Y-Vonne Hutchinson is an Author, former international human rights lawyer, and Silicon Valley serial entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Founder of ReadySet, a diversity and inclusion training firm that helps tech giants, political leaders, media outlets, and Fortune 500 companies speak more productively about racism and turn talk into action. Y-Vonne also hosts a podcast called Time To Act about Diversity and Inclusion.

On the show, we talk about her latest book HOW TO TALK TO YOUR BOSS ABOUT RACE: Speaking Up Without Getting Shut Down. This episode is a conversation on race, inequality, and how race is fluid. A candid discussion from a global perspective that leaves the viewer with concrete advice that they can use in their work life.

Part memoir, part actionable guidebook, this book equips employees with a framework to think about race at work, prepares them to have frank and effective conversations with more powerful leaders, helps them center marginalized perspectives, and explains how to leverage power dynamics to get results while navigating backlash and gaslighting.

Transcript

Yulia Laricheva 00:04

Hey friends, welcome to another episode of Dream Nation Love. I'm your host Julia. And today on the show, I've got Yvonne Hutchinson. She's the CEO and founder of Ready Set. And that is an Equity Diversity and Inclusion firm based out of Berkeley, California, previous to running ReadySet. She was an International Human Rights and Labor Lawyer. She did that for over a decade. And she consulted for foreign national governments, the US Department of State, the UN, she's brilliant, and she has a new book out, and it's called How To Talk To Your Boss About Race: Speaking Up Without Getting Shut Down. It's also available on audiobook and it's a really quick read, it tackles really taboo topics like race. And what I really love about it is that she really brings in her law background into it. And she mentions a lot of cases that go towards dealing with race and race at work. I really enjoyed her writing. It's amazing. So you should check it out. It's a quick read. It's a it's a dense book, but it's a quick read, and it's quite enjoyable. So I hope you enjoyed the discussion as well. We talked about a lot of really, really interesting topics, and share this podcast with a friend if you enjoyed it. Also subscribe for the newsletter, which is on Dream Nation Love website, which is dreamnation.io. And also if you go to the dream nation love Instagram page, which is Dream Nation Love, subscribe to the newsletter, I'm going to be giving away a few copies of the book, enjoy the show and talk to you soon. Hi Y-Vonne, and thank you for being on the podcast. Thank you for writing your book.

Y-Vonne Hutchinson 01:33

Oh, thank you so much for having me. And I'm really, really happy that you enjoy that.

Yulia Laricheva 01:38

I have your book right here. It's a really great book. And it's very pertinent. Yeah, because it talks about the pandemic, and it talks about everything that collided in the pandemic. So that's what I really enjoyed about it. Because I'm like, wow, this is like probably the most current book that I've read about race and race relations and, and how to navigate work.

Y-Vonne Hutchinson 01:58

Yeah, I mean, I feel like we're in such a period of transition and change. In the book, I say that it's of its time, but it's also timeless, like these issues have been here since the founding of this country, and they're not going to go away overnight. And so, in a lot of ways, a lot of the things we talk about in the book are timeless at the same time, like you said, it's very much of its time, we're seeing just a fundamental shift in the way that we relate to our work, the way we talk about race in our country, and the collision between identity. And the workplace, or I should say they've always been we've always collided, but I guess the sort of recognition that you can't check your identity at the door when you go to work. And the fact that workplaces are really having to figure out how do we grapple with these sort of deeply embedded societal ills that impact our workers after they walk through our doors?

Yulia Laricheva 02:55

You right, or they just log on to zoom too.

Y-Vonne Hutchinson 02:58

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Yulia Laricheva 02:59

It's like, you know, nobody really talks about which is really interesting is also like, the backgrounds and the houses to peek into during a zoom on a huge conference call that shows societal structures. I'm not gonna mention which company it was. But you can see where like, my boss logs in from his like, amazing kitchen, you know, they're like tiny apartments and you're like, you're burly probably should think a different room just to like, not flaunt it, just to be considerate.

Y-Vonne Hutchinson 03:25

Yeah, I talk a lot about those blurred lines right there. I feel like there's almost this kind of like, artificial sense that we can separate who we are outside of work. And especially with the rise of remote work, the boundaries between personal and professional are even more blurred like you just, it's not like I can strip away my identity when I'm talking to you from my kitchen. Like we're literally in my apartment in my kitchen, with this little zoom background thing that I have set up. So it looks acceptable. But there's no way that I can take my identity out of my home. And I think that's what I think is so interesting when we have these conversations about identity and work because like you're saying the slides are just even more blurred now.

Yulia Laricheva 04:13

Oh, my gosh, I can go on because it's a conversation at itself. So I'm like, Oh, my gosh, there are so many points to talk about. But I want to bring it back to your book. Back to your work. I was gonna ask you my first question is always, what was your dream as a kid growing up?

Y-Vonne Hutchinson 04:28

So when I was a kid, I used to say, and maybe this is still possible, who knows that they wanted to be vice president. I said being the president was too much pressure, but don't want to be the person in front. Too much scrutiny. But I was like, I could be vice president. And then if I decided I wanted to be president, then I could run for president. So that was my dream as a kid. It's still kind of my dream.

Yulia Laricheva 04:53

It's a wonderful dream. Your priorities.

Y-Vonne Hutchinson 04:57

Yeah, it's like those kids who all want to be rested. If they're really missing the vote Vice President is where it’s at.

Yulia Laricheva 05:04

You get the same benefits really.

Y-Vonne Hutchinson 05:06

I get to be around the White House, I can pick and choose what initiatives I want to be.

Yulia Laricheva 05:12

I think that's what Biden did. And I'm pretty sure Dick Cheney ran the place when Bush was —

Y-Vonne Hutchinson 05:20

I...

Y-Vonne Hutchinson: The Author talks race, inequality, tourism, and securing our future.

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