In July 2019, Gov.

Wolf signed an executive order to create the Office of Advocacy and Reform to better protect and serve vulnerable Pennsylvanians.

The office consists of an executive and deputy director, a child advocate, policy specialists, long-term care ombudsman and three-person diversity, equity and inclusion team.

Hi, my name is Pastor Phillip Davis, and I'm the host of Courageous Conversations.

Today on the show, we are blessed to have a member of the team from the Office of Advocacy and Reform.

Joining me today is Venus Ricks.

She is the first-ever director of diversity, equity and inclusion at the State of Pennsylvania.

Don't go anywhere.

We'll be right back.

Well, Venus, thank you so much for taking time out, driving up from Harrisburg to be here on the show today.

Thank you for taking time out to be with us.

- Thank you so much for having me.

- Yeah, we're so excited to understand that you are the first-ever director of diversity and inclusion for the state of Pennsylvania.

That's a big deal.

- It is a huge deal.

I will also say that being the first doesn't come with folks not doing work before you got here.

So there is a first, but there's also people that have been doing things prior to the team that I work on's arrival.

So I want to give honor to that work as well.

- Yes.

- And what we are doing as a team and with my leadership and what we're bringing forward with those that have already been at the Commonwealth doing that work already.

- How did the office come about?

I mean, I know there was an executive order signed, but how did the office come about and what was really the impetus for you?

- So as you know, right, the country has been moving in a certain direction.

There's a huge divide with humans right now and really our state is not outside of that.

And so on top of advocating and reforming right in the Office of Advocacy and Reform and advocating for the most vulnerable humans of the state, thinking about, what do the internal folks need, right?

The employees that are working on behalf of the Pennsylvanians.

And we have to be honest, we are also those working in the Commonwealth are also Pennsylvania residents.

So what do folks need to serve in this current landscape of Pennsylvania?

And so how do we bring their public service up to a level that focuses on equity and inclusion to meet the needs of today's Pennsylvanians?

- Wow.

And so, essentially, you're developing and devising strategies that will help impact the employees of the state to be able to move in a way that is more welcoming to others?

- More welcoming, more strategic to how humans need, right?

So if I'm not sure if you're familiar with the trauma-informed PA plan, that's another piece of this.

And so advocacy and reform, part of this is, what has happened to Pennsylvania humans and what do we need to be accounting for?

As we know, humans are showing up in a variety of identities.

And it's not just binary anymore.

It's not just black and white, it's not just rich or poor.

We have to think about a variety of ways that bodies are showing up, what humans in the workplace are experiencing, based off of the constructs and societal influences that we have.

And so how do we prepare our workplace to be serving in that way?

And some of that is not only thinking about numbers that we're bringing in, right?

We all want to talk about how do we diversify our organizations, how do we diversify our workplace?

It's about that at the base, but it's also about, what are you doing in your workplace, in the culture?

How are you embracing and then advancing and using all of that human potential in your organization, in your agency to maximize and optimize your human potential?

So not using diversity as an aside because we're not looking for it.

So how do we engage it?

- Do you believe that...?

So we know the murder of George Floyd was so public and really elevated issues of race and inclusion, those type of things.

Do you believe that this played a role in the state wanting to move in this direction?

- Uh.

I would believe so, right?

We know that our state, our country, that really put a light, a real, real huge light, some of us knew about this prior to that incident, right?

But this was a place in where the first time in many years where Americans had to look, they had to see, is this us?

Do we want to be this?

And lucky for us as a state that we have an administration that believes in, just because it's not happening in other places, how do we do it here?

How do we be innovative?

How do we move forward and make sure that the humans of the state are getting what they really, really deserve, and where we've missed the mark in some ways.

- Very powerful.

And to your point, you know, to Governor, to our Gov.

Wolf, you know, I'm impressed by him taking these bold steps, right?

To be able to say, this is a need within our community.

It's something that needs to happen and it needs to begin at the state because what happens at the state then trickles down.

So is your function with all organizations within the state or is it limited to a specific space?

- So our role and my leadership is really for the agencies that report up to the governor.

