Speaker Spotlight: Hilary Jones on Gender Equity, Diversity, and Culture

Hilary Jones, Ph.D., believes in a different kind of business world. One that is equitable, positive, disruptive, supportive and, as she puts it, “awesome.”

Through her workshops, facilitation and consultation, she helps small- to medium-sized businesses and non-profits spark the change needed to take sizeable leaps forward in areas related to gender equity, diversity and workplace culture. Hilary has worked in the field of violence prevention, through teaching (currently part-time faculty at RISD), and through 10 years as Executive Director of RIOT RI (formerly Girls Rock! RI).

In just a few weeks, on Oct. 28, Hilary will join us as a featured speaker at our upcoming Nexus training, “Let’s Change the Leadership Game.” We grabbed a few minutes with Hilary in advance of our training to learn more about the change she wishes to see in the world.

To begin, can you tell our readers about your background and how that ultimately led you to starting your own business?

As with many folks, my career path has been circuitous.

I have played guitar since 1994 when I was 14 years old. During this time, I became interested in what was broadly deemed “alternative” music at the time—punk, grunge, indie, metal. In particular, punk’s ethos and connection to social justice work struck a chord with me. I started to follow the work of Riot Grrrl bands like Bikini Kill, who wrote gutturally aggressive songs about street harassment and white privilege. Equity and access to self-expression and self-actualization was a priority for me. I felt a deep need to make change to the ways that sexism, racism, and heterosexism impacts people’s lives and often narrows their paths.

I played in bands in high school and loved the power of performing loud music, but was one of a small handful of women who played music in our town. Then I moved on to college where I majored in Psychology and minored in Gender Studies. As college was ending, I’d heard about a Girls Rock Camp held in Portland, Oregon and thought it was the coolest idea ever. But I was heading to grad school and knew it wasn’t something I could work on just then, and set it away in the back of my brain.

My graduate work was in Social Psychology with a focus on Gender and Multiculturalism. When I started grad school, I assumed I would be going the tenure track route. I ended up learning about Day One through one of my grad school classes and started working there doing prevention work—presenting workshops to thousands of people at schools and workplaces throughout the state about about gender stereotypes, sexual harassment and violence, and bystander intervention. I got to apply my research skills through evaluation work, and in general, I was enamored by non-profit work’s ability to make real change outside of the ivory tower.

While at Day One, I finished up my graduate school work and immediately decided to volunteer at the nearest Girls Rock Camp at the time in Brooklyn, NY. It was just as magical as I had anticipated, if not more, and began to try to recruit friends to the idea. In January of 2009, we began meeting around my kitchen table biweekly to plan the first camp, and what would eventually become Girls Rock! Rhode Island.

Ten years later, Girls Rock! RI, now called RIOT RI, has served 1000+ participants with a unique brand of music, empowerment, and social justice programming, and in August of 2019 I stepped down from my position as Executive Director and handed the reins over to two fabulous new Co-Directors. Over the last few years, the organization engaged in a highly intentional anti-oppression effort to truly live out its values and mission. This included assessments of programming, board and staff membership and structure, participant and volunteer outreach and supports, training, and many hard and important conversations. With this work, the organization is the best it has ever been and for me, it felt like the right time to move on to a new challenge.

Before transitioning out of my role, I was unsure as to my next steps. Which was scary. But I realized that part of the magic of RIOT RI is the space we create together—where folks can feel comfortable expressing themselves, taking risks, and working collaboratively. Participants often remark that they feel a bit of a shock after leaving the “bubble” of camp. It occurred to me that perhaps my next step was to help create that “bubble” in the places where people spend most of their waking hours—their workplaces.

So, while perhaps circuitous, my current work as a trainer, speaker, and consultant on gender and diversity issues allows me to use these disparate experiences to help employers create workplace cultures supportive of all aspects of their employees’ identities. This is accomplished through professional development, improved systems, and workplace policies that reflect a commitment to make change.

What are some of the top challenges you see in the workplace today as it relates to gender, diversity and culture?

Folks are dealing with a few major issues. First, many workplaces have not caught up with the fast-changing cultural conversation around diversity, and more pointedly, anti-oppression work. Generally, folks understand the importance and want to improve, but they just don’t know how. And they are afraid that in the interim they will say or do the wrong thing, leaving them paralyzed, and often not moving forward with important diversity, equity, and inclusion work as a result.

