Ep 61 Self Advocacy with Shelby Barlow

You know how at the beginning of a podcast you hear someone say how excited they are about their guest? This is probably one of the most exciting guests I’ve had and I’m going to tell you why. So a while ago I was watching Shelby Barlow on TikTok, I see her as a Gen Z-er, and what has been really exciting for me to see is for Gen-Z’s to take action on TikTok and to speak their truth in ways that have never been done before, especially in business. There is so much we can learn from Gen-Z in terms of what they see and how they see business going forwards; we need to adapt quickly because we’re seeing this mass exodus in the job market where people are just not tolerating toxic environments and Shelby has been nice enough to talk to us about toxic environments in tech, her experience and in one company Pinterest in particular which was really surprising but then not really, because we’ve all sort of known that toxicity is running rapid, nouns actually dealing with, racism on a corporate level, on a corporate scale what do we do within management, how do we protect people within a company and make sure they’re not being harmed. 

What I liked about Shelby in particular, my biggest takeaway from her interview was that she used the phrase ‘Harmful Racism’. Harmful Racist types of actions were put upon her, and I thought that that was such an astute way of encapsulating what racism is. Racism also really attacks your nervous system, you don’t have a long turnaround time and that bully/mob mentality, because you have to go to work the next day, your body is under attack and you are being harmed. This was a very candid look at what this looked like, the harm that was caused, and how it was not dealt with from her perspective and I love listening to her unfold what was really a common workplace trauma. 

In the latest Podcast episode Self Advocacy with Shelby Barlow, we hear the effects of how racism plays a negative role in a work environment. What can happen when a company does not take this on as a learning opportunity to correct harmful-racist treatment within their organization and how Shelby Barlow shares her story of self-advocacy while working at Pinterest.