Courageous Leadership: Black Wealth & Boycotts  – ep.164

Amidst this month’s critical economic discussions and the rising economic boycotts—Target, Amazon, Walmart—Dr. Shelley Jones-Holt joins Melyssa Barrett on The Jali Podcast to address courageous leadership and economic empowerment. With DEI under attack, Dr. Shelley shares vital strategies for building Black wealth, leveraging cooperative economics, and fighting back against erasure. Discover the power of strategic ownership and community-driven resilience in these challenging times. Tune in for actionable insights and a powerful call to action.

Melyssa Barrett:  Welcome to the Jali Podcast. I’m your host, Melyssa Barrett. This podcast is for those who are interested in the conversation around equity, diversity, and inclusion. Each week I’ll be interviewing a guest who has something special to share or is actively part of building solutions in the space. Let’s get started. Welcome to the Jali Podcast where we celebrate diversity, equity, and inclusion, and the power of storytelling to create meaningful change. I’m your host, Melyssa Barrett, and today we have an incredibly timely and powerful conversation lined up for you. As the nation grapples with the dismantling of DEI initiatives. At the highest levels of government organizations, educators and leaders across the country are asking what’s next? How do we continue the work of equity and inclusion when the very foundation of that work is under attack? So to help us navigate this critical moment, I am honored to welcome Dr.

Shelly Jones Holt, a visionary leader, speaker and author who has dedicated her career to driving systemic change in education and leadership. So proud to call her a friend. We connected and Dr. Shelley is a champion of cultural proficiency and courageous leadership guiding organizations, businesses and schools in building equity driven frameworks that foster long-term success and inclusion. As the founder of Leadership Legacy Consulting, Dr. Shelley has worked with institutions nationwide helping leaders embed equity into their DNA beyond compliance, beyond performative actions, and into real transformative change. She has been recognized for so much of her groundbreaking work, including being named Equity Administrator of the Year, and serving as a sought after advisor on race, culture and organizational transformation. So today we are going to discuss how leaders can remain steadfast in their commitment to DEI, despite political pushback, how businesses can continue fostering inclusive environments without placing themselves at risk, and what displaced DEI professionals can do to pivot and sustain their mission.

So this is a conversation about resilience, courage, and the future of equity work in America. So grab your notepad, get ready for some powerful insights, and let’s dive in. This is another week of excitement for me. I have just had some wonderful, wonderful people and truly every time I meet somebody new, I’m just amazed at how wonderful they are and I’m so glad that however we were brought together that we have the opportunity to have a conversation. So Dr. Shelly Jones Holt, who is with me this week, I’m just grateful for the opportunity to connect with you. I feel like we’ve known each other already. We are just kind of on the same mindset or something, so I’m just excited to have this conversation. So welcome to the Jali podcast.

Shelly Jones Holt:  Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it. I’m glad to be here.

Melyssa Barrett:  Yes. So tell me, and one of the things that I love is that your company, you talk a lot about courageous leadership and in this day and time, I think we need a lot of courageous leadership. But before we go there, tell us a little bit about how you got to where you are. I mean, how did you even get to the point where you decided that you need to focus on leadership consulting and really kind of make sure that people understand what that courageous leadership means?

Shelly Jones Holt:  The journey is an interesting one, and coming through the public education system as a teacher and a principal and doing all the things I finished as a superintendent in the K 12 system, I realized that there was a lot of, first of all, there’s a lot of politics involved in it, which folks soon learned. But I also learned that there was a lot of fear that was surrounding a lot of the decision making that I was seeing around me and seeing that fear kind of turn into bad decisions from really good people. They were making decisions either for themselves or for their careers, but not necessarily for those that they were designed to serve or that they were tasked to serve. And those lines can get blurred very easily, very quickly. And I’m someone who is kind of indignant in my integrity and my values and my beliefs about people.

