Julie Harris Oliver: [00:00:00] You're listening to the other 50% A Herstory of Hollywood. I'm Julie Harris Oliver. We are continuing our series of talking with experts who work in various aspects of diversity, equity, and inclusion across industries and in entertainment. Today I sat down with MyKhanh Shelton, a brilliant d e i practitioner and attorney with more than 20 years of experience as a legal and diversity, equity and inclusion advisor in the media and entertainment industry.

MyKhanh Shelton has deep expertise in identifying, evaluating, and mitigating legal risks and a proven track record of designing people, strategies and systems to attract and retain diverse workforces and foster inclusive cultures. From 2020 to 2022, MyKhanh served as Senior Vice President Enterprise Inclusion for Warner Media, where she was res.

Responsible for leading workforce D E I initiatives for Warner Media's global workforce of 30,000 employees, including production safety initiatives across Warner Brothers hbo, and H B O Max Productions. Prior to Warner Media, MyKhanh [00:01:00] served as Senior Vice President Global Inclusion at 21st Century Fox, where she led initiatives to increase diversity and inclusion across the company's 20,000 person workforce in film, television, sports, news, and digital businesses.

She also advised internal and external partners on matters related to diversity of stories, betrayals and representation in the entertainment industry. Prior to forming the D E I Center of Excellence, she served as the company, senior Vice President, Fox Group Legal. In that role, she led litigation teams across the US represented Fox and industry-wide litigation and initiatives.

And advise senior executives on a wide variety of employment related matters. She is no slouch. She holds a Bachelor of Arts from UCLA and a Juris doctor from UC Berkeley. She serves on the boards of Facing History and Ourselves and Promax, and we will learn more about these as well. We talked about meeting people where they are using data to inform the work.

And her particular philosophy of speaking truth to power with love and data. Here have a listen. MyKhanh Shelton, welcome to the other [00:02:00] 50%.

MyKhanh Shelton: Thank you for having me.

Julie Harris Oliver: So I would love to start at the beginning and hear the journey from law school to d e I professional. So how did it start?

MyKhanh Shelton: Yeah, so I went to law school at Berkeley with the goal of becoming a civil rights attorney.

I really love advocating for people and issues that I believe in. So as a lawyer, I went to a business litigation firm. I went to the top firm in the country to get my training. Um, and there I really took to employment law cases. I was staffed on like big public utilities cases. I was staffed on big pharmaceutical cases.

Then I had these little employment cases where it was me and the client understood and was very, To the very human-centric nature of those cases. So I, I really chose to stay in the practice of employment law and went to Fox Film and Television to take an [00:03:00] in-house employment law role. And so, you know, that's what I did for the first few years of my career.

Not really intending to stay in, you know, entertainment or in the studio system, but as I, you know, moved through the ranks. I realized how much great work and how much impact could be had within a corporate environment and how many people's lives you can affect, and how much of the people that I was working with were affecting content and culture at large.

And so I stayed and I worked on a lot of really cutting edge limit law cases. There was a. Television writers age discrimination case that I led the defense of for Fox did a lot of very interesting work, but ultimately it was in the more proactive preventative work that I was most interested. And so I took a more advice and council role and that led me to, [00:04:00] you know, working with executives, working with human resources teams to really understand, you know, how to create great environments for people.

Julie Harris Oliver: So what did that work look like in the early days of, oh, there's something here in entertainment we need to get a handle on.

MyKhanh Shelton: Uh, gosh. It, it, it a company as big as Fox, right? That has, you know, so many different lines of business. I'll focus on the production side since this is, uh, production podcast. You know, one of the, one of the early, uh, issues I handled was with a production that was really successful.

I mean, at the time it was the highest rated show. On this particular network and there was an issue that came up, uh, conflict. There was, you know, a complaint that was made. Somebody believed they were being mistreated, and so we put some measures in place. That were really transformative, right? I mean, we started slowly, we [00:05:00] started like opening up channels of communication.

We started asking people to be more explicit with what their needs were, more explicit with what the challenges were, and then we brought in resources from across the studio. The thing is, a lot of productions have access. To resources at a studio, at a network, you know, within the community, but they're not often used or pulled together.

But they barely know about it. Oh, exactly. Exactly. Didn't even know about it or felt like it was scary or, you know, didn't understand that, you know, this is, it could have been, you know, remedial and not punitive. Right. If you call physical security, that doesn't mean like somebody's in trouble. If you call hr, that doesn't trouble, right?

Um, if you have the network executive out there on a set day or physical production executive out there on the set day, right, those folks could be access to information. They could be access. And a conduit to more resources. So we brought [00:06:00] those types of resources together and we set up a cadence of conversations in the writer's room.

