Episode 7 - Virginia Essandoh

Virginia Essandoh joins JSL’s Chief Diversity Officer, Vickie Hubbard, for the seventh episode of Not Your Average DEI Podcast! In this episode, Vickie and Virginia discuss the obstacles affecting the progression of DEI in the legal industry and effective strategies for overcoming those obstacles.

Virginia Essandoh serves as Ballard Spahr's Chief Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Officer. She sits on the Management Committee and Expanded Board and is responsible for overseeing, implementing, and providing strategic leadership to Ballard Spahr's diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. Working closely with the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Council, Virginia advises and collaborates with firm management, including Department Chairs, Office Managing Partners, and administrative professionals to implement the firm's diversity, equity, and inclusion strategic goals and inspire the concepts of diversity, equity, and inclusion into firm culture. 

Before joining Ballard Spahr, Virginia was senior consultant at Altman Weil, Inc. In this capacity, she assisted in developing and implementing diversity and gender initiatives and strategies in private law firms and corporate legal departments, advised on organizational and management structures for law firms and corporate legal departments, and facilitated law firm strategic planning, client satisfaction, strategic marketing, and management structure analysis for her clients.

Transcript

Speaker 1: Vickie 

Speaker 2: Virginia 

Transcript 

Speaker 1  

Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of Not Your Average DEI Podcast. Again, my name is Vickie Hubbard, and I am one of the members of JURISolutions Legal’s DE and I Committee, as well as the Chief Diversity Officer, and my pronouns are she and her.  

And I am so excited to have a wonderful guest on our show today, Virginia Essandoh, who is currently the Chief Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion officer with Ballard Spahr.  

So, listeners, let's all welcome Virginia to the show. Hello, Virginia.  

Speaker 2  

Hello, thank you Vickie for having me.  

Speaker 1  

I am so thrilled to have you here today, and for everyone that's listening in, the topic of our show is best practice tips for overcoming potential obstacles as Chief Diversity, Equity, and inclusion Officer in the legal industry.  

And what better guest to have on our show than Virginia? And as I mentioned, Virginia is the Chief Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Officer with Ballard Spahr, and she's been with the firm for many years and she’s served in the diversity space for 14 years.  

And so Virginia, as we begin this particular episode, I like to start off the show with a few fun fact questions before we jump into the topic of today's show.  

So, Virginia, I know that you or your office is currently located in Philadelphia. Are you still located in Philadelphia?  

Speaker 2  

I'm personally located in Philadelphia, but we are in 15 cities across the country.  

Speaker 1  

Have you always resided in Philadelphia?  

Speaker 2  

No, so I was born and raised in Racine, WI, born in Milwaukee, actually raised in Racine, WI, and went to law school in Chicago, went to College in Ohio, and I worked for a consulting firm that specialized in consulting to law firms and legal departments based in Philadelphia.  

And so I moved here for that role and then came to Ballard 14 years ago.  

Speaker 1  

Oh, excellent. Exciting. So as it relates to your travels, do you have a favorite vacation destination?  

Speaker 2  

I would say Hawaii is my favorite place. I've never seen the ocean so blue and sky so blue, and Ghana is my second favorite place to visit.  

Speaker 1  

Oh, exciting. Okay, so as Ballard Spahr's Chief Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Officer, what are your key responsibilities?  

Speaker 2  

So, I work closely with our Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Council to develop and drive our strategy related to having a law firm where we have lawyers and administrative professionals who come from all backgrounds and all perspectives.  

The Council then works closely with the board of the firm and so we recommend policies and strategies for the board to adopt and to roll out to the firm.  

I also work very closely with the leaders of our women's initiative, Ballard Women in their strategy and execution of their goals.  

And so, I'd like to say that primarily I prefer to work behind the scenes, sort of driving our leaders and helping them fulfill their responsibility as really leaders in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at the firm.  

And so I talk about my team in a couple of different ways. I talk about it in terms of the department, we have a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion department. There are five of us in the department at Ballard.  

But then I also talk about my bigger team, which is all 1,200 partners and employees at Ballard because this is the work of all of us.  

So, I am a developer and driver of strategy as it relates to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.  