And so seeing that and especially come to a head around the time of Mr. George Floyd’s murder, and when that happened, I noticed a lot of folks that were just confused and they weren’t understanding what they needed to do to lead. And it’s almost like we’re having a revival of that time in the opposite direction right now where people are confused. They’re like, what do I do to lead? And at the end of the day, they have to push through the fears that they’re feeling in order to serve those that they need to serve. And so that’s how my company ended up being called Leadership Legacy. I focus on courageous leadership where you live, learn and earn courageous meaning to push through fear and to leadership, meaning to serve. We help people and organizations and teams and even families now push through fear in order to serve.

Because right now that is necessary. It was necessary then, especially as folks realize that things just weren’t what they seemed for many of us, and it’s even more prevalent and necessary now for all of us because things have been a little scary, and we have to be able to push through fear. And part of being able to push through fear means I need to increase my knowledge. I need to increase my skills, I need to increase my capacity. I need to increase my culture proficiency. I need to increase my emotional intelligence, I need to do some things. I saw a quote today that says, what you do not decide to change, you choose. And so right now we are in a period where people are going to have to choose whether or not they want to change the current conditions, and it’s going to require courageous leadership in order to do that.

And so we started this working with partnerships and doing workshops and sessions and things like that for different companies and organizations. And then we expanded into doing leadership retreats and having a leadership curriculum for various organizations. So we have ones for families, we have series that are for corporate organizations, school districts, nonprofits. And so depending on what your needs are, we do design programs for folks to develop and cultivate that courageous leadership in their team. So that’s how I came into this. It was really out of a necessity, but it turns out that it’s a really, one, it’s a really good business. I love it, but it’s also very necessary and it helps a lot of folks.

Melyssa Barrett:  Yes, absolutely. Well, and it’s so needed. And now I feel like there’s such a gap that we need to fill. And I was talking to another DEI practitioner earlier today, and we were talking about how I said, there are times you feel like you are about to step off of the ledge like you are going to jump. And I said for me, there are times when you have to know when to pull back to maintain your own mental wellness, just to gain your momentum, and then you continue to go through. So I love the fact that you’re like, you have to push through, but that doesn’t mean that you don’t pay attention to what you need yourself personally as you move forward.

Shelly Jones Holt:  And that’s really where the family leadership piece really started to come into play. Because remember, I started this with corporations, school district leaders, people that were seeing what was happening in the schools as a result of what they were seeing in society. Because I think sometimes people forget that as educators, everything that’s happening in society shows up at the schoolhouse and it shows up at the schoolhouse with these, and I say this in the most loving way, but they are brainless individuals meaning, and I mean that in the loving but literal sense because their frontal lobes are not formed, that executive functioning is not there. And so they literally are brainless individuals who show up and the school house and they’re expected to learn, but they have all these different ideas and beliefs swirling around, and folks are just thinking that they’re going to magically get along.

And that’s not necessarily what happens. And so yes, we have the of educating, but now there’s this whole social aspect that the work within the ideals and beliefs of understanding that people are different. That’s what diversity is. It just means that there are different people and with equity being, they’re meeting their needs. And so if we have different people who have different needs that need to be met, that’s diversity, that’s equity, and then they all want to feel included. I mean, nobody wants to be that kid, especially at the schoolhouse that’s feeling excluded. And so having this work begin at the schoolhouses and then understanding that, oh wow, this extends farther than this. So we were working in schools, we were working in workplaces, and then we realize and talking to folks that this really needs to also go home. And that means that the place where you are is designed for you to rest.

