexibility than normally would be experienced.
But I have had to think in a different way. I've had to learn that I have to provide more details to people, that people are not just going to catch my drift of what I'm trying to say. So it's, it's really forced me to be a lot more of a methodical thinker, a tactical thinker, work strategically, and really make sure that all the ways that my brain wants to do things that I'm actually, that I've actually got a plan, which is difficult to do. If anybody that has ADHD, no planning is not necessarily a hallmark strong point. So it's really taught me a lot of new skills. And so I've embraced trying to work within that kind of structure. Wow. Yeah. I always tell people, like, I don't know that I could do it.
You know, like I physically don't know if I could work within like a highly bureaucratic governance model. hopefully to the point where folks with ADHD can navigate the world of work a little bit more easily and find the accommodations that they need in order to survive there, let alone thrive, you know? Yeah. What are you seeing in the world of work these days? Are you seeing the positive movement that we all sort of been hoping for? I do. I think the biggest point of frustration comes with me not really knowing how to answer the question when I get it, how can I support you? It's a later in life diagnosis for me.
And so for me to actually understand myself enough to communicate what I need has been a struggle. I think also, but, but yeah, in general, I think there's a change in terms of people want to know they want, they're not just taking it like, oh, everybody has, you know, you've heard that everybody has a little ADHD. Oh, I forgot my keys three times last week. And so I must have it too kind of thing. I think people are kind of understanding more neurological differences. And there, there has been that positive shift and like, okay, let, let, let's try to understand how you need support and what that looks like and how we can accommodate. A bit of a caveat though, is that the better you can advocate for yourself is sometimes the harder it is to get your needs met because it's kind of like, okay, well, you work really well in this area.
You might have even an exceptional ability in X, Y, Z way. So do you really need this accommodation? And so I find that that can be a little difficult. And I don't think it's quite 100% changed in that regard. But I think it's moving in the right direction. I think it's just people, I think what we need to do is normalize from the interview process, because we know the employee experience starts right from the interview, sometimes even before that you can disclose something like that. I know a lot of people don't. I didn't.
I never do. it's normal to disclose if you have a hidden disability and um and feel safe doing that and know that um you you will be supported you'll you'll be understood I think corporate culture has a long way to go in that regard oh I would agree with that I mean the word on the street like the advice on the street you know uh, in the different groups that I'm involved in with disability groups or neurodivergent groups is not to disclose, you know, like that, you know, you better not because yeah, you don't even know if you're being discriminated against, frankly. Right. So, and there's very little, like, like you know very few checks and balances um so it would be really nice if we could like really trust that an employer wasn't going to discriminate or even if they were you know i mean i i think it's great to employ people with disabilities because people with disabilities have amazing problem solving capabilities because they've you know we've been problem solving our whole lives trying to figure out how to you know be like a regular person or whatever you know uh just trying to do stuff that everyone takes for granted a lot of the time so um i think i think you should hire more people with disabilities i don't know. What do you think?
Yeah, I, there was something in the UK that I read about that, like a long time ago with companies that were actually prioritizing hiring people with neurodivergent brains. Right. Ability to hyper-focus was one of them that was an attractive quality. ability to hyper focus was one of them that was an attractive quality um just uh being able to offer different solutions quickly um processing quickly i think that's a misunderstanding of a lot of neurodivergencies uh that it takes us maybe a while longer to get things maybe maybe in certain regards um but i find, I don't know if you find this because everybody with a given diagnosis or, you know, condition is different, but I find my brain works quite fast.
And so sometimes, you know, just the other day, my, one of my colleagues was like, cause we try to give these kudos where it's's like, give say something nice to your colleague next to you kind of thing. And so he's like, I just don't know how you know what you know. I know what I know. Do you know what I'm saying? Because the way that I learn is like, not in a, let me read this and learn this, you know, it's just like a lot of subliminal stuff. So yeah, I think understanding how that kind of person thinks and works and operates. Yes, there's a long way to go with that. But there's a there's a lot of ways where employers have realized, oh, this is actually a benefit. I think there's, because of all the accommodations we've had to make throughout our lives and workarounds and all these kinds of things, it helps us to see things from a different angle a lot of the time. Like if a group of people are, because they're institutionalized, and I don't, I mean that in the way that they're used to thinking within the corporate process. So it's always like the thought at the end of it is always, how will the board see this? How will such and such director or ed see this and so you're not really using your own um thinking at that point you're kind of thinking how someone else would how someone else would be thinking about it and i think that's where a lot of limitations come in and how people think about things.
I don't even have the ability to think like that. So I just put it out there and, you know, I'm always bringing new and fresh ideas to my team because I think I have the stamina to do that because it's, you know, when you're talking to people, I don't know how many different things you do. I know there's a lot, but that's normal to me. If I was actually going to work and just coming home, I've never done that. And I don't know how that even works. I always am doing various different things and that always looks scatterbrained. If you are not used to that kind of way of being. And so I think it's a struggle is it's a struggle to always be, you know, communicating to people like, no, I got this. This is just normal to me.
This is just normal to me. And so, yeah, I think it's a bit of a discovery for people to encounter somebody that is neurodivergent and actually have to work with them. So I realize I might frustrate other people. I realize I might talk too fast or I might be moving on too quickly, or I might be doing certain things. So just, you know, I'm open to bringing things to my attention, like, hey, could you please give me a little more clarity on that? I'm not there yet, or what have you. So I think you have to be open to understanding that not everybody's going to get you and just help people along with that because it's not really an expectation of mine that, oh, you know, understand me or else I just got to be patient.
I found like the weirdos in the workplace are usually the most, some of the most open-minded, you know, willing to accept feedback sort of people, like really like a strong belief in continuous improvement, because like, we've tried so hard to fit in and probably maybe, and it just didn't work, but we're constantly like striving to do better. It's like, but if I don't know from I'm an early age and it sounds like you were like this too. It was like, I can't fix what I don't know. You know, like I can't fix something about me.
Not that there's anything I should be fixing. I eventually learned necessarily, but you do want to make people feel comfortable. I don't want to make anyone feel uncomfortable, you know, with my behavior or my, you know, if I'm too loud or too crazy or too whatever, like I want to make sure that I care about the way people feel around me as well. Right. And that's not because they told some, like, there's some like societal pressure to do that. It's really because I just, I just want people to feel comfortable, you know? And so if that means that like, I can learn to just dial something back a little bit you know I'm gonna do that and I think that's okay and that's that's an individual thing probably right um yeah I think it's actually really indicative of the condition of having um ADHD and what because we're always um that that I think that is actually a thing from childhood where, you know, we've been told we get a lot of feedback on our behaviors. Right. And so we are more concerned, I think, with how does this person think about me? Am I being too much? How are they perceiving me?
And yeah, so we are open to feedback because we have learned that we're not the best gauge of our behavior. we have learned that we're not the best gauge of our behavior uh so like to other people to say hey if i'm i'm getting too much um just let me know i'm totally fine with that um because we're used to it we're used to hearing you know hey calm down don't do that don't touch that don't you know as it's such a normal part of how we're how how we work but yeah I think one thing that popped out to me the other day I was talking to my son about my aha moment was um I think I understand the major difference between somebody that's neurotypical and somebody that's neurodivergent.
And he's like, what? Because he's autistic and has ADHD as well. And I said, it's, I think logic overrides emotion for somebody that's neurodivergent and emotion overrides logic for somebody that's neurotypical. It's just a theory. overrides logic for somebody that's neurotypical it's just a theory and I'm uh and I'm working on what that I'm working on what that looks like see if I'm right or not how right I might be but on the type of neurodivergence as well because I know people who are like borderline personality usually that's characterized by like very strong emotion like a very strong like inner world and emotional world and that kind of rides everything but definitely for me that strikes true for sure but is bpd a mood disorder or is it a neurodivergence or is it both centered i think it's with i think neuro it's a neurodivergence for sure yeah um I think most like personality disorders are considered neurodivergence as well which is okay okay see I'm learning something yeah I wasn't aware of that I thought it was quite separate so yeah yeah anyways it's it yeah it's interesting like even a psychopath would probably be considered neurodivergent I'm very sure yeah for sure yeah hernia is considered neurodivergent and yeah so but I think I think that's probably very true in certain cases of neurodivergency like for sure ADHD autism I think probably that's that strikes me as accurate anyways yeah very concrete way uh of thinking yeah yeah absolutely hmm very interesting um so before we you know I've been putting this out in the universe me and you and I both talk to a lot of DEI and for myself as well as accessibility advocates consultants you know people who are just working in this space or trying to make impact in this area and it's become really apparent I think to both of us as we were talking before that folks seem to be burning out.
You mentioned that some people are like, that you know, are like leaving the industry. This is really concerning for me, I think for all of us, you know, who are in the space trying to make an impact. I'm just curious, like, you know, what are you seeing as overall themes in the DEI space right now? This or other things? Yeah, I'm seeing burnout for sure. I've always seen that. There's stats to support that. The lifespan of someone in this profession is usually three to five years. And I've seen more recently two, two to four.
