Art of Inclusion
Kamala Avila-Salmon discusses her career spent building programs and leading organizational transformations to drive representation and inclusion in music, tech, television and film.
Episode Notes
How do you turn a genuine desire for improving Diversity, Equity and Inclusion into actions that actually change systems, processes, and cultures for the better? In our episode with Kamala Avila-Salmon, the first Head of Inclusive Content at Lionsgate Motion Picture Group—you’ll find practical guidance from a luminary who’s helped to orchestrate change at scale and across industries.
In her talk with Jesse, Kamala describes the influence of black characters on TV early in her life; how she got curious, creative and scrappy to find jobs and create meaningful roles early in her career at spots like RCA and Bad Boy Entertainment; her practical and brave perspective on professional networking; how she pushed the music and television industries to adopt a more inclusive posture as the era of digital transformation took hold; the impact she had on both customer and employee experiences by widening representation in marketing at Google and Facebook; what she sees as the tenants of inclusive marketing; and where the entertainment industry needs to go from here on representation, inclusion, and equity.
(3:00) Kamala’s early years: drawing inspiration from representation
(06:45) Breaking through without direct connections in a ‘who you know’ industry
(11:47) Reflections from a disruptive time in the music business
(15:48) Back to business school & back to her first love: television
(17:16) Experiencing the intrapreneurial, energizing culture of Google
(21:17) Discovering her tenets of inclusive marketing
(25:38) Accepting the role of a lifetime with Lionsgate
(28:41) How transforming the workforce makes inclusion possible across systems, processes, and policies
Guest Bio
Kamala Avila-Salmon is the first-ever Head of Inclusive Content for the Lionsgate Motion Picture Group, where she develops and implements diversity, equity, and inclusion strategies to reflect a globally diverse audience in the studio’s film slate. After pursuing her BA and MBA from Harvard, she has worked across music, movies, TV, tech, and streaming entertainment, leading marketing campaigns for Janelle Monae, The Voice, and Red Table Talk, to name a few.
She is an outspoken voice on issues of race, racism, and anti-Blackness, working to diversify the powerful images and messages disseminated by Hollywood. She has penned several Medium articles on DEI in the workplace, and in the entertainment industry specifically; and she hosts the podcast, “From Woke to Work: The Anti-Racist Journey”, geared at helping people go from "woke" feelings to clear, effective action to advance racial justice..
Helpful Links
From Woke to Work podcast
Referenced in episode: Work Rules by Laszlo Bock
Listen to Janelle Monae
Kamala on LinkedIn
+ Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Kamala Avila-Salmon: What we should be doing is trying to think about how are we putting images on screen that resonate with the broadest portion of our audience? How are we empowering storytellers who have been historically excluded? If the industry is serious about diversifying, gate opening has to be a part of the strategy.
We actually have to transform the workforce of the studio holistically. And that means finding ways to open the doors to people who have not been able to get in. To remember that there is a place for you in this work. And if we leave this work to only the few people who have it in their title, we won't get there.
[00:01:01] Jesse Purewal: From Qualtrics Studios, this is Breakthrough Builders. A series of conversations with people whose passions, perspectives, instincts, and ideas, fuel some of the world's most amazing products, brands, and experiences.
Hello, Builders. My guest on the show today is Kamala Avila-Salmon. Kamala is about as close to the definition of a Breakthrough Builder as you can get. She's currently in an incredible and important role, the Head of Inclusive Content at the studio Lionsgate. But before she embarked on that role, she'd already had a nearly two decade career championing diversity, equity and inclusive representation on screen and in music. Kamala has helped move the world forward by systematically championing the development of products, brands, and experiences for people of all races, all genders, all abilities at brands like Facebook, Google, and NBC Universal, whose scale makes it so important to get representation right.