Speaker 1  

Absolutely, and with 14 years of experience serving with Ballard Spahr, what do you enjoy most about your role?  

Speaker 2  

The small wins that happen every day that I enjoy the most. They might feel small, but I know how significant they are.  

An example would be a couple of weeks ago we dedicated a conference room to a former partner, Cherise Lilly, who was I believe one of the first people of color on the board of the firm. She was the 1st woman of color, first Black woman, to chair the litigation department or department at the firm.  

And she's just a woman of firsts. She did so much for the city of Philadelphia as its city solicitor, and so we dedicated a conference room in her name and it brings me joy that for generations to come, lawyers will walk down our halls and see representation of themselves, kind of in that coveted space of conference space in law firms.  

That sort of a coveted corridor or those are coveted floors and law firms, your conference room space and so the fact that we had this conference room with her name on it, it will have her face in that room is an example of what brings me joy, because I know how satisfying and how important it is that gesture is in our firm.  

So, it's those things where they make major impacts for the firm that bring me joy. And at Ballar, I'm fortunate enough to say those things happen on a regular basis.  

Speaker 1  

That is so refreshing to hear, and because you say that I'm curious to hear more examples. Give me one more.  

Speaker 2  

Sure, you know, part of what is important in this work, especially as it relates to equity, is to regularly call out inequity and that's something that we started to do a long time ago. We didn't want to sugarcoat, sort of areas where we had challenges.  

And so, you know, this would have been a decade or so ago when we didn't have any Black male partners at the firm, or actually, we had one black male partner at the firm.  

And every time I had an opportunity to have an audience with the lawyers, I would call that out and there would be people who were surprised because it hadn't occurred to them.  

But there are plenty of us who noticed that, would notice that on a regular basis, right? You're in a big room of partners, there are certain things that certain people notice.  

And when we brought over the next Black partner at the firm, because I had been mentioning it on a regular basis and sort of calling it out, more people understood the significance of it.  

And, you know, we could have just hired him and lateraled him over and people would have been like, okay, another partner. But because it was something that we had heightened the focus on, people understood how important it was to continue that trend, and they understood it every other hire, you know, Black male partners in the firm since then.  

And so, that's an example of it might not seem like a huge deal, but the fact that I did something difficult, which was to call it out every time, they made people uncomfortable every time I said it.  

“And by the way, we still don't have any more Black men...” you know, I would say things like that, “and we still don't have another black male partner.”  

When it happened, more people I think both its impact and that realization, when it hit everyone in a positive way, brought me tremendous joy.  

Speaker 1  

And you know, my thought would be that you being that alarm that consistently went off, it gave others the courage to actually, even if they didn't vocalize it, to show up more authentically as it relates to them observing this as well and supporting you in this.  

And so I see that as a major accomplishment. My next question kind of connects to this. I'm curious to know that in your years of serving within the DEI space within the legal industry, what are some examples of obstacles that you may have faced and overcome? And I'm not sure if you saw that example as initially an obstacle that was overcome. I definitely see it as a win for sure, but do you have any examples of obstacles that you would like to share?  

Speaker 2  

There are so many, and that's the reality of this work. There are obstacles every day and they are never overcome and I can speak from experience. And that's a sad point they are never overcome. We can get something in place, we can get a strategy or initiative in place to ensure, for instance, that for all open positions we try to ensure diverse candidate slate, we can make that policy and we can have a system in place to make that happen.  

But if we do that, hold people accountable consistently and regularly, it will easily fall by the wayside. As new people come in and out of the firm and are responsible for recruiting, it could easily shift.  

As leadership changes in an organization or in the firm, all that can easily shift and so it's hard to talk about overcoming any challenges because you have to stay on top of everything, no matter if you're successful once, you have to be successful again and again and again and again.  

And, you know, another simple example of that might be, you know, we could win best law firms for women one year and then not win in the next year, right?  

So, yes, it's an accomplishment, you win it because you've met certain standards and benchmarks and then you submit data and you have a year where you've had some attrition and then you don't win it that year, but then you win it again the next year, right?  

And so there are always obstacles, always struggles that we never overcome. That's real talk, like you just never overcome them.  

You just figure out how to be consistent and hold people accountable, but you have to keep holding people accountable.  

