We have the pleasure of speaking with Minda Harts, the founder and CEO of The Memo LLC, a career platform that helps women of color advance in the workplace. She speaks with us about a number of topics, including her new book coming out later this year titled "The Memo: What Women of Color Need to Know to Secure a Seat at the Table" and some ugly truths she says keeps women of color from securing their own.




Check out Minda on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram, and don't forget to preorder her book from wherever you buy books!




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TRANSCRIPT

Ade: Welcome to Living Corporate. This is Ade, and Zach isn't here today, but we do have an interview we had with the wonderful Minda Harts. Minda describes herself as a founder, philanthropist, and seat creator, which--seat creator is incredible to me as a phrase in and of itself, but Minda is a beast. She is an adjunct professor of public service of NYU's Robert F. Wagner's Graduate School of Public Service. That was a mouthful. She's also the founder of The Memo LLC, which actually I got regularly in my inbox, faithfully, before we even had a conversation with Minda. It's a career development company for women of color, and her debut book, which is called The Memo, comes out this fall with the Hachette Book Group/Seal Press. She's been featured in Forbes, CNBC, The Guardian, The Washington Post, and Fast Company. You can also tune in weekly for her career podcast as well for professional women of color called Secure the Seat. So obviously you can see that there's been some overlap in our interests as well as Minda's. Minda has conducted workshops all over the world and keynotes with ad corporations like Time Inc. Y'all may have heard of that little shop. South by Southwest. It's this popular little thing. You may not have heard of it. The Campaign for Black Male Achievement and the New York Public Library. She's also been at universities like Western Illinois University, NYU Stern, North Carolina A&T, and Cornell University. All that said, you may be expecting a few things from listening to this conversation, and what you're gonna hear between her and Zach will be some amazing strategies for women of color. So keep listening. We don't have any Favorite Things for you this week, 'cause y'all know how I am, but got you next week, promise. See you soon. This has been Ade. Peace.




Zach: Minda, welcome to the show. How are you doing?




Minda: I'm doing great. Thanks for having me, Zach.




Zach: Oh, no problem at all. Really excited to have you here. Would you mind--for those of us who don't know you, tell us a little bit about yourself. 




Minda: Yeah. So my name is Minda Harts, and I am the founder and CEO of a career platform that helps women of color advance in the workplace called The Memo, and prior to The Memo I spent 15 years in corporate and non-profit spaces as a consultant. And I also teach at NYU Wagner and have a book coming out later this year called The Memo: What Women of Color Need to Know to Secure a Seat at the Table.




Zach: That's incredible. Now, look, let's kick this off with this question, 'cause I think it's a good preface for this discussion. So you were recently quoted in a piece by the New York Times speaking to the anxieties around the motherhood penalty, and you said, "Because we are often only one or two or few in the company, we strategically have to plan our every move." Could you talk to us a little bit more about what you mean? Not only in the context of bringing your kids to work or having children, but being strategic period as a black woman and, larger, as a woman of color.




Minda: Yeah, absolutely. I think that in that article too I also say that, you know, "A joyous day for one mother or father is mental gymnastics for another," and I think that often times, if you are the only ones, dependent upon how you're being treated in the workplace, you may or may not want your child to come to work with you because of how you've been treated in the workplace. And I think when we talk of micro-aggressions and bias and white privilege, I think our counterparts often don't think of what that means for us to show up. So again, you know, the pizza party in the jumpy house might be fun for all the other kids, but, you know, if I'm the only one in the workplace and I'm already dealing with all of this other stuff, you know, do I want to be subjected to that while my child is there with me? You know, so we have to think through. And then if one bad thing happens, our counterpart's child is being cute, but our child is being bad, you know? So we have to think about what those messages are. So each day, whether you have children or you don't, we have to really be strategic and calculate every step.




Zach: So let's talk about your podcast also for a second--it's fire--called Secure the Seat.




Minda: Thank you.




