Ideas worth spreading

How to get serious about diversity and inclusion in the workplace

2,409,077 views |

Janet Stovall |

TED@UPS

• July 2018

Imagine a workplace where people of all colors and races are able to climb every rung of the corporate ladder -- and where the lessons we learn about diversity at work actually transform the things we do, think and say outside the office. How do we get there? In this candid talk, inclusion advocate Janet Stovall shares a three-part action plan for creating workplaces where people feel safe and expected to be their unassimilated, authentic selves.

Imagine a workplace where people of all colors and races are able to climb every rung of the corporate ladder -- and where the lessons we learn about diversity at work actually transform the things we do, think and say outside the office. How do we get there? In this candid talk, inclusion advocate Janet Stovall shares a three-part action plan for creating workplaces where people feel safe and expected to be their unassimilated, authentic selves.

About the speaker

Janet Stovall

Inclusion advocate, speechwriter

See speaker profile

UPS's Janet Stovall has developed a business approach that addresses corporate racism head-on -- and has created methods to help dismantle it.

Eduardo Bonilla-Silva | Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2017 | Book

Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in America

Colorblindness keeps "good" people from recognizing the arguments, phrases and stories they use to explain and justify racial inequity. This book addresses the real problems caused by colorblind racism and offers advice on what individuals can do interpersonally and organizations can do structurally to confront and dismantle racism.

Craig Steven Wilder | Bloomsbury Press, 2013 | Book

Ebony and Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America's Universities

Slaves were sold to start colleges, expand campuses and pay professors. Slaves waited on faculty and students, and college presidents courted slave owners and traders. This fascinating study shines a light on histories that many institutions have forgotten — or wish they could.

David K. Shipler | Vintage, 2016 | Book

A Country of Strangers: Blacks and Whites in America

How do Black and White people see each other really? What assumptions do they make? How much of what we do is based not in reality but on biases and self-fulfilling prophecies that just look like truth? This book digs deep into the stereotypes and discrimination that drive our behavior and interactions.

Michelle Alexander | The New Press, 2010 | Book

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

As much as we'd like to believe that we’re in a post-racial society, we simply replaced old social controls like Jim Crow and legal racial segregation with a new one, mass incarceration. The result is a caste system that robs whole generations of liberty and livelihood and distorts the idea of justice.

Jared Diamond | W. W. Norton & Company, 2005 | Book

Guns, Germs and Steel

Real estate isn't the only area where it's all about location, location, location. Diamond argues that providential geography — not intellectual, moral or genetic superiority — gave some cultures a head start that has allowed them to gain and hold on to societal dominance.

Trudy Bourgeois | CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2017 | Book

Equality: Courageous Conversations About Women, Men, and Race to Spark a Diversity and Inclusion Breakthrough

Real progress toward diversity and inclusion in corporate America starts with courageous conversations — talking about all the things we’re most afraid of talking about.

About TED Institute

Every year, TED works with a group of select companies and foundations to identify internal ideators, inventors, connectors, and creators. Drawing on the same rigorous regimen that has prepared speakers for the TED main stage, TED Institute works closely with each partner, overseeing curation and providing intensive one-on-one talk development to sharpen and fine tune ideas. The culmination is an event produced, recorded, and hosted by TED, generating a growing library of valuable TED Talks that can spur innovation and transform organizations.

Read more about the TED Institute