Speaker 1  

And what are some strategies that you've implemented and/or observed that have been effective and respected in holding individuals accountable? What are some strategies?  

Speaker 2  

I would say the number one successful strategy has been when it comes from the Chair of the firm and the board of the firm.  

So, when we want to accomplish something, if we want to put a policy or a procedure in place and it doesn't happen because it's something I want to do or it doesn't happen because it comes from the office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.  

When it's successful, it happens because the Chair of the firm has said this is what we're going to do and you're accountable to me for it and I will hold people accountable.  

And then our board as well, our board says that we are taking ownership and responsibility for this. And in an example would be one that I just mentioned last year we incorporated a policy that said for all open positions for lawyers and staff, you have to have a diverse candidate slate and it has to be inclusive of people of color.  

Particularly black lawyers and staff and we had that specific language. And, you know, that can be tough for people to hear it like that, but it came from the board.  

And we did add some language that said unless it's impractical, and then you have to explain why it's impractical as to why you couldn't have a diverse candidate slate for the open position.  

And so that's an example where people aren't accountable to me, they're accountable to the board, and that means that there's a quarterly report for every single position that was posted.  

And of course, there are some of those caveats, like it has to be a posted position, and so for every position that's posted, lawyers and staff, there is a protocol we put in place in which we need to see the demographics of all the applicants, all the candidates, and then breakdown the demographics of all of the candidates.  

Did you interview? Did you recruit? Did you have black candidates in the mix? It's that level and that's where we are right now, like, it has to be... and that's been an evolution at Ballard, too, right?  

To get that specific, recognizing that there's a reason why we have to be that specific, but then it also makes people uncomfortable, but there's accountability, and there's a report, and there's a report that's analyzed and it's given to the board, and people have to explain whenever they diverged from that policy.  

So that's what the accountability looks like, regular reporting and then justification when you don't do what we define as critical to our goals and who we are as a firm.  

Speaker 1  

Yes, I love that and I'm sure that these are great takeaways for our listeners. And, you know, to your point as it relates to having the voice behind this particular example of a strategy and policy being carried out, being one of the leaders of the firm, the senior leaders of the firm, board members of the firm and how impactful it is when individuals that oversee a particular firm, how impactful just having them spearhead visually for those that are looking and or observing a new policy, being pushed forward, being able to see that they actually support it and that they're actually leading in this particular initiative.  

It does play a valuable role. And so, I thank you for sharing that example because I think that's really, really important. And so with that, and I love where we're headed with this conversation, of course across various organizations and law firms, individuals are transitioning into the senior diversity roles across the nation.  

And so we have new budding DE and I leaders that are taking on this new role and would love to hear from you some best practices that you would recommend that would prepare them for success within the first one or three years of them serving in their role.  

What would be some best practices that you would recommend that they consider to better prepare them for success?  

Speaker 2  

That's a great question. I often have the opportunity to work with new leaders in this space and mentor people along the way, and one of the things that I say is start slow and take your time and invest the time into learning the culture of the organization.  

Don't come in hot and know that there's a tendency and a desire to effect change pretty quickly, but the seriousness and the implications of this work requires that you learn the culture first and you understand and learn the people in the firm or in the organization first.  

Understand what behaviors are rewarded, what behaviors are not accepted, because that's how you're going to build your strategy, and it takes time.  

And so you have to be intentional about earning the trust and demonstrating integrity so that people trust you and that takes time.  

I always say I didn't start to see success at Ballard until five years in. And that was five years of listening, of understanding what it took to be successful, who the successful people were, how did we define success, getting to know the leaders, traveling to 15 offices, and meeting with all the office managing partners and directors of office administration and meeting with partners.  

Another thing that worked for me, and I admit this might not work for every organization, but I focused at the highest level of the organization first, and I felt like if I didn't invest my time into getting to know our leaders and spending time with the partners and letting them trust me and understand where I was coming from, let them hear me speak and hear the perspective that I've brought to this that I was focused on the business and I was focused on the firm being successful, and for those partners to be successful.  

I had to learn to speak their language, and so I took a lot of time to do that. And when I say focus at the highest levels, you cannot be effective and you cannot help associates until you have a relationship or weigh in with the partners or the leaders of the firm.  

