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Despite all the buzz about diversity and inclusion, few companies make it a true investment priority. We need to start bringing intention, rather than just good intentions to the process.
The fact that critical decisions are being made without the perspective of half of the population is particularly concerning in tech because of the ever-increasing role that machines in general and AI in particular play in our lives.
Jodi Kovitz, a lawyer, turned tech executive, founded #movethedial, an organization to advance the participation and leadership of women in tech. In this episode, we talk about her entrepreneurial upbringing, how she navigated her early career, and the nudge she finally received to start her own company, and global movement.
In the wake of COVID-19, Jodi made the difficult decision to pause operations at #movethedial. In doing so, the aim is to preserve the company and support the movement in the long term. We are all deeply optimistic that #movethedial 2.0 will emerge as a strong, and resilient organization.
The Ivey Entrepreneur Podcast is sponsored by Connie Clerici, QS ’08, and Closing the Gap Healthcare Group, Inc.
Transcript
You're listening to the Ivey entrepreneur podcast from the Pierre L. Morrissette Institute for entrepreneurship at the Ivey Business School. In this series, Ivey entrepreneur, and Ivey faculty member, Eric Janssen will anchor the session.
Eric Janssen
Jodi Kovitz thank you so much for coming to hang out.
Jodi Kovitz
So excited to be here with you.
Eric Janssen
I appreciate you making the time. I know you've got incredible demands on your time but I'm really appreciate you making the trip from Toronto, thank you,
Jodi Kovitz
It's actually very meaningful for me to be back and love the work that you're doing and love what you're teaching your students so happy to be part of it.
Eric Janssen
I think three big things I wanted to cover today. The first one is a little bit of your backstory, and then getting into how did you actually make the leap to start move the dial. If we go way, way back, I want to hear about HandHeld Cards.
Jodi Kovitz
Okay, I'm going to tell you. HandHeld Cards was my first business. I started it when I was 16-years-old. The vision was to create beautiful art, that would be greeting cards. I am passionate about art and I love to use my hands. I really wanted to come up with something that filled what I saw as a unique need at the time in the market to create something that was bespoke and I live very close to a greeting card store and that's how the idea came to me. I was very lucky, my parents were very supportive of my curiosities. My mother, she led me down to the Japanese paper store and took me to all these wholesalers so I could buy all the different pieces. Between 16 and when I started my undergraduate degree at Western, and I actually started at Huron before I came to Ivey. I sold the cards around campus. I really did learn about how to build relationships from that card company and I'll come back to that a little bit later when we talk about my approach to building relationships. For me the significance of HandHeld Card and even being here at Ivey today, I believe that entrepreneurial story of having a vision, dreaming a little dream, it was a very small sort of very specific product that I created, but then actualizing it and being able to have speak to the experience of growing the company, I had people who worked for me in my residence even on the floor of my room, we had a little sort of assembly line and using sort of that story of growing the revenue and building those clients and those revenues over time to get into Ivey. I think that the entrepreneurial spirit that I had is what enabled me to distinguish my application, so that was joyful.
Eric Janssen
Where did it start? Did your parents nudged you to try something out or did you just on your own say that hey, like, no, I'm not gonna deliver catalogs, I'm gonna actually do something on my own. Who started this thing?
Jodi Kovitz
It came from me to start something on my own. I also did have a job at the same time. I started working in retail at sporting life making $5.15 an hour and I'm really glad I had that experience. I realized early on that autonomy was something that I valued and so I think part of the impetus for creating my own company, was if I create my own thing that I'm really passionate about, maybe I can make money as opposed to having to like clock in and clock out and have a Mr. Sub for lunch every Saturday when I have a 15 minute lunch break so I think that's where it came from but I think even the fact that I would think about it came very much from how I was raised. All my parents played a role in that but in particular my mom really encouraged all of us, my siblings, and I, who, interestingly, are also all Ivey grads, we've all went to Ivey for our undergraduate degrees, was to be curious, and encouraged our curiosity and to pursue many different passions and enabled and supported that. For example, I played several musical instruments, and my sister played hockey and my brother also was into music, from music to to art, and all these different things that, and I think that mindset of you can do anything you put your mind to, is part of what enabled me to even have an entrepreneurial mindset in the first place.
Eric Janssen
We're going deep within the first few minutes, but I have to ask the question, so you have a daughter now? I've got a few children as well. Are you intentional about trying to do that with her as well as other things that you do, where you're like maybe try this out, are you trying to direct her? How do you how do you encourage her?
