Celebrating Diversity: Dr Nikki Lanier Of Harper Slade and RAARE On How To Build Inclusive Communities
An Interview With Vanessa Ogle
Stay optimistic. Your mindset must always be focused on what must be true versus what is true. Realism has its place within most strategic priorities. But with this doctrine, because we are focusing on creating a world that we have never seen, you must be very clear about that world, what it will look like and why it is inevitable. That way, you can inspire people to move into alignment with your mindset versus people feeling like they are being forced out of theirs.
In a world where diversity is often acknowledged but not always celebrated, we are taking a step forward to highlight the importance of inclusivity in building strong, vibrant communities. This series aims to explore the various facets of diversity — be it racial, cultural, gender-based, or within the differently-abled community — and understand how embracing these differences strengthens our social fabric. As part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Nikki Lanier.
Dr. Nikki Lanier is the CEO of Louisville-based Harper Slade, a WBENC Certified advisory firm with an international presence, focused on helping organizations advance organizational strategies based on the demographic workforce of the future. A labor and employment attorney, a three-time CHRO, and a former senior vice president with the Federal Reserve, Nikki is a leader with over 25 years of career achievements spanning Banking, Labor and Employment Law, Collective Bargaining, Human Resources, and State Government. A private and public sector CHRO adept in a multitude of HR disciplines, Nikki is experienced in managing multi-site operations and employing comprehensive approaches that effectively align human capital priorities with the overall organizational strategy. Nikki is a collaborative leader who is skilled in building synergetic teams in multicultural and cross-functional environments. In 2023, Nikki launched the RAARE Woman Collective (Radical Action Advancing Racial Equity), a racial equity program and coaching suite for “inclined” white women interested in advancing racial equity as partners, leaders and advocates. This year, in April 2024, Nikki was recognized as one of “100 Women to KNOW in America” by JP Morgan Chase and the KNOW Women Media Group for her success as an acclaimed global racial equity strategist and thought leader; a community leader and entrepreneur, and for her ability to unite communities around equity and social impact.
Nikki’s voice and perspective on the link between inequity and macroeconomics is a compelling one and her insights have been featured on Closing Bell, CNBC, USA Today, Forbes Magazine, Essence Magazine, Ebony Media, Blavity, PBS and countless web and podcasts. Though based in Kentucky, she has spoken at events worldwide in furtherance of this work and has hosted Harper Slade launch events in Washington DC, New York and Oakland California, Chicago, IL and South Florida.
Nikki earned a juris doctorate from the University of Miami School of Law, a bachelor’s degree in Journalism from Hampton University and holds a certification in Collective Bargaining from Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations. She has served as an adjunct MBA professor for the University of Louisville College of Business where she also serves on its Board of Advisors.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series. Before we dive into our discussion about celebrating diversity, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you share with us the backstory about what brought you to your specific career path?
Thank you for the opportunity. When people ask me why I’ve focused so much of my professional life on advancing racial equity, I usually explain that it was an assignment passed to me “in utero”. My parents were immersed in the civil rights movement. I was raised on the campus of Hampton University, one of the country’s most prominent HBCUs, where both of my parents were employed: my mother in academia as the Chairwoman of the English Department and my father on the administrative side with several roles, including Dean of Financial Aid, Dean of Students, Dean of Support Services and for some time, the head of Hampton University’s Business Assistance Center.
Given my parent’s deep involvement in the civil rights movement, they shared with me, quite liberally, the pains and gains associated with that work. While a college student at Philander Smith College in Little Rock, Arkansas, my dad was in an organization called SNCC (Student NonViolent Coordinating Committee). His assigned focus area was to register black people to vote, a right black people, ostensibly already had. His work (and the civil rights work at that point) focused on ensuring black people had an unencumbered right to vote. For his work in this capacity, my father has been jailed, beaten by police, hosed by fire hoses, bitten by police dogs, and shot at by the KKK, all happening in his home country. My mother was a volunteer with the NAACP in Montgomery Alabama and, as a college instructor with the public university there, was prohibited from participating in any activities encouraging civil rights for black people. She quietly gave her time to protestors during and after their marches, tending to wounds, assuring meal prep and otherwise providing office support as she could. Hearing their stories with regular cadence, while literally living on a black college campus, an environment that perpetually reinforced black excellence and beauty, awakened in me a deep desire to help carry their legacy of helping the country we love close the gap between what it ought be and what it is. I became smitten by the work of wrong-righting and am honored to help the country I love be the best it can be.