And so, if an associate needs something, unless, like, I'm not useful to them if I've spent my time just focused on the associates right away. I needed to start at the higher level so that I knew how to go about getting the resources that the associate needed, if that makes sense.  

And so I've put a lot of time, many years into developing relationships with the highest levels of the firm so that I could be effective to help others, so I knew how to get things done and the best way to people’s hearts and minds.  

And so start slow. Take your time. Learn the culture. Learn how things move and how things shake in the organization. Learn who your influencers are. Learn what turns people's hearts and minds and their behaviors, and then the second piece would be focused at the highest level of the organization.  

And understand that really well so that you can be effective and be infected throughout the organization. So those are the two biggest pieces of advice that I often give.  

And then I would say a best practice is to always be working on yourself and your own development and self-awareness. And so I've always known kind of where my biases are. And so I'm always working on that because I don't want that to get in the way of my integrity at the firm because I'm biased about something.  

And so always work on your own self-development on a regular basis, whether it's your own mental health, whether it's doing what you need to do to be mentally prepared to handle the heaviness of this work.  

Because you have to model a lot of behaviors and so if you're not in the right space spiritually, mentally, emotionally, then you can't handle what all comes with this role, and then you start to model behaviors that you don't want to model.  

And so I often encourage people to make sure they're taking care of themselves, that they're taking courses on bias for themselves privately, that they need to get a coach privately because people pay attention to our actions.  

They pay attention to every single word that we use, and then when you're in a position like that, or you're modeling behaviors, that means you're always on.  

And if you're always on, that means you always have to be taking care of yourself so that you can model the appropriate behaviors.  

Speaker 1  

This is such good information, I'm sure that individuals listening will take a lot away from what you just shared, and some really good recommendations as well.  

I'm actually new in my role as Chief Diversity Officer and quite a bit of what you share is a part of my own personal self-development plan that I've tasked for myself.  

And so it's good to hear from you that I'm on the right track with that as well because I think it is important as it relates to your own professional development and personal development as a professional and most specifically in a DE and I role that we're always learning, seeking out new avenues and new ways for us to identify where our strengths and weaknesses may be.  

And also to have those individuals who have been very successful serving in a CDO role as a mentor to help you find the blind spots. So I believe that you shared a lot of great nuggets and I really appreciate you sharing that.  

Speaker 2  

Thank you.  

Speaker 1  

And so, as it relates to support from law firms, what can law firms do to best support Chief Diversity Officers in their roles?  

Speaker 2  

I think that first thing is to give the person, you know after they've earned it, of course, give the person a seat at the management table, at the leadership table. But that's probably the hardest thing for organizations and law firms to do.  

Recognize all the places where you need the guidance and advise the eyes and ears of your diversity professional. That could mean sitting in the room while you're evaluating summer associates to hire.  

Or you're sitting in the room and you're listening about the discussion about who's going to advance to partnership. Those places are important spaces and places for your diversity professional to be in because they need to use their skills and expertise to think of ways in which the process needs to be and to ensure that the process is equitable.  

And so that's really important in terms of support, giving your professional access to information into important meetings and discussions.  

The second thing is making sure they have the support that they need in terms of staff. Ask your Chief Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Officer or diversity professional what sort of support they need.  

I've been very fortunate and it took some time, you know, this was 14 years ago, you know, to build a team and build a staff.  

But it's necessary that your professional can tell you what they need in order to be effective to get their job done, right? And so just as the role, and the role will evolve, and as it evolves the needs of the diversity team should and will evolve.  

We saw an influx of clients asking for demographic information on who's working on their matters. And so with that influx, we had to hire. I have two coordinators who focus exclusively on responding to the depth and breadth of requests that we get from clients about the demographics of their teams and the utilization.  

And they want to know the demographics of the firm overall, you know, they want detailed data analysis and so we had to evolve and grow with that because of how we, fortunately, increased our quantity of lawyers of color.  

In particular, we expanded our business resource group. So we had what started out as a minority associates group when I first started at Ballard evolved and matured to a diverse lawyers group, then matured even further to break off and in addition to the diverse lawyers group, we have a Black lawyers group, Hispanic lawyers group, an Asian American business resource group.  