Jodi Kovitz
It's a great question. I'm very mindful and intentional in my parenting. Whether that's because of how I was raised or sort of life circumstance of I had a moment when Lily was really young, and that informed a lot of my journey where she was quite ill and I almost lost her and so that really woke me up to being a very committed, intentional parent around sort of the energy that I bring to her and what I role model for her. I feel very grateful actually, that happened but because of that, and sort of the intentionality I bring to how I try to parent her, I spend a lot of time listening to her. When I hear a curiosity in her, I really do try very hard to lean into that curiosity and to show up and enable her to pursue it herself however I can. So I'll give an example, she loves to cook. She just always been interested in baking and she started to watch cooking shows on Netflix and, and I said to her, would you like to take a cooking lesson? She said, yes, I would. As a matter of fact last night, I ate Pad Thai that she made that was like, delicious, probably the best I've ever had. She's been having private cooking lessons and it's not to say that that's easy for me to do, they're expensive. I'm choosing to allocate resources there to enable that her to develop that skill, set curiosity, confidence, because not necessarily that she'll open a restaurant as a chef, maybe she will but watching her sort of be curious and interested and passionate, and understand that if she invest time, energy, commitment, and grit to it, she can actually make a thing is really important to me. She plays multiple instruments, guitar, piano, now trumpet and composing. My mom did that she really diversified the exposure that I had to different activities and I think that meaningfully impacted my confidence in believing that I could build a company and so that is how I'm sort of enabling her entrepreneurial spirit.
Eric Janssen
Two interesting things I want to come back to the first one, blew my mind that at some point, my kids will be cooking for me. Something to look forward to. Secondly, there's this phrase that comes to mind, like pulling the thread. It seems if you are listening, you can spot something early in them and say, oh, that seems like there's some interest in that thing. Let's pull the thread and support it and see if we can help nurture it a little bit so that's interesting.
Jodi Kovitz
Absolutely. Understanding that just because they're little humans, doesn't mean that they don't have a very strong point of view of who they are. Another example, we just had our summit move the dial about company I now own and founded, which I'll get into later, hosted a summit for 2800 people this year. That was recently. Last year, she spoke at our first summit on the stage about sick kids and her experience there and this year, she said mum, can I speak, and her choir was actually performing as part of the art sort of immersive experience and I hadn't planned on her speaking, because I don't want to be giving her too many opportunities and not forcing her, I never want to force her to do those things. I said, well, you're not on the agenda, you're going to sing with she said, I really want to speak, it's really important to me. So I had a choice in that moment sort of be firm on the programming and sort of not listen to her or listen to her curiosity and her interest to pursue public speaking to a crowd of 3000 people at age 10. She wrote on speech she talked about when she wrote the speech incredibly inspiring things around astronauts that recently took the first spacewalk that were women and hoping that don't talk about their gender anymore in the future, and that she wanted to take over. That's news to me, but she was so confident and articulate and memorized her speech and prepared for it. As a result of A) listening to what she wanted to do, but B) just the osmosis of role modeling and what I'm doing, even though in moments where it's difficult, and takes me away from her, which is, as a parent, I'm sure you've had those moments as well, is sometimes difficult understanding the impact of role modeling for our kids and being true to who you are so that they can find bits of that, that resonate for them and follow their own path. So anyway, that's my answer on parenting.
Eric Janssen
I see parallels between that and teaching like I sas still new-ish coming back to teach it Ivey but I definitely see parallels, you'll see threads that you might be interested in a student, student says something about never thought about being an entrepreneur, but this class kind of opened my mind a little bit and you can either say, interesting, good for you, like, that's great or, let's sit down sometime, let's talk about like what do you mean? What was interesting about it? What could you do next, that might actually feel that fire a little bit? I think there's interesting parallels between parenting and teaching Despite the fact that you were an entrepreneur at 16, and you're an entrepreneur now, there was a piece in the middle where you didn't start your own thing right at school. So what did you do after you graduated?
Jodi Kovitz
I summered at the Boston Consulting Group and I did the thing that many Ivey students do. It's like, I chose a path, it was the consulting path. I was super proud of myself that I got the job. There was six of us that got that summer roll, think I was the only woman identified person and then when I got there I hated it. Sorry, but that's true. The firm was amazing. It was an incredible opportunity to be there, great culture, but it was being in the spreadsheet, doing the analysis, which was not what I call my superpower. We all have skills that we can develop. Certainly in my time at Ivey, I sharpened my analysis modeling skills, which was never sort of my strong point growing up, I never saw myself as very good at math. I sharpen my saw enough to get the summer job and get through the case studies, but it really was hard for me. It was almost like squishing a square into a circle for me to do that and I was so fortunate that I had an incredible mentor. Her name was Mary Ellen Marie. She was a very strong, inspiring human who, in fact, was going through breast cancer treatment at the time, and would come to work completely bald, not even wearing a wig and just proud of herself and that was a really important role model experience for me to see what it was to sort of be confident. She took an interest in me and she saw that during the day, I was doing my job and at night, I was doing my side hustle, which is in fact, the first social movement I built while I was at Ivey, which we can talk about later but I built this investment challenge and she saw that I was so passionate about the entrepreneurial little venture, which was a nonprofit sort of social movement game that I was building for students, versus the actual work that I would have to do in order to be successful at BCG for many, many years before I would ever get to be doing selling or anything entrepreneurial. She took me out for lunch, I'll never forget it to a restaurant called Canoe that overlook Toronto. She