Kamala and I had a far reaching conversation about the influence of black characters on TV early in her life, how she got curious, creative and scrappy to find jobs and create meaningful roles early in her career at spots like RCA and Bad Boy Entertainment. Her practical and brave perspective on professional networking. How she pushed the music and television industries to adopt a more inclusive posture as the era of digital transformation took hold. The impact she had on both customer and employee experiences by widening representation in marketing at Google and Facebook. What she sees as the tenants of inclusive marketing. Where the entertainment industry needs to go from here on representation, inclusion, and equity. And other topics.
One quick housekeeping note, Kamala's audio shifts in tone about 20 minutes into our conversation. So you'll hear her voice come through in two different ways, but I promise it's all the same Kamala. Just some extra gifts from the technical gods in this one. Without further ado, I give you Kamala Avila-Salmon.
[00:03:00] Kamala Avila-Salmon: I was born in Jamaica and I have to clarify Jamaica the island, not the part of Queens, because I also grew up later in Jamaica, the part of Queens. So from Jamaica to Jamaica, to a certain extent. And we moved here when I was about four or five years old. And I think The Cosby Show was just starting and I've just dated myself for your audience. And I remember watching that and immediately I knew it was special. I was very much like, "This is different. This is unique. This is something that we haven't seen before." I saw the way that my parents responded to it. I kept watching A Different World and other things from that universe.
And I felt like in that moment, I saw how this could be a tool for making people feel seen and making people feel valued. And I noticed where I saw people represented and where I didn't see people represented. And I think I had a very early, early epiphany that representation before it was a hashtag, I felt that in my bones. I saw what it meant to be represented. And then I also, I think, had a pretty early realization that I wanted to be one of the people who got to help decide what we saw. And that was where it all began for me. I grew up loving entertainment overall. Not just television, I was a singer growing up, I started a record label briefly after college. I was always interested in that. But for me, it was always on the business side. While I loved the performing side, I always felt like we need to have more decision makers that look like me.
[00:04:33] Jesse Purewal: So how did you get to the point where you said, "Okay, this is not just interesting and cool and that it's happening." What were some of the first couple steps you took, whether it was in school, in clubs, with friends, as you thought about wanting to go live this dream?
[00:04:46] Kamala Avila-Salmon: I think some of the first steps that I took was really probably in college. I talked to a lot of people, as many as I could in my life. And I didn't have anyone in my family that had ever worked in anything related to music, TV, film, et cetera. Actually, as a Jamaican immigrant, my parents were just like, "That's not a job. So why are we talking about that?" I was supposed to be on a certain law school track, which I followed as far as I could before I realized that I needed to do my own thing.
But in college I interned at Virgin Records and there I was working in the A&R department. An A&R department for those that don't know, that's the department that signs new artists. So undiscovered singers and rappers would be sending their own home recordings, hoping that some record label would listen to it. The truth is that most of the time, they don't listen to them. That's not necessarily how they are finding people. But when I got there, I found a drawer of unsolicited recordings that no one had ever listened to. And I was like, "Hey, do you guys mind if I listen to these and catalog them? And see if there's anything good."
Spoiler alert, there wasn't. But it was actually a really great learning for me initially that you don't need to wait to be assigned, you can figure out a way to create a path for yourself and find ways to be useful. That is a lesson that I've taken throughout my career. Don't wait to be assigned, look at what needs to be done and find a way to be useful.
[00:06:07] Jesse Purewal: What turned out to be the unlocks in your experience, in terms of the question of access? Industries like media, like entertainment, like sports marketing, there's these mythologies of needing to be incredibly well connected and needing both incredible patronage as well as luck. So that you can then take the next step and then work your way up.
So at some point we all get our breaks, but there also has to be some strategy and some intentionality around taking those first steps to make that happen. So how would you counsel people who might have their eye on a bigger prize, but need to take the first five, 10, 15, 20 steps to get there, to get moving?