Now, as founder and CEO of Harper Slade, my work focuses on helping organizations here and overseas cultivate environments where black and brown talent can thrive. Harper Slade, by the way, is named in honor of my paternal grandmother, Lenora Harper Robinson and maternal grandmother, Ernestine Johnson Slade, who were both trailblazing women in their communities, in their workplaces and in their homes. Both of these stalwart mavericks were VERY much about the business of being black and assured their children, my parents, were similarly focused.
I founded the RAARE Woman Collective, a global coaching program for inclined white women who want to become better racial equity advocates and leaders in every space they occupy: in their homes, workplaces, and communities. I firmly believe that we will all succeed and benefit when we work together in partnership to eradicate discrimination, racism and oppression.
A crucial focal point in all areas of my work is the demographic reality and economic imperative we are moving toward in this country, in which the majority of working-aged Americans will be black and brown by the year 2045, a reality which will hold significant impact for our monetary and fiscal policy, as well as our geopolitical footing.
Can you share an interesting or hopeful story where spending time with someone who did not look like you or who was different from you taught you something that has been useful to you?
It’s undeniable that our world tends to perpetuate a fairly prevalent sentiment that somehow difference is tantamount to deficit when it comes to black and brown people. If we are honest, we understand, at fairly young ages, that black and brown people are viewed as somehow de facto unequal — at a human level. That sentiment, I would argue, holds true for all of us, to varying degrees. For me, growing up and hearing the stories from my parents and their peers and learning so much about the history of oppression that black people navigate, I felt trepidation about being in spaces with white people, especially privately. Honestly, it is a fear that I still have to manage, even as a 53-year-old equity practitioner. What brings me great hope is that I am finally in a place where I am comfortable (and self-aware enough) to nurture real friendships with white people –something I have never done before. In fact, January of this year was the first time I had ever been an overnight guest in a white person’s home (I might also add it was the first time I have been invited). It was a lovely and pure experience. I enjoyed spending time at my friend’s home in San Francisco and appreciated the opportunity to talk, laugh, connect, dine and explore our commonalities and differences. In my advisory work, I teach organizational leaders to understand and unpack their beliefs about people who are different. That is foundational in my mind, because beliefs drive perceptions that feed thoughts that lead to feelings and then actions. I had a belief that white people are to be feared, that the systems that benefit them only serve to cause me harm, and that feeds everything else, to various degrees. I also teach that we have to understand our beliefs about “different” people so that we can invite new experiences into our lives in order to disrupt beliefs that just don’t serve us. In my company, we always start at the beliefs exploration level in this work and not the actions, choices and behavior level. It’s the harder path, but undoubtedly, an evergreen one. In my own case, with something as simple as a sleepover, I was able to learn and grow from my own counsel.
You are a successful leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?
Self-awareness, visionary thinking, and kindness have been instrumental to my success. Self-awareness has allowed me to understand my strengths and weaknesses, helping me to continually improve and adapt in a rapidly changing world. This introspective quality ensures that I remain grounded and focused on my personal growth and professional development. Visionary thinking, on the other hand, fuels my ability to see beyond the present and imagine innovative solutions to complex problems. This forward-thinking mindset keeps me motivated and drives me to pursue ambitious goals. Lastly, kindness has been a cornerstone of my interactions, fostering strong relationships and a supportive network. By treating others with empathy and respect, I’ve built a foundation of trust and collaboration, which has been crucial for achieving long-term success.
Ok, thank you for that. Let’s now jump to the primary focus of our interview. Can you share a personal story that highlights the impact of diversity and inclusivity in your life or career?