A cadence of conversation with department heads and the receptiveness to all of these measures was just completely mind blowing people. It was everyone was,

Julie Harris Oliver: were they so relieved?

MyKhanh Shelton: They were so relieved. And by the end of by of producers called and.

We came in on time. We came in on budget more often than any of the previous three seasons, and he thanked me for doing all this because it was not without risk. I was like opening up this potential Pandora's box of issues and problems. But that was very, I was hooked once I set up that inclusion plan and saw the success of it.

And saw that it could be done. I just really firmly believed that we needed to have [00:07:00] these on all of our productions. And so as kinda an informal way into the work, even while I was in the legal department, this is what we were doing on set.

Julie Harris Oliver: It kind of flies in the face of, which I think has been the attitude for, I don't know, give or take a hundred years of the tortured artist.

Mm-hmm. You know, and you have to kind of go through the torture to get the creative thing out. And I think what, what you proved out is that the opposite is actually true. Yes,

MyKhanh Shelton: exactly. Exactly. People just thought the rules and if you, oh, you have to, um, have policies. Those things were for like, you know, the corporate stooges.

They're not for people over here and creative, but it turns out people like clarity. I mean, it just really helped people understand what their rules were and what the expectations were, and just help build trust within the production. I think that trust is what allowed people to be even more [00:08:00] creative.

Exactly that.

Julie Harris Oliver: Like putting up the guardrails and then allowing people to come and be who they are and contribute what they need to contribute. Exactly. Without being in

MyKhanh Shelton: chaos. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. You was energy that were going into story, going into the work product, so. The walking on

Julie Harris Oliver: eggshells

MyKhanh Shelton: energy takes it outta you.

Exactly. And so I learned so much on that one. I learned so much because, you know, it was a season four at the time of this part particular series, and people thought, oh, once we got through the first season and the second season, we thought all the relationships and all the things that were working. Were all the things that we needed, but understanding that the dynamic of the production really radically changed from season to season.

You know, season one, you're just so happy. Everyone's so happy to have a job and have, you know, be in production. Everyone's willing to really, uh, accept and tolerate everything like good and bad behavior. Right? And [00:09:00] then season two, that dynamic of, okay, wait, now we're hired back. The stakes are a little bit higher, right?

But now we've formed some. And so you, season two goes soy. Out any round rules or you haven't like done the things that are like good hygiene for our production. And then it was season three, which is exactly how it played out here. The, the wheels started to come off Right and then Yeah.

Julie Harris Oliver: You know, and then if you make it to season five, I always joke, that's when people start stealing.

Yes. And embezzling. Cuz everyone gets very comfortable. The budgets get big now you think you have a job for the next 20 years. And Exactly.

MyKhanh Shelton: It gets dicey. It was always like, well, you know, let's not do season one. Let's, if it. Wait till season two and then season two, but everything's going so well. Oh, season three now everyone knows each other.

Everything, you know. No problems exist. We're all fine. It's fine. Yeah, exactly. That's when you have high. So

season two and season three. Alert always high. Yeah. [00:10:00] Or

Julie Harris Oliver: do set something up in season one and don't just wing it and hope it all turns out okay. Yes. Yes.

MyKhanh Shelton: That would be maybe, yes. That, that is the textbook way to do it.

Julie Harris Oliver: Yeah. Okay. So then if we're talking about, um, this is about 2011, you started doing this, and then around 20 15, 20 16, we got to, uh, Oscar.

So white was a big one. How, how did that affect what you were doing? Um, there

MyKhanh Shelton: was a lot of media attention. There was a lot of consumer and. Political pressure on the industry to really examine why is hashtag Oscar so white? Why is there such a lack of diversity in filmmaking? USC was doing, you know, really meaningful research work showing us what the data looked like.

Ucla, their Hollywood report is really, really, you know, critical in showing people, look, there's a real problem with the lack of diversity in Hollywood. And so all of those studies and all [00:11:00] the press and the hashtags and the, all the social media around it. Really brought a lot of consumer pressure and political pressure on the studios.

So, and then there was also threat of litigation. So my job as a lawyer was to go figure out our legal position. But as I researched and as I talked to executives within the company, within the industry, the more interesting question to me and to a lot of executives at the.

Even if there is no unlawful discrimination, which for a number of reasons, you know, there were gonna be very sound legal defense

problems. Right. I was more interested in. What the problem is and how we were gonna solve it. Looking at the data was so helpful because even talking to executives who are the ones who are green lighting, they're the ones day in day out who are making all these hiring [00:12:00] decisions, right? I think really earnestly, they were surprised by the patterns that they saw in the data because you know, any single decision could be justified and everybody thinks they're making great decisions.