looked at me and she said, you need to follow your heart and you need to be listening to where your passion lays, and I wish I had and if I had done that, then I may never have ended up with breast cancer, I can't watch you conform yourself just to do what you should do quote unquote, because you're at Ivey or because you got the opportunity. I really encourage you to think much more out of the box for yourself, you're you really have an entrepreneurial spirit and you need to nurture it. I listened to her and I spent my last semester at Ivey in Milan on exchange at Bocconi, which was a life highlight, I could talk about that forever but that was just truly a life highlight for me. I think I derive a lot of my ability to hustle and have my confidence as an entrepreneur in my ability to figure out anything from having lived in Milan, in fact, where English was not the first language, which you wouldn't know if you haven't lived there and I had to learn Italian and figure it out and so that was a huge part of my life. Then, when I graduated from Ivey, I came back and I got a job at Workbrain. Workbrain, the CEO was a guy named David Ossip, of course, I'm sure you're quite familiar with him, given that that just senior partner has worked there and has really driven the company becoming what it is today with him and I was very fortunate to work with David. I learned a ton from him, global mindset, how do you build a thing with a vision of excellence? How do you just grit so much that like your mindset is yes, we can always no matter what, no matter when it's hard and at the same time, there was no women on the leadership team that I admired or looked up to. It wasn't overt in that moment that I was leaving work brain because there was no women, I didn't know that then 20 something years ago, but I did meet an awesome woman who I could relate to who I'd been introduced to for the purpose of a mentorship relationship. Her name is Pat Krajewski. She's still a close mentor today and we were supposed to have coffee for her to maybe give me some mentoring. And by the end she was offering me a job and I had said yes on the spot. Walking away from my pre equity, at the time I didn't know it was quite foolish. In my heart, I now know that it's because I think we all need role models that we can relate to. Even though David and the whole team at Workbrain were incredible people to me and taught me a lot and I still deeply cherish my relationship with David and others that I worked with at work brain. I needed to be learning from someone ultimately that I could see myself in. So I worked at Scotiabank, then for a couple of years in succession planning for the C suite team down to director. It was a very small job on a highly strategic team. I actually was doing data entry for all the succession plans and leadership development plans but I loved it because as we were talking just before we started the podcast, I'm a voracious consumer of best in class leaders perspectives, different leadership competencies. I read all kinds of books on this and it was like doing a little MBA in leadership by working at Scotiabank for those few years. I then decided to go to law school because I had always wanted to do further education and I didn't really at that time see the necessity to come back to Ivey and do a one year MBA a lot of my friends did. I'm sure I would have gotten a lot out of it, but I thought I could get a lot out of going to law school and learning how to think critically and then I could always hang a shingle as a lawyer if I ever needed to. My mother had been divorced when I was quite little and I always wanted to be able to be financially independent. I went to law school, never thinking I would practice, I thought it was a good backup plan and then I go back to business. I loved and excelled in my business law course. I'll never forget, I got the prize in Business Association, like a top place in the class and it was natural for me, therefore, to go back into business or go into business law. But I fell in love with family law. Don't ask me I me. I thought it was interesting intellectually, the law was changing, I was fascinated by assisted reproduction and sort of the law that was changing in that area and I also the entrepreneurial spirit, me sort of thought, well, if I'm going to practice, and hang a shingle, or like practice, in a larger law firm, I can probably use my selling ability in my entrepreneurial spirit to build a practice early. That's what I chose to do. I could have been a corporate lawyer, but then I had the opportunity to become a family lawyer and I chose it. I actually was extremely entrepreneurial in my approach to the practice, I had a business plan, they laughed at me, the partners laughed at me, I'll never forget this initially at Tarkin Mains when I articled and work there, because I went to ask for $2,000 to support my business development plan and of course, I wanted to take their like, we have never seen a first year associates ever have audacity to do this, but we can't say no. Several years later, I was sending my business plan around to all the partners and sharing it and some of them saying, we're sorry, we didn't believe in you but they were very supportive and enabled me and particularly the senior lawyer that took a bet on me, his name's Lauren Wolfson, I'll be forever grateful to him for his mentorship and belief in me. He supported me building my own practice, but he also taught me absolute excellence in communication. That skill that I spent six years learning how to draft he would take a red pen seven times to a document, and literally cut it to shreds but the fact that he took the time when he's a guy that builds 150$ an hour to teach me, so that I would learn how to articulate a value prop in a concise way. So that I would understand how to sell at that time, the judge or the client on what I was trying to attain, how to be thoughtful around composing an argument, which now that I spend a lot of my time selling a vision has been extremely helpful. I did that for six years. What happened was, and I did build quite an acquisitive practice. What happened though, is my daughter got extremely sick, I spent two years in and out of sick kids with her. I realized, in one of those moments that I actually had lost myself while I was becoming a lawyer. I had always done community work, I had always worked out my entire life, it was very important to me physical fitness, personal development, friends, family, and all of a sudden, I was just a lawyer, and a mom who would run home, put my kid to bed, run back to the office work till two in the morning, like, it really was a bit of a mess. In that moment, with Lily I had this big wake up call where I was like, oh, I could lose the only thing that matters to me. I do not like how I'm showing up in the world and my ex husband is a wonderful human and he's a wonderful father and the relationship wasn't the right relationship, notice that had to change and all the things at the same time. That moment is sort of what I would call the precursor to building a life of passion and purpose that I'm currently living.