So if you understand what those, you think about the Department of Health, you think about the Department of Human Services, I mean, there are a number of them.

And so our work is what you've already been doing with equity and inclusion, how do we give you a structure and a strategy for that that brings in transformational leadership, that brings in symbolic leadership?

What is happening in the organization that we have to get in the way of?

Where's the disparity and disproportion showing up that is making it more challenging for employees to do the public service work that we're asking them to do?

- Sure.

- So I think that is pretty much what our work is.

It's also in internal and external in the sense that we're internal consultants.

So agencies and their leadership and those working on their DEI initiatives can talk to us, right?

We're there.

You don't have to look for someone else.

We are thinking about what the PA government needs and supporting you in that way.

And then we're also external ambassadors.

So not that we're necessarily out and about in the community that often, but we have to know what's going on with humans in the state so that we can be serving and then bringing that back to the agencies and saying, where can we meet some of these gaps?

Creating some communities of practice internally to think about, how are we always making sure we're putting the public first?

Because we're functioning under 20th century leadership and we have to be moving to 21st century leadership?

- So, so one of your counterparts was here a couple weeks ago, Norman Bristol Colon, and he shared with me and my viewing audience the changing landscape of Pennsylvania, right, and the diversity that is coming forth.

How does the state work towards inclusion as it relates to state employees representing or looking like the population of the State of Pennsylvania?

- And that's a lot of the work now.

Right.

So when you think about doing this, there's no perfection when you're talking about humans.

A lot of what we're doing in this work is getting in the way of implicit bias.

So talking about what is happening in our minds that are interfering with how we're bringing people in and how we're moving them forward in the pipeline.

And so really thinking about the structure, the system, where are the barriers?

I think it's important for people to know that it's not something you can just check off.

It's really about that digging in.

What are we grappling with, right?

So talking about the landscape of Pennsylvania, again, not looking.

So if you know, what is it, in I think eight years, we're in 2022, in eight years, the workforce will have Gen Z millennials.

Boomers.

Gen Xers.

And so if you think about what that looks like in the workplace, just that identity piece, all of us learned how to do work differently, so how is that showing up in the organization?

How is it showing up in our work?

And so helping people see those pieces, that this is also about how we include.

Thinking about boomers who are leaving the workforce.

And we're now talking about how to do equity when you've learned equality your whole career.

- Wow.

- And right, the landscape requires equity, not equality.

And so helping folks make that transition in their mind-set, in their leadership in how they do their work is the important piece.

- Yeah, I've been working with our local school district here in Easton on their diversity alliance.

We help to create and craft ideas and plans and a strategic plan to make it happen.

A lot of times, what I find is that racism is so baked into an organization or an institution.

It's structural, right?

It's institutional.

That when you begin to challenge historically held norms, you get the normal and natural pushback.

How has your journey been?

You've been there since July, I think.

Have you felt resistance or pushback trying to bring systemic change?

- Uh, honestly... You will.

When you do culture change, you're going to get resistance.

But I believe that the resistance I thought might have been in government is not there.

- Wow.

The natural things that you get if you've been doing this work and doing culture change the way that it should be done, you know that you're going to get resistance.

So you're already ahead of what that resistance looks like.

And so I will believe that the resistance is more about fear.

It's less about people don't want to do well for other humans, it's about, we don't know, and we've been doing it this way, and now we're being told, actually you're doing it wrong, you need to pivot.

And so think about if you've been doing work and someone says, get down and do it this way for 30 years.

And now the young'uns - I'm not a young'un, I don't consider myself a young'un.

But if you think about Gen Z and the millennials are like, "Get to it now."

And I'm like, hey, as a Gen Xer, I'm like, hey, y'all.

We got to inch our way.

No inch, but we have to do a little bit more... People have been doing it the same way.

How do we help?

How do we show grace?

And I think because of the work that happened prior to the team getting there, the grassroots work of folks in different agencies saying this is important, we value this.

We don't want to wait.

We want to make sure we're serving in the way that we should.

So it made it very smooth to come in and say, so how do we help you get forward?