Second, some workplaces think they should look “diverse” for marketing, not because it’s the right thing to do. This leads to “diversity hires” which essentially means the company hires someone into a homogenous workplace that isn’t set up for them. They quickly become frustrated and move on to a company with a better, more inclusive, culture.

One last challenge I’ll mention is the mentality some employers and workers have around answering #MeToo with the “Mike Pence” rule—the idea that instead of creating a workplace culture that is more supportive of women, the answer is for men to interact with women as little as possible for fear of being “falsely accused”—which almost never happens. This makes zero sense, of course, but if your basic understanding of women is that they exist for sex, then every interaction is potentially viewed sexually (of course harassment has nothing to do with sex and everything to do with power, but that’s a whole other conversation). We need to back up and address the false assumptions here first before further distancing women from opportunities for networking and power.

What is one thing each and every one of us can start doing tomorrow that would lead to more inclusive, supportive workplace environments?

Build trust. Do your employees know you? And more importantly, do you know your employees? Do your employees know each other? Making change around gender and diversity is hard work and it requires folks to be vulnerable and uncomfortable with each other. If there is no trust in your workplace then those vulnerable, uncomfortable conversations can’t happen and neither can change.

In what ways have we improved on all these fronts? What are the evidences that exist that we have the ability to move towards a better future?

One space that I focus on is the music gear industry (companies who make or sell guitars, amplifiers, drums, etc.). A few years back, Fender Guitars conducted a study that found that over 50 percent of new guitar players were women. This was a huge shock to a heavily male-dominated industry. What happened next? They began including more women in their marketing and created products that might attract them. Fender had $500 million in growth as their main competitor, Gibson, whose marketing is decidedly less diverse, filed for bankruptcy.

This is specific to marketing, but it plays out in much of Fender’s hiring as well and they feed each other. It’s doable and it can happen; companies just have to be willing to make the commitment.

What is a misconception you believe exists about workplace culture and how our employees feel each day when they show up?

While this is potentially shifting with the pandemic, I think there is still an expectation/misconception that employees are able to “check their lives” at the door when they come to work. That simply isn’t true. None of us is able to do this. We are not robots.

Employers need to understand that employees have complex identities and lives. They might have hobbies that feed them mentally and emotionally and help them do better work. They might have children who they have to feed or pick up from school or elderly parents to assist. Harsh or even simply implied restrictions around time spent in the office are not helpful. And these implied restrictions can come when a boss models poor work life balance by working until 8 pm every night or never takes lunches. Even if an employee “can” leave at 5, what message are they getting if their boss never does? What are they learning about how they are expected to get ahead in their workplace?

Of course, in our culture, much of the impact here is highly gendered as well, as women are more likely to have family responsibilities—or expectations that they have family responsibilities (while in a heterosexual couple, their partner might be the one working until 8 pm).

So instead of trying to move forward in their career, they might take a step back and work part-time, or perhaps decide to stay at home if they don’t believe they can keep up with workplace expectations. This has been amplified with work and parenting responsibilities in the pandemic and it is why the normalization of the “rat race”/employee as robot idea is such a problem—especially for women, and even more so for women of color—who are experiencing dual oppressions of racism and sexism.

BONUS: What is next for you?

Currently I’m working with a number of companies using a holistic approach—creating or updating their mission and values, ensuring their employee handbooks and policies match those values, and leading workshops on gender equity, diversity, and workplace culture to support that work. I recently conducted a survey of nearly 1000 participants about Gender and Musicians’ Music Gear Experiences and I will be writing up the results soon, which will be used to further the case for change. I’m also working with RIOT RI as a consultant in support of their Changing Our Tune project to prevent gender-based violence in the Providence music scene and I’ll be teaching a course at RISD in the Spring.

I launched a podcast in January 2020 called Mid-Riff, about gender, music, and music gear. I’ve been able to interview and share the stories of super smart musicians and industry folks who I admire and I am looking forward to continuing to podcast and write, as well!

To connect with Hilary, click here.

Nexus members, to register for “Let’s Change the Leadership Game,” where you will have the chance to hear Hilary speak, click here.