Eric Janssen
There's a lot of fill in the blank, right? From graduation and knowing that you were entrepreneurial, to finally making the full committed leap and I feel, having read your book and knowing about the story, I think, actually making that full committed leap is part of what has made move the dial so successful today but it took you all of those lived experiences to get to the point where you were like, yes, I'm going to fully commit and jump in, and move the dial.
Jodi Kovitz
100% and it was stitched together over many years of those lived experiences. Once I decided to leave the practice of law, I realized I needed to transition and I share this from the perspective that if somebody's listening, that wants to leave a discipline and move to another discipline, what I learned is you don't have to put so much pressure on yourself to make the perfect move initially. I went to serve for five years that were a great gift to me, gift in the relationships gift in what I learned and there was an end to what I learned and experienced there even though I knew that doing strategic business development at a law firm wasn't necessarily my career. But it was a really important transition for me and a really important on the the job education experience without which I don't think I would be where I am. Sometimes when I'm coaching people, and I'm sure you've had this experience, too, people put so much pressure on themselves if they want to leave a particular discipline like banking, or consulting or whatever it is, law, to get the next move correct it's actually it's not a linear journey. When I was at OHS Learn, I did do strategic business development for five years, and I moved up and they recognized my potential and kept investing in me and supporting me, I took an Ivey executive course, actually, that transformed my life with a teacher named Denis Shackel and he really saw me. This comes to the next point, you're asking me around, how you make that full, go all in or that full leap. Having people that see you, and help you see yourself and believe in yourself along the way, is absolutely critical. At each moment where I've leaned into the pursuit of the next goal, it's always been as a result of somebody seeing me I mean, even Colleen Morehead, who saw me at OHS Learn and said to me, I mean, I'll never forget it, she very early in our time together, you work like a horse and I believe in you, and I will invest in you and she did, she was hard on me in the most positive way. She pushed me, pushed me, pushed me, beyond my comfort zone. Then when I met Denis, and he saw me and he invited us to do a speech in that course that he taught, persuasion and influence, it literally was life changing for anybody listening, take Denis's class, if you can and he said, you know, you got to do a speech and it should be like, I have a dream like that big and that is when I wrote my speech, dream it planet, go get it, which is a chapter in my book, which I'll talk about, when I have the opportunity to talk to anyone who will listen about my story, and the mindset of anything that you can dream you can do, and I gave examples and I'll never forget the class gave me a standing ovation when I did that talk. It was in that moment that I realized, wow, I want to have this impact on people I want to speak, I want to share my vision, I want to build something and I wrote it on a cue card, he made us do that and influenced by him and inspired by him and giving myself the opportunity to invest in myself for those three days, became the beginning of the journey that is now moved the dial and how it's manifested in my ethos, which is my book and all the things that we're building.
Eric Janssen
You said that he saw you. So what did he do? How did he make you feel? What did he say when you say that he saw you?
Jodi Kovitz
So the first thing is that he made us do the disc analysis before we arrived. I remember being so annoyed that he was making us do that because I was busy. But anyway, I did it and when I walked in, I'll never forget, I was late, because I had a very important presentation that I had been scheduled to deliver that morning of the first day, and I just couldn't miss it and I had to let him know in advance, I would be late. So the class was going and I came in an hour late and he made a whole spiel about me when I got in. This is Jodo, I think I was an I and I was like the only I think it was an I have to check, just to be fair, exactly what it was but whatever the mix of traits, he was like my never see this, this is Jodi, she has these traits of welcome Jodi, she's going to give us so much by being here and I was kind of embarrassed that he was doing that at first but as the course went on, I actually saw that he got to know each of the students and what their unique strengths were and he would invite each of us to participate very uniquely, in a way that would be in our own superpower, and in our own comfort zone, because he had done the personality test, and had spent the time preparing and caring enough about each of us. He called me out to give me opportunities. He really pushed and inspired me when he saw that I was really enjoying the exercise around the speech and then I did it in my small group and he had observed it and then he encouraged me to do it in the big group and I just felt like he really saw my potential and he said it to me and he signed the book that he gave me with a special message 'Carpe Diem'. I don't know what it was in him but he saw something in me that I couldn't even yet see inside myself and interestingly, one of the people that I met in that course Chris Liang we had a very special connection, we're very different humans. He's a very analytical, thoughtful, methodical, gentle leader and he kept leading the group through all the exercises and his team would always win because he would lead from the side in the back and and now we work together. He works at Move the Dial and he's on my leadership team and we've recently reached out to Denis to come do a leadership, a whole team day for my team, basically persuasion and influence for Move the Dial, because he's had such a huge impact on my life and on Chris's life and really changed the trajectory of my life.
Eric Janssen
That's awesome. I wanted to go into that, because I think we'll come back to things like that just reading your book, I want to get your perspective on how we can do better or be better at moving the dial, but part of what I gathered was like it's not an ambiguous movement that's suddenly going to happen. It's individuals helping individuals. So I wanted to call that out because it sounds like that's what Denis did for you. So let's get actually into so you made the leap, in your own words, what is Move the Dial, what are you up to?