[00:06:45] Kamala Avila-Salmon: It's a great question. It is still an industry of "Who you know." But also, who knows you. So what I did, as I said, I didn't have anyone in my family immediately. I couldn't pick up the phone and call an uncle or an aunt or ask my dad, "How do I get into whatever." I had to just do it myself. So I was like, "What's my network?"
And so when I graduated from college, I'd gone to Harvard Undergrad, and I had sent my resume to every record label in New York. No one was calling me back. Sometimes you feel like you're applying to those open job listings and you're, no one's actually ... feels like you just submitted a demo. No one's actually looking at that resume. And so I was like, "Shoot, I don't know anyone, what do I do?" So I grew up idolizing record moguls. And one of the ones that I idolized was Clive Davis. And he had gone to Harvard Law. Just on a whim, I looked in the alumni directory to see, like I wonder if he's in the alumni directory. And he was.
And I think at the time he actually had a version of his home address. So I wrote him a letter. I've never met this man, he didn't know me at all, had no reason to necessarily pay attention. But I'd known and discovered that people feel a weird affinity sometimes for people that they have something in common with. So I wrote him a letter and said, "I also went to Harvard. I'm really inspired by your journey. I would love to learn from you. Is there any role in your company?" I just mailed that off.
And a lot of people would've said, "Well, what's the point? He doesn't know, he's not going to respond. That's a waste of your time." For me, it's like, I never let someone tell me no that can't tell me yes. There's enough people in the world that will tell you no, and try to deter you from what you're going after. But at the end of the day, they can't open the door themselves either. So I said, "You know what? If it's no, it will be revealed. But I have nothing to lose." And within a few weeks, I actually got a phone call from his head of HR who was like, "Mr. Davis, got your letter. He's wondering if you want to interview." I interviewed for an assistant position there and that's how I got it.
So for me, the lesson is that the connection doesn't need to be direct, but there is always a way to figure out how to get more proximate to whatever it is that you're going after. Even if it means a cold call, a cold email, et cetera. And this was a trick that I took throughout my career. If I'm networking, if I meet someone, I'm always at the end of the conversation asking them, "Is there anyone else in your network that might be willing to chat with me?" And then over time I built my own network through really grinding it out and turning my own story over to see where might there be some common thread that I could use to connect with someone else?
[00:09:19] Jesse Purewal: Well, it strikes me in the spirit of both the give and the get part of this. That probably people, like the gentleman you mentioned, are not getting a lot of reach outs from folks who are singularly focused on, how can I help drive representation on screen? And more inclusivity in the media and entertainment world and here's my perspective.
Probably 96 out of 100 reach out, so they're getting are like, "Hey, can you help me?" And it's a little bit more one way and then ask for a favor. Versus it sounds like you had the maturity of a perspective early on in your life and certainly early on in your career, where you could authentically bring something of value to the table right out of the gate.
[00:09:56] Kamala Avila-Salmon: I think that's right. I think the thing that I've found true for me in my journey is people respond to genuine passion that feels like it's coming from a place beyond just self actualization or self aggrandizement. We all have our own ambitions, we all have things that we want to do. But knowing your why that you want to do it. It's one thing to say, "I want to run a record label one day." That is actually a pretty distinguishing statement to make because many people would never say that. I assumed everyone that I was working at the record label with, was everyone, we're all trying to get to that spot. Then I started talking to people and most people are like, "No, actually I'm not interested in getting to that spot. That seems like a lot of work. That seems like a lot of pressure." So, that actually is a way to be distinct.
But I think the thing that made it more impactful was I had a really clear sense of why I wanted to do that, how I felt like that was going to impact the world. Why I felt like this was going to be meaningful, not just to me, but in the world in general. And I've found people, no matter how senior they are or how distant from you, it might seem that they are, people respond to genuine passion and purpose. Either because they connect with it and they have the same. Or because they don't have that and they wish they did, so they love learning about people who are driven in that specific way.
