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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?

My 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.

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?

Iloved 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 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?

Being 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.

I really enjoyed facilitating and developing others through program development the most; however, I also worked in Talent Acquisition and Learning for an entertainment technology company, and I took pleasure in developing the recruitment team and helping to hire the best talent. I moved into Employee relations and Talent Management and I strongly believe that leading a Center of Excellence and working both in corporate and field roles, enhances your ability to flawlessly execute for your clients. It creates greater communication and collaboration when you can look at HR strategy from both viewpoints.

You eventually moved into Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, right? What was your entry into this area?

In 2006, I was Director of Learning and Development, and HR Business Partners and I was asked to start a diversity committee. While it wasn’t necessarily planned for me to start a career in Diversity, I believe it is my calling. I started that Diversity committee, helped to launch ERG’s and it catapulted my career. I ended up moving into roles in professional services as the Global Head of I&D for a large company, responsible for 40,000 employees across 120 countries. I founded my second boutique consulting firm and flourished tremendously as a DE&I strategist and entrepreneur. In 2020, after the tragic public deaths of George Floyd and other Black Americans shining its bright light on the challenges of systemic racism both in our communities and our workplaces, it was refreshing to go from attempting to talk about race inside of an organization (and not getting a lot of traction), to training

C-suite executives on how to talk about racism. It was a blessing that so many DE&I professionals that had been put off, uninvited, and looked over—in some cases by their own organizations —all of a sudden became one of the most sought after, recognized and needed professions. My expertise and partnership mattered!

Why did you decide to take the role with Peloton given your thriving DE&I consulting business, CLM & Associates?

Well first, I believe in Peloton’s mission - “Peloton uses technology and design to connect the world through fitness, empowering people to be the best version of themselves anywhere, anytime.” I believe the body needs to be as sharp as the mind, so there was definitely a connection there. From the job perspective, I was getting a lot of calls for CHRO, SVP of Talent, SVP of HR and DEI leader roles. I wasn’t ready to walk away from the important work that I was leading for my clients, but when I started having conversations with Peloton, I met great people who were down to earth and gave me a great impression of the company culture. I met one of their senior board members, and the CEO, who were both engaging and easy to talk with. There wasn’t any pretentiousness or sugarcoating. Every time I met with someone, I thought to myself, “Wow, I would really like to partner with this leader.”

What sold me was that the person I would be reporting to. She was engaging, attentive and optimistic. She and the recruiter were phenomenal and made the entire candidate experience so worthwhile to me. Even when I pushed back on a few things, she was receptive and said, “we are ok if you push back, this is why we need you. We don’t know what we don’t know. We need you to help us.” It was the most inclusive and welcoming experience, and I knew that I would feel comfortable walking away from what I had built because Peloton would be the right culture for me. A place where I could talk about race, be myself, feel valued and make an impact. I also have watched them over the last few months as they pledged a $100 million commitment towards the issue of anti-racism, dedicated resources and memberships to HBCU students, invested in anti-racism training for leaders internally and raised their minimum wage to $19/hour.

I bet you have some war stories working in this field.

This is not an easy field to work in as I have experienced unconscious bias, assumptions and judgements about both my style and capability. I have been mislabeled and experienced some microaggressions, but I have used these experiences to inspire the architecture of my uniqueness. I honestly get along pretty well with people from all walks of life, but some people like to believe that their upbringing, or marriage to an ethnically diverse person provides them with the life experiences they need to be an expert in this space. Others have lived very sheltered lives and honestly are very uncomfortable with diversity and even more so with race, and hold positions of influence in their organizations and may not realize that their decisions can be very harmful to someone’s career….all due to their own discomfort and blind spots.

I can also tell you that some of my experiences have made me question if I am really as good as my clients and some former employers say that I am. Imposter syndrome is real, and when you have had colleagues question how you do something (as if there is only one way), or ask you why you didn’t see something they saw, it’s easy to internalize this thinking and to start questioning your confidence, competence, and capability. I’m an empathetic leader, and I have learned that it takes a level of boldness to lead this way, and I have always charted a different path, which I know, at times, comes with some level of criticism. I don’t know how to lead any other way, then what feels authentically true to me.

It goes without saying, I haven’t let my struggles nor my pain in doing this work become my identity. I simply save my explanations for people who are committed to understanding this work and understanding me.

This past year, I can’t tell you how many times I heard, “so you want us to hire diverse talent, but you are also saying hire the best talent…?” You should see the look on my face when I hear very senior leaders say this in front of their leadership teams. It is as if the two are mutually exclusive. So I have used my voice many times to amplify those who have been silenced and marginalized and I will continue to do so. As Black women, we have been conditioned to make it work, to create work-arounds, and to just get it done. I literally could write a book about that!

What guidance would you give CEOs or other leaders who want to make an investment in this area?

2021 will not be better simply because we desire for it to be, and we can’t make the future better until we comprehend why the past wasn’t good enough. So here are a couple of tips and some guidance that includes some real advice based on observations:

1. When you bring a group of leaders together to discuss leadership capability, instead of having a separate course on diversity; maximize the opportunity and build in a module dedicated to helping leaders understand inclusion and get them comfortable with the topic of race. They will be navigating race for years to come.

2. When discussing talent management and succession planning, add gender and ethnicity to the discussion you are already having, instead of holding a separate conversation on this with fewer people. Everyone needs to hear about their non-diverse pipelines, and recognize that the all-white male bench for the named critical roles isn’t good enough.

3. Simply having a listening session or a speaker on anti-racism will not improve your turnover or create better employee experiences for Black and Brown employees. Neither will writing a check to a diversity focused organization. A DE&I strategy must be pursued with intentionality, similar to a marketing or product strategy. It is equally important and should not take a backseat to anything else operationalized in the organization. Hiring a DE&I leader isn’t enough if you aren’t prepared to set them up for success. This isn’t window dressing and shouldn’t be treated as such.

4. It is helpful not to expect the one or two Black or Brown people on your leadership team to represent the diverse voice for the organization, be asked to serve as the Executive sponsor for everything diversity or provide their perspective or reaction each time something occurs in marginalized groups or communities. It is also important not to be critical of these individuals for having a different style that may not “fit” within the dominant culture norm of the organization, while over relying on them to contribute to enhancing the culture that your organizational policies, norms and quite frankly, your culture isn’t prepared to fix. It isn’t a sustainable strategy. Stop it!

5. Diversity and Inclusion are not HR initiatives. it is a way for an organization to change the way that business gets done and can significantly add to the bottom line.

6. Finally, the exhaustion, hurt and pain many experienced in 2020 did not go away when the calendar hit 2021. So while we celebrate a new year, we should ALL take a look at how we rebuild and improve the new way of working. Each and every human can contribute to this space in an impactful way. Every employee deserves to feel heard, make an impact and feel valued.

Thanks for the conversation, Black in HR. I am honored.