Economic inequality is a pervasive issue in the United States.

Small businesses don't get the same tax breaks and government bailouts that massive corporations do.

But inequality isn't predicated solely on the business side.

Black-owned businesses are at a distinct disadvantage when compared to their white-owned counterparts.

On top of the normal challenges of running a business, black business owners must also navigate a considerable funding gap between white- and black-owned businesses.

As political movements like Black Lives Matter gain steam across the country, it's important to remember that injustice goes far beyond the justice system.

Institutional and systemic racism inspired by white supremacy impacts business owners and employees alike.

Today, we will discuss the history of oppression and talk to two individuals who are running their own business and doing very well.

Hello, my name is Pastor Phillip Davis, the host of Courageous Conversations.

Joining me on the show today are William Brown.

He's the CEO and co-founder of FIA NYC Employment Services, a Lehigh Valley based staffing agency.

And his partner and co-founder, Lindsay Watson.

She is also the principal of a virtual assistant support business which is also minority owned.

Stay right there.

We've got an exciting show for you.

Well, Lindsay, welcome to the show.

William, welcome as well.

We're so excited to have you on Courageous Conversations.

And so we're just in the living room, we're just talking, although, William, you're on Zoom.

You know, this is an opportunity to inform and educate and inspire people, so we're just going to talk today.

So, I want to hear a little bit about your business.

William, why don't I start with you?

Why don't you tell me, how FIA got started?

How did you all begin in the space of employment services?

- Well, it's really interesting.

I have a background in staffing in New York many, many years ago, from 96, I think it was.

And I came up to Lehigh Valley actually to start a tech company.

We started a tech company and we were raising funding.

We were part of Ben Franklin, which is out here as well.

Technology partners.

And Lindsay was working in staffing in New York at the time.

Working with me and trying to keep a job, it was too much.

The business got to the point that I needed her full time.

So I made the investment, moved out here and said, let's do our own staffing company just so we can keep you fed.

Well, the tech company went down.

Staffing company went up.

- Right.

- And we decided we needed to pivot.

And here we are.

- That's amazing.

That's basic economics, right?

You go where the water is flowing.

And so, no, that's exciting.

And so the two of you partnered to start the business, which is amazing.

As an African-American minority owned business, how has the reception been for the work that you all are doing here in the Lehigh Valley?

- Thank you so much for having us.

So excited to be here.

So, it's a great question.

So we started off in New York City.

In the first year, it was definitely tough, because we were trying to start a startup in New York City.

And so credit to Mr Brown's just being a visionary.

He saw all of the promise and development that was happening here and said, you know, maybe we should relocate our headquarters to Allentown to be a part of that.

So this was back when the PPL Center was just a big hole in the ground.

You remember those times?

- Absolutely.

Yeah.

- So we picked up and moved with the company.

And I also picked up and made Lehigh Valley my home.

So we've been here for...

It'll be nine years this January.

- Wow.

- Yeah.

So in terms of reception, we were starting from scratch.

But we stuck to what we knew, which is professional services, staffing.

Mr Brown mentioned we both have that staffing background, but it was corporate office roles.

So we decided after kind of learning the lay of the land, we're going to continue in what we know.

So it's really been step by step.

A lot of the relationships we have with our clients have been organic, meaning going out to networking events, shaking hands, getting to know people.

But I can't say that we've had a lot of challenges just being a black owned business here.

It's just been a lot of hard work, a lot of hard work to become a part of the community and become known.

- Yeah, the Lehigh Valley is interesting.

If you're not from the Valley, you don't always get a warm reception.

Right?

But you all have done a tremendous job of helping to connect people with employment.

I'm going to ask William, William, let me ask you this question in regards to what's happening right now in the market.

You know, the great resignation, they're calling it, right?

Folks are walking off of jobs like crazy.

How do you as a staffing employment service combat that?

And what are some of the steps that you're taking to help ensure that we have a solid working community?

- It's interesting, because now where people can work from home and they don't have to come to work and then with the pandemic, add that to it and people got the right to stay home, people now don't really want to work in brick and mortar or in the store, in an organization.

They want to stay home and work.

They want to telecommute.

You really have to find the right people that want to be in a certain place.

And right now, this is a new challenge, because now you have people that have tasted the option and they realize we are productive at home, we don't want to come back.

