Zach has the honor of speaking to Debra Gore-Mann, president and CEO of The Greenlining Institute, about tackling systemic equity. She graciously shares her unique career journey with us and talks a bit about what it looks like to manage the wide array of philosophies, motivations and personalities she engages with in an effort to shift and create systemic change. Check out the show notes to connect with Debra and for more information on The Greenlining Institute!

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TRANSCRIPT

Zach: What's up, y'all? It's Zach with Living Corporate. Man, really exciting times. I mean, exciting is a word for it, right? Like, got some concerns with the coronavirus, people working from home, new ways of working impacting marginalized folks in different ways, so definitely expect for our content to shift a little bit. So we're talking about and sharing tips on working from home and how to work from home, dealing with managers, leading teams if you're working from home and also dealing with managers who maybe have never had to manage you as you work from home. But all of that to say we continue to roll with the punches, y'all, and look, it's Tuesday. We're having another conversation, real talk in a corporate world. We do this, right? Like, we sit down with black and brown entrepreneurs, executives, CEOs--who are also executives, but you know what I mean--advocates, allies, public servants, elected officials, and look, today is no different. Like, we have a great guest, Debra Gore-Mann. Debra is the president and CEO of The Greenlining Institute, a policy, research, organizing and leadership institute working for racial and economic justice. Whoo, justice. That's a heavy word in these diversity & inclusion streets, and here they are, and here we go. Debra, welcome to the show, ma'am. How are you doing?




Debra: Hi, Zach. Thanks so much for inviting me. I too am sitting in, you know, troubling times in that I am a decision maker on whether to work from home or whether to continue to bring folks into work, so I hear you on your opening.




Zach: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, to your point about being a decision maker, I'd love to talk about your journey, right? Like, you've held a variety of different roles, from investment banking to being in athletics to being a chief development officer. Like, I'd love to hear more about your path. Like, as Living Corporate, and I think as we all continue to have these conversations, we've been blessed to talk to people with really unique journeys, right, and it seems as if honestly the people that are making the most impact have some of the most, initially on the outset, just curious paths to getting there. I'd love to hear more about just your story.




Debra: Absolutely, and I think my journey is--you know, I used to think that is that it was unique, but the more that I've shared it the more I've realized that there were just some pivotal moments that happened, that happened to me. So in my journey, you know, I'm biracial. My mother is Japanese and my father is black, and he was in the military. And I know for some folks when you say "the military" it means--you know, it's a significant sort of life experience to have a parent who was in the military. So he meets my mother in Japan, and so, you know, she comes to the United States. So she was an immigrant, so I kind of speak that space. And our house was very much a bicultural home. We ate as much Japanese food as we ate soul food. So it was nothing for us to have sushi and collard greens.




Zach: Y'all mixed it--y'all mixed it together?




Debra: Yeah, totally. My mom just, like, just did both, just did both. 




Zach: Word? Hm.




Debra: But the one thing that was sort of emphasized in our house was education, and equally from my father's side, you know, black household, as the Asian side. I did have a bit of a tiger mom, so people might know what that means, [laughs] you know? And education was important, and so, you know, really kind of overachieved in that space, and here was one of these critical, pivotal moments, right? So finishing high school I'm literally the number two in my class--I think they call it the salutorian--my best friend was the number three person in the class, and I'm going to apply for colleges, and the story she gets--and she's German but white, and the story I get when we compare notes are completely different. I'm told to go to a community college. My family can't afford to send me to college, but this would be a good stepping stone. I mean, it was a very positive conversation, and then I compared with my friend Lilly and she's like, "She told me that I should apply to some of the best schools on the West Coast," but in particular, 'cause I'm originally from Seattle-Tacoma, the University of Washington or the University of Oregon. Totally different story. And so, you know, we're sort of going, "Yeah, this is because you're black." [laughs] And I'm like, "Yeah, it is," but, you know, I didn't know. I hadn't gone to college. My sister--I had an older sister, and she went because, through the PSATs, somebody offered her a full scholarship, so I thought that's how it happened. Well, lo and behold, her brother had gone to MIT. He comes home during that winter break and he says, "Oh, no, you guys--you're #2? You're #3 in the class? You guys are applying to ivy leagues." And we're like, "What's an ivy league school?" 'Cause our counselor didn't tell us anything like that. And so I end up applying to Stanford, Harvard, Princeton, Cal Tech, the University of Michigan, right? Sort of high technical schools, high academic schools. She applies to Yale, Harvard. We still apply to our local school, the University of Washington. I also applied basketball, so that's gonna come in here. So I had some athletic scholarships as well, and ended up we got into I want to say 9 out of 10 of the schools we applied to. She ends up going to Yale and I end up going to Stanford, and that in and of itself--so if you're in an Asian household, you know, for the daughters to leave the home is sort of "bad daughter, disobedient," so my mother was like, "You're not--" She doesn't know Stanford from anything else. She's like, "You're not going to California? You're a bad daughter." So my first courageous step was to say, "I'm gonna go to this school. It's in California," because of my good friend's brother who was like, "This is one of the top schools in the country. You need to go." So that's my first sort of, you know, accidental but intentional advice that I got, and then, you know, going to Stanford really kind of changed my life from there, opened up a whole new dialogue, really started to understand my biracialness. Now we have a term, intersectionality. At the time intersectionality was not necessarily as bright and clear, but I really started to understand that and, you know, had an engineering degree. I worked at a tech company, a material science tech company, when I graduated, then I went back to graduate school--back to Stanford--and got my MBA, and at that time I gotta be honest, you know, I was really motivated by money. We were a lower middle-class. You know, my dad was in the military. My mother worked as a domestic housekeeper, so I was cleaning houses, helping her clean houses from a very early age, so I can clean a mean bathroom now to this day. [laughs] 




Zach: To this day. [laughs]




Debra: To this day, you know? You don't want me to come visit your house.




Zach: [laughs] I might. [laughs]




Debra: "I need to clean this bathroom!" [laughs] And so it was really kind of important for me to sort of maximize my value, so I went to Wall Street, you know? I went to work at an investment bank, and even realized--well, let me take a step back. Another circumstance that happened, when I went to graduate school, I ended up being the only black female in that class. And this is, you know, 1987. But what happened--and I went to admissions and I was like, "How can I be the only black woman in my class?" There was about 25 to 28 of us who had applied, but we all applied at very competitive--so Wharton, Harvard, you know, Princeton. You know, top business schools. Wharton, Northwestern, and the rest, the other 24, went to all the other schools. I was the only one that year that picked Stanford. [laughs] So here I'm in a class, you know, where I'm the only sort of black female voice, and so in, like, every class it's like, "Well, what does Debbie think?" 




Zach: You become the representative.




Debra: I'm the representative, I'm, like, the sole representative, but I'm still identifying as biracial. I'm like, "Why don't y'all care about my Japanese lineage?" But in any case, right, so I land squarely in that, and what really helped me navigate that was that I played basketball, and we would have these pickup games, and I would, you know, be ballin' with the rest of the white guys who are now, you know, running companies, running venture capital, but sports was my translator and my equalizer, and so I've always very much leaned into sports vernacular and ability, and I think that has served me well, frankly, in my corporate leadership and everything, to be able to talk sports--and I mean, like, really talk sports--has really helped.




Zach: And what position did you play? Not to cut you off.




Debra: I was a point guard. I was a point guard.




Zach: Okay, so now how would you characterize your game? Were you, like, a combo? Or were you, like, a facilitator?




Debra: Yeah.