Jodi Kovitz
Move the Dial is a global movement and organization, working to advance the participation and leadership of all women in tech. People often say, why tech? There's so many different industries that still really need our help and for me, it was very natural, having started in my career in tech 20 years ago, and sort of seeing that then and then I came back to tack 20 years later. I was at Osler for five years and then I got the phone call to apply for a role as the CEO of a nonprofit in the tech space. It was then called Ace Tech Ontario now called Peerscale, sort of like YPO for tech CEOs, your listeners will probably be more familiar with YPO. It's basically a peer to peer networking group for CEOs of software as a service businesses and heads of their functions. I walked into the room for the first time to share my vision with 130 leaders and they were all men except for four. I was overwhelmed, because I was surprised by this lack of diversity snd so for me, the reason why we need to deal with and work together to actively close the gender gap in the industry is because everything is tech, even here at Ivey, everything that you do is technology enabled today. Whether you're delivering education services, financial services, calling a taxi, getting your food delivered, everything is tech enabled and if we don't have all of the humans, including women identified folks and all the different types of women with different lived experiences, at our design, leadership and governance tables, we will end up with building solutions that don't reflect the actual needs of the population. For me, that's the why I'm really past in my own mind, my raison d'etre being equality, like for me, that's table stakes, we're heading into 2020, all humans should have equal human rights, period, full stop. But that is not enough. Nor is it that it's better for business, that we get better results by having women at our boardroom get, like we're clear on that. I think we've been talking about that for the last 20 years. For me, it is this is urgent, because we are currently building technology products, we are building autonomous vehicles, without all the perspectives at the design table, which means we will not value our lives the same when we build algorithms that teach those cars, how to make decisions over this life or that life. Which means that we're building solutions that don't factor in the different ways that different kinds of humans need to be served. That's my why and it was just such a massive gender gap when I got back and I saw it in my new role, and then kept seeing it, that I got inspired to create, initially just a first event, it was really just let's have a conversation, but in a really positive way, which is my ethos, so let's just show awesome women that happened to be leaders, and sort of put this on the table and that was in 2017 and that little event given where we were at as a society, and hunger for it in the market at that point has now turned into a global movement. We've touched over 50,000 people in the last two years. I have a team of 22 staff, it's my full time gig and there we are.
Eric Janssen
It's been amazing to see it grow from the sidelines. Congrats. I know, it's early in the journey still, just getting started. So I hear you, and I was one of the leaders in a technology company that probably unknowingly until someone called it out, realized that I didn't have a diverse team. I'm competing for talent in a really competitive market. I need to hire quickly. Say, I have an all guy team today, where do people even start? I can't afford a chief diversity officer, I know this is important but where do I start?
Jodi Kovitz
So I think for me, it really starts with mindset. You have to step into the mindset of it really matters to ensure that we have diversity of lived experience and perspective and thought on our team because we're going to do a better job and have a better product as a result, especially on a sales team, particularly as building teams that reflect the population becomes increasingly important to your clients. If you're out selling with an all male, all white sales team, when that does not reflect the reality of your clients, that is not going to bode well in terms of your opportunities. For me, it starts with mindset and making the decision that we are going to be intentional, not just have good intentions. What that means is as a leader of a sales team, you don't know how to run a sale, a recruiting effort that will A) attract different types of candidates B) will be intentional, understanding all sorts of issues from how the job description is written to who is on the panels, whether we have been bias trained in terms of preparing for interviews, and how to approach interviews, and what is the process? Where are you looking for your candidates, and even if you're using a recruiter, is that recruiter by extension being extremely intentional and thoughtful around bringing in all sorts of candidates. I really understand the lived experience, I've lived it, the need to hire fast, and especially in a scaling technology company, can really feel like it needs to trump hiring thoughtfully early enough in the game, because the challenge is not being intentional begets problem, then if you end up with an extremely monogamous group, it's very hard to entice or attract anyone who wants to be part of that group as an only and I certainly as a white person of many privileges don't understand that it's lived experience and I have done a lot of listening so that I can start to understand from others who are teaching me that when a team looks all the same, it's very hard for somebody who looks different, or has a different lived experience, to want to join the team, because they're not sure if they'll be valued on the team or feel that they belong. There is a very comprehensive list of tactics that any leader who's looking to intentionally, mindfully build a much more diverse team can use but I would suggest that it really starts with mindset, understanding what you don't know, as I did very early on in my process, I really did not know how to do this, I'm still learning I always will be. The best thing you can do is work with an expert who does know how to do it, to help you develop a thoughtful strategy, invest in that strategy, make sure that step by step, implement the changes that you need to in order to ultimately procure a much more inclusive hiring process that will result in a much more robust team that reflects the population.