How do we impact?

So it's not just about intent.

How are we making impacts now to the work you've done and actually seeing outcomes for the humans of Pennsylvania?

- That's so good.

I mean, when we think about historic, institutional and systemic racism, it is very hard to move folks from a way that things have been done for so long.

And it does take individuals doing the work, right, not just within the institution, but it has to be internally in them.

It's the heart that needs to change.

You can't legislate racism.

I think it was Dr King that mentioned that.

So from your perspective, why is diversity, equity and inclusion important?

Why is it necessary?

Let's talk about from the State of Pennsylvania.

What is what is the impetus behind it all?

- So equity and inclusion, the importance of it is that humans are different, right?

And I know that sounds cliche and it sounds minimal.

But if you're a public servant, and if you think about what Pennsylvania was founded on, the common good, we no longer can do the tolerance thing.

We know that was part of it, but we can talk about that another day.

I'm no longer tolerating people.

So if you think about public service is about humans, and humans show up in a variety of ways.

So our public service now has to serve a different common good because it's evolved.

So what do we need to understand about that new common good and how our public service meets that?

And that's really the conversation.

It's no longer an argument about should we treat people well?

People are being traumatized from generations of poverty, generations of racism.

And when you take in, racism is a mind-set, right?

And it was connected to economics.

- Yes, it was.

- And so when you make people's bodies economy and money, then when that starts to move and look differently, people think you're taking their economics.

And so you have to have people understand what is happening in our society historically.

People do really believe that we're losing, that Western civilization is over.

And so if that is the mind-set you've had for so long and it's worked for you, it's scary to hear the other way.

We have to be making room for people's understandings around this stuff and also expanding it, understanding that racism, right?

We really have to tackle some stuff.

- Sure.

- But if you don't give people resources connected to poverty, they're going to continue to move those mind-set pieces forward.

It creates more hate, more violence.

Right?

Think about it, if you don't have enough, you want to blame.

You want to find a target.

- Yeah.

- So we're helping people think about your resources are what's really what you're grappling for.

- That's good.

- Right?

While you're over here, let's help you with the mind-set while we figure out how to move some of these resources and help people see humans in the way they should be seen today, not yesterday.

- That's good.

What have been some of your challenges from, you know, from the level of...?

Because you have a very high, you know, level role, you're walking in authority as a black woman, right, in the State of Pennsylvania, where historically, that hasn't been the case.

What have been some of your challenges personally?

- Much of that.

If we know how we're socialized or how we learn things in this society under a racist structure, black women's intellect isn't valued.

- Yes.

- And now you have the black woman, the first, not to say the only, right?

But the first, visibly first.

Let's talk about that because people have been doing this work, right?

Visibly, I'm the first.

The other part of that is, again, there's no value in our intellect.

And now you have the black woman saying, this is actually how your strategy should move forward.

And so if you have never seen...

Think about high school, college, kindergarten through 12, if you've never had a black teacher and you've never seen intellect from a black woman as valuable... - Or principal or administrator or superintendent.

- Any of it.

So here we come.

And I'm saying, actually, you've all been doing really, really great.

Here's what I also know from the years of doing this work.

And the other challenge is, folks have decided DEI is trendy.

So I look young, but I've been doing this work for a long time.

I've been doing it before it was called DEI.

There are theoretical principles.

There's concepts to this.

Equality and equity are not the same.

And so folks find a moneymaking opportunity, which I understand.

- Sure, sure.

- All of us need to have economic stability.

But then when you really get into, how do you apply those theoretical concepts to actually changing organizations and moving culture and that needle?

Those are the places where we have gaps.

And so we need to really be thinking about, how are we making people's bodies and their lives trends?

- Yeah!

- And how we're really actually working for their needs every day.

- I've never seen more DEI offices of Fortune 500 companies to, you know, local companies.

Everybody's moving to the DEI.

And I think it only exposes what has been historically the truth that we've known as minorities, whether African-American, Latinx or Asian, that, you know, the white culture possesses power and that power, one great man said, concedes nothing except upon demand.