I define diversity as intentional seeking and placing of who and what is not in the room. In the context of work, inclusion is defined simply as how does work feel about me, how do I feel about it AND what happens IN and THROUGH me because of it. The latter can really be applied to any setting, not just work. However, as it relates to work, we help our clients understand diversity and inclusion through the lens of employee engagement strategies. Even though I have spent the majority of my career as an HR executive, I was always an employee of the organization first: a black female employee. With that came the kinds of experiences and frustrations that we have all read about, even though I was an HR leader. On far too many occasions, the extent to which I felt connected to my work, safe and secure in my existence at work and really able to find my way to engagement, felt more elusive than it should have been. Quite often, I found myself in work environments where the “auditioning” process just never seemed to end. I was constantly justifying, defending, and explaining myself, my approaches, my nuances, idiosyncrasies, mannerisms, persona BEFORE I was able to do my work. That tends to be the common experience of black and brown employees in most corporate settings and it’s a precarious reality for employers if left unmitigated: one that most certainly compromises employee engagement, allowing for discretionary effort, innovation and ultimately the employer’s competitive advantage. Most of my career experience has been mired in this very dynamic — and I understand the micro and macro implications of that to the workplace, as well as the employer’s goals regarding desired revenue, shareholder value and industry positioning. Employers hire employees so that they can contribute to the fullness of their competencies. A workplace unexamined for unfettered bias, inequity, and prejudice is de facto compromised.
How do you approach and manage the challenges that arise when working towards creating more inclusive communities?
To manage these challenges well, it’s first important to acknowledge where they come from: not only at the surface, but more deeply. In my opinion, the absence of inclusive environments is not just about dislike of a group of people or hating a group of people, at its core. It represents a fundamental discomfort with an unexamined relational paradox across lines of difference. This is largely due to the narrative about one another that we have all inherited and never really stopped to unpack. It’s reinforced by the way that we live inside of segregation, and becomes evermore metastasized when we think about these kinds of topics being subject to political fodder and fairly dogmatic opinions.
Inclusive work is fundamentally change management work. In fact, it’s transformation-igniting work: bringing into existence tomorrow that which does not exist today. It does not happen without thoughtful, strategic, carefully constructed and human-centered discipline on how to invite people to believe, perceive, think, feel, and act differently — specifically, and importantly, around people with whom they have had little practice interacting and engaging. It requires an understanding that our societal norms reinforce a fairly healthy dislike of one another, especially nowadays, where there seems to be a proliferation of unkindness, divisiveness and selfishness.
Our approach focuses on meeting our clients where they are, recognizing that this work is highly emotional and difficult for everyone, preservation of dignity while we focus on steady improvement and assuring we are focusing on and positioning our workplaces and our society for the 2045 demographic reality ahead.
What innovative strategies or initiatives have you implemented or observed that effectively promote the importance of diversity and inclusivity?
In order to ignite real human connection with principles of diversity and inclusion (recognizing how disruptive, volatile, and emotional these topics are), you must know how to sit them in proper contexts. We talk about diversity and inclusion as THE employee engagement strategy of our lifetime. We don’t talk about it as a social justice initiative, a “right thing to do” priority or a moral imperative because capitalist systems don’t know how to respond to that kind of impetus. It’s important that we recognize that people are ever more “different” and, therefore, your customer-base and your employee-base will increasingly hail from communities that most decision-makers have had very little exposure to or experience with. So in order to assure appropriate engagement of diverse talent, you must deeply understand the nuances, idiosyncrasies, priorities, needs, lived experiences of people who are different so that engagement can flow to more discretionary effort, more innovation, and a more competitive organization. There is not an employer with whom I’ve had contact that does not highly covet employee engagement. Anchoring your diversity and inclusion posture to employee engagement also assures that it will always be a strategic priority of the organization and not a bolted on initiative du jour.
Similarly, racial equity work must sit inside the context of the demographic trends that I just mentioned, as well as the economic imperative that accompanies the shifting demographics in front of us. We reside in a country that must persist in its excellence and vibrancy. We all want America to continue as a global economic powerhouse. It will be very difficult to maintain that footing if the majority of our citizens cannot plug in to the fundamentals of our labor economy, societal constructs, and political systems because of current day, or lingering, race-based inequity. Each of us has a role to play in addressing this reality, including our corporations and organizations. Not doing so has significant monetary and fiscal policy implications, all of which impact not only our workplace, but our families, communities and society. My company understands all of these dynamics intimately and can convey the same to our clients with credibility and authenticity.
