FEATURED GUESTS
Anurima Bhargava
Anurima Bhargava is the founder and president of Anthem of Us, a strategic advisory and consulting firm that promotes dignity and justice within corporations, schools, and communities. She was chief of the Educational Opportunities Section of the US Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division from 2010 to 2016, and served on the White House Task Force to Prevent Campus Sexual Assault. In December 2018, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi appointed Bhargava to serve as US Commissioner on International Religious Freedom. From 2016-2017, Bhargava was a Fellow at the Institute of Politics and the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard University. Before joining the Justice Department, she was counsel and director of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund’s Education Practice, counsel at the New York City Department of Education, and an investment banker at Merrill Lynch. She serves on several boards, including Doc Society, Poverty Race Research Action Council, and the Advisory Board for Public Service at Harvard.
Jia Jiang
As the founder and CEO of Wuju Learning, Jia Jiang is at the helm of a company that trains organizations to become fearless through rejection training. Jiang’s blog, “100 Days of Rejection Therapy,” documents and analyzes his journey to discover and conquer the fear of rejection. Jiang is a TED speaker and the author of the bestselling book, Rejection Proof: How I Beat Fear and Became Invincible Through 100 Days of Rejection. He is also known as the Rejection Guy.
Howard Ross
Howard Ross is a lifelong social justice advocate and is considered one of the world’s seminal thought leaders on identifying and addressing unconscious bias. He is the author of Reinventing Diversity: Transforming Organizational Community to Strengthen People, Purpose and Performance, and the Washington Post bestseller, Everyday Bias: Identifying and Navigating Unconscious Judgments in Our Daily Lives. His latest book, Our Search for Belonging: How Our Need to Connect is Tearing Us Apart, published in May 2018. Ross has specialized in the synthesis of neuro-cognitive and social science research and direct application related to diversity, inclusion, equity and accessibility work. In 47 of the United States and over 40 countries, Ross has successfully implemented large-scale organizational culture change efforts in diversity and cultural integration for academia, governmental institutions, professional services corporations, Fortune 500 companies, and other organizations.
Kaiton Williams
Kaiton Williams is the cultural technologist in residence at Impact America Fund, a social impact venture capital firm investing in high-growth companies that enhance the economic well-being of marginalized communities in America. Williams is a systems engineer and a human-computer interaction researcher, with experience building large-scale Internet services and studying the intertwined cultural and technical issues that have grown around them. Before joining Impact America, Williams held senior engineering roles at Microsoft.
RELATED RESOURCES
• Jiang, Jia. Rejection Proof: How I Beat Fear and Became Invincible. Random House, 2016.
• Ross, Howard J. Everyday Bias: Identifying and Navigating Unconscious Judgments in Our Daily Lives. Rowman & Littlefield, 2014.
• Report of the NACD Blue Ribbon Commission on Culture as a Corporate Asset.