Right, so DEI becomes this vehicle that can challenge historically held norms, right, and create opportunities for the marginalized and oppressed to find parity, to find equity and a level playing field.

But it requires the leadership to really buy into it.

And how has that gone for you?

You already have gotten the OK, from the Governor, right?

And he's appointed a black female to be the director.

And then it's almost like, all right, now, go make a change.

- Well, let me switch that a little, cos this is how we...

I wasn't appointed.

- OK. - The office was created and then I was hired.

I went through a whole process.

- Which means you showed all of your credentials, your resume, and everything else, right?

- Yes.

- That's good.

That's good.

Thank you for that.

- Repeat that for me just for a second, so I make sure I get what you're saying.

- I was just saying that it has to start at the top, right, and for all of the folks that I've interviewed with DEI, if the CEOs and the leaders are not bought in to the concept, then it will not trickle down, right, and it will not impact the organization.

Well, PA is a huge organization, right?

- It is.

- It's a government.

So you've already got the buy-in, I'll say, of the Governor.

Has that translated with some of the other folks that you're walking and doing the work with?

- I believe so.

- OK. - I really do believe at the core of it is really that people just don't know and are fearful.

I don't I don't know that anyone...

I mean, I'm sure there's someone somewhere, but I can't be sure-sure about that.

I think there are more people who are willing to do good work and just don't know where to go with that good work.

- Right.

- And if there are people that are actually actively working against it, they're not present in my life every day... - Good for you.

- ..in this work.

Or maybe I've set it up that I say, you know what, I have to figure out how to work.

That's also strategy.

So if there are those pieces, that's a strategy that I have to think through with the team to make sure we're working with because again, every piece of this is important.

The other piece that I want to challenge is when you're thinking about 21st century leadership, that is bottom-up.

And so what the challenge is is that you, again, back to the workforce and who we have in the workforce right now.

Millennials and Gen Z are 21st century leadership workers.

So that is not something where you see a role as the end all, be all.

- OK. - Right?

- Yeah.

- Where if you're functioning, what we have is we have leaders who are moving out of the workforce who have been functioning under 20th century leadership for so long.

And that is top-down.

- Right.

- So what you have, along with visual and racial ethnic diversity constraints and tensions and divides, you also have that age and what you learned in the workforce.

And then you add, right, if you are someone who has poverty trauma, you may no longer be poor, but you're in your role and you have that poverty trauma you brought with you.

And that has many faces and many hues.

So really thinking about how this plays a part in this, and really understanding what each generation is looking for.

- OK. - And it's not a top-down thing anymore.

And I think that's the conflict.

- Yeah.

- That's very much the conflict.

- Yeah, we learned from the Great Resignation this next generation is not staying on a job that doesn't make some concessions for who they are as individuals and what their expectations are.

I don't understand it, but, you know, my daddy always told me, you never leave a job till you have a job.

- Think about that, though, generational, right?

Think about what you learned, and I'm not...

I don't want to assume age, but that is a generational piece.

I was raised by Boomers.

- Mm-hm.

And then, wait, maybe the end of... What's the generation right before?

I want to say the Silent Generation.

- The Silent Generation.

- So if you think about when you're raised, and so I joked and said, as Gen Xers, we were raised by that generation, and we were, like, the latchkey kids, right?

That's when economics and workforce started to move a little bit.

- Yeah.

- Women, rights, '70s, and where women started going into the workforce and what the dynamics, particularly for black people.

I mean, black women have always been working.

- Right.

- That's a whole nother story.

So think about that, the dynamics of the family and how that changed, and what people saw of who was in the workforce, who's not in the workforce, what's happening in families.

And we have to be thinking about what that looks like today.

A lot of what has happened is that work and how work needs to happen in the 21st century is really equity and inclusion's embedded in it.

But we're still practicing over here and folks are not moving.

And so part of this is setting that foundation to say, what do you have to release so we could get here?

- Yeah.

You know, sitting listening to you and hearing your insight and your capacity to really dissect what's happening within the state and then bring leadership, right, vision, strategy, and empower your team to be able to work.