[00:11:19] Jesse Purewal: So after the couple of internships, you end up at RCA Music earlier in your career. From there you go to Bad Boy Entertainment, which that must have been just such a thrill, the kinds of campaigns you got to work on for Janelle Monáe, I think, and some other bands that were picked by Sean Combs. So how was the narrative in the industry unfolding around you in those early years? And what signal were you getting around how your efforts were being accepted and how they were playing out?
[00:11:47] Kamala Avila-Salmon: My time at Bad Boy was pretty formative in a lot of ways. One of the first projects that I got a chance to work on was Janelle Monáe's first album. And she is an artist that I will forever be kind of indebted to and grateful for because she is someone that came in almost exactly as she is now in the industry. Focused, a visionary, had a clear sense, had a team around her that had a purpose and a passion. And that really cemented for me the importance of being in charge of your own narrative and your own brand. And I think that whatever field you're in, whether you are an artist or an executive. Being really intentional about your brand, what you stand for, and again, why you're doing what you're doing is so, so important.
And I think at the time, Puff had his shows, he had Making the Band. So he had made Day26, he had made Danity Kane. I was working on those albums, as well. And I was still a relatively young person and so for me, some of the narratives that were coming out is that, one, I still didn't see the level of representation that I wanted to see in the industry at the senior levels. I realized very early that, "Oh, I'm seeing it on this side of the camera." In terms of who's singing, who's dancing, et cetera. But I'm not seeing as much of it on the other side of the camera. So Puff was pretty distinct in that, where he ran his own endeavor. And so that was super inspiring.
And the other thing that was happening was digital transformation. Record labels are very different now than they were then. And it was the beginning of LimeWire, Napster, then iTunes. And what I saw was there were a few people at each of the record labels who were leading into digital and excited about the potential of it. But the majority of people were really afraid of it. You could hear the internal industry mantra of like, how do we get consumers to go back to what they were doing before? How do we turn back the time? There were even ... it sounds ridiculous now. But there were policies of what we're going to do is actually go and prosecute our consumers. That was the plan. How can we shove it back into the box?
And I actually went back to business school during that time because I felt like disruption presents such great opportunity for thinking about what can come next. And I realized while it was happening to the music business, the music business was not the first industry to ever be disrupted. And in disruption, there are always opportunities. There are winners, there are not winners. I really wanted to take a step back and really be able to bring a different set of skills and tools to thinking about disruption, innovation on purpose.
Disruption can either happen to you, or you can be leaning into that disruption and driving something new. So I think some of the message for me at the time was that I never wanted to be an executive that felt like I was at the whim of what was happening externally. I always wanted to feel like I could think about things differently and I could ensure I never wasted a crisis. Never wasted a good crisis is another one of my key quotes.
[00:15:18] Jesse Purewal: On the disruption piece, I'm curious about the career arc. So post MBA, if I have this right, you were at CAA for a little bit, Creative Artist Agency. And then you were at, I believe, NBC Universal. So in thinking about what you said about disruption, is there a reason you went into a organization like the NBC family of companies, that I would regard as maybe having been disrupted as opposed to being the disruptor, before going, as you did, over to Google to be part of what's now called Google Play and Music?
[00:15:48] Kamala Avila-Salmon: So it's interesting because now, of course, TV and film are being significantly disrupted. But at the time, music was the entertainment industry that was disrupted and the others were kind of holding firm. But for me, there was a really clear reason why I wanted to go back into traditional media following business school. I knew at that point during business school is when I set my sites on television and film as a thing that I wanted to go back to. I didn't want to go back to music. I wanted to go back to that first love of like the visual. Because things that you can see are so deeply impactful, the stories that you can tell there are so much deeper and can be so much more resonant.
But even though I consider myself a natural disruptor, I don't think that you can disrupt effectively if you don't understand the rules of the game. So I knew that I was new to television and film, and therefore I wanted to actually both at CAA and at NBC and Universal, really understand the rules of this new game that I was jumping into. How did deals come together in television and film? Who are the players? How does distribution work? How does marketing work? And marketing continue to be a through line for me, because marketing was something that I had done prior to business school. And it was what I started doing after business school. So I've always been fluent in the function of marketing, but I needed to learn the new rules first, before I decided which ones I wanted to break.
