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Detroit Regional Chamber > Racial Justice & Economic Equity > Just Lead: Corporate and Nonprofit Leaders on DEI and Racial Equity Work in Business

Just Lead: Corporate and Nonprofit Leaders on DEI and Racial Equity Work in Business

October 26, 2023

During the second annual Just Lead: Advancing Racial Equity, A New Detroit Conference, a series of Detroit Region equity leaders opened the Conference in a three-part plenary, The Business Case and Experience with DEI and Racial Equity. 

Part I: DEI Is the Right Thing to Do 

Joining New Detroit’s Board Chair Cheryl P. Johnson as moderator, Walker-Miller Energy Services’ Carla Walker-Miller and Detroit Equity Inc.’s Bishop Edgar L. Vann spoke about diversity, equity, and inclusion being the “right thing to do” for business.  

Carla Walker Miller

“Equity is acknowledging with courage that we are not the same and having the courage to understand from that person’s POV what they need to be successful – not from my POV, not from my lived experiences, but from that person’s POV.”

Carla Walker–Miller
Chief Executive Officer,
Walker-Miller Energy Services 

Bishop Edgar L. Vann

“Often times, we have an emotional, visceral response to equity. It needs to be a non-emotional process and reality check toward it… Even right here in Detroit, we have corporations that stepped up at that moment [in Summer 2020, following the murder of George Floyd] and made commitments. I haven’t heard the reports coming back from those corporations on how successful they may have been in making those episodic commitments.” 

Bishop Edgar L. Vann
Founder and Chief Executive Officer,
Detroit Equity Inc. 

Part II: Leading with Head, Heart, and Hand to Create Racial Equity in Communities 

Moderated by National Diversity Council’s Darlene King Turner, the second panel included Henry Ford Health’s Bob Riney, DTE Energy’s Trevor Lauer, and Taubman’s Bill Taubman. The trio spoke about some resistance to embracing DEI in business, as well as leading with head, heart, and hand to create racial equity in communities through their organizations. 

Bob Riney

“Any change that has decades of resistance is hard. Also, anything that’s become politicized is hard because it’s distracting to the core goal, and people can divert their energy and get caught up in things that are actually not focused on moving the needle. There [are] individuals and organizations that benefit from that distraction. So I think that you have to have a will to create a consistency of approach through easy times and hard times and know that it’s not a straight line. It’s going to move up and down, but if it’s trending at a continual basis in the right direction, that’s what you’ve got to focus on.”

Bob Riney
President and Chief Executive Officer,
Henry Ford Health 

Trevor Lauer

“Culturally, you need to change an organization. You need to change processes inside of an organization to change it, and then I think the other reason why it’s so hard: you have to lean in as a leader. If you’re not leaning in as a leadership team and demanding change, and then understanding those process changes, then it’s easy to say you want change to happen. But if I want to grow revenue or I want to fix an operation, I know the metrics I have to change. We can do the exact same thing here, but leaders have to ask that question. They need to see the data and understand that change is happening. It’s easy to say that. It’s harder to actually put that into operation.”

Trevor Lauer
Vice Chairman and Group President, DTE Energy 

Bill Taubman

“Culture and people are conservative in change, and that’s part of the reason it’s difficult. And the older we get, you get more set in our ways, your values get more fixed, and it becomes that much more difficult to open up and consider alternatives, both as a person and as an organization. It’s important that you allow for the exposure, you allow a diverse group of employees to have exposure within the organization so that you can understand their experiences, both personal as well as within the corporate environment, and be able to understand that and use those experiences to evolve as an organization.”

Bill Taubman
President and Chief Executive Officer,
Taubman 

Part III: Developing Cross-Cultural Relationships 

Part III was moderated by Freda G. Sampson LLC’s Freda G. Sampson and included Plante Moran’s Gordon Krater and Black Leaders Detroit’s Dwan Dandridge, who discussed challenges igniting cross-cultural relationships and vulnerability in DEI work. 

Dwan Dandridge

“We are often having discussion[s] around systems, talking about race. We understand that’s necessary because the change we’re looking for is ultimately fairness and the correction to all the wrongs that we have inherited from previous generations and some of the things that are happening right now. Personally, I believe that you have to be able to have everybody at the table. We talk about diversity when it comes to impacting companies and organizations, but if we’re talking about race specifically, oftentimes, we’re having very deep, meaningful, very honest conversations in silos.”

Dwan Dandridge
Chief Executive Officer,
Black Leaders Detroit 

Gordon Krater

“The biggest challenge is ignorance. I don’t mean intentional ignorance; it’s just a lack of information. I know that I’ve experienced this. I’ve seen others experience it – where you’re afraid to say the wrong thing. You’re afraid to sort of step in it and offend somebody, or all of a sudden, you’re labeled as something when that’s not at all what you meant. I experienced the fear of that – people have granted me grace, so that’s been very helpful in my personal growth. But I think encouraging situations, encouraging gatherings, encouraging training – whatever it is where you have people together and you have to deal with being vulnerable. I think that’s where the growth really happens and the healing happens, too.”

Gordon Krater
Retired Partner,
Plante Moran