Eric Janssen
You go through a great example in your book that I just wanted to call out, because I think I was guilty of, I put out a job application and I would want to attract female candidates but I didn't think about how I was writing job application. So I'd say well look at my candidate pool, I have only I've got 100 applicants, two of them are female, of course, I'm going to interview them both, but like, they're just not applying. I think you calling it out in the book, I actually this morning ran through one of the old job applications or job descriptions that I wrote up and ran it through one of the tools available online and it the bolded headline right at the top heavily masculine I was using all of the terms that the articles call out. That's one tool that I didn't even know existed. It's a great one or the other mindset being one of the things, folks on the next one, you said there are a few tools or resources. So what are the few?
Jodi Kovitz
I would encourage people to sort of understand there is a ton of software, there are different organizations that are out there that can help you run your job descriptions through that can help you get your biases out of your hiring process. Typically I don't love to like single out any particular technology, but the type of technology that we're looking for is technology that takes the bias out of the job descriptions. I would strongly encourage them and it's something that I do and I invest in and I did it even very early on in our life cycle as a company is I hired somebody to coach me on how to get this right, that knows what they're doing and we work with an organization that does inclusive design femininity all the time for everything that we do, from hiring to our bias training to our event production to make sure to a designing our parental policy, which is a six month paid leave, you want to attract you know women think of strategies like that. How can you act, do you have a chest feeding room available? That has a fridge in a private area to chest feed so that when people come back all these kinds of it is weaving together a thoughtful strategy with all the pieces, it is not simply changing only your job descriptions. It might require in some cases, waiting. I had to wait to hire one of my roles, in the end ended up using someone on a consulting basis harder to do for the sales team but you can't do it for every role, but really giving yourself the time and pushing on the recruiters to go back and actually another tactic that I learned through my process of being educated was, you have to actively reach out to and build trust with communities that you may not be used to hiring from if you want to actually attract people from those communities. So posting, for example, on the black executive networks job board actively versus just putting it on LinkedIn, because why would somebody who's a member of the black Professionals Network, think you actually want to hire a person of color unless you are actively reaching out and demonstrating your interest and commitment, and a willingness to take the time to interview and meet those folks. I think what I've learned is, it's not an easy solution, it's extremely nuanced and being going into the mindset then means committing to, investing time, energy, money resource, to really thoughtfully designed the hiring process, from job description all the way to interviews, lates and panels to perhaps the amount of time and where you post the jobs, and which recruiter you use to get you to the result that you would be looking for. Then by the way, really being committed if you have a largely homogeneous team, and then you bring someone onto the team that looks different, or has a different lived experience, even then take quite a bit of time to build trust with that human and have that person then become sort of a champion and an ally to other people who might bring additional diverse perspectives, because they actually believe you that they are wanted on the team that is a process that takes a lot of time and is not something that I have seen talked about as much as it should be, and what it takes to really build authentic trust.
Eric Janssen
We don't have to call it some companies if you don't want to but I'd love to know what is what does great look like? What is a really good diversity and inclusion strategy tactics? If you want to call it specific examples, great, but what does it look like.
Jodi Kovitz
For me, and I talked about it quite a lot. I see Salesforce as a North Star. The reason why I say that, and certainly there's lots of partners that we work with that move the dial, I think are getting doing a really good job of this as well, who have extremely diverse teams meaningfully increasing the relevance of their product. I'll talk about Salesforce, because I think, for me, what they did is set a very bold vision quite some time ago now around what equality means and equality as a core value, but also putting their money where their mouths are. Marc Benioff, the CEO, it was brought to his attention several, a number of years ago that there was a pay equity problem. He didn't want to believe it, of course, who would, he's a very purpose driven person but when he went into it, and he dug through the different gios, and the different role descriptions, he saw it, and they he tone from the top made a commitment to invest in fixing it not like over 10 years not interested in like a little annual report. He was like not worth fixing this now. It costs millions of dollars and then he's righted the ship many times because it's not like a one hit wonder.
Eric Janssen
Did he fix it by just like bumping the salaries?
Jodi Kovitz
3 million overnight, yes and he got it done. Then he's had to do it a couple of times, because every time they have an acquisition, or the time creeps back in. For me, you know, and they do a lot of other incredible work and they have a very full semi quality team led by Tony Prophet, who I believe really walks the walk. It's a nuanced strategy. There's lots of pieces to it. But for me, I use that example because it really was about a self awareness that there was a problem, a willingness to fix it and what I call, going all in, and all in doesn't mean just we talk about it, and we have some good intentions, but we're not prepared to invest in it. All in means we fixed it, we invest, we measure, we fix it again, we spend money, this is important as a strategic business priority and as a core value to us as a business. Another example, when you look at all the different organizations that we work with who are investing in this work, and even particularly those who don't have it and they're not at the end of what perfect looks like, but they say like we are in with you, we want to learn together with the community, we want to fuel this work. It's really important. TDs Great example they they believed in our vision, they invested in it tremendously to make it happen. It's not to say that they think they're even at the end of what great looks like but they are really working hard at it and going all in with humans and dollars and measurement and reflection, to work very hard to get it right and you can see it now in their technology organization, how much more the women identified people feel they belong, feel that they're valued, and want to stay and grow at the bank, it's really interesting to observe that.