[00:17:08] Jesse Purewal: What was it about the value proposition at Google Play and maybe going back into music after that time, that saying to you at that particular point in your career?
[00:17:16] Kamala Avila-Salmon: It was funny. The way that I got to Google was the then head of HR at Google had written a book called, Work Rules. I believe it's what it's called. And Google was distinct at the time for having built a very specific type of culture and organization of people around their mission. But I started to get really enthralled with it, because I'd never worked at a place like that, entertainment doesn't work that way.
So I ended up connecting with him there. And for me, the reason why it made sense to go over to Google was I'd only worked in the traditional hierarchical space of traditional media. And I felt like for an industry being disrupted, we needed to be thinking differently about how to organize people, how to leverage talent, how to get the best out of our employees. And we needed to enable a lot more intrapreneurship within the company than we currently were enabling.
And so I wanted to go to Google and, one, just kind of see, is this culture real? Does it actually exist? Because when you work at hierarchal companies, it doesn't seem like it's possible for everyone at every level to be creating their own job. But when I went into Google, I discovered that to be the case. And it was really just inspiring, how I ended up back in music was through the way that tech works. I went in for one role to work on TV and film. But by the time I arrived there, the business needs had shifted and they needed someone who actually had a music background to help build out the music subscription platform and the marketing for it. So it's right person, right place, right time type of thing. And they lived that culture of lean into where there's opportunity and you can reshape your role completely.
[00:18:51] Jesse Purewal: I imagine, too, as a disruptor, you found a lot of favorability in a culture that values not only the spirit of pushing the status quo, but also doing it based on data and insight. If you're in an environment in a tech company where you can bring the conviction and the passion and leadership knows that it's the right thing to do and just, you need that extra bit of persuasion that the data can provide. And then it's like, "Oh, well we need to go do this right now." So there's probably even a little bit more urgency and support than having you be that disruptive version of yourself in a more effective way.
[00:19:22] Kamala Avila-Salmon: Yeah. It was a really amazing experience because it was a place where data could win an argument. In the entertainment industry, we don't have much of that culture. So going into a place where being the good student that I am and that I've always have been, being able to actually research and find insights and support for what I was pitching. And then to find my bosses persuaded by that and to be able to go and chase that opportunity. And so when I was making the argument, it wasn't just about, it's the right thing to do. So also like, well, here's what's happening on our platform. Here's how underrepresented audiences are leaning in, here's all the evidence for how they're driving culture.
And we got to build some really, really cool things there. That I just think both at my level, at the time, would've been so difficult to build. They really do believe at places like Google, that a good idea could come from anywhere and a good idea could come from a person of any level. And I think that's been one of the keys to the rapid growth of those companies is that any company can have 1,000 people working there. But most companies are probably really leveraging the top 20 people. They actually try to leverage and get the highest amount of productivity and innovation and thought leadership from all 1,000 people, if possible, regardless of level. 1,000 is more than 20.
[00:20:43] Jesse Purewal: So I know titles never tell a full story. But what I'm really intrigued by with your background is that, at some point your titles represent a shift away from, "Hey, I'm doing content marketing or marketing management." Into, "I'm doing inclusion strategy." And I think that happened, in particular, at Facebook where there's a move you made from managing content for some Facebook originals into actually building out a marketing team to develop and ship more inclusive, culturally relevant stuff. How did you engineer that role shift? Or is it much more organic than that?
[00:21:17] Kamala Avila-Salmon: It was both organic and intentional. Anytime you're given a role or job description or title, whatever it is, I believe that it's on you to interpret that through the lens of what you care about and what you're good at. Because that is what's going to actually help you stand out.
