Corporations Compassion Culture. Keesa C. Schreane
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Gratitude. This best describes what I'd like to give to the generous people who supported me in creating this book.
To my outstanding Wiley family: executive editor Sheck Cho, your kindness and enthusiasm is just what I needed for my first book. You are so gracious. Managing editor Susan Cerra, our Friday afternoon jam sessions kept me on the right path. Jean-Karl Martin, your organization and ideal sharing helped me go to market in a way that was more efficient than I could have envisioned.
I'm thankful to be part of a community of authors and publishing professionals who embraced and encouraged my ideas. Anna Murray, thank you for seeing the vision. Your faith in my ability and my ideas were instrumental in each stage of this book. I'll do my best to pay it forward.
Seth Godin and Shawn Askinosie thanks for our Zooms, chats, emails, and sharing brilliant resources.
Sheila Levine, thanks for your dedication to this project and answering all my many questions.
Stacy Grossman, thanks for jumping in so quickly. Kelly Spors, your business insights were thoughtful and engaging. Tiffany Dufu, I appreciate your inspirational kindness.
Hilary Poole, you are fun, smart, and working with you is such a joy.
Conny S. Kazungu, PhD, your energy, and consistent readiness for the next adventure I rolled out, was invaluable.
Edna Varner, EdD, I am grateful for you being my first writing coach in eighth grade—and still the best decades later!
Erika Winston, JD, MPP, your brilliant clear-headedness is priceless and exactly what I needed.
Thanks to all my interviewees: Shawn Askinosie, Doug Bristol, Marcia Chatelain, Mark Cuban, Laura Freebairn-Smith, Shennette Garrett-Scott, Seth Godin, Rebecca Henderson, Trevon Logan, Juliette Menga, Anna Murray, Daniel Pink, Caitlin Rosenthal, Susanne Smith, and Debra Walton. Also thank you to my anonymous interviewees. I'm inspired by your generosity and business acumen. Thanks for sharing your vision that there is a better way of doing business.
A special round of thanks to my Refinitiv and Thomson Reuters management team, mentors, and sponsors—Karen Ashley, Brennan Carley, Tamara Dews, Emma Miller, Deirdre Stanley, and Debra Walton—and all my wonderful colleagues who supported this endeavor.
To my phenomenal family: I'm grateful that you're supportive while demanding I act with the highest intentions—Mom, Dad, Uncle Al, Aunt Bobbie, Uncle Phearthur, Aunt Ingrid, Aunt Henrietta, Aunt Anderine, Uncle Greg, Uncle Paul, Gram, Nanny, Bimp, Dominique Banks, Daryl Alexander, Reverend Grant Harris, my “parent friends” Wanda Starke and Ron Fisher, and Tiffany K. Schreane, my sister and best friend whose brilliance, candor, humor, and love helped me bring this book to life.
To the Spirit in which I live, move, and have my being.
About the Author
Keesa C. Schreane is an environmental, social, governance, and supply chain risk business leader and host of Refinitiv Sustainability Perspectives Podcast, engaging investors and business and sustainability communities on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) data and technology, regulations, corporate risk, global financial markets, as well as diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).
She's also a broadcast television and livestream contributor and writer with numerous outlets and publications:
Black Enterprise
Essence
Facebook Live
Latina
NASDAQ
Refinitiv Perspectives LIVE
WDEF TV
Her expertise includes business development, sales and marketing, and employee resource group leadership, building successful strategies for operational enhancement and relationship management. She is a Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialist (CAMS).
As founder of the You've Been Served Podcast™, she interviewed top industry leaders such as Seth Godin, Carla Harris, and Leena Nair, uncovering insights on increasing revenue, improving communities, and affecting lives through social impact, innovation, and service.
Keesa has served on numerous boards and committees aligning with her equity, inclusion, and compassion in business focus, including Business Resource and Investment Center, Girl Scout Council of Greater New York, Thomson Reuters Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) Ambassador, and Refinitiv Women's Business Resource Group.
Her work is recognized by the following industry groups and thought leaders:
Featured guest on Reid Hoffman's Masters of Scale alongside LinkedIn CEO, Jeff Weiner
HubSpot as “Top Female Marketing and Growth Expert”
Masonry's 18 Content Marketing Bloggers to follow on Twitter
Connect with Keesa at https://www.keesaschreane.com/.
Chapter 1 Inclusion, Equality, and Compassion in Business An Overview
Changing the course of a culture can be like changing the course of a ship. You turn the wheel slowly. The ship moves in two- or three-degree increments at a time. The degrees of movement are imperceptible, especially relative to the ship's size. Those onboard may not perceive a change from one minute to the next. But after a certain length of time they start seeing small changes in direction. Finally, those slow, steady, and careful minor turns yield a complete change in the direction of the ship. Ironically, it may feel to those onboard that the change happened all of a sudden, but in fact the ship had been turning for a long time.
This is a good analogy for what is happening with traditional corporate culture. Decades of lack of equity, lack of inclusion, and inequality are slowly shifting the course of business toward a culture of fairness and ethics in employee treatment. Changing the way we do business and how we interact with employees has been a slow process. Yet, it remains an imperative one.
As we enter the post-COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter (BLM) era, the move toward a new compassionate culture, with equality and inclusion as a foundation, is even more urgent. A compassionate culture empowers people to develop new ways to solve business problems and deliver solutions. For employees to tap into these higher levels of learning, creating, and working, they must feel valued, included, and treated ethically.
Compassion in business means creating a culture in which equality, inclusion, and kindness are foundational principles, integrated at every level. Through a compassionate culture, employees have the agency to bring creativity, innovation, intelligence, and imagination to their jobs.
A business can't be compassionate if it's not willing to practice equality and inclusion. Equality and inclusion are not the same as compassion, but they do go hand-in-hand. They complement each other. Practically speaking, companies that embrace decent pay, diverse hiring, inclusive language, and ethical behaviors likely have compassionate cultures.
Just how seriously have corporate leaders taken their responsibility to be compassionate, just, and equality-focused up until now? The data speaks for itself:
2014: Facebook admits it has “more work to do” in recruiting after reporting 74% of their US senior workforce is White and 77% is male.
2019: Five years later, Facebook has a US senior workforce that is 65% White, 25% Asian, and 67% male; all other ethnicities still report single digits.
2019: Uber expects a near $90 billion initial public offering (IPO), even as their drivers strike over low pay.
2019: Hundreds of McDonald's workers in US and UK cities staged walkouts