Eric Janssen
It's interesting to see big companies like that kind of bring you along for their journey. I was just on the CIBC website, and saw some of the work that the commitments that Victor Dodik made really early on in his tenure as CEO, and they've done a ton of work, amazing work but what I found was really interesting was they have 92% of our staff believe that we have an inclusive culture. I thought that's interesting, because you'd want, like, you'd want to publish a stat that was like, across the board, everybody believes that we have it but I think by showing that I mean, 8% of a company that's really big is a lot of people that actually still don't believe it but then publicly putting that out there that like we're not there yet but here's where we're at is really cool.
Jodi Kovitz
Yeah, I love that. I think that transparency is critical. I think they're another great example. I mean, Victor, I talked about him in the book, as well as a leader that I deeply admire, because Victor really made a very meaningful commitment. I think now they've evolved their inclusion strategy to really be very fulsome. I think that's part of the journey of humans and companies is that we always evolve our strategies. A few years ago, when gender diversity was as a focus still really requiring extreme attention. I mean, it still does, it probably will, for a long time but Victor really went all in on that a he by his involvement with catalyst, and on the board, and other organizations, and being such a strong male champion and ally of gender diversity, I really think moved the dial in corporate Canada, actually by way of example. For me, that was incredibly inspiring. CIBC was one of if not the first organization who believed in my work, who funded it, they just nominated me for the WXN award, they brought me with my family, like they really mean it when they say it. I think that comes from his ethos, as well as the team around and beside him that really have manifested that there as well. I think there's others, you look at Bemo they're investing $3 billion in women entrepreneurs like that is a massive statement, like similarily. One of the things I deeply admire about how they think about it, and all these financial organizations is that they're working together as an ecosystem. I think that's a really critical point is that when you start to say, how do we get this, right, this is for all of us, because in order to actually build a more equitable and inclusive future, specifically in the innovation and technology space, it really does take all of us. Those organizations that recognize it's less about our individual brands, or individual talent strategies, which are important on bottom lines, it is also about society, and what we all have the power to do when we all work together.
Eric Janssen
I want to switch gears from corporate to let's call it education, and schools. Have you done any work with or noticed anything that you think schools could be doing better on the DNI front?
Jodi Kovitz
When you asked that question, which is a really fantastic question, what immediately comes to mind, for me is how important it is to inspire curiosity in a very democratic democratized way, starting when our kids are very young. One of the things that's happening right now, is that our public education system and our private education system are so disparate, and the experience and exposure that kids are having to stem and entrepreneurial sort of skills and mindset are so disparate, that we're not doing our youth of our future leaders and service. For me, I think we have a massive opportunity to really start when we think at how our schools are funded and what our approach is to ensuring that young children and as they're growing up through the school system, have access to not only stem programming and learning how to code, but also being taught the skills that we require for our future that is really about being able to have curiosity, solve the world's big problems, and be able to sort of have an entrepreneurial spirit, if not breed only entrepreneurs. For me, that is something that I'm thinking deeply about, and what move the dial will be working towards in 2020, delivering programming that will augment and enable much more democratized access to that sort of role modeling and exposure.
Eric Janssen
A lot of the things that you talk about for tech are also applicable or could be applicable to schools. Think about the way that you attract candidates profile candidates, interview candidates, the way that you reward. incentivize. or call out call in behaviors that are acceptable or not in programs?
Jodi Kovitz
Absolutely. I don't know enough about sort of the current admissions process, for example, at Ivey to even know how you approach it and I'm sure there's been a ton of thought and care given to it. I definitely think all of us as schools can be on that journey to learn how do we bring people in to enable true diversity of thought in our classrooms as much as we want at our companies?
Eric Janssen
So your book, I devoured it. You can see all the dog eared pages and some scribbles. I thought it was great, is it is it available?
Jodi Kovitz
It will be soon. You can sign up on my website, JodiKovitz.com to be notified, right when it's out. If you want to tag move the dial and follow Jodi Kovitz on Instagram, I'll be happy to be giving the three people that do that a copy of the book. Go ahead and, and follow us and and let us know with #GoOutOfYourWay and there'll be three winners that I will send the book to and the little giveaway, but it is currently in production for mass market and will be out soon.
Eric Janssen
I think we will be better off to get it out there far and wide, so that's great. A few things that came out of it for me. One, I want to say there was a particular part where that talks about sort of meeting people where they are. Sometimes I think we can be, I'm not gonna generalize it, me, I'll be afraid to say something or speak up about something for fear of saying the wrong thing. I think you're one of your quotes in the book was to meet people where they are and not not be super judgmental, or come down too hard if someone says the wrong thing, I thought that was really interesting.