In your opinion, what are the key elements that make a community truly inclusive, and how can these be fostered on a large scale?
Whether we’re looking at life at work, in community or within the greater societal construct as an American, inclusion is a feeling. How does my community feel about me and how do I feel about it? How does my country feel about me and how do I feel about it? What must be true to extract that feeling? The key elements that need to be present to make a community truly inclusive would be reflected in all inclusive environments, including on a national level:
- Demonstrative interest in the wellbeing of each other: feeling compassion from fellow citizens at all levels and in all environments;
- Differences honored and appreciated: that all are seen and valued because of who they are and not in spite of it. An appreciation that differences are not tantamount to deficit.
- Presumption of dignity, respect and preservation: complete confidence and trust that engagement with “the other” presumes dignity, respect and preservation;
- Community involvement and engagement: opportunities exist to be involved and heard and are encouraged
- Clear access: unencumbered access to pathways to all that that community has to offer; and to progress within that community
- Fairness and equity: the assurance that accountability is fairly exercised and that rules are equally applied.
Based on your experience and research, can you please share “5 Ways We Can Build Inclusive Communities”?
Since inclusivity in the workplace and within organizational structures is my wheelhouse, I’m going to focus here on workplace communities. However, these recommendations can be reframed or expanded for all communities. I have included specific action steps for each.
- Promote Inclusive Leadership and Representation: Ensuring diversity in leadership and decision-making roles helps reflect the diversity of the workforce and fosters an inclusive environment.
Action Steps:
- Set clear diversity goals for leadership positions and regularly track progress.
- Establish mentorship programs to support the career development of underrepresented employees.
- Form community diversity committees or councils to advise on policies and practices, ensuring they reflect diverse perspectives.
2. Enhance Access to Professional Development and Career Opportunities: Intentionally and thoughtfully providing opportunities for training, advancement, and professional growth is crucial for an inclusive workplace, particularly for those who have been historically overlooked.
Action Steps:
- Offer regular training and development programs that are accessible to all employees.
- Create transparent pathways for promotion and ensure that all employees are aware of them.
- Provide scholarships or financial assistance for further education or certification programs, especially targeting people of color.
3. Foster an Inclusive Work Environment and Culture: Creating a workplace culture that values and respects all employees’ backgrounds and perspectives is essential.
Action Steps:
- Assess your work environment for current sentiments about DEI in general and race relations specifically. Your employees have a point of view about this work and you should know what it is.
- Incorporate diversity and inclusion into your employee engagement strategies and racial equity into your workforce and pipeline development work.
- Build a level of comfort at work in talking about race, bias, presumptions and narratives that we hold about one another that gets in the way of work
4. Implement Inclusive Policies and Practices: Reviewing and revising workplace policies to ensure they support diversity and inclusion helps create a fair and equitable environment.
Action Steps:
- Conduct regular audits of hiring, promotion, and pay practices to identify and address any biases or disparities.
- Implement flexible work policies, such as remote work options, that can accommodate different needs and life circumstances.
- Ensure that benefits packages are inclusive, offering support for diverse family structures, mental health, and wellness programs.
5. Promote Cultural Competence and Awareness: Tightly define DEI for your workplace, pace and sequence the work (don’t introduce all issues and challenges to be remedied at once) and regularly educating employees about diversity, equity, and inclusion fosters a more understanding and respectful workplace. Be careful not to elevate one group over another, in the name of DEI. Avoid creating environments where blame, guilt, shame and “gotcha” become the norm.
Action Steps:
- Provide required diversity, equity, and inclusion training for all employees, including leadership and the board. Require your leaders to do more than “sanction” the work. Encourage them to actively participate in their organizational and individual learning journeys.
- Host workshops and seminars that invite employees into perspectives of one another and address unconscious bias.