You know, that happens because of growth and you need the support of your firm to say I see that growth happening means we need to hire more so now we can manage 8 active business resource groups.  

And part of what was important to me was we wanted the business resource groups to be effective, to have business plans and operate in a business and professional way and develop clients.  

And so because we do that like we needed a coordinator who would keep them organized and help them with their business plans, right?  

And so as our strategy around Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion has evolved, then a team has grown and I needed different skill sets and the firm has supported that growth along the way.  

Speaker 1  

That's wonderful.  

Speaker 2  

Something else just occurred to me that I should share. So when a lot of organizations, and Ballard included, when we talk about our firm-wide diversity efforts, we were really talking about lawyers.  

We weren't really firm-wide, meaning we didn't have a strategy specifically related to administrative staff. And so, a couple of years ago, we recognized that in order to really have a firm-wide, a true and honest firmwide strategy would be to hire someone who was going to focus on that.  

And so in 2020, we hired our first Manager of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, whose primary job is to ensure that we're staying honest to who we say we are and that we do what we say we do.  

Meaning if it's going to be a firmwide diversity strategy, then that needed to incorporate our administrative staff. And so the manager’s responsibility is exclusively to make sure that we're developing our strategy to incorporate our administrative staff.  

And so that is another way that Ballard has supported the growth and evolution of the work that we're doing. And it really was our chair who said, go ahead and do it. If that's what you need, hire someone who can focus where you can't.  

And so we've done that and that's an example of evolution of a strategy and an effort and a firm supporting it.  

Speaker 1  

Absolutely. And having the budget support so that you can grow the team to do the things that you don't have the bandwidth to do, which is really important as well. So in your opinion, why are law firms having challenges moving the needle in advancing their DE and I initiative?  

Speaker 2  

We all have challenges because we are trying to shift a culture that was not made to shift. That's in every organization, in every law firm, for sure.  

We are trying to evolve a culture that makes room at a table, while at the same time educating people that moving over to make room doesn't mean that they're pushed away from the table.  

And these are all fundamental struggles for people. Just on a human level, right? On a human level, we are all threatened by someone or something that might shift the atmosphere, right?  

And so that's what we all face. And so the challenges will always be challenges that we must always overcome and sometimes find new ways to overcome them, but we all have the same ones and it's recruiting.  

Just when we think we've got recruiting figured out, and to a certain extent we sort of do, I think at Ballard, and many big firms figured out how to recruit, but we all struggle with retention. Why can't we retain?  

And there are so many factors related to that, so many nuances, and we all know what they are in law firms. We all know what they are and we're doing different things to try to address and fix it.  

We struggle with, right now retention looks a little bit different and difficult because of the market being hot and it's simmering down a little bit, but there's so much movement and so much compensation out there that it was hard to compete.  

And so that's making and made retention more difficult over the last year and so we all struggle with people re evaluating their lives and what they want to do and what kind of work they want to do and how they want to live their lives.  

Like all of these challenges we're all facing, we have a hard time we struggle with and are challenged with diversity, equity, and inclusion because people don't want to come back to the office.  

And we've studied and we know why they don't, and yet we still want them to come back to the office. So it's all of these things. So we all have the same struggles, we all have the same challenges.  

They're not going to go away. We're going to just find different ways to address them and then there'll be new ones and I hope that isn't too cynical. That's the reality, and that's why I and my colleagues, we are always on our toes.  

We are always trying to feel the atmosphere, to see when it's time to steer and shift, and so I think that will always be the case.  

Speaker 1  

Thank you for that. And so, with that observation within the past two years in which DE and I has really taken a front seat as it relates to many initiatives across corporations and law firms, have you observed any advances that you would like to share?  

Speaker 2  

I do like the addition of and focus on equity now. That's something that we saw focus on over the last couple of years. People fed it and they used the acronym, which I don't.  

I don't personally use the acronym because, to me, the words have impact. Every time I say the words diversity, equity, inclusion, it's just another opportunity for people to hear what I'm saying and hear what I am here for and what I do, and what I'm all about.  

And so I will never, and we don't in our materials, you will never see on Ballard's website an acronym related to diversity, equity, and inclusion because that word, equity, is powerful and I want it heard and said as often as possible.  