So to work that way is one thing.

Now, the other side, you talk about people not wanting to stay on a job or stay with a company.

Well, companies have to pivot.

They really have to learn what the market is right now and how people work and how people flow.

There's different things to, you know... My side of this is diversity for the strongest part Lindsay is the staffing.

And on the diversity side, there's more to just bringing people of color or different races and different ethnicities into jobs and trying to get them to work.

You have to set up the ecosystem and surround those people, that they feel comfortable in that place.

I'm trying to be very tasteful by how I say this.

- Say it, man.

You're in the living room.

Yeah, go ahead.

Say that again.

- The structure has been white corporate structure.

When you want to bring people in as Muslim, you want to bring people in as different racial ethnicities, do you celebrate their day, celebrate their holidays?

Do they feel on that workplace that everything is conducive to who they are and their culture?

- Yes.

- If not, you know, you say take off your stuff, put on a suit and tie and look like us and we accepting, you.

No, you're not.

And that's the long and short of it.

You have to really be willing to change your ecosystem to fit the people that you're bringing in.

- That is so true.

You know, we actually did a show on the Crown Act, where, you know, folks, our people were wearing their hair naturally and how it was being rejected.

It started with the young man who they almost didn't let graduate from high school because of his dreadlocks.

It's just a shift that has to happen in, as William mentioned, the whole ecosystem.

How did you all make it through Covid-19?

And what were some of the challenges that you all had to deal with in regard to that?

- Covid-19 was very interesting, the impact.

So our clients couldn't hire.

So everything just kind of stopped.

Right.

And I'm going to speak to half of this and then definitely, Mr Brown, I feel like you could, because this is really where our DEI division started growing.

So a few things happened.

We opened a somewhat smaller division, career coaching and resume writing.

And we did that because candidates were coming to us saying, I've been an entrepreneur for 20 years, I've been in this job for 15 years, I don't know who I am outside of this job.

And so we said, OK, well, we'll offer services to help you rewrite your resume and give you some guidance to help you separate who you are and what your skill set is for the industry you work in, because sometimes it can be blurred and you do the same thing over and over again, you kind of forget who you are.

- Sure.

- So that opportunity happened for us and it's doing well.

We're still offering those services.

On the staffing and recruiting side, things were quiet, so it gave us the time to really revamp and redesign how we offer what we offer.

So we went from staffing to different ways to about five different ways.

- That's amazing.

- And all five ways are working right now.

- Yeah, well, that's exciting.

But evidently the planning stage went well, the strategic planning and really looking into the future and almost remaking yourself to fit the needs of your clients.

And if I'm not mistaken, you work here with PBS as well, right?

- Yes.

So PBS is one of our top and favorite clients.

We've been staffing for PBS39 for I've lost count of the amount of years, but I'm always proud to use PBS39 as a case study because just even unintentionally, we've staffed 100% diverse candidates, so women, persons of color, people in the LGBTQ community, you name it.

- That's amazing.

- And so yeah, we're proud of the partnership that we have with them.

- Yeah.

And even for them to give us the space to talk, to have Courageous Conversations.

It's not happening a lot in the world.

Williams, let's shift to the diversity, equity and inclusion conversation, because we've had some conversations about that.

But still there's a bill out there.

It's the equity in pay HR7 bill that's out there.

And still to this day, right, black women are making 62 cents for every dollar that a white male makes.

On average, black men make about 87 cents for every dollar.

Talking about doing the same job across the board.

Same qualifications.

But the pay structure is still low.

And when we think about CEOs and Fortune 500 companies, you can count them on your hand, right?

The Latinx and black executives represent 3.4 and 1% of Fortune 500 CEOs.

Historically, thinking about trade unions, right, and why trade unions came online, to dislocate black workers who were skilled, but they were intentional about removing black workers and hiring in immigrants.

So there's a long history of racism and oppression that happens in the workforce.

Can you talk a little bit about why diversity and inclusion is important and why this conversation needs to be ongoing?

- Yeah, and thank you for telling me earlier we're in the living room, because Lindsay called me Thor's Hammer.

I can be very direct and I don't sit comfortable with a lot of people in DEI meetings.

And here's why.

You know, there's been this creation and diversity or DEI where it is, OK, but you still talk to the boss, who tells you what DEI is, who is not of your race or your color, of your ethnicity at all.