- Create opportunities for open dialogue, such as town halls or discussion groups, where employees can share their experiences and perspectives in a courageous and supportive environment.
I’d be remiss in not adding the five attributes which I believe are essential for departments and individuals to adopt if they are interested in promulgating this work well:
- Self-control. Effective DEI and racial equity practitioners understand the work is difficult enough and highly emotional. Self regulation and emotional maturity are key.
- Know your audience. Take the time to determine who, in any given scenario, you are looking to influence and inspire in the name of DEI and racial equity. Spend your time there.
- Distinguish the person from the issue. We are at war with a doctrine, not a person. We have all inherited a narrative that irrespective of upbringing, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, etc, some of us are assigned a deficit. The fact that some of us are assigned broad condemnation and presumption associated with groups in the name of DEI causes more harm than it heals.
- Must be disciplined and change management-focused. DEI and racial equity work requires transformational outcomes and approaches. that work requires change management orientations to assure you are compelling and inspiring new ways to believe, perceive, think about who are different from you.
- Stay optimistic. Your mindset must always be focused on what must be true versus what is true. Realism has its place within most strategic priorities. But with this doctrine, because we are focusing on creating a world that we have never seen, you must be very clear about that world, what it will look like and why it is inevitable. That way, you can inspire people to move into alignment with your mindset versus people feeling like they are being forced out of theirs.
How do you measure the impact and success of diversity and inclusion efforts, and what changes have you seen as a result of these initiatives?
Within my work and space, the most evident measurements of success of these efforts include:
- Greater representation of diverse talent
- Less turnover
- Higher levels of engagement among employees of color
- Higher levels of joy at work with black and brown employees (not at the expensive of white employees)
In my view though, the measurements of success come with great complexity and at different levels. Because racial equity is such a significant societal issue that most certainly spills into work and every other institution and environment, we need to explore layered success by context.
I always look at where a client, a group or a person is starting from to determine the measure of success. As an example, in the workplace, it’s a huge deal for some workplaces to openly support conversations about black and white dynamics. Others take a bit of time to just be able to say the words “black and white people” aloud. We have clients who have never had open discussions with any regularity on race and being able to do so is quite a win. I really appreciate helping clients give a deeper context to their work in this area and help them nestle bold racial equity and/or diversity goals into their planning, committing to learning more about other cultures, talking about these ideals more in personal life, paying attention to what they watch on television, read, discuss, where they may vacation, etc. All of that helps to broaden the lived experience lens that informs engagements in the workplace.
The RAARE Woman Collective is a racial equity suite I designed to help white women advance racial equity in the spaces they hold. In my view, this expanded view of WHERE racial equity work can take place and WHO ought be the architects of it helps me appreciate success that shows up other ways, such as white women feeling inspired to build their own programs to do the work; restored relationships among white women and their shifting/softening white relatives.
On a deeper societal level, we can think of success as follows:
- When DEI is a benefactor of grace we are asked to extend from a policy standpoint.
- When ALL Americans can view the preamble and feel as though they see themselves in “We the People” (at work, at the grocery story, in education settings, in healthcare systems (and in health outcomes).
- Seeing the idea that black and brown are equal human beings and not only deserve to be extended all of the same presumptive rights and privileges, but that we MUST advance beyond the limitations that are often imposed is the imperative of our lifetime and the failure to do so, in an accelerated way, will stifle the country’s growth.
You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
I, alongside wonderful colleagues, have already built such a movement, the RAARE Woman Collective, and to date we have more than 100,000 women from all over the world leaning into this body of work. It is a racial equity program suite focused on helping white women advance racial equity in every space they hold — from their workplace to their communities and homes. RAARE is extraordinarily unique and unprecedented both by virtue of the premise disruption; the idea that white women have a right to be mad at racism in the same way that black women are, and our belief that white women may actually be the best suited to advance racial equity, at least in their homes and communities.
Given their proximity to white men and centers of power, who on the topic of racial equity simply must be moved, it is in fact currency as it relates to impactful advocacy. We have found that there are hundreds of thousands of white women who are in inclined to this work, meaning they are interested in, curious about, and/or want to know more around how to advance racial equity, but they simply need a guide, a coach, a curriculum and the support of black women to help them along the way.
