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THE JOURNEY OF A
DE&I EXECUTIVE
Black In HR Interviews Dr. Christal Morris
Dr. Christal Morris is a world renown Human Resources and DEI Executive who has worked around the globe bringing teams together and creating strategies that drive growth. Christal has recently accepted a new role as Senior Vice President of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion with Peloton. Christal also has previously led DE&I strategies for industry giants like Ernst and Young, Time Warner Cable, Intel and Willis Towers Watson. We sat down with her to discuss how she got her start, and overcame difficult obstacles, both personally and professionally, to become the powerhouse she is today.
Dr. Morris, you have been in the HR space for a while. How did you get your start? y beginnings in HR started with a summer internship at a hospital in college in an HR department and after finishing my undergraduate degree in Sociology at UC Santa Barbara, I really loved the experience and took an interest in people and culture. My Sociology classes and attending a PWI (predominantly white institution) prepared me for HR. I spent a lot of time educating the dominant culture as I navigated across various cultures in both school and through international travel. Given that I was primarily raised in an all-white neighborhood growing up in San Diego, and went to primarily non-diverse schools most of my life, I felt prepared at an early age to tackle the challenges of building inclusive spaces. I was an RA (resident assistant) for 2 of my 3 years on campus and I remember being teased for knowing all of my residents and quite a few students on campus. There were only 800 Black students out of 22,000 total, so the Black students were very close. Educating others on why the Black folks sat in the cafeteria together, or why I put on lotion after a shower, or didn’t wash my hair every day was a constant conversation. Go figure, a good portion of my life involved me helping others get comfortable with who I am. Shortly after graduation, I found myself in the tech industry and moved into Leadership Development, where I learned the inner-workings of HR specialties like OD, L&D, and talent management. 25 years later, it is still the best profession I could have chosen.
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You previously mentioned that you were able to experience international travel at a young age. Where did you go and how did that shape you? loved and continue to enjoy interacting and engaging across many different cultures. I went to the Philippines and China for many weeks to facilitate training on Planning and Logistics as I helped to redesign the supply chain strategy for Intel (this was late 90’s). I went
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alone, and navigated Shanghai for 4 weeks, and learned to rely on the relationships I had developed with my Chinese colleagues. I learned that I was very different from my colleagues in other countries, and people were fascinated by my dark skin, my hair and speech. It took me back to growing up in San Diego and moving from a predominantly black neighborhood to an all white neighborhood. The day we moved in, a little girl asked me why my skin was brown, and I didn’t know how to respond. I simply said, “I was born this way.” 20 years later, as I am walking down the streets of Shanghai getting lots of stares, people pointing, touching my skin and hair; I recall how comfortable and confident I was feeling different and knowing I belonged there. Since then, I have adopted the mantra that I belong in every space I occupy. I find that travel really centers me and is almost like therapy. I have now traveled to over 50 countries, and the lexicon has strengthened my cultural competence throughout my career journey. I truly enjoy immersing myself in experiences centered in learning about others or helping to share the US norms with others. It is an opportunity to provide counter stereotypes, and make way for others to see something different than what they have consumed in the media that may cause them to have a prejudiced attitude towards Black and Brown people. What did you like the most about HR, particularly as a specialist? eing a specialist meant I could dive deeper into a few specific areas within HR. Growing up in Learning and development with a top corporate university structure, I was able to transform the lives of those I engaged with by curating professional development experiences for new supervisors at Intel. More specifically, I could immediately see the results of my labor through the observable behavior and different styles of leadership demonstrated as a direct output of some of the experiences and insights gained from the programs I developed.
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