They think that they're doing their best, and so you really had to. Step and look at data over the years, data over the whole studio system industry.

So that's what led me into the work of d e I more formally and at the time there was so much great work being done in academia. So much great work being done, you know, in among practitioners and, um, economists to really understand this. And we knew, or at least my pitch. Was, this was a professionalized function that needed to have its own resources that we needed to bring in expertise in this uh, area.

And it could not be, well just as a side project. [00:13:00] Um, on top of like a legal department or on top of a, you know, HR department's, you know, normal work.

Julie Harris Oliver: So did you go in and pitch it and

MyKhanh Shelton: create this role? Myself and a number of other executives at the company, labor department, employment department, hr, we all really as a joint effort pitched out the creation of.

Fox inclusion and it wasn't without a lot of debate and, you know, really robust conversation about whether or not that was prudent, right? There were some people who said, you know, if you professionalize it and you create a different department that's gonna absolve executives and that's gonna absolve people from their own responsibility because isn't it everybody's job.

To work on d e I, right? And so, and there are other people who have said, you know, we've tried that in the past and it didn't work, and you know, it's not working anywhere else. Why would we do this whole thing now? What would we do differently? So there was a lot of conversation about it, and ultimately there was a [00:14:00] lot of, a lot of data, a lot of research pointing to the need for us to better understand what the workforce was gonna look like, what the demographics of our audience.

What behavioral science was telling us is happening, what is standing in our own way? So yeah, so we got a department approved and then I headed up that department. We created Fox Inclusion, very film and television. And then over time it very successful that we had a lot of, we had a lot of interest. And so then I was um, I guess you'd say elevated to head up Century Fox.

Inclusion across the portfolio of Century Fox businesses, which for the most part now is part of Disney. And then some parts left as Fox, uh, the network. Well done. It was quite a ride. Yes,

Julie Harris Oliver: I bet. Okay, so now you're A D E I professional. How do you really approach it and what's your philosophy? How do you [00:15:00] start?

MyKhanh Shelton: I start from the top because I firmly believe that leadership really matters. Um, and I think that could sound obvious, but there are a lot of people who approach it from a grassroots effort. They approach it from, you know, ERGs and you know, from the employee base, which I think all of those things are really important and I think everyone has a part to play.

And I think, um, employee resource groups and. You know, kind of the grassroots activism that we see happening within corporations now are so important. I think to accelerate the change that we need to see, it really has to start from the top. And so I start from the top and I like to think of my approach as, you know, speaking truth to power with love and data.

And then it might sound like a weird thing that I, I, and I mean love with. A real [00:16:00] open heart and a real open mind to, and their capacity for change. So it's that.

So you're not

Julie Harris Oliver: coming in as the diversity lady cop?

MyKhanh Shelton: No, definitely not. Definitely not. I, and I don't actually even say that I come, uh, truth of power with love and data. I just come with the belief that people want a better world. People want a better workplace for their colleagues, for themselves. People want do their best work, and to do that, they need to understand people.

They need understand. Identities they need to understand and practice empathy. And I was really like, one of the conversations that I had in 20, you know, when we were all in the reckoning. I, you know, had this conversation with this executive that really, really stuck [00:17:00] with me. He said that I was the first person he had talked to on these topics of diversity, equity, inclusion, who did not expect to be disappointed by him.

And that really kept him in conversation and I really thought about that a second say, I could see how hard that would be. This is a cis white man, and if he's going into conversations with people who just expect to be disappointed in him, you know, like he's already in trouble. He's already in trouble, and it's gonna be really, really hard all around to keep that conversation going.

So, I, um, I really took that feedback to heart and I really think about that a lot. Cause, you know, sometimes it's hard to give people the benefit of the doubt, like history tells you, history tells. Yeah. There are lots of people who, I don't deserve the benefit of the doubt, but I think it's, I think it's necessary.

And I listen to your podcast with Kira Banks and when she said, you know, choosing Hope is an active practice. I think, you know, choosing, [00:18:00] choosing hope, choosing, you know, to give people the benefit of the doubt, those are active practices and I, I think that I find it most effective to approach it with that hopefulness and with that assumption of good intent,

Julie Harris Oliver: it's probably so much more effective than, I know you don't wanna do this and I'm gonna make you Yes.

It's gonna be terrible. Exactly.

MyKhanh Shelton: Well, I, you know, I've seen so many people go into conversations about, Whether it's HR or D E I or really like anything related to, you know, people a little bit apologetically, like I, sorry, we have to do, I'm harassment training painless. Let's just get Sorry to bother you.