So I definitely get that people are tapped out. They have to often perform miracles with little to no budgets. as the representation of everything to do with that work. And so I find that now there is more of an understanding that DEI is everybody's work to do, that this person is leading it, but it's everybody's work to do or else it doesn't work. And there's expectations there that can be expectations on the practitioner side and expectations on who is employing you or contracting with you to do the work. And so, and not saying that people that burnt out don't do this, but it's very important to set expectations from the very beginning.
Like, you know, I'm not a miracle worker. I'm going to need some resources. I'm going to need some budget. And kind of making that very clear. Also, when I've been looking for positions and I've been looking at what they're paying, I think that's disappointing as well for a lot of people. And as we know, the cost of living rising so sharply especially in the last few years it's really hard to keep up with these um with these laundry list job descriptions that want five to ten years experience in dei and how is that possible when this just became a field since 2020?
You must have a master's, you must have this, this, this. So I have now seen more of job descriptions that are more asking for a realistic parameter of skills, education, and so forth, because that can be really the crux of what the issues are, is that from the very beginning, it's like, can you perform miracles? And so that's part of it. And I think also when you're doing something in any official capacity that you've had to deal with your whole entire life, it can just, it can just become something like, okay, I think I'm kind of done explaining or I'm done justifying this work or, you know, and so I find that a lot of practitioners are like, well, if they don't get it, I don't know. I don't know how that's possible to not get it.
Whereas I find that I don't have that kind of attachment to what's somebody's level of commitment or understanding is even. And so when I talk about the new certification I have, which I'll, you know, talk about later, even. And so when I talk about the new certification I have, which I'll talk about later, I think it really helps because people and practitioners have not had really a lot of frameworks that they can apply. And so how do you get other people involved in doing the work if there really isn't a concise framework. There was a standard before, but there's been issues with that. So I think it's just setting expectations like, here's what I do, here's what I need you to do, and here's what I need to do the work, and here's what doing the work means. So when a lot of practitioners were let go recently in the United States and whatnot, they were doing that based on seeing DEI only as addressing race.
So I saw this happening and I was like, there's going to be a counter swing to this because it is not just race. It is every marginalization and also newer generation, Gen Z, early millennials, Gen Alpha now coming into the workforce. These are generations that identify in more than one marginalized group at the same time and more multiracially. group at the same time and more multiracially. So I really think it's not understanding even the basics of what this work actually is. And then, you know, people with lived experience being stuck with, okay, how do I actually framework this, action this out, get people on board, get buy-in? It's very difficult. It's not easy work. No, it's certainly not. It's extremely emotionally laborious, this work. I'm not a DEI practitioner, you know, so, but I have many friends who are DEI practitioners. And I think you get into the work, like most people get into, you know, culture work or a lot of the work that we do in coaching and whatnot, because we have some kind of lived experience that, you know, developed a passion for something.
You know, we feel like we want to change something. So we enter this change management space in a niche area like DEI or accessibility or, you know, different kinds of cultural transformations. And, you know, it feels like you're pushing a boulder up a hill a little bit. And I think you're right. I think it's because, you know, we're not really trying to meet people where we're at. We're going in with an agenda, you know. It's sort of the opposite of the coach mentality in some ways, where it's a coach mentality, right? You're like, you're meeting people where they are without an agenda and you're working on their agenda. It's like we're coming in with this agenda and, you know, trying to apply our worldview onto, onto something. And that doesn't mean that that worldview is, you know, I think the, I think it's a good worldview to have. Right. I think it's important. Yeah. I mean, a few things there, a few things there is that I'm not just speaking from lived experience and we've actually had this issue in training because I do a lot of, I do a lot of education. There's a lot of scholarship.