I realized that a lot of what I was doing, it wasn't enough that it was just me doing it. I actually got to a point where I was like, "No, every marketer needs to be thinking about that." So even at the time, at my level, I made a pitch to the CMO and I said, "Hey, we're talking about diversity being important to us. We're doing that to some respect with workforce things, but how is that informing the business?" And I said, "I have a really clear sense that we need to be investing more in our marketers of color. In particular, our black and Latinx marketers who are deeply underrepresented at Facebook." At a time when across the family of apps, people of color, especially black and Latinx people were really driving usership on the platform.
And I said, "We need to leverage those people and those insights. We need to build programs that will help develop them, grow them, retain them, et cetera." And I was like, "I think I could do that on the side. And I would like to start to build that." And I think he was a little bit like, Damn, where'd you come from? I was not on his leadership team. I was just a person working in marketing, one of the 1,000 people working in marketing. And I was like, "But I want to meet with the CMO and I think it'll be worth this time." Thankfully, he thought it was.
With respect to the marketing inclusion work, that was again, looking at the way that I marketed the titles that I was assigned and feeling like there was opportunity that we were leaving on the table. And as I started to build my brand within the marketing organization, having various marketers, even senior level marketers, reach out to me to say, "Hey, what do you think about this script for this commercial? How do you feel about this casting? Or I want to pick your brain on something." I was like, "Those are the right questions to ask. But it should not just be solved on the side when I have a little bit of time. There needs to actually be a team, there needs to be focus on this." We need to think about diversity of the vendors we're working with, diversity of the messages we're going out with, diversity of the casting.
My goal for that team was I would love to work that team out of existence by imbuing the tenets of inclusive marketing to every marketer. And that translates to what I'm doing now, which is trying to develop and then imbue the tenets of inclusive content making to every single person that touches our content.
[00:23:57] Jesse Purewal: And so I know that the answer might be slightly different depending on the context that you're in, the product you're selling, the audience you're going after. But I love that phrase and I'm really curious about how you would summarize or like how do you frame what the tenets of inclusive marketing are?
[00:24:09] Kamala Avila-Salmon: One of the key tenets is that we need to reimagine who we think of as our audience and we need to see them in a deeper, more nuanced way. The country that we're in now is fundamentally different than the one we were in 30 years ago. By gender, by socioeconomic, by LGBTQIA, race, ethnicity, of course, et cetera. And what I found is that most marketers were still conducting what I would call "mass market strategies" that were built for a mainstream market that was primarily white and mostly driven by men. That's just not the market that were operating in anymore.
And so when you know that, you should be thinking about, "How does that change my tactics? How does that change the types of messages I should be shipping? How does that change the types of perspectives that I need to build a resonant campaign? How should that change how I do research? How are you letting that fact guide the way that you do your work? How is it changing the vendors that you go after? How is it changing the consultants that you work with? How is it changing the music that you're putting in?" All of that. Like, everything is kind of up for review. We have to be aware of that. Oh, our systems are set to not inclusive. We have to program them for more inclusion, in order to build something that can be resonant with a broad audience.
[00:25:24] Jesse Purewal: Yeah, so I'm imagining when you stepped into Lionsgate in 2020, a company with a long standing history, a legacy, potentially an established way of doing things. That its systems were probably in need of some evolution towards that more inclusive posture. Talk a little bit about maybe the atmospheric conditions that you stepped into when you began the role at Lionsgate. And what your first, let's call it, six months in terms of driving the change agenda looked like?
[00:25:51] Kamala Avila-Salmon: People ask, "Oh, how did you get it? Or did they create it for you?" And they didn't create it for me, to the studio's credit. This was a role that they looked internally and said, "Hey, we need someone here to help us in this area." So there was a recognition that systems were not set to maximum inclusion and needed someone to really be a leader here.