Yeah, exactly.

Julie Harris Oliver: Exactly. I know you're busy and important. This is beneath your regard.

MyKhanh Shelton: Exactly. It's like, wait, why? Why are we doing this? Why are we selling this executive short? Why are we selling the work short? Why are we selling the potential to change short? I mean, I understand why, because you know, a [00:19:00] lot of people are, are, you know, have been made to think that this is a nuisance.

And so of course to be polite, you gotta apologize, I suppose, if you're gonna be a nuisance to somebody. Well,

Julie Harris Oliver: we've literally heard the phrase, hasn't this all

MyKhanh Shelton: gone a bit too far? Exactly, yes. So yeah, I think that's just a misunderstanding of what this is. So, Take a deep breath, go. You take a deep breath and you must be misunderstanding what we're doing.

Can't possibly mean that. So, uh, I try to approach things. I try to approach things with a sets of humor. I try, I try to approach things with, uh, an open heart and I assume good intentions and I. I think my work is to operationalize them. Great.

Julie Harris Oliver: Now going back to the data of it all, cause I think that's so powerful.

Cause I think people may have a lot of feelings about things or feel like they're doing the right thing or feel like, well, gosh, what was that study where they said when, like on a board of directors, if there's. One [00:20:00] woman, the men in the room have the feeling like, oh, problem solved. Mm-hmm. We have equality.

And for women, when three women are in the room, they feel like, oh, problem solved. We've reached equality. But when actually, if you looked at the data, neither one of them are at equity or equality. Right? Yeah. So it's so powerful to have the numbers and the data. So tell us how you. How you approach it with the data, how you use it, how it informs what you do.

Okay,

MyKhanh Shelton: so in so many ways, like we talked about the UCLA report and the USC report, and there's a San Diego State report, like those at a very macro level, I think. Help to situate ourselves in this industry so we know what we're dealing with, right? So we know that if this is an industry wide problem, we need to have real collaborative efforts across the industry.

We all need to be working on this together because, uh, this is an industry in which people move around so much. And, you know, [00:21:00] the, the culture of the industry is just so entrenched that we need to have that understanding. There's a use for big data to give you that content. Mm-hmm. And then I would say, you know, data can also sound very scary to people.

And I would suggest that people think about the data that is within their control. Right? So if they're, uh, a higher manager, what records are they keeping in terms of, you know, the numbers of people they're seeing, the resumes they're reading, who they're interviewing, who and what the criteria are. For making the decision on who to hire, right?

That's, uh, a use of data that I think is often overlooked. Cause people think of data as like, you know, big data sets and like, you know, it needs to be mass numbers on a big spreadsheet, you know, Excel spreadsheet. When I think anybody could benefit from the use of data in their own decision making. Cause it'll keep you honest.

Julie Harris Oliver: Just that [00:22:00] example. Right now I'm cataloging all the people I know who've hired people who have piles of resumes. I don't know one person who gives that spreadsheet. Yeah.

MyKhanh Shelton: Right. That's what, so I think it's a real discipline. Um, it doesn't take that much time. It takes effort and it takes the willingness to be confronted with what you might see.

And that's, that's bit hard. So I think really giving yourself grace to say, all right. Let me, let me just start collecting this and lemme start thinking about this and lemme work with whomever it's right. Get a partner in this, whether it's your colleague, whether it's your HR person, whether it's your D person, so that you could talk through what's happening.

We've talked for so many pipeline problem, you know, pipeline into the industry. Are the candidates there? Who are the candidates? What. Should the benchmarks be, but I think that we continue to talk about it without making the progress we wanna make. Cause we don't follow through [00:23:00] well enough individually or collectively.

But here, let's talk individual, right? If you, your hiring process. Right, and you see who you are pulling from who your candidate pool is. Then I think it's also really important to lay out really clearly what your criteria for hiring will be. You mean it

shouldn't

Julie Harris Oliver: be just who do I feel really good with in this interview?

Who feels the most like me? Yes. Who

MyKhanh Shelton: reminds me of myself? Exactly. It should not be that and. I think it should not be. I think what happens is people get very, very explicit on the mechanical skills needed for the job. Right. The like, okay. You know, if you're talking about production accounting, whether or not they could actually do the math, build the spreadsheets, like, you know, submit the reports.

Those types of things without putting enough weight and time and energy into the leadership [00:24:00] aspects of the role. And so when we do, and when I have seen people do it, they added onto a job description. You know, at the end. It's like the last two bullet points, like oh yes. And leadership skills and like building a team.