There's a lot of hardcore academic scholarship behind DI work because it's human rights and there's a long documented history of human rights issues since the inception of Turtle Islands and since the inception of Canada and the United States and Western countries. You know, different groups have been telling us what their experiences are. So that can be part of the frustration for people doing this work is like, you know, we've had three waves of feminism. We've had the civil rights movement. We've had disability rights movements. We've had this and that movement. How much more do you need to know? And so I think I also resist that kind of characterization that it's like this pocket niche thing, because it's literally every other type of human aside from the prototype normative human of a white male of a certain age, of a certain religion. So it's everybody else. And so that's not really niche to me. And I think that's kind of the mind setting behind it is how much of a smart business strategy is that to cut off something that is so pervasive and concerns so many groups of people? Because I think that people, I think that companies organizations, and this is just my guess, people I think that companies organizations and this is just my guess might not be what it is is that we focus so much on multiculturalism before and unity and all these things and it's wonderful but we weren't actually meeting people's needs we weren't actually hearing from people their struggles their realities and so it became a thing of like, oh, well, knowing the nuances of whether people bow or whether they handshake and thinking, well, that is cultural competency as far as relations go within a corporation. That's all a business person needs to know is, you know, the customs and those, those kinds, those are surface things.
Those are really surface things. I think in terms of what people are actually struggling with and what they actually need to fully participate is a totally different thing. And I don't think that's something that's easily understood without somebody with lived experience and expertise. You have to also have education in this area to be effective. Oh, absolutely. But I do think that there is often a lived experience that drives them to learn more, you know, to want to write a wrong. you know, to want to write a wrong, you know, want to write a wrong. And I think, I think that makes a lot of sense. That's almost, you're talking about building cultural competency as a transaction, right? Like I'm, we're doing business together.
We just need to know enough about each other to do business together. Whereas we're trying to build companies that have relationships between different kinds of people. And in order to do that, you need to be able to know enough to be able to treat somebody else like a human being. Is that, am I picking up what you're putting down? Yeah, yeah, for sure. And I can't emphasize the generational gaps in this work enough because you have, I mean, I remember working 30 years ago, 20 years ago, and it was like, you just show up and go to work. Nobody, there's not an expectation that your boss cares about you at all. And not to say that there wasn't bosses that didn't care. I've had great bosses even back then, but I think it was not an expectation. It is an expectation now. It is an expectation that when a George Floyd happens or when a Palestine happens or when a Wet'suwet'en or when something happens, that it is addressed in some fashion or form beyond a performative statement. And that was not an expectation before. And there's actually people that will not choose to work in your organization because they don't know where you stand on things.
And so it's an actual, it's a actual it's a it's a it's not so much a cancel culture but it's a culture of accountability and it's an adjustment we're making because we're not used to that we're used to this is your position this is um this is what it is do your work um it's that is a huge shift in the last few years. And that is where I think there's a difference and a misunderstanding is that people, I hear it all the time from people my age, people just don't want to come in and do their job. It is also inappropriate to talk about politics, to talk about religion, to talk about these things in the workplace not too long ago was considered downright inappropriate. And so now we've had to make this shift where people want emotionally intelligent, culturally competent, psychologically safe leadership. Huge, huge difference. safe leadership. Huge, huge difference. Yep. People want to know, like, can I live with their values and ethics? And in order to do that, we need to make those transparent and demonstrable, right? Like, you know, what are we putting our money where our mouth is? Are we actually, do we believe what we're saying? You know, are we, you know, getting that out in the universe? Are we actually doing the stuff that we say we do? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I have three Gen Z's and you have some Gen Z's as well.
Do you have any millennials? No, no, no no no i my eldest is 26 i don't think that's millennial no i'm pretty sure it's not i don't know in the cutoff is um maybe 96 oh he's 97 seven so he might be he might be yeah like a late like um yeah yeah it might be just the cusp between you know in that bubble yeah um i think gen z though i think he's gen z yeah i think so yeah five yeah 26 to age uh 18 yeah what are you seeing as i'm curious maybe we're seeing the same things uh from our kids in terms of what they care about. They care about their world very, very much. And they are very aware of things on a level that, I mean, I was quite an aware kid. I was quite an aware teenager. But I think that they are not as, it's not as hard for them to understand certain things. Like where I might struggle with explaining intersectionality or generational trauma or emotional intelligence things to an older person um they don't struggle with that no at all like at all i can explain to them well this is that might they might not have heard the term but when they explained it to them they're like oh yeah yeah people are different in multiple ways and and not everybody needs the same thing and you, and they're more aware of justice pieces that, you know, they're more aware of what anti-oppression looks like, what anti-racism looks like. And these are things that are not as hard for them to grasp.