You also have to do this work of courageous leadership. So how do you balance that need for rest and rejuvenation, but also with that need to cultivate and build and support your children and your loved ones that you’re raising, but also yourself with increased knowledge. And so yeah, the need for rest, the need to pull back. And right now as we were talking the other day, right now is the time for everybody to get their house in order. Folks are doing some interesting things. And in order for us to come out on the end of this, on top, every family, every organization, every person needs to get their house in order, in order to be able to do the good work that’s going to be necessary to clean up kind of what’s happening now. Because I have no doubt in my mind that America being who it is and having all these different types of people here, we’re one of the very few, if not the only country, that is literally built on people coming from all over the world to settle here. And that means that there are different ways and beliefs and ways of doing things that we need to adjust to. We don’t have mechanisms to do that. If we don’t teach our children how to do that, they are doomed. And this is not a political stance. This is just about leadership and being leaders in our homes and our workplaces and our schools and our organizations and leaders know that I can’t lead some of the people. I can’t just support a few of the folks that I like. I have to support everyone, and that’s necessary.

Melyssa Barrett:  Well, and I love the fact that you have this focus on family. I, I mean, I do a lot of work in financial education and just being able to, I think you talk about living well and all of those things, it’s like it really has to start in the home. But I think there’s so much that we, I mean, it’s not when, I mean my mother was never one that stayed at home. She always worked. But decades ago, we had a woman would stay home and do a bunch of stuff. I mean, that was her job, we’ll call it. And then we had an actual focus there. Now it’s like we could have two or three different jobs. We’re trying to make ends meet. We’re trying to deal with all the people, the information, the chaos. And I think it’s really challenging from a family perspective to talk about that courageous leadership you’re discussing. I mean, especially through school. I mean, come on.

Shelly Jones Holt:  It’s insane.

Melyssa Barrett:  What can you tell some of these parents that are dealing with, they want to be the leader, but that balance between rest and leadership is it can be challenging.

Shelly Jones Holt:  It can be beyond challenging. I mean, it can be downright frustrating if we’re going to be honest. And so the first thing I would say to any family is that we’ve got to get very clear about what the job is at hand. And I don’t know that anybody ever really teaches us. And I know that sounds like a really kind of a cop out term at times from a teacher. Nobody ever really teaches us all that we are trying to balance. And that’s one of the things that we do in our work is we first of all show people like, Hey, do you realize all the things that you are calling yourself trying to balance in doing this thing called life? And it’s interesting, I’m trying to find the slide real quick to be able to put it up on the screen because when folks really start to realize what they are balancing with family leadership, it really throws them up like, whoa, oh my gosh, this is so much.

So a lot of folks don’t really understand how big it is just to answer your question very directly until they see the bigger picture. And this is part of what our work does is when I started to show this to families, of course I started in churches and in community groups, but I started to show them the five pillars. And I really just introduced it when we created it to help people understand what they’re balancing at home. And so a lot of us, we know about this professional leadership. That’s what we’ve been talking about, leading at work, leading at school, leading in all these places. But then we don’t talk about the financial leadership part. That’s another part of leadership, especially in the home. How do you make your money work for you? This is how your professional leadership is, how you make your money.

Then you got to figure out how to make your money work and you make your money work so that you can run your home. So now we got to figure out what home leadership is. How do we turn a household into a home? How do you get the chore charts and the cleaning schedules and the cooking schedules and the shopping schedules. I mean, I’m just talking about the schedules. That’s not even just enjoying one another as a family and creating family time and all of that good stuff. And then we have this personal leadership development. That’s me time, who I am getting my mind, my body, my spirit, my workout routine, and making sure that I’m taking care of my health, my heritage, understanding who I am historically. And for some cultures and people, this is a lot deeper work than it is for others, especially if that culture has been ripped away or you’re away from it and you’re not familiar with it.

That can be very difficult. People have to know who they are in order to be most successful. Some of the issues we’re having now is because people don’t know their history. They don’t know who they are, and they’re kind of making it up as they go. And that can be quite difficult. And as we’re seeing a little bit dangerous, when you don’t understand the premises of how things have been created and who you are, and then you have your relational leadership, how you connect to everyone around you. And so when we present this and I show people that you’re trying to balance all of these areas as people and as family leaders, and ultimately we pay a whole lot of attention to our job, and then we think this is going to figure itself out. And so we’ll put 80% of our attention into, okay, I got to make money, I got to get my career and all of that good stuff. And then the rest of this thing, this stuff of your life gets about 20% of your attention if that.