Basically, we're sitting in the seat, but we really have no control of...

The line doesn't stop with us.

So therefore, as I began to study DEI, it was interesting to me.

And let me just tell you how we got into DEI.

It's very interesting because I knew about it, I never considered myself a professional, but life experience made me a professional.

I was working with the United Way on a meeting to help did they want me to talk to them about their diversity situation.

And it became clear to me, OK, DEI, let me break it down first.

I need to understand what this is.

And I understood, diversity, equity and inclusion.

Diversity means you want different people of different races, different cultures.

Equity, equal amount of work, which you just talked about, equal amount of promotion, equal amount of pay.

You follow the code, you do what is required, you should be paid the same.

That's equity.

Inclusion, include me in the process of what you're doing.

I want to not just have the job, but I want to be part of how the flow of the business goes.

And I will jump to a side and say this for a minute.

It's a study.

It's been proven that diverse companies are more profitable.

- Wow.

- It's proven.

- So it gets to the bottom line, right?

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

- If it comes down to the dollar, then it's been proven that companies that are more diverse tend to make more money.

Why?

Because you have a different understanding of different demographics.

You got different minds that know this is what's going to reach my community and this is what's not going to reach the community.

And so you can get in those communities.

And let me just say this.

You know, you got me going!

We all know that the black dollar, we know that, supports this country.

Unfortunately, we spend more than we save.

- Trillions of dollars.

That's right.

- We know that.

All the fashion, the top name fashion companies are starting to aim this stuff toward this inner city because they know if the black culture or if the inner city culture embraces your product, your product goes through the roof.

- So true.

OK, so now equity, then, equal pay for equal work.

Well, that's not the case.

Inclusion.

Let us be a part of the dream and the vision.

But what happens is companies want the diversity side.

I just want to bring people in so that when people look at us, they say we're doing the right things.

And look at...

I hate to make fun of him, but Trump always says, look at my black guy over there.

You know, there he is right there.

You know, the truth is you want the diversity but you don't want the equity.

You don't want the equal.

You don't want the inclusion.

You don't want the part of it except for where it feeds you.

Whenever I talk to a company about DEI, I'm saying, are we starting from the top down or do you just want to just work for the mailroom?

Tell me what we're doing.

- And you make a very valid point, Lindsay.

When you think about this... Let me let me just read off a couple of things that I think are important.

So there is this understanding of what they call the good old boy network.

So if the CEO, you know, the person in HR, the ones who run the company, which essentially have been white dominated for years, have a cousin, an uncle, a friend or somebody, and so what ends up happening is they end up opening up.

They say 80 to 90% of jobs are internal and not external.

Right?

So people are hiring internally.

So they're hiring people that they know.

Right?

So someone has an executive role.

And if you have a friend who happens to be, you know, in the same field, they bring them in.

Listen to this.

Coca-Cola, about 20 years ago, settled a $192.5 million race discrimination class action lawsuit.

In the city of Chicago, they paid $1.1 million to settle EEO racial discrimination lawsuit.

Texaco, 176 million they paid in settlements to minorities.

Tesla, 137 million, this just happened April 2021, for racial discrimination and harassment.

Dillard's agrees to pay $900,000 for failure to promote based on race target.

The big box individuals are talking about diversity, equity and inclusion.

Wells Fargo agrees to pay $7.8 million in settling a hiring claim.

Right?

So, I mean, it goes on and on.

When you think about JPMorgan Chase, it pays 24 million to settle a potential lawsuit from black financial advisors who say they were mistreated at the bank because of their race.

So these companies are costing themselves money by not shifting and changing the ecosystem to have diversity, equity and, I like the inclusion, which means, well...

So the lack of inclusion means we may hire you, but we're not going to entrench you into the decision making and promote you.

So it's almost like the days of old when people moved here from Georgia to come work at Bethlehem Steel.

Well, they could all be laborers, but nobody would ever move into the management space as African-Americans.

It was understood that these were the realities.

So from your perspective, when you think about these historical, systemic institutional racism and oppression, as a staffer how do you respond to that?

- What a question!

- Yeah, yeah, yeah.

- I think it's going to be a partner answer.

Yeah, yeah.

And here's why I say that.

I am from a very small town in Connecticut originally.

95% white.