And so that's what I'm seeing is like the conversations that I can have with my kids are it would be an advanced conversation with a lot of other adults that I can have with my kids are, it would be an advanced conversation with a lot of other adults that I know. Yeah, I agree with that. Yeah. I'm sometimes very surprised with how easy the conversation flows around some of these topics and how they're contributing to the conversation. And honestly, sometimes even teaching me things. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I've had like, I talked to my kids about politics. I talked to them about religion. I talked to them about like all kinds of things and they're like, yep, get it. Got it. They might not agree with me all the time, but they get it. Yeah. I mean, they're, they're fine with disagreeing with me. That's never a problem. Yeah. I mean, they're, they're fine with disagreeing with me. That's never a problem. Mom's wrong. Tell me, okay. So you're writing a book, you've been writing a book, Thinking Outside the Boardroom.
Tell me a little bit about that. And then I want to talk about your new certification. Cause that sounds really interesting, but tell me about the book. Yeah. What all of that? because that sounds really interesting. But tell me about the book. Yeah. What all of that? I think outside the boardroom is kind of my understanding of this work. I wanted to put it out there. And I also wanted to help organizations explore creativity around it. Creativity, particularly regarding engagement. How do you get people into this discussion? How do you get people unafraid?
And, you know, helping people to build the capacity to actually engage with on very difficult, potentially highly divisive topics very difficult, potentially highly divisive topics in a, in a safe way. And so it's kind of that exploration and yeah, that's, I'm excited about it. It's I am actually going to be finished this month and it will go to the publisher and then hopefully have it in my hands. month and it will go to the publisher and then hopefully have it in my hands uh i'm hoping by october uh september that's amazing yeah um well i yeah we'll definitely have to have a virtual beverage together or something to celebrate really excited to read it. I'm excited to read it because I think that you think about things in such a, like, I want to say a complex way, but also simple, if that makes sense. Like, I think it's very nuanced and different the way that you think about this work. And I wish we had more time to really go into it, but hopefully people started picking a little bit of that up through the conversation as well. But tell me, okay, so tell me about your new certification and should I be getting this certification? Should I sign my card? Yeah. What can I say about it? It's diversity and it's diversity inclusion service management. So it's DISM. Long title is DISM ISO 30415 semicolon 2015, 2021, sorry.
So it is an international standard organization certification, which is, which sets it apart from what people were using before, which was, I don't know if I'm getting this 100% correct, DEI, DEIB or something like that. So that was. DEIB, is that the one? GDEIB, yeah. Yeah, so that's the documentation. They went, what happened to them? They just dissolved. Yeah, they dissolved. And so this standard also is UN endorsed. So there are... The UN has sustainability um goals and so this meets a few of them in terms of like gender equity creating gender equity and um you know a few other things so it was created by a queer black man who was what who was the first queer Black man to run for office in the United States, James Felton Keith. Follow him on Twitter, he's very entertaining.
And so in Canada, it's delivered by Ventura Collective. They are two Latinx women, Anna Maria and Linda. Hello. Hi. And so they are the certifiers in Canada. Basically, when something's ISO certified, it means that about over 150 countries, representatives from over 150 countries have looked at something and set quality standards for a given service or product. So people might be familiar with ISOs for various different things. And so it's making its way globally. They're having a conference in Atlanta, and I'm really excited because I'm going to go. And so it's starting to really take off in Latin America. It's being used in France, South Africa. So different countries are adopting the standard. The reason why I was so interested in it is because the way the health authority works in BC is it's an overarching health authority. So, PHSA is Provincial Health Services Authority, but there are different health authorities, specialty hospitals and whatnot underneath that. So, all the different DEI folks for different health regions have come together and said, we want a standard of practice. We want to establish a standard by which we do this work. And then I stumbled upon this. So I have been introducing it to them. I've introduced it to my team. And it's really a good framework because it shows you 27 different diversity types.
It shows you it's a spreadsheet of 171 questions that you can ask in an assessment. And that is scored. So it's called inclusion scores, the parent company. company, and that's James's company. And it's called Inclusion Score because your answer to each of those questions gives you a score. And then that helps to pinpoint in what areas you need to focus on, what areas can wait a little bit. So it shows you how, it shows you a maturity, it's a maturity model is what it is. So it shows you what your maturity level is in regards to different things, governance, procurement, and then depending on what your score is in certain areas, you go, okay, we really need to work on X, Y, Z. So it really helps people that want to engage, want to do the work, are committed to the work, feel it in their heart, but just haven't had a way of actually actioning it out. I see a lot of frustration with that, where people are like, okay, we want to do this work, we want to embed it and incorporate it in everything that we're doing, but how?