But then when you get into the interview process or you get into really unpacking what those things mean, People don't go far enough in what I've seen to really understand and apply those criteria fairly across all the candidates, right? So then on some people who do have the those skills, you'll say, okay, well good, they're necessary.

Where other people don't have the skills, but you wanna hire them, you're like, ok, well those were preferences and they were not requirements, right? And you're gonna be very flexible with how you apply the job description. To meet who you expect to hire. So, and this is how

Julie Harris Oliver: you get the super technical wizard at the top of a tech department who can't talk to people Exactly.

But is an amazing architect.

MyKhanh Shelton: [00:25:00] Exactly. Exactly. So I think even using data to track how you're asking those questions, right? So in these, have I asked these questions and you know, what am I seeing in terms of the responses? So that even over time, if you're not able to hire exactly. To fit those criteria, because let's.

Give people the benefit, the doubt. Maybe they applied it criteria and they still couldn't find the right person who had all those skills. So compromise

in your who lacking those particular leadership skills. And so then you can invest in building those leadership skills internally, or you can go recruit for those particular skills. But it's hard to keep track of all of that unless you literally keep track of that. And so I think of data in big and small ways.

I think it could be really helpful to people to start just tracking themselves. And [00:26:00] so that's a, that's a recommendation that I make to everybody. It takes like 10, 15 extra minutes. But you start to really, um, habitualize that part of your work that will, I think, just help tremendously in the long run.

And then

Julie Harris Oliver: you can defend your choices

MyKhanh Shelton: also. Exactly. Exactly. And I, I think it gives credibility to the efforts that you're making, the credibility of the efforts that the company's making. If you're part of the company and the mission is, To increase diversity and to be more equitable and inclusive, like those are the receipts that you timewise

have different expectations. There are some people are just like, oh my gosh, why isn't this solved already? Why aren't you just immediately hiring all these people and you know, then I'm not gonna trust you if you don't. And then there are other people who are like, is gonna take, we need to build the capacity, we need to [00:27:00] build the whatever IT skill we build.

Talent pool. And that just takes a long time. And there's, you know, really I can understand why there would be so little trust between the two as to, you know, whether or not you're putting any meaningful effort behind it. And so if you do things that show people, show yourself that you are being disciplined about the work, I think it's gonna help with the communication and the trust building across different groups as well.

Julie Harris Oliver: And then let's pull back just one step to look at data, cuz something I found really interesting is a company might say, we have 50% women and people of color in this company. But then you drill down one notch and you find out and they are all at entry level roles and then drop off as, as you go up the ladder.

Can you talk about that piece

MyKhanh Shelton: of it? Yeah. I mean, being really smart about how you use and collect data will. Really require you to disaggregate a lot, right? Cause in your example, right, the 50%, but then everybody's at, at the bottom [00:28:00] and then you have no idea where people are dropping off. Right? Or you have no idea where the problems are, then it becomes really inefficient to solve that problem.

Or some people think

Julie Harris Oliver: they're done cuz you get that first big data and you're like, we're great,

MyKhanh Shelton: we're fine. Yeah, exactly. So, uh, you know, I'll give you an example of this. Uh, this one project I worked on. Was coming into a business that really, really wanted to retain and grow their, uh, women executives. And their assumption, I think, based on a few anecdotes was that women were leaving after.

Or not coming back from maternity leave. Right? They were going out on maternity leave, maybe coming back for a little bit, but then ultimately leaving because it was too hard with a newborn. So, well,

Julie Harris Oliver: this is why you can't let women in the workforce really. Cause they have babies and they leave. Exactly.

Men don't have children, so

MyKhanh Shelton: that Exactly right. Carry on. So, so, so many, so many, so many assumptions there. So this, um, so. The solution [00:29:00] here, right, by really well-intentioned executives was to say, you know what? We're really going increase the support for new moms, in this case, not even new parents, but new moms, right?

We're gonna increase the support. We're gonna really focus on reentry after maternity leave. And I mean, all great things, all really useful things. And in a world of infinite resources, I think I'd say great, keep doing it. But if your goal is to retain and advance women executives, When I looked at the data I saw that wasn't the drop off point.

That is not where they were losing their executives. Where they were losing their executives was something like 10 years after they came back from leave. So that, so that's what the data showed. And so as we, that's a whole different question. Yeah. So then we went in and we interviewed women who were like at that point in time in their lives.

And what we were seeing is they were starting to have more responsibilities for school, more responsibilities driving. It wasn't like you could just drop. The kid off at the, you know, childcare center. You [00:30:00] know, there were more pressures at that point in time. So we're like, oh my gosh, wait. This is a whole different set of problems that we need to solve for.

I mean, really deeply entrenched problems about work volume, um, schedules and a lot of big things that we going need to unpack. But in the very short term, we could take some really quick immediate steps to one, let people know we're understanding their problems and understanding the challenges, and we.

Really quick things like we got a corporate account for hops, skip drive, so that I loved hops, skip drive. It's for people who, dunno, it's like for kids, right? Uber for kids. Yeah. There are like really short term fixes that we could do. Just say, okay, wait, now we understand we're, we're understanding what this problem is.

We're understanding that the responsibilities of home care and childcare are very different. And for many reasons, we're seeing in our workforce that that's where people, women are being driven out and that's where people are, women are leaving the [00:31:00] workforce. So, you know, again, in a, with infinite resources and the company that says, we're gonna solve both those problems, that's great.

That's all the better. If your goal to retain you are putting your resources in the wrong place. We were not solving that problem, and we could not have seen that without data because anecdotally, people love talking about the newborns people.

And cuz

Julie Harris Oliver: there's a lot of data around women after they have babies, like the actual data is, they come back more focused, do more work, do better work. But the perceptions of them drops so precipitously that now they can barely function is the assumption about them. So of course they would make those assumptions when when the data looks

MyKhanh Shelton: like that.

Yeah. You have to see, you have to understand that data and then you have to see. How it shows up in your own company, right? Cause there are gonna be different ways that issues show up in your particular work environment. And so you need to understand both those. And the thing

Julie Harris Oliver: that really gets me that I don't know if [00:32:00] corporations can fix, is the assumption and reality that 80% of those home childcare, all of that, all of those duties still fall on women, even though women and men can have very equal careers.

And I don't know how we fix that part in

MyKhanh Shelton: a corporation. Oh, there's a lot corporations can do to contribute to this. And there's actually a Tell me. Yeah. Well, there's a book that I'll, I'll book that I just read called. It's Richard Reeves, um, and he did a lot of research about, you know, that disproportionate responsibility on women for home care and childcare.

And in his book. His thesis though is that that has a very negative effect on men and a large part of the reason that boys and men in this country are struggling with addiction, with mental health, with unemployment or underemployment, has a lot to do with the same issues that plague women. So none of us are thriving [00:33:00] in this situation where all the responsibility or a large part of the responsibility fall on women and where the cultural norms are that women take care of, of the family.

Cause when you know there's something like layoff and, and men are unemployed, if that was their whole identity and they are not expected to be the ones caring for the family or caring for children, that throws their whole identity and their whole sense of wealth. I'm sorry. Well, wealth and worth, you know, out the door.

And so, you know, in his hypothesis, all of this really is part of the reason we're seeing boys and men struggle so much. I think that book research he collects in that book is really helpful for us to understand and open up the conversation to more people about gender equity and why all these things.

Are important not just for women and not just for people of color, but for CI white men who are also struggling under these systems.

Julie Harris Oliver: So in conclusion, feminism

MyKhanh Shelton: is good for [00:34:00] everybody. Yes, exactly. So then on a real

Julie Harris Oliver: personal level, you talked a little bit about how you meet people and how you approach people and.

I think it's so important to meet people where they are mm-hmm. And bring them along to where you want them to be. And I've actually witnessed you do that beautifully and miraculously. But I would love, I would love to hear you talk about how you do it, because I, I've seen it from the outside where I've seen the beginning and seen the results, but I haven't seen the spit by step.

No. What is your, what is your secret sauce? How you, how you do that? Oh

MyKhanh Shelton: gosh. Okay. I don't know that I have secret sauce, but I do have a whole history of failed attempts. I, I, I used to have, you know, kinda that youthful enthusiasm and urgency that launched me into, you know, so many conversations, so many relationships, demanding of people that they see the world the way I do, the man that I see, right?[00:35:00]

All the things. And you know, I learned pretty early on that. That's not how people work. You can't just tell them how to think. You can't just, you know, drag them along and demand immediate change even from people who wanna change. So, you know, I think maybe one of the most formative experiences I had in this was when my brother came out the closet and he.

Told my family, called a family meeting and shared with us in a really, really, you know, emotionally wr way. He was very scared of how we would respond, really how my parents would respond to him being gay. And you know, my dad stepped up immediately and he was like, we love you. We love you, period. And my mom just starts crying.

She was like, oh my gosh, all it's gonna be so hard. It's gonna be so hard for you. All the things like, oh, you're gonna get bullied, [00:36:00] you're gonna get sick, you're gonna get aids. Like, you know, it's just like, oh, all sorts of dramatic fear and everything else. And I was like, ok. Mom, you gotta get over it. Like this is, this is calm down.

