Welcome to Season Three of Reconstructing Inclusion!

This is my last episode for 2025.

If I could go back five years, what would I have changed? This solo episode is my honest accounting of where the diversity, equity, and inclusion field went wrong.

The past five years transformed DEI. What started as meaningful change became performance art. Organizations treated inclusion as optics management: do just enough to deflect criticism. But it rarely touched fundamental structures.

Now we're living with the consequences. The resistance has erupted. We may have contributed to the very resistance we were trying to overcome.

🔥 Standout Quotes:

"Instead of enrolling people in a conversation about what organizations structurally needed to change, there was a tremendous amount of energy talking about the structural problem of systemic racism." [00:05:00]

"When we see statistical disparities and immediately conclude their evidence of discrimination, without examining all these other factors, we're committing this fallacy. Disparities don't equal discrimination." [00:11:00]

Resources Mentioned:

Social Justice Fallacies by Thomas Sowell

In This Episode:

[00:05:00] When optics replaced purpose

[00:07:00] Active vs. passive opposition

[00:11:00] The three fallacies affecting DEI work

[00:16:00] The Richard Bilkszto tragedy

[00:22:00] What inclusion work should actually be

[00:24:00] Building durable skills

[00:27:00] Why this moment holds promise

#Inclusion #DEI #Leadership #OrganizationalDevelopment #Diversity

Let's Connect:

https://inclusionwins.com/

https://reconstructinginclusion.substack.com/

➡️ Subscribe to Reconstructing Inclusion for more unfiltered conversations about the future of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI)

Welcome to Season Three of Reconstructing Inclusion!

When Empathy Becomes Optional: A Conversation with Maaria Mozaffar

When did empathy become something we can turn on and off? When did we start deciding which children deserve protection and which ones don't? These are the uncomfortable questions Maaria Mozaffar forces us to confront.

🔥 Standout Quotes:

"If you are watching that and you think it's just about legalities, should've known better, then I wanna know where your humanity is." [00:16:00]

"I don't believe humans have the right to consider other humans less human... I will keep an eye on every interaction and not pass the buck." [00:34:00]

"Watch your baby be crushed under buildings. We'll see if you're gonna look for someone to blame or you're gonna put on your backpack and say, let's lift this up." [00:35:00]

About Our Guest:

Maaria Mozaffar is an attorney, mediator, legislative drafter, and author of More Than Pretty: How to Live a Life of Substance in an Artificial World.

For over 15 years, she's been writing human-first policies that center dignity and interconnectedness. In this conversation, she argues that we've turned off our empathy and made it optional instead of essential—and that we have the power to turn it back on.

Resources Mentioned:

The Fox and the Hound (animated film): A story about friendship, identity, and choosing humanity over what we’re conditioned to believe.

More Than Pretty: How to Live a Life of Substance in an Artificial World by Maaria Mozaffar: A book about moving away from distractions and creating a life of substance and impact.

In This Episode:

- The three camps: happiness, helplessness, and hiding (and why none are serving us)

- How ethnocentrism is driving immigration policy

- Why we've made empathy optional and how to make it essential again

- Why global education is essential for breaking through propaganda

- How we've chosen to see some people as less deserving of dignity

- The power of one voice and one micro decision

- What it means to stop being an NPC in your own life

Let's Connect:

https://inclusionwins.com/

https://reconstructinginclusion.substack.com/

➡️ Subscribe to Reconstructing Inclusion for more unfiltered conversations about the future of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI)

Welcome to Season Three of The Reconstructing Inclusion Podcast!

In this episode, Amri Johnson argues that D-E-I as symbols must go, not the principles, but the letters themselves that have become hollow ammunition in a culture war serving no one.

Fresh from the LEAD 2025 conference in Milan, he'd been seeing traction emerge from the wreckage, but it looks radically different from what came before. It's less about representation metrics and identity categories, more about humanity and systems change.

He opens with a story about his 6-year-old son telling him, "this is just a dream"—a moment connecting to Daoist philosophy that forced him to consider how DEI practitioners have been co-creating the very conditions they now face. The question isn't whether DEI should exist, but whether we're brave enough to wake up from the dream we've been living and create something better.

🔥 Standout Quotes:

"D, E, and I are not the essence. The essence has been stuffed into these three letters, and it's like writing the word pizza on paper and handing it to you. That's not pizza." [00:06:00]

"If social capital isn't present, the floors of businesses are hollow and the ceilings are capped. The only change is downward." [00:14:00]

"When we care for the so-called other to help them fulfill their highest potential, that's how we fulfill our own highest potential." [00:20:00]

Resources Mentioned:

LEAD Network Conference 2025: We’re All In

Subscribe to Geoff Marlow on Substack

Cultural Intelligence Center - Since 2004, has helped leaders and teams confidently navigate cultural complexity, leading to stronger collaboration, sharper innovation, and more impactful leadership.

Atlas at Cultural Infusion - delivers world-first missing data, and empowers teams with an innovative, engaging experience.

Time Stamps:

Why both anti-DEI and pro-DEI camps have a stake in keeping the letters alive [00:06:00]

The "pizza metaphor": How we've been arguing about words on paper while everyone goes hungry [00:06:00]

Why social capital trumps financial capital—and what happens when it's absent [00:12:00]

The five fundamental shifts redefining inclusion work over the next 12-18 months [00:15:00]

Moving from racialization/gender/sexuality as organizing principles to centering humanity [00:16:00]

Cultural intelligence as the foundation everyone can build [00:19:00]

Care, openness, safety, and trust as relational infrastructure [00:20:00]

Sense-making as the organizational superpower AI can't replace [00:22:00]

Networks and cognitive diversity as critical survival skills [00:24:00]

➡️ Subscribe to Reconstructing Inclusion for more unfiltered conversations about the future of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI)