Lean in as Nicole shares with Tara the importance of not only finding and navigating your voice in the space, but advocating for others that may not be able to.

Announcer 0:02You're listening to Moments That Matter, a special CXR podcast series, where leaders and telling professionals share their own experiences with varying aspects of discrimination and inequality. Hear on Moments That Matter, we are dedicated to creating connected conversations around specific moments. These are moments that matter.

Tara Amaral, Marshall McLennan 0:25My name is Tara Amaral and I'm thrilled to be a bit to be able to introduce Nicole Wormley who's going to be having a conversation with us about moments that mattered in her life. Nicole asked you to tell us a little bit about yourself. But she is currently the Senior Director of diversity and talent attraction, and university recruitment at Danaher Corporation. She's had a long life in talent acquisition and HR and she does identify as a black woman. So Nicole would like to introduce yourself. Nicole, you may be unmute.

Nicole Wormley, Danaher 1:06Thank you, Tara, for the introduction and I'm delighted to be a part of this moments that matter experience, I too, would like to take a bit of a step back when I when I reflected on the moment. And my my unapologetic way of being to your point, Tara, a black woman, I thought about my upbringing. And what I thought was okay, so I have, I was always taught respect, I was always taught, treat people the way you want to be treated. And I was empowered by a really, really strong set of parents that told me how wonderful and how awesome and how amazing I could be as a child, which was great. And I took all of that, and my, with my spunky self as a young adult, and then I graduate from college. And I go into my first recruiting organization. And while I'm not the only woman, I'm the only black woman, um, and I had the privilege of working at an office with a with a strong female who was the manager at the time. But I got to experience many big brand name companies at that time in 1994, requesting males for their assignments or for their roles, or requesting that people not come from, or candidates not be presented to them if they came from certain HBCUs because many of those schools were not accredited at the time. And I didn't say anything. I didn't say anything. Because while I was empowered and had all this energy from Mom and Dad, I'm the young youngest woman in the organization, and that voice just wasn't as powerful as you start off early in your career. So I vowed that if I ever had space, if I ever had decision making power, I would make sure that that was not the case, I would make sure that women have space and opportunity and access to organizations, I would make sure that HBCUs were debunked, because they were the managers at the time, if the organization did not challenge these clients, because these were paying clients, they just let it happen. So I said on my watch, that won't happen. So you fast forward to where I am today. And I am delighted to be able to be in a position where I get paid, and I have passion around the work that I'm doing. And whether I lead diversity attraction or not, I would be supporting diversity attraction, because it's the right thing to do. And I remember little young Nicole that didn't hadn't established her voice early on in her career that now she has a voice and she has a seat. And she's going to fight for women, and she's going to fight for black and brown kids.

Tara Amaral, Marshall McLennan 3:37So let me ask you, if you reflect on what happened when you first entered the workforce versus what's happening now? Have your tactics changed about when you see or feel something that's uncomfortable?

Nicole Wormley, Danaher 3:52Yes, the tactics and I would say the stakeholders change as well, I would say early on, it might have been clients and our customers that we're paying.