Right? Come on. You gotta shake those fears. You gotta, we gotta support, we gotta support my brother like,

So, surprise, surprise, uh, that did not work. She was, you can scold her into it. I scold into it, said.

You know, don't worry, but it'll be our

Julie Harris Oliver: private shame. Exactly. Exactly.

MyKhanh Shelton: And I was so impatient. I like, no, none of that is acceptable. Everybody all. [00:37:00] It just, it made it just harder and harder for to have these conversations with my mom, and it was my brother who, you know, I mean, he was outta,

we get comfortable with even saying this out loud. Can we give mom a few minutes? And he showed such grace and I really, I really took that to heart and I really understood that he had the long game and he was like, we're gonna bring along. And then it didn't take as long as I fear, it took a little more gentleness than I was willing to approach it at the outset.

And, you know, I took a lot of that into my work as a lawyer. I took a lot of that into my work with executives now, and I think that gentle pressure is, uh, mu much more effective than, um, [00:38:00] hostile demands, which is, you know, how I started in my twenties. That is the

Julie Harris Oliver: instinct. You just wanna parrot these people into, into doing the right thing.

Exactly. I think it's right. You have to plant a seed and let it, let it germinate a bit. I mean, I remember one thing specifically that I, I had heard over and over and over again. I thought, oh yeah, that makes sense, that makes sense. Until a person said the thing in a different way and it, then it hit me and I was like, oh my God.

I did not understand. And it, it took me a year to like take in a point and I was like, oh, oh, sometime. Yeah, sometimes it takes a minute to really get it. Get

MyKhanh Shelton: it. Yeah. I'll, I'll plug another book here that. Really helpful on this topic. Oh, the other 50% book club? Yes. Yes. It's um, it's a book called The Persuaders by a.

And he uses case studies to show how people work to talk across difference and to bring people along and to earn [00:39:00] collaboration. And it's really, really powerful in the ways that he's able, he collects the stories of people who have been doing this work really effectively. So I highly recommend that book.

Julie Harris Oliver: Okay. Love that. We'll put it on the list. Yeah. Okay. Now, considering here we are now in 2023, and I think the fire of 2020 is not here in 2023, and it feels like we're feels, see obviously we are coming into a bit of a backlash. How? How do you think we move through that and keep moving forward in the face of, hasn't this all gone a bit too far?

MyKhanh Shelton: You know, thankfully I hear from more people interest, curiosity in learning, and I hear more openness to conversation than I hear people saying, has this gone too far? So that gives me a lot of hope. I think that realizing that we, and I'll say like the collective [00:40:00] we, those of us who were educated in the American school system, uh, I was, I went to public school and um, had a very conventional education and that education really lacked a, a focus.

On social emotional learning, and it really lacked a focus on perspective taking from many different perspectives, and it was a very singular view of history. So I became involved with an organization called Facing History in Ourselves that seeks to bring a more nuanced and complicated view of history into the classroom, into high schools.

And middle schools. And I got involved around the time I moved into DEI because even as a lawyer I saw that, you know, so many executives that I was working with, they were getting themselves into trouble and they were really struggling in their leadership roles, uh, [00:41:00] leading diverse teams because, They just very simply did not have an understanding of the context that other people were experiencing.

And I'll, I'll give you like just a, an example of myself. I'll, that, that I'll use that. You know, I was born in Vietnam. My whole family was born in Vietnam. Um, and we immigrated to the United States. So when people asked us like, where are you from? There was no baggage to us because I was like, oh, we're from Vietnam.

Immigrated here. But then as I learned the history of, you know, Asian Americans and the history generations of Asian people who.

Treated as perpetual foreigners. I understood that It came with a lot of baggage to, in a very different way. When you asked the question, where are you from? That's not anything that I don, I don't think I would've or intuited on my own needed to understand, [00:42:00] understand American history of that was taught in school.

And so I saw that with executives. I kept thinking, gosh, if people understood, if the executives understood. You know, the history of black and white relations in America, it wouldn't be so quick to be flip about, you know, race relations, right? Why is not

retro adults? Right. We, people didn't understand that and so, yeah. And

Julie Harris Oliver: hearkening back to what Dr. Megan Burke was talking about, that if you're talking at executives at a certain level, we're all of a certain age that were brought up with colorblind racism, so Of course.

MyKhanh Shelton: Exactly. This is new. So then when I, I learned about Facing History that brings this curriculum and professional development to teachers so that they can teach.

