Holistic Business Practices
A Standards and Practices Framework for Entrepreneurs and Leaders Who Are Racialized as White
(HBPII Fall/Winter Session September 14, 2024 - January 4, 2025) Curriculum for Diversity Consciousness and Cultural Competence
*Prerequisites Required (see course outline at the bottom)
“Holistic Business Practices will impact all my involvements going forward. So grateful for this opportunity to move deeper into integrity and alignment.”
– Graduate Testimony
You are racialized as white. You are an entrepreneur or a leader of an organization. You are passionate about providing a product or service that everyone needs, but you’re noticing that you are mostly only attracting people who look like you and/or people who are not marginalized, and/or you are noticing that you’re having retention/return/repeat challenges with customers who are marginalized. You do not need us to tell you that this impacts the reputation and success of your business. It is, however, likely you have a gap in your awareness around catering to diverse needs in the communities you serve. And it’s not just marginalized folks you’re missing. Potential customers of all walks of life – who are more socially conscious – are more intentional about choosing what businesses they support and patronize. Being a socially responsible company can bolster a company's image and build its brand. The younger generations prefer diverse companies to buy from and work for.
In a LinkedIn study, companies with solid diversity and inclusion standards and practices were 22% more likely to be seen as “an industry-leading company with high-caliber talent” and 12% more likely to be seen as an “inclusive workplace for people of diverse backgrounds.”
Maybe you’re already making an effort to be more attentive and accommodating to folks who are marginalized. Perhaps you’ve begun using images of people who are queer, disabled, or people of color in your advertising. Perhaps you’ve tried to incorporate colloquialisms in order to seem more savvy. Maybe you’ve made gestures that are being misunderstood or are seen as discriminatory. Perhaps you’ve even taken the time to mention that your products and services work for everyone. Yet your business is still mostly patronized by able-bodied, cis-hetero, white people. You may have even gotten some negative feedback from marginalized customers, and simply didn’t know what to do about it.
Virtue signaling and woke-isms are easy traps for people racialized as white to fall into when demonstrating their commitment to racial equity. But how do you align your business practices with your emergent consciousness for the phase transition that society is undergoing?
“I completed this course today. If you're truly interested in co-creating or co-discovering a field that's not enthralled with the dominant culture, this is very relevant.”
– Graduate Testimonial
This 5-part virtual series is designed for graduates of the Heal Thyself Transformative Initiation for People Racialized as White, who are entrepreneurs and business owners committed to maintaining their integrity with racial equity in their business practices.
With guidance from Dr. H. “Herukhuti” Sharif Williams and Rev. Brig Feltus and peer support, students will reflect upon ways to practice racial equity as socially responsible business owners. Throughout the course, students will develop personalized and actionable goals for racial equity in their businesses. This course will help students put their beliefs into practice and walk the talk of racial equity.
“I can’t recommend this course enough. It is only open to alumni, and it is one of those courses that I wish I could take again for the first time.”
– Graduate Testimonial
“Leaders must acknowledge that increasing demographic diversity does not, by itself, increase effectiveness; what matters is how an organization harnesses diversity, and whether it’s willing to reshape its power structure.”
– Harvard Business Review
In This Course, You Will Acquire the Awareness Necessary To:
Connect with a broader demographic through cultural awareness
Bring people together and nourish professional relationships
Treat people more compassionately and fairly
Reverse historic patterns of exclusion
Be responsible and response-able
Assess your own blind spots and address them
Gather feedback that helps you better serve your communities
Promote desirable behaviors in the workplace
Establish a reputation for taking meaningful action to respond to workplace discrimination
Be up to 70% better equipped to capture new markets and resonate with new customers from different backgrounds
Make diversity a priority in your organization
Attract more discerning employee candidates
Improve productivity
What the Experts are saying
Diversity in thought (cognitive diversity) can enhance team innovation by up to 20% (Deloitte).
Diverse companies are 70% more likely to capture new markets.
Employees at diverse companies were 45% more likely to report that their firm’s market share grew over the previous year and 70% more likely to report that the firm captured a new market
(study by the Harvard Business Review).
Gender-diverse companies note improved value creation.
McKinsey researchers found a positive correlation between ethnic/cultural diversity and value creation, with highly gender-diverse companies being 27% more likely to have superior value creation.
Companies that frame social issues as ‘the right thing to do’ tend to be more successful at promoting desired behaviors.
"Recent neuroscience research also suggests that compassion is not only transformative for the human brain, but it is also the key to fueling systemic cultural change. We call this making a transformational case. And the transformational case has statistically-significant predictive power.”
– Ty Heath, Director, Marketing Engagement, The B2B Institute at LinkedIn
Course Outline
“The learning was rich and also very community-oriented in that we learned a lot through each other. Dr. Heru Khuti is so compassionate and present in the way he works with humans. So very Available. It’s very inspiring and continues to influence me months later. Please take a moment to consider taking this leap.”
– Graduate Testimony
Basics:
*Prerequisites:
Completion of Heal Thyself Transformative Initiation for People Racialized as WhiteLive Session Schedule:
Sept. 14, 2024, Oct. 12, 2024, Nov. 9, 2024, Dec. 7, 2024, Jan. 4, 2025
What you get:
4 month intensive
4 units of hands-on assessment, evaluation, and active workshopping application to your business.
Attentive support from the Curriculum for Diversity Consciousness Sau Team (Sau means “protectors” in the Kemetic language), our exquisitely trained care and integrity team who are all Heal Thyself alumni and who are racialized as white.
Access to ReMember Institute Network and all of its dynamic, open spaces.
Access to your private Holistic Business Practices cohort space on ReMember Institute’s Network for the duration of the course.
5 live lecture and Q&A interactive Zoom sessions led by ReMember Institute Master Teachers (who are distinguished spiritual teachers, sociologists, historians, DEI experts, activists, all identified as members of marginalized groups) and viewing access to the live lecture recordings throughout the duration of the course (schedule below). First Saturday of each section, 9 am - 11:30 am pacific.
An official certificate of completion for this course with ReMember Institute’s Curriculum for Diversity Consciousness and Cultural Competence seal.
Schedule:
September 14 - October 11, 2024 Unit 1
First live session (9/14). Meet your teachers, introduction, review standards and practices, preliminary life-mapping, and pattern recognition assessment.
October 12 - November 8, 2024 Unit 2
Second Live session (10/12). Setting intentions, how to do 360 interviews to gather information and journaling about the results.
November 9 - December 6, 2024 Unit 3
Third live session (11/9). Understanding systems, values clarification, and goal-setting. Identify and create tasks for adjustments, intention and efficacy, building community, the Systems approach, racism, and racial equity in 12 areas of human activity.
December 7, 2024 - January 3, 2025 Unit 4
Fourth live session (12/7). Student presentations and review.
January 4, 2025
Fifth live session (1/4/25). Continued student presentations and culmination.