Particularly for us, because we stand by it. We didn't add the E in our strategy right away. We took a year to evaluate the equity piece.  

We took a year to understand what it means and what it would mean for Ballard and what it would feel like to have an equity mindset before we adopted it.  

And so I am encouraged by, over the last couple of years, people including equity in their commitment, I trust and assume and hope at the same time that they are actually committed to equity versus focus on equality, that they understand how everything has to shift, systems and processes and traditions, in order to look for opportunities to improve equity in law firms and organizations.  

And because we take it so seriously, I'm assuming everyone else is. And so I'm encouraged by the addition of a strategy around bringing equity to our workplaces.  

Speaker 1  

And I love that you make that point, Virginia, because I think that sometimes people equate the word equity with equality and they mean two different things.  

And so, as it relates to some of the success that your firm has had as relates to equity, would you mind sharing some strategies that you might recommend to other law firms that would like to impact their initiatives around equity as well?  

Speaker 2  

Sure. So because equity needs to touch every aspect of law firms, we have strategies around equity for everything and so I'm just trying to think of a couple as examples.  

I think that our policy related to open positions is about affirming equity. It is the fact that we were specific about ensuring black lawyers and staff are part of who we're looking at for open positions in a very intentional way.  

And not just open positions, but we want to know who got the offer and who didn't get the offer, and why. That's an equity mindset. But, that is also born out of an analysis of where we are lacking, right?  

And so you have to have done the work, the history, the benchmarking to see where you have not had success in order to make a bold statement to say particularly, we're looking to include Black lawyers.  

You just can't say that for no reason. You have to have benchmarking to show that that's an area where you have not done well, right?  

And that you don't do well historically. So I would say in our hiring of new lawyers and staff, we've incorporated equity in that concept of who and how we look for candidates and who gets offers ultimately.  

And so, we are seeing some success there because again, we have the accountability factor. So I can track kind of what our candidate pool has looked like over the last. 12 years compared to, you know, now that we have that policy in place.  

And I remember sharing a statistic earlier this year or last year that we now have more Black lawyers than we've ever had, right? And so you kind of look for those correlations and so you can see some successes there with the caveat that again, as I mentioned, we all struggle with retention.  

So we've got to address that. If they talk about retention, I now have some dashboards that our client value and innovation team have created for me so that I can look at billable hours on a monthly basis by race.  

And again, that's something that we would not have considered before we were intentional about equity, so now I can, at the push of a button, have a dashboard that shows me the percentage of white associates at budget, under budget, or above budget, black associates at, above, or under budget and I can look at that correlation every day.  

I have now tools to have different discussions. And because we have educated our leaders like we're going to hear some new discussions, you're gonna hear some new conversations, they know and they're prepared and they're willing to have this discussion and know that they can easily be asked the question of why is this group of associates under budget on a consistent basis?  

We’re going to ask the hard questions, you have to answer it. You have to answer it. You can't ignore a question. You have to answer it, right? So that is equity in work allocation and who's getting opportunities.  

That's equity. And looking at hours and billable hours in a new way. I mean I could go on and on because it touches this equity mindset, touches every single thing.  

When our leaders sit down to have a discussion about the partnership class and who's going to be elevated to partner, having an equity mindset means you have to understand before you have that discussion. You have to understand the concept of performance.  

Who gets judged on performance and who gets judged on potential? And that's the new dialogue. Those are the new conversations that have to happen.  

And I'm not making any judgment statements, but studies and surveys have shown that there is a group of folks who get judged on their potential, and it's easy for us to see what they have the potential to do and we promote them based on that.  

While others had to have already performed and so I'm not making that up, you know, that comes from somewhere.  

And so an equity mindset means you're going to be reminded of this concept before you go into any decision-making. By the way, we're going to do a study before you have this conversation about what people brought to the table before they were made partner and was that equitable in making decisions, right?  

It's kind of bringing all these things to forefront so they're top of mind before the decisions are made. An example, something that’s easy and it's not easy, but it sounds easy, as talking about everyone at the same hour on different days, right?  

So like, if you're going to talk about 5 candidates for partner instead of talking about candidate number one at 9, candidate number two at 10, candidate number three at 11, you take a break.  