Melyssa Barrett:  So

Shelly Jones Holt:  When you think about why folks get burned out, why they’re feeling stressed, and then when the world starts to get off kilter and it really throws this into disalignment, and if your emotional intelligence is not up as your capacity is being stretched, if you’re unsure of all these things that can happen, it can feel like the world’s swirling around you and you’re just trying to stay afloat. And so this is why, especially for those of us in activism work or in change work or in leadership work, why it’s so important for us to understand this matrix here and really be able to say, okay, have I been putting too much into my career and I need to put some more into my body and my mind and my spiritual development? Do I need rest? Have I had some time with my friends or my spouse, my mates, so that I can connect with the people, people outside of that professional arena so I can just be a person?

Have I devoted my time to my home? Is the laundry done? Have I kissed the babies lately? Have I looked at the homework lately? Have I done those things that I need to do to run a home? Changing the air filters? Have I made sure the lawn is mowed? It is almost into gardening season for those to get out hard. I’m like all of that things about running a home and don’t let anything go wrong, a plumbing issue or an electrical issue or anything like that. We’ll throw our whole life into disarray. And then right now, especially, we want to get our money. And so if everything is a priority, nothing is a priority. And ultimately what we end up doing is putting these all on the same plane, making them all priorities, and we do a little bit of meat all the time, and then we never really are satisfied because we haven’t taken the time to say, all right, you know what? For the next three months, I’m really going to focus on my personal leadership. And I understand that some of these areas may need some attention, but right now this is where I’m going to put my attention. And the next, maybe I’ll focus on what’s happening with my relationships, right?

Melyssa Barrett:  Yes.

Shelly Jones Holt:  So having this chart really does help. And this is kind of the foundation of the work we do with our families because then we create goals, we create visions, we create plans around these so that those can start to really go, all right, what are we focusing on? And we love doing this with family leadership teams and who we call the family leadership team. It could be a husband and wife, it could be a father and daughter. When my dad was still around and I was a single parent, my dad really did help quite a bit to make sure that we were a team and trying to help raise my son and do all the things. And so that would be my family leadership partner. But there were times when I needed time to myself, and there were times when we needed to get on the same page.

So having retreats and vacations and things that you can do as a family to really focus in on your leadership is critical. And I think that one of the biggest things that we’ve learned in doing this work in helping practitioners, helping leaders, helping folks that are really on the frontline doing the work, is somebody’s got to help the people that are doing the helping. And that’s kind of where we get into be that support for those that are doing that work that we don’t really see the backend part. We don’t see the part where, until we see the documentary about how difficult it was for Malcolm X and his family, how difficult it was for Martin Luther King and his family for John F. Kennedy for all, I mean, many leaders that we see in front of us, we don’t see the backend work of what life is like for them. And so I think it’s a critical piece.

Melyssa Barrett:  No, that’s so true. And I love the fact that you even brought in everybody’s family doesn’t look the same. So whether it’s a blended family or you were a single parent with your dad, I mean, it’s like the family units can look different, but I love the fact that you talk about just a reliance on it can be whomever it needs to be, give you the help that you need in those areas. So I love the fact that you can look at those specific areas and it’s like, okay, well let’s get the family team together and figure out what that looks like. So that’s

Shelly Jones Holt:  Awesome. Absolutely. Absolutely. And that’s the fun part of what I get to do, because having been on the frontline and been a leader in those spaces and now being able to say, I see you, I get you. And a lot of the folks I work with are, well, some of ’em actually, a lot of the younger folks I work with, I should say, that are kind of the next leaders going in, they don’t think about some of these pieces. And so having been in those roles, you and I both know that you don’t realize what you don’t know until you get in there