So my dad was in the military and my parents got divorced when I was a baby and my mom decided to raise my sister and I in that community in the 80s.

OK, so born and raised in New England in the 80s.

- Wow.

- And so my experience growing up was I was quite naive to the racism around me.

I've never, never, ever fit in.

I've always stood out.

I've been tall since I was young.

You know, person of color always stood out.

Right?

So one of the things and just me growing up in corporate America is I learned there is a lot that I saw but I never necessarily had the platform to speak out about.

And I'm 40.

So in this generation, we didn't come in with braids.

We didn't come in with this kind of hair.

We just knew not to do that.

- Right.

You had to be Europeanized, right?

You had to fit into that ideology, right?

- Yes.

And so Mr Brown and I have had many conversations where he's challenged me and said, you need to see the racism and the systemic part of it.

You need to see it for what it is and not have a blind eye to it.

And I bring this up for a reason, to answer your question.

And I'll be as quick as I can.

What I what I see now in the generations, I guess, after me is they have platforms, they have the opportunity to speak up and speak out.

I wouldn't be surprised if more lawsuits came.

One of the things that kind of broke my heart as you were sharing those numbers is 170 million is nothing for a global company.

So is it easier for them than to just pay it off and let's just settle versus change?

And so I hope from a global perspective things begin to change.

What I can say for this community, Lehigh Valley, the clients who we're working with and we hope to continue to work with who do genuinely want the equity and the inclusion to be supported, our services support the ability for them to attract talent, hire them and retain them.

So we don't just leave you once you place someone.

If you truly want to have that equity and inclusion, our services will support that.

And like you mentioned, kind of focusing here and hopefully going global, you know, all of our efforts right now are supporting this community for those who are intentional and actually want to change.

- Well, thank you for that.

And you answered it extremely well.

I mean, just giving your own personal lived experience becomes really important.

You know, William, I would say this, that I would think that what we have to understand is that when we consider the trauma that individuals have had to go through, the trauma is that, now I've been on this job, I'm not promoted, sometimes I'm fired, sometimes I'm let go, I'm harassed.

These stories are people being called the N-word.

These stories are monkeys being put in lockers, these stories... And these people have to leave their jobs and go home to their families and still try to cope.

Right?

So the trauma that people are dealing with, William, on the jobs, just trying to make a living.

And there's a long history of that in America.

And a lot of people say this is not a conversation that's necessary.

You all are crying, you're crying victim and all that other kind of stuff.

But they're not taking into account the human carnage that many times happens on these jobs.

Can you talk a little bit about that, William, and why what you do is still so important?

- You know, you're hitting on some real serious stuff here, and I want to jump back to the point Lindsay made the last conversation a little bit.

Lindsay said to me one time, somebody made a remark to her.

Because she brought it up, I'll speak on it.

Wow, you're the whitest black person I know.

And they laughed.

And she shared it with me and almost like she thought it was a compliment.

And I was like, what does that mean?

- Yeah.

- Do you understand what was just said to you, what was said?

And I've been told, you weren't raised in the hood, obviously.

Yes, I was!

Nobody I know in the hood speaks like the stereotypical image they have of us.

They take that subculture, the hip-hop culture and they try to say, this is how black people speak.

Nobody in my neighborhood spoke like that.

You know, you had a subculture.

And I said that would be like me looking at a group of white people and saying, oh, you don't speak like the yokels that they show, the hillbillies on The Dukes of Hazzard.

You know, don't make that who we are.

That's a subculture of people.

So when you talked about the suits, it really hit me, because... Lindsay said the numbers as well.

Here's the sad thing about that.

I want you to think about this.

And I worked in corporate America on the business side.

That's my brain.

And I work with the legal departments a lot.

Most of that money settlement doesn't go to the people who were hurt.

It goes to the legal teams that set up those class action suits, and they set up the class action suit so you can't sue them individually.

So when I hear these numbers, I'm not happy about these numbers because that doesn't mean that it helped us in any way.

Out of that $50 million, whatever, you're going to get 1,500.

- Right.

So true.

So true.

- So nobody's benefiting from that that is hurt by it.

- Yeah.

- The only people benefiting is the legal teams who set those up.

So now, getting off of that, coming to these other things that you said you've seen happening in the jobs and the things that go on with people, we have been taught systematically that we have to be thick skinned and take it.