Zach: No problem. What was your journey in, like, creating that space?




Minda: Yeah. You know what's funny? I would say I battled myself for almost a year before I started Secure the Seat. I just didn't see myself as a podcaster. I thought, "Well, I have The Memo," the career platform with my co-founder Lauren. "We're fine over here," but what I realized was I was missing out on talking to some of the other issues that I think people of color, women of color, face, and also how can our allies or how can those who don't identify the way we do, how can they be helpful? And I think that part of a seat at the table is it's great to be at the table, but securing it looks much different, and also passing that baton, bringing others that look like us in the room with us, and I think we don't talk about that enough as people of color.




Zach: I recognize your entire brand, your entire platform, is really wrapped around or centered around empowering women of color in the workplace and just period, and we know that you have a book coming out called The Memo. Can you talk to us a little bit about what led you to work on this book and write this book? And was it a similar journey to the Secure the Seat podcast? Was there any one moment that really hit you and sparked the fire and made you say, "Hey, I need to write this."?




Minda: Yeah. It's interesting, because I had an idea back in 2012. So now, you know, it's 2019, so sometimes we just sit on things for a long time, right? And I knew I wanted to do something, but I didn't know what that something was, and it didn't manifest itself until 2015. And I realized that--what is my legacy going to be in Corporate America? What is my legacy going to be in the non-profit sector? And if there aren't people advocating for women that look like me, for, you know, men that might identify as, you know, people of color, then who--if no one else is gonna do it, then I need to be stepping up to the plate and add my unique slice of genius to this puzzle, because it's one thing to get yourself in the room, but if you're not bringing others along with you or sharing that secret sauce, then what are we doing, right? And so when we think about those who came before us, like the Harriet Tubmans, the Frederick Douglasses, the Malcolm Xs, they secured the seat so we could secure our seat, right? And so I want to be one of those people that played a role, even if it's a small role, in just having people think different. We talk a lot about leaning in, but what we're seeing is a lot of us are leaning out, and that's what I don't want to happen, because we've worked too hard to step away now.




Zach: Absolutely. And it's interesting. I read a piece recently saying that leaning in does not work if you're a black woman. If you're a woman of color, like, it doesn't work. And I'm not using women of color and black women interchangeably because those are unique experiences and identities, but what I mean is that, like, even that language and, like, some of the frameworks in which we discuss these things, they are centered around whiteness, and some of these to be looked at or examined differently when you're talking about black and brown experiences. Your whole point around leaning out, that's really interesting. Can you, like, talk a little bit more about what you--like, what do you mean by people are leaning out as others are trying to lean in?




Minda: Yeah. So we talk a lot about diversity and inclusion and equity, in terms of marginalized or underrepresented groups, and what we're seeing is that--at least for black women in particular, that a lot of us are leaving Corporate America and starting our own companies, and--which is great, that is to be celebrated, but we're leaving because of frustration, because we're not being invested in, because all of the education that we've obtained is not moving us forward. And so if they're not moving us forward, we're moving out, right? And so we're being cut off from this opportunity on the corporate side to obtain generational wealth in that regard, because the reality is not all of us will be successful entrepreneurs when we leave the traditional workforce. And so I'm saying that we almost have no choice but to kind of lean out of that, and my thing is, like, let's put the pressure on these companies for us to--for them to let us have a stake in the ground and move us up, if they say that's what they want to do. 




Zach: Now, look, I'm not trying to have you give out the sauce for free, but your website says that The Memo addresses some of the ugly truths that keep women of color from the table. Again, without you giving the whole book away on the podcast, could you talk a little bit about what some of those ugly truths are?




Minda: Yeah. So I can't give all the sauce, but you can go and preorder it wherever you like to buy books.




Zach: Ow. Yes.




Minda: 'Ey. [laughs] Help me secure my seat. But what I will say is a lot of the business books, a lot of the career books, are centered--as you sa