And that's always the big question so yeah it's I'm super excited about it's new in Canada I was part of the second cohort um but yeah it's also insurance it's also backed by insurance so um what is starting to happen in the United States is that and I think other countries too, is that insurance is starting to look into this and has interest in it because it can mitigate risk. It's looked at as if you have a sound DEI practice, that you are less of a risk to be sued. In Canada, we think we're not as litigious. However, that it just happens in a different way so in the states there would be full-on like lawsuit um in court in canada what tends to happen more are settlements and so those are things we don't hear about in the news but they happen all the time and insurance companies uh as anybody that's worked for an insurance company, which I have, they don't like to pay out. So in any way that they can not do that, they're interested in. So the assumption is that if you have a structured DEI policy, a plan, what have you, policy, a plan, what have you, that you will be deemed that you are less of a risk to ensure. Interesting.
That is good to know. And I'm going to look into this because it sounds extremely interesting and like it's just give you a good baseline probably of knowledge, even though as I'm not a DEI practitioner, but I think it's important for all practitioners, consultants to inform their work with a DEI and accessibility lens, right? Yeah, yeah. Specific to what I'm doing, you know, making sure we're able to speak the same language, for sure. Yeah, and it also gave me the freedom to acknowledge that DEI is a corporate process.
It's a corporate lifecycle process. And we struggle a lot with that in this work. And that makes some people uncomfortable because they're like, no, this is hard work. This is, you know, human rights. It's all hard work. And unfortunately, once that became a part of corporate hemisphere, let's say, I don't even know how to really describe that. But once you put human rights into a corporate container, it has to have some sort of systems aspects to it for it to be, quote unquote, done. of systems aspects to it for it to be quote unquote done um so i think it's um it acknowledges and it that di is a corporate process because i mean if you ask martin luther king what he was doing he wouldn't say he was doing di work um or you know this is um a corporate entity. It's a, it's a corporate idea.
And it doesn't mean that it's inherently evil. It just means that it's, it's, it's processing its systems. It's a way of systematizing, you know, human relations. So I think it's it's interesting. It's very, So I think it's interesting. It's very interesting how it's done pretty much the impossible. I know there's other models that are like it. The GDIB is not completely different, but I think it just takes it that much further. Well, and like we said, GDIB doesn't exist anymore, as far as I know, which is very disappointing, actually. I saw that last year. But this looks like a very, very valuable alternative. So that's really good. Very cool. Awesome. Thank you so much for coming in for all your knowledge on this topic, Kathleen. Yeah, thank you. I'm happy to have the opportunity to speak to your audience and just chat with you. It's always a joy to talk to you. Is there anything that you're like, just, you know, come in like Columbo at the very end?
Just one more thing that we'd like to, maybe the Columbo reference. Like I'm the oldest apparently. But you know, Columbo, if, if for those of you who don't know who Columbo is, this is Columbo's back in the, I think seventies and eighties, there was a TV show called Colombo and he was a private investigator um and he'd always come in right at the end after he kind of solved the case but nobody knew he'd solved the case and he'd just come back in you know that you thought he was about to leave maybe turn around and say just one more thing and then he'd crack the whole case right yeah i didn't miss him i didn't miss an episode of Murder, She Wrote, but I can't say I've seen too many Columbo episodes. Murder, She Wrote is also a very good, very, very good TV show that we should bring back for sure. That was good. I love that one. But do you have a Columbo moment for us? I do look out for my own podcast. That's in production. And yeah, I'm going to be writing in a lot of other compilations this year.
And I've got a Spotify going and I'm on TikTok. TikTok's going good. Yeah. Just, you know, find me different platforms. I'm everywhere. Um, and, uh, yeah, I think that's, I think that's pretty much about it. I think that I'll be speaking, um, I'll be speaking in Cambridge, Ontario, um, maybe coming to, out to Ottawa to see you. Um, I'll be speaking in Vancouver. So yeah, just, uh, I put it out there and it's coming back to me um about traveling more speaking um writing more um so yeah a lot happening well thank you very much our multi-hyphenate kathleen johnson yeah comedy uh yeah makeup artist and film yeah doing doing it doing it all doing it all uh brilliant but not not all at the same time necessarily yeah I just started getting back into film I've done makeup for a few um local projects here in Victoria.
But I was in IATSE in Toronto. So I have worked on major productions as well. But yeah, it's just anything, any reason to be around creative people, I take it. That's brilliant. Well, I cannot wait to read your book and continue to follow you. And we'll make sure that everything, every possible way you can follow Kathleen will be in the show notes. So stay tuned for that. Yeah.
Thank you so much.
Thanks Kathleen.
Don't forget to stay weird, stay wonderful, and don't stay out of trouble!