Go answer some emails, come back and talk about candidate number four at 2, and candidate number five at 3 or 4. Like, you're not as alert or hot as you were at 9:00 AM in the morning when you're talking about candidate number five at 4:00 in the...right?  

And so here's an idea. Here's a concept for equity: use five days. I've got each candidate from 9 to 10 when you're fresh and you're bringing the same level of energy to each discussion.  

That's what equity feels like when you put it on and you wear it. And if you don't like that, then you don't like equity.  

So that's a whole conversation about every process and system and tradition that we respect in law firms, how we have to hold it up to the light, look at it, and hold it back up to the light again, and that's what equity is.  

Speaker 1  

Well said. Thank you so much for that. So, we're heading towards the end of our show, but before we leave, you mentioned earlier that you do quite a bit of mentoring.  

And so would you mind sharing, are you involved in any mentoring programs or do you do individual mentoring?  

Speaker 2  

Last year Ballard had a peer mentoring program and so we were matched with our peers in the firm and we sort of mentored one another. So a chief in the firm and another department was my mentor and I was her mentor.  

And so that was kind of a formal peer mentoring program, but most of the mentoring I do is on an informal basis with either people in my department or other diversity professionals who have been connected with through our partners, through our clients who have folks in this role.  

And they've asked me to just spend some time with them on a regular basis and kind of talk through some of their issues with them. So I guess I have to call that mentoring.  

Speaker 1  

Oh, it's absolutely mentoring, and not to put you on the spot, but in all of your years in your career, can you think of maybe one example of maybe a mentor or a sponsor that really made a difference and helped to elevate your career?  

Speaker 2  

Yes, I can think of a lot. And they're all at Ballard, well not all at Ballard. They're, you know, at my previous consulting firm, too. I guess I've been fortunate then, but it's hard for me to pick one.  

I also am an observer of people and force people to mentor and sponsor me when they don't even know they're doing it.  

Speaker 1  

I love it.  

Speaker 2  

Yeah, so I observe and take from, and I believe everyone has something to give in something for us to learn from everybody has strengths, things that they're great at. And so because I'm so focused and I'm trying to be self-aware of the things where I'm terrible at and the areas where I'm weak.  

I'm always trying to learn from others in those particular areas. And so, you know, I take a little bit from everybody around me and learn from them whether it's somebody who, when they ask me a question, they ask me the most specific question and they're very particular and they make sure I answer them and it might annoy me.  

I'm like, I need to be better at that. I need to be better at asking exactly what I want. And so, whether it's the chair of our firm who has always engaged me in dialogue and has let me try things and fail, and try something else without being worried about my job, that's sponsorship and that's mentoring.   

Whether it's a partner who has told me that I was too heavy-handed with an associate or told me that I was too unforgiving with an associate, you know, that's mentoring to me because it helps me with my tone and the message that I want to come across.  

Most importantly, the best mentoring that I get are the people who are on my team who tell me or remind me and encourage me and help me be who I say I am and who I encourage our leaders to be, they hold me accountable for being that way with them.  

And so, if I talked to our leaders about taking time with your people and how important it is to get to know them on a personal basis and to slow down sometimes.  

And to offer your folks psychological safety so that they feel like they can make a mistake with you and they can feel safe in that and not that you will criticize them to no end.  

Well, I have a great team that reminds me that I need to be that way for them, too. And so I recognize that I want to be the best leader and boss for those who are in my department, and that's mentoring, and that's sponsoring because they helped me to be a great leader, and so I value that.  

Speaker 1  

I love that, Virginia. And you're definitely blessed, I will say that. Well, thank you so much, this has been such an awesome call. I really appreciate your taking the time once again to speak with us.  

And before we end our episode today, do you have any parting words that you'd like to share with everyone?  

Speaker 2  

In your work, just remember the importance of understanding the culture of an organization so that you can be effective. And take your time to understand how to get things done and how the best way to relate to people in this work because that's crucial, and that then trickles down to success.  

Speaker 1  

Absolutely. Thank you once again, Virginia. Everyone, thank you so much for listening in to another episode of Not Your Average DEI Podcast, and tune in next time.