So I saw this role actually on LinkedIn. And when I saw it, I felt like it was written for me because the description of what they were looking for was almost exactly what I've done. And then they said that they were looking for someone that could help design systems, processes, and policies, that would help to drive a more inclusive slate. That's exactly what I've done in my prior roles. But, when I came in and I talked to the leadership extensively before coming in, I had a really clear sense that for me, if the change was just in response to George Floyd in 2020, we now need someone to make us look and feel less racist. I'm not the right person for that. If the change was just hiring me and saying like, "We're just going to have someone like this in the room." I'm not the right person.
I really need to be able to sit at the decision making table and help to guide decisions by bringing a different point of view, that centers inclusion in a different way. And everyone said they were super receptive to that. So when I came in, the first thing that I did was discovery. What are the current systems that we have? How do we evaluate content when it comes in? How do we decide what to green light, not green light? What types of notes do we give? What producers do we have relationships with? What directors have we hired? And how does that compare to where the rest of our peers are?
So after doing my original discovery, one of the things that I felt was really clear, I'm really big on the fact that words matter and words mean things. So if we're working on inclusive content, we need to all agree on what inclusive content is. And what I found is that when I talked to people, people had a lot of different definitions of what that even was. And the traditional Hollywood understanding of that has been in the past, like, "Oh, so you want to make a couple more black movies a year." That is not what I'm here to do.
One, black is not a genre. We would never talk about a white movie, but for some reason we feel comfortable saying like, "Oh, that's a black movie, that's an Asian movie. That's a female movie." That's not the right way to think about it. What we should be doing is trying to think about how are we putting images on screen that resonate with the broadest portion of our audience? How are we empowering storytellers who have been historically excluded? If the industry is serious about diversifying, gate opening has to be a part of the strategy. We are much more inclined to say yes to someone that someone else has said yes to.
So if we are committed to changing that, we are going to have to hire some first time people who have not necessarily done this thing. That's just the way math works. How do we figure out then if we can't solely assess storytellers based on their past CV, how else can we assess storytellers? How can we leverage research, data, insights, analytics to create arguments, to hire new people, to invest in new stories?
One of the first things that I worked on was really helping to transform our hiring process. Some might say, "Oh, that has nothing to do with inclusive content." But for me, it has everything to do with it. Because if the fate of making more inclusive content rests solely on the shoulders of me and my small team, we will fail. We actually have to transform the workforce of the studio holistically. And that means finding ways to open the doors to people who have not historically been able to get in.
[00:29:28] Jesse Purewal: Yeah. I love that you're starting with the employee side and the culture side and getting the right minds in the room. And to your point, you might have to invest in some people at different levels of the company who haven't had the proverbial correct experience or expected experience going into these roles.
I do have a question about your collaborations with people across the company and what that looks like at this scale and size. When there is a new role in a company, and there's a first person to hold the seat, how are you moving out of that stage of, "I'm listening, I'm learning." To, "I'm doing and I'm having impact." And kind of building relationships, building credibility with the rest of the team. And frankly, probably trying to enjoy the ride.
[00:30:09] Kamala Avila-Salmon: I think when you're the first person in a new role or when your team is new, one of the things that people have to understand is that part of your first task is going to be knocking on doors again and again, trying to get in. People have established ways of doing things. And so one of the first things that I had to do is check my ego very quickly. People are not designing to exclude me, but they've been running this company for a long time without this team here. So part of what I have to do is figure out, what are the things that they are really passionate about? What are they trying to achieve? And how can my team amplify that? How can my team help them achieve those goals?
So trying to do a mix of authoring, where like I understand I have this expertise. It is my job to craft these strategies with co-authoring. All right, I have an idea of what should be done. Let me share with you, here's what I think should be done. What do you think the roadblocks might be? Where do you think this might break down? Would you be willing to try this first? Should we hold back on this piece? What about this? Here's where I think we're trying to get to. Great, so now we agree on where we're going and it sounds simple, but so many people don't even do that first piece. This is true in everything, but in DEI, people try this and it doesn't work. Do better, is not a strategy. So you're only goal cannot be, we just want to do better. How? With whom? Within what timeframe? How will it be measured? Better to whom? You have to take the time to do that pre-work and force some of those conversations that may seem obvious to be had. So you can get that alignment before you just start running.