Jodi Kovitz
Thank you, I have to give credit to many pioneers in this diversity and inclusion and equity space. There's many people who came away before me, who talked about this philosophy of calling in versus calling out, I really believe in that philosophy. So credit to those that have been doing that work for quite some time. I really affirmed that approach and my own lived experience is that that approach can be so much more effective in enabling us all, to feel like we can be part of solving the problem if we are too quick to judge, attack, shame, it's very easy to lose people. Not everybody agrees with this and I'm very respectful that there is a really important role for calling people out, particularly for people who have been at this work for a very long time, and/or have experienced significant amounts of discrimination over the course of their lives, those humans might feel very differently, given their own journeys and I deeply respect that, and I'm learning to understand it. I've just noticed in terms of my own approach to building a movement, where we really need all people, even if they're not as far along on the inclusion journey as I might be. Now, after doing this for if you work, and others might be ahead of me who've been at this a long time, and or might have PhDs in this work, there's still a place for people who are interested in curious about learning and I invite all of those people to come in and to join us and meet them where they are to the best of our ability.
Eric Janssen
That's great. Last one before we wrap up here, so you've been at Move the Dial for how long now, since you started? Let's cut, while before you formally started it but like actually made the leap to a full time how many years?
Jodi Kovitz
January 2018. I'ts been 19 months.
Eric Janssen
Almost two years. How has your thinking changed over the last two years from where you were at two years ago to where you're at today? If at all?
Jodi Kovitz
Many parts of my thinking have changed. in what area? In terms of sort of as an entrepreneur or like in my overall inclusion worker.
Eric Janssen
Let's go full circle back to an entrepreneur.
Jodi Kovitz
Now that I've sort of started to build a thing that I had a vision around, I have such a deep appreciation respect even deeper, I always did in my head, but it wasn't sort of, I couldn't feel it in my body before I had done it for entrepreneurs that have built things, small things, big things, but particularly those who have built really big things. When your goal is to build a really big global thing and then you look at people who have done it. It is not for the faint of heart and it requires an immense amount of focus, grit, momentum, positivity, wells and wells and wells of courage. It's really the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. I saw that you have Shoe Dog on your bookshelf, I love that book I admire people who have built companies as big as Nike or you look at Disney and what that is as a brand or Spin Master, I was fortunate to host an event at Spin Master a few weeks ago and you look at Earth Buddy coming out of Ivey to a multi-billion dollar global company, I have such a deep appreciation and respect for entrepreneurs. I also know that it is possible. If you are fueled by passion, if you are building a thing, not just because there's a market opportunity, because for me, that is one of the greatest lessons I've learned, if Move the Dial was just there's a need and an opportunity in the market to build a global movement around tech, because we need that we would never be where we are today, you have to really care about what you are building because it's just too hard not to, so it has taken being fueled by passion, it has taken really being able to translate the dream to a very executable plan that is just a bit further than attainable not audacious enough to reach for it but also it takes execution and that is extremely difficult, but attainable. That is sort of what I have learned, sort of reflecting two years in, I could never have imagined building a thing that's gotten this big this fast at the same time we did it, I did it, and the team around me, that's the last piece I will say, your team is everything. None of this would exist without the people that have believed in me, and the vision, and mostly the team that's on the ground behind the scenes that don't get the glory of celebrating how impressive it is that we've done this, it's really been because of them and because of an intense focus on the leadership of them that has enabled this to happen.
Eric Janssen
Well as someone who has been partial, not as big as these global organizations, but as someone who knows what it is to build a company, you're doing amazing work. It's amazing to see the work you've done. Two years is not a long time to come as far as you have sort of accomplished everything that you and your team have in such a frankly, a short time is amazing, it's very admirable. You've done an awesome job.
Jodi Kovitz
Thank you. Yeah, I appreciate that.
Eric Janssen
Is there anything? We've got a big listenership now so a lot of people are listening on these podcasts. Is there anything that this the Ivey community or the listeners can do for the dollar for you?
Jodi Kovitz
Well, thank you. I appreciate that question, that's so thoughtful. Well join us. First of all, sign up at MoveTheDial.com to be part of the movement, we have tons of exciting programming coming out, we do lots of highly curated events from something we call dial moving dinners, where we gather people to really help them around the spirit of generosity to help one another. We do very large scale events that people can sponsor attend participate as speakers, we have tons of esteemed speakers in the Ivey community so if you have a great story to share, we have a stories platform, that's global storytelling. It doesn't matter where you are in the world, we sure be back in Japan and London this year, and across the US. Reach out to me through MoveTheDial.com and you can connect with us, in order to join us. I just really encourage you outside of Move the Dial itself as an organization and of course, we welcome sponsorship and community members. Outside of Move the Dial, my key message is we all have a role to play in order to ensure that the future reflects the population and it really does come down to very tiny actions that each of us can do. Ask yourself if you're listening today the question of what can I do tomorrow, and/or once a week to move the dial for someone else. What that means is to literally go out of my way to create a small opportunity invite someone to a meeting, offer someone some advice and coaching. Create an email introduction that might be transformative for that person, use a little relationship capital, sometimes it's two minutes, but it's that choice to act because the dial doesn't just move.
Eric Janssen
Awesome. Well, I appreciate you coming in and making the time and thank you for spending a little bit of time and sharing some of what you've learned with us. We appreciate it.
Jodi Kovitz
My pleasure. Thanks for having me.
Introduction/Outro
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