Tell me a little bit about you.

Like, how did you become the woman that you are?

I heard you before the show talking about the influence of your mother.

- Yes.

- Can you talk a little bit about that?

And maybe just taking that time to inspire a young black girl who may be working, watching or, you know, a young Latinx girl who sees you in your role and says, "This, this woman is accomplished."

Can you maybe share a little bit about your journey?

Yes, I'll try to do that in a short period of time, as brief as I can.

So when I was about seven or eight, my family moved from Brooklyn, New York to Sunbury, Pennsylvania.

- Sunbury.

- Sunbury, Pennsylvania, and I'm sure there are people that are watching who are familiar with Sunbury.

- Yeah.

- I was the only little black girl for a very long time... ..in a sea of whiteness, in rural whiteness.

- Yeah.

- So you learn a lot about yourself.

You also learn a lot about poor white people and their experience.

And so for me, as a child, you don't know how to articulate that.

You don't know the language for it.

But I always remember thinking I'm having very similar experiences as these folks, and the only difference is their skin is different.

So they treat you sometimes worse than they treat me because I'm smart.

- Hm.

- Right.

- So you were the little black girl and you were smart.

- And I was smart.

I was a smart black girl.

So then, right, so I noticed how I maneuvered because I had intellect.

And that was partially because my mother and my grandmother, I remember my grandmother would say things about the King's English.

"Leave her alone.

She speaks the King's English," and I didn't know what that meant.

- Uh-huh.

- And as I know now, right, that means, right, for our people, education was the way forward, that was going to level you up, that was the great equalizer.

And so as a kid, I was just thinking, this is how they're keeping me out of trouble, but I liked to read.

And so they were reinforcing that.

I didn't know what's to keep me from just mess outside or whatever was going on, but I was excited to read and learn, and that just kept going.

My mother encouraged it when I moved to Sunbury.

There wasn't a lot that looked like me, so I had to find things that I was interested in.

My father spent a good amount of time in prison, so what he introduced me to, as far as like liberation and how to see myself, I had a family that, although I wouldn't say they were militant, being black was not something to throw to the wayside.

It was - it's OK for you to be who you are... - Embrace your blackness.

- Right.

And you're going to go out there and people are going to tell you you're not good enough.

So here's what we have to do to make sure.

So when I was tutoring children or, you know, tutoring other peers in high school and I'd go home and my mother would say, "But you're tutoring their children.

"How does this make sense?"

- Right.

- She was very good at showing me the contradictions in the messaging.

I don't know that she knew she was doing that.

I don't know if my grandmother or my aunt even knew.

But having that foundation where people told you from the womb, you're not less than.

So when I went out into the world when that less-than message was coming, even though it hit me... - Yeah.

- ..I was like, "Hm, how is it that they're telling me "I'm not less than, but then I go out here...?"

So, didn't know, but it was preparing me for probably where I'm at now, right?

You're going to say I'm not good enough.

You're going to say what I'm bringing to you is... Because that's what you've learned about me.

You're responding to what you see - my visual.

You've not taken the time to then see what's behind the visual.

- Absolutely.

- Right.

So with implicit bias, with stereotyping, that's what we do today.

We see something and it shows up in a way and we decide I have to interact with you like this because of what my implicit bias is.

versus putting space in that because it's all really based in social constructs and how we've been traumatized around identity.

- Sure.

- Anyway, that was a long way to get to... - No, that's amazing because, you know, you highlight so many different areas and you mentioned something earlier.

You talked about the intellect of the black woman.

Our ex president, the last president says that it is not fair for him to be prosecuted by black women, right?

His case in Georgia is being tried by a black woman, and the one in New York is being tried by a black woman.

They just happened to arise to levels of authority.

Kamala Harris, our vice president, is catching all kinds of pushback, right?

Because, I believe, of the color of her skin.

- Mm-hm.

- African-American women for years have been vilified, dehumanized, and tossed to the side, right.

But then you have the capacity to walk in a place of authority and to bring the skill.