[00:31:40] Jesse Purewal: Kamala, I want to wrap by asking you about something you created recently, the allyship and anti-racism funnel. Talk to me about what that is and why you felt it was needed in this moment.
[00:31:50] Kamala Avila-Salmon: Thank you so much for that question. So in 2020, like everyone else, especially like most black people in this country, I was reeling from everything that was happening. Not because George Floyd was some new story we hadn't heard. But in fact, because it was a very old story that we were very familiar with. Many, many people have died very visibly at the hands of police violence and other types of racialized violence in our country. And the country hasn't necessarily responded.
2020 was a unique moment in which it felt like a lot of people were responding and paying attention. But I started to feel in those initial reactions that people were getting stuck at the feeling stage of things and were not actually progressing. So all of a sudden, people were saying, "I'm now an ally, I'm now an anti-racist." But what work had been actually done? What were you doing differently? I kind of put on my marketer hat of like, "There's a funnel that we have to take people from unaware of a product to being like adopters."
Similarly, I believe there's a funnel to go from being totally unaware of the prevalence of racialized violence and racial inequity, to actually being able to earn any of the titles of ally or anti-racist. And there's a real progression that needs to happen. You're going from unaware to aware. Then you may feel sympathy, you may feel empathy. "Oh my gosh, I can't believe this is happening." But that's not the end of the journey. And that was really the premise for the podcast that I started from woke to work. Because I felt like people were having woke feelings, but we're not actually doing work to change outcomes. And putting that funnel with my contribution to helping people think through how to go from just feeling bad or feeling sad, or even feeling mad. To actually doing things. How could we really hold ourselves accountable?
[00:33:35] Jesse Purewal: Well, Kamala, you're a leader, you're a disruptor, you're a change maker. And what I love about this conversation is you have helped a lot of people understand how to make important progress in some really useful and practical ways. I actually love the fact that your reach outs as a teenager in college to that alum of your college, to land that first internship. Where the same thing that happened maybe two decades later in your career around, getting that meeting with the CMO of Facebook. And just reflecting on this is work that's never done, but it's so meaningful to you to be able to move it forward and to be able to have some practical wisdom for how other folks can do that. Or the equivalent of whatever is really important and meaningful in their lives. I just think it's so useful. So thanks so much for the input and the energy and the time and the candor and the usefulness of this conversation today.
[00:34:25] Kamala Avila-Salmon: Thank you so much, Jesse. I'm really excited for everyone to ... if you remember nothing else, to remember that there is a place for you in this work. And if we leave this work to only the few people who have it in their title, we won't get there.
[00:34:41] Jesse Purewal: Thanks for listening to Breakthrough Builders. If you're enjoying the show, please subscribe and leave a rating and a review and tell a friend. Breakthrough Builders is a Qualtrics Studio's original hosted and executive produced by me, Jesse Purewal.
An awesome team of people puts this show together, including our show writer, Todd Bagnull, and our head of social media, Chelsea Hunersen. From StudioPod Media in San Francisco, our show coordinator is Nicole Genova. Editing and music are by producer Sterling Shore and executive producer, Katie Sunku Wood, with sound engineering by Ryan Crowther. At VaynerTalent in New York, Samantha Heapps, Hanna Park, and Yvonne Lynn provide publicity and promotional support. The shows designers are Baren Santiago and Vinsuka Chindavijak. Our website is by Gregory Hedon. Photography by Christy Hemm Klok. Special thanks to the entire Breakthrough Builders crew at Qualtrics, including Ali Rohani, Ben Hawken, John Johnson, and Kylan Lundeen.