We also teach white women that they have a right to lead in racial equity work because racism has stolen from them too. We always emphasize that racial inequity is an ideology. It is not a person or group of people. It’s not a religion and it’s not a political party. It’s a belief system that has invaded the hearts and minds of most of us and has, therefore, robbed and cheated all of us from a fuller life. Now, clearly, there are differences in how that has shown up along race lines, but to be clear, black and brown people do not own grief exclusively on the issue of racism. So, we teach white women how to be bolder in their racial equity work, what language to use, the attributes that must inform their advocacy work, and the navigation of guilt and shame. Importantly, we help them develop actual written plans to help them focus their advocacy work and of course, we support them through their plan execution.
Our program consists of in person events, coaching experiences, online engagement opportunities, and coursework. Informed by our mantra, “Grace over Gotcha”, we are developing white women to help them do what they already want to do, and that is to create a world in which racism can’t live. We are very excited about this work and the opportunity to dismantle artificially constructed impediments in the way that white and black women build connections, friendships, and advocacy work. It has been incredibly powerful and is building.
The RAARE Woman Collective and Harper Slade were birthed from my understanding of the economic urgency before us. We know that by 2045, black and Hispanic people will make up the majority of the working age adults in our country, and that means the economic mobility and fluidity of this population is critical to our country’s betterment. Having worked for the Federal Reserve as a Senior Vice President and advisor for more than seven years, I know firsthand the importance of a healthy middle class and/or median income earning household to assure a healthy economy, and am immensely worried that if we can’t face, acknowledge, or remediate past harms and blunt future harm, specifically experienced by black and brown people, relative to our ability to be economically fluid, the entire country will suffer.
There was a study obligated by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco in 2021 that unequivocally articulated this case. It also helped to debunk the typical mindset that whatever may be burdening black and brown communities is of our own doing; that were we to make more positive choices and behaviors our household economic reality would not be as dire, but nothing could be further from the truth. The most significant threat to black and brown economic mobility has always been the way we’ve experienced racism in our home country. That is not the world according to me, Dr. Nikki Lanier, that is the world according to the federal reserve, bricking and Institute and other prevailing sources.
We must work together in very avant-garde, uniquely pointed and strategic ways to create a new normal for our country with regard to its treatment of, and beliefs about, the darker American citizen.
How can our readers further follow you online?
For more information about Harper Slade, you can find us here. I have my own website for my speaking engagements and work. Please take a look! I am also on Linked In. We have recently moved toward expanding our international presence, with representation in London. Please reach out with queries or to connect with me.
Thank you for the time you spent sharing these fantastic insights. We wish you continued success in your great work!
Thank you! It’s been a pleasure to share my work and story!
About The Interviewer: Vanessa Ogle is a mom, entrepreneur, inventor, writer, and singer/songwriter. Vanessa’s talent in building world-class leadership teams focused on diversity, a culture of service, and innovation through inclusion allowed her to be one of the most acclaimed Latina CEO’s in the last 30 years. She collaborated with the world’s leading technology and content companies such as Netflix, Amazon, HBO, and Broadcom to bring innovative solutions to travelers and hotels around the world. Vanessa is the lead inventor on 120+ U.S. Patents. Accolades include: FAST 100, Entrepreneur 360 Best Companies, Inc. 500 and then another six times on the Inc. 5000. Vanessa was personally honored with Inc. 100 Female Founder’s Award, Ernst and Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year Award, and Enterprising Women of the Year among others. Vanessa now spends her time sharing stories to inspire and give hope through articles, speaking engagements and music. In her spare time she writes and plays music in the Amazon best selling new band HigherHill, teaches surfing clinics, trains dogs, and cheers on her children.
Please connect with Vanessa here on linkedin and subscribe to her newsletter Unplugged as well as follow her on Substack, Instagram, Facebook, and X and of course on her website VanessaOgle.
Celebrating Diversity: Dr Nikki Lanier Of Harper Slade and RAARE On How To Build Inclusive… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.