The President Biden says, "I'm going to appoint "an African-American female to the Supreme Court," and people are losing their mind, right, thinking, "Oh, this is horrible, and it's racism."

But, you know, in the 100-plus years and the 150-plus judges, you know, were all white men.

But now when President Biden opens up to say, I'm going to put a black woman and level the playing field, there's a problem, there's pushback.

How do you deal as a black woman with what you see and what you experience with that type of pushback in society?

- I'm a different kind of black woman, I think.

- OK, OK. - Not different from other...

I'm sure there are other black women who think this.

For me, that's fodder to say, I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing.

- OK. - Tell me the why.

- Mm-hm.

- If you can't tell me the why it's based in some kind of ism or power control.

- OK. - So if you don't want a black woman to be a Supreme Court justice, tell me why.

If you cannot tell me why, it's based in racism.

- That's good.

That's good.

It seems that you have a tall task at the state of Pennsylvania, but you are more than equipped to bring the necessary change.

Last few questions, as it relates to your team.

How do you provide the necessary leadership to help them continue to do the work, this diversity, equity and inclusion?

- Yeah, I will say that I have an awesome team, first of all, so the pieces of lead them is easy.

It's very easy to lead our team.

I don't know what Dr Dan Jurman was thinking when he put us together.

Either he had some master plan, but it feels like I've worked with these two folks for a long time, and the synergy, the things that I contribute, I think, are just when I get a strategy or a thought that is forward thinking and know that maybe this is something new.

How do we want to attack it?

What do you need for me to bring you for it?

If they think it's not something that will hit the Commonwealth, well... - Yeah.

- ..or they're not ready for, I know that it's not something yet, because Venus will go.

I will say, "Let's do boom because of what we heard here."

And they'll say, "Well, Venus..." We had this level setting the other day, and they know it.

So it's really good to be with people that work on a team that are forward thinking, they want to use theory and practice evidence-based stuff.

But they also know we have to make impact.

So when Venus, I always want to make an impact, but when I'm going off somewhere, they're very good at saying, "Let's level this."

And we're also good... We spend a lot of time talking.

When we meet with agencies or we meet with teams, we also talk with our colleagues.

Like, that is not, you know, if people are struggling with this, we say, let's talk through it, because part of this, you don't remove yourself.

You still are showing up.

Sometimes your identity pieces that you haven't even talked through are showing up in this work.

So a lot of it is our team just working with our colleagues to say, you're right on track, keep going, right, and giving them those wins and those hits.

And we do that very well together.

- OK. - Not just our team.

But we have other colleagues that are trained.

We have folks that are therapists in their other lives and have maybe put that on pause for here.

So there's some clinical stuff that we actually use as part of the trauma-informed piece.

How do we create spaces that are informed by trauma?

So you understand how to be giving public service in a way that is thinking about the humans and how they show up in their traumatic pieces, whether that's collective trauma or poverty trauma, or an incident that happened.

We have veterans in our state that are really grappling with things.

And they look a variety of ways.

And one thing I did want to say also is, not to this question, but something you said earlier.

- Sure.

- I think there's a piece in this where we forget about class.

Class really does put people, whether you're black, white, Latinx, Asian, class is that thing we really need to be talking about because, for me, I think that dividing, or not dividing, but the thing that pushed me differently was education is part of class.

And so where economically income wasn't working, my family said, you will continue to go to school because you need to move forward in life.

So I think about how education has even morphed, and it's how are we thinking about education as the equali-... Equity...

I'm going to make up a word now!

Equityizer.

- Equityizer.

- Right?

But that piece, how has education become an agenda versus learning being objective?

- Wow, thank you.

Listen, we could go on all day.

I just appreciate you.

The work that you're doing is impactful.

I know it is very challenging, but you're very equipped to get the work done with your wonderful team.

You're going to impact the state of Pennsylvania, and we are grateful.

Thank you for taking time to come and just sit in the living room and have a conversation.

I'm grateful for that and to all of our viewing audience, thank you for taking the time to watch Courageous Conversations.

I'll say this to you, keep being courageous, and we'll see you next time.

God bless.