- So true, right?

Yes.

Yeah.

But let me, William, just kind of deviate a little bit, then I'll come back to you.

You know, there was just a settlement that took place I read on LinkedIn the other day, $1.2 billion, the largest settlement ever won against the government was one for farmers, black farmers who were discriminated against from like 1986 to 1991, 1.2 billion.

And each farmer, there's, like, 33,000 farmers only got $50,000.

This is for historical years of racism, oppression.

They were denying them loans.

Right?

And the Department of Agriculture was denying them loans intentionally so that they would lose their farms and that the white community would be able to come in and buy those farms.

They were giving loans to the white farmers and then they were, you know, having the opportunity to put these black farmers out of business.

So a lot of times these conversations are not happening.

This 1.2 billion, it wasn't on the news.

There wasn't a whole lot of conversation about it.

So my good friends in the white community have no idea the level of trauma.

And think about these farmers.

They're working hard.

They're doing all they can.

But now the government that they are paying taxes to is intentionally denying them resources to be able to allow their farms to work.

They lose their land.

This is back to reconstruction, right?

This is kind of stuff they did after the slaves were freed in the south.

And it takes inquiry and questioning and conversations like this to highlight, you know, what's going on in our community.

So let me bring it back to you, staffing agency, because I'm on my soapbox.

Go ahead, Brother William.

- Let's stay on your soapbox for a little bit.

- All right.

We only got five minutes.

So let's make sure we stay there quickly.

Go ahead.

- OK, quickly.

And exactly what you just said... - Three minutes.

- The world will look at them and say, well, you got a billion-something dollars.

What are you complaining about?

They don't understand it.

The detail is they only got 50,000.

- 50,000.

Yeah.

For generations.

For decades.

For decades of oppression and decades of rejection and intentional systemic racism that again impacts the overall economics of the black community.

So when you think about our net worth being low, it's low because there's a number of variables that lead to it.

But we do know that institutional structural racism inspired by white supremacy is one of the things.

So let me ask you this question, Lindsay, what advice would you give a candidate looking for a job in a diverse environment?

There's so many people here in Lehigh Valley who need your services.

What advice would you give a candidate?

- So that's another great question.

So I'll answer it two ways.

The first way, a candidate anywhere, including Lehigh Valley, you've got access now through technology networks and possibly someone you may know who could give you some insider information.

So let's just start from a technological basis.

LinkedIn shows employees looking at the websites, that DEI statement, and then doing a little bit of digging, just Googling them like the name of the company and DEI and seeing what kind of initiatives they've actually implemented in addition to this statement.

Being able to go to LinkedIn and see who's what level and what do they look like?

Is it diverse?

And then making a decision, if you feel as though if you may be still one of the few, do you see progress?

Do you see a movement forward?

And if so, would you feel comfortable still being some of the few?

Right?

Because we can't promise and guarantee that you're just going to go into a environment where everything is diverse.

In a lot of ways we're just getting started.

- How do folks reach your company?

How do they get in touch with you all?

www.fianyc.com You can find us on LinkedIn on Facebook.

We're all over the place.

But if you go to fianyc.com, we have some great partnerships now with the Chamber of Commerce here, where we're offering our DEI consulting services to all Chamber of Commerce members.

If you're not a member of the chamber, you can still reach us and get access to it.

We love our clients and we love the initiatives they're doing.

We don't talk a lot about it, but we're also very heavily staffing for diverse candidates.

So it's something we've been doing anyway for all these years, but now there's so much value to it.

So if you are looking for a role and you have a diverse background, reach out to us.

We're the place to go.

- Wonderful.

Wonderful.

Well, let me just say, this has been a rich conversation.

We could have went on, Brother William.

Thank you.

You're a man of God.

So, you know, you being able to share and talk about your passion, and I believe in the gospels there is this understanding of justice, equity and inclusion, that our Christ sees us all together.

And so this is a wonderful conversation.

Thank you both for coming on the show.

What you're doing is so important to people's lives and to our economy.

So, you know, on behalf of everyone here at PBS39, I'd like to thank you, Lindsay, thank you, my brother, for coming on the show.

And to our listening and viewing audience, thank you for taking the time to participate in this Courageous Conversation.

All right.

God bless you.

We'll see you soon.

Keep being courageous.