In these increasingly diverse classrooms, in much more nuanced ways, fuller, richer, you know, views of history and, [00:43:00] and really not what to think, but how to think. I, that's the solution that that is going be. I know every generation thinks they're gonna be the ones that like fixes all the things, but, and we keep the things this time, really time, this time with Facing History and the curriculum of the approach, uh, to pedagogy.

I don't, I, I think most of us were, were denied. Um, I think that, that, that is going be, you know, a game changer. The high school students of today are gonna be the leaders

studios industry. And they will have a much more developed sense of empathy and identity and history and context critical.

Really, really change things. And

Julie Harris Oliver: how, I imagine there is some challenge and obstacles considering the current political climate [00:44:00] and how some school districts are outlawing all of that. Mm-hmm. How, how is that organization kind of getting in there, in the face of our political climate?

MyKhanh Shelton: Um, really, really carefully.

Again, it's very focused on helping students learn how to think, not what to think. It's like how to critical. Not a particular viewpoint like, and certainly, you know, not partisan at this point. There are so many topic, every topic seems like it can be. So I.

But it definitely takes a non-political nonpartisan approach to supporting teachers. A lot of this is the teachers who are teaching our kids. They weren't taught these things, and so now they're in the classroom leading classrooms without the support, without the professional development that I think is necessary.

I mean, you think about the topics. [00:45:00] The teachers have to teach on any day. It's a different topic. Gonna talk about

whether, whether. Where are you gonna help? So, you know, I'm really, really proud to board of organization, tremendous work support teachers, support school districts.

Julie Harris Oliver: Wonderful. I'm gonna ask you the same thing I asked Dr. Banks, what gives you hope? Oh gosh.

MyKhanh Shelton: So, so many things. What gives me hope is that despite all the challenges headwinds there, So many people who are interested in change, who can imagine a more, just an equitable future. We see it in Tennessee, we see it, you know, in all the [00:46:00] activism that is happening around the world.

I think that those are, those are people who are, who are putting their themselves on the line for change. And they give me hope and they give me inspiration. Um, not to

Julie Harris Oliver: brag, but my stepchildren went to the Capitol in Nashville.

MyKhanh Shelton: Oh. Just saying. So proud. So proud. You should be, I mean, so proud that like, just, that gives me a lot of hope, like seeing what's happening there.

I mean, it is remarkable. It's, they're very young people. Those are all very young people standing up and making a change and making a difference. It's incredible. They are not having it. Exactly. And so, you know, for those of us who, you know, think that there's any luxury to like opt outta the conversation at this point, I think that there is just not even if people say, you know, have we gone too far?

And sg and too much D can call it whatever you wanna call it. But there are [00:47:00] gonna be a different set of expectations on leaders. And if leaders are gonna lead effectively, if leaders are anybody follow,

educated, competent in.

Systems, hiring systems, pay systems, promotion systems, all of those along with them. Cause I think everyone's getting the memo that, uh, you and Kira, Dr. Banks talked about. You can't your way out. It, you gotta make the change. It's going be meaningful and it's gonna stick. There's no going back. Exactly.

Julie Harris Oliver: I hope there's no going back.

Yeah. Where can people find you? Well, right now

MyKhanh Shelton: I am hard at work getting ready to co-chair the Facing History Benefit Dinner. That's happening May 24th in la So people should find information about that Benefit Dinner [00:48:00] on, um, the Facing History website, and I'm on LinkedIn. Okay.

Julie Harris Oliver: Can anybody go to that

MyKhanh Shelton: dinner?

Yes. We're particularly looking for corporate sponsors right now or any, any sponsorship, but. I think it's, it's a good sponsorship opportunity for companies cause it comes with a set of resources that companies can use for their own workforce.

Julie Harris Oliver: MyKhanh Shelton, thank you so much for doing the other 50%.

MyKhanh Shelton: Thank you Julie.

It was so fun. You've been listening

Julie Harris Oliver: to the other 50% A Herstory of Hollywood. I'm Julie Harris Oliver. Thank you to MyKhanh Shelton for sharing her story and her expertise. Special thanks to Jay Rowe, Danny Rosner and Allison McQuaid for the music. You can find me and my work at julieharrisoliver.com and go check out the Catch or Break podcast, the insiders guide to breaking into and navigating the entertainment industry.

I can finally tell you that coming in July, we have a very special season and it's the companion piece to the H B O Series, project Green Light. This season will document the behind the scenes of the behind the scenes, the parts [00:49:00] the show didn't show. By talking with several department heads, cast and producers.

It will launch July 13th along with the HBO O Series. So mark your calendars. Thanks for listening. See you next time.