And you go, could somebody have told me or help me think through this? It would’ve been nice to get a heads up taking this VP job, or it is going to turn my whole world around. I thought it was just going to be like, I’m just elevating up the corporate ladder. And it’s like, no, your whole life changes in some cases depending on those positions. And if you don’t have somebody who’s been there done that to say, yes, we can help you with the logistics of your job, and that’s one of the beautiful parts of having done the work, but let me help you balance your life and around what it is because you’ll have a whole bunch of people that’ll help you do your job great. But who’s checking on your

Melyssa Barrett:  Marriage? Who’s

Shelly Jones Holt:  Checking on you, your kids’ relationship, who’s checking on your relationship with your friends and your family members? When’s the last time you had a girl’s day or a fellow’s day or whatever and you feel comfortable realizing and putting in front of folks that I need that? It took me a minute to realize it’s okay for me to say as a mom and an entrepreneur and a leader, that I just want to go have time with my girlfriends to just go be silly and go swimming at midnight. Or I think about a month ago, we did a Thursday evening, and so we all had the wine and the cheese and we all got, and it was freezing, but by the time we got in the spa and we were just talking and laughing, and next thing you know, we were all P prish and we had a blast two hours later, and it’s like, oh my gosh, that was so great just to laugh and giggle and just have fun. And so all of that has to be considered, we are whole people, even if we are leaders, and we don’t want to lose people in this diversity, equity, and inclusion work because by not really thinking about the diversity of our needs, the equity of our needs, and including all parts of our own needs and our own experiences. And so

Melyssa Barrett:  It’s fine. Yeah, I mean I think it’s fabulous. You’re focused on and what you’re doing. And since you brought up the topic of DEI, I’ve been having lots of conversations with folks because obviously there’s a lot of anti DEI conversation going on and people that are just, I think they don’t even know what DEI actually is. And so I think in a lot of ways the term has taken on some different meetings. People think that DEI is affirmative action. It is not. And so it’s interesting to me because I think it’s actually allowing us to speak more about DEI because there’s all this rhetoric around what it is and what it means and all of that. So I’m actually embracing more of the conversation because the reason we started, I started the jolly podcast, was really to find out how people think about DEI. And quickly I realized there is diversity, equity, and inclusion in everything we do. That lens just provides you a lens. Yes. And so one of the things that I would love to ask you is as you think through diversity, equity, and inclusion, what do you think some of the impacts are of some of these rollbacks or I don’t know if I’ll call it a rollback. I mean, there’s this question about whether people will embrace CEI or not.

What do you feel about it?

Shelly Jones Holt:  Well, so first of all, I think that there is an intentional desire amongst people, the legacy of eugenics thinkers and people who have embraced eugenics long ago. See, this idea of naming things in ways that can propagate a certain message is not old. I mean, it’s not new. It’s very, very old actually. And so what we’re seeing are the granddaughters and the grandsons of the eugenic thinkers have actually been passing down this thinking within their families and within their ways of operating and doing business in their places of worship, in their places of business, in their places of recreation for generations. And the difference between what’s happening now and what happened during the civil rights era is that at that time when people were talking about civil rights and getting equal rights, this idea of coffee and the fact that things had not been equal, it struck a chord with folks.

There was never a knowledge base though, or a conversation around the fact that the anti-blackness that it was predicated upon was still there. And so this idea of, yes, you should get a job, but in the mind of the eugenics thinkers, they’ll never get the job because they’re not as smart as me anyway. And so we never addressed the eugenics thinking, which was predicated upon people who were immigrants, people who were of darker hue, people who were not as white as others, were not as smart, were not as intelligible, were not as fill in all the blanks. And so I know it’s going to be a long answer to a very short question, but stay with me for a moment. That’s okay. Because when you don’t understand that, that thinking never ended. So people that had those eugenics thoughts, and if you don’t know what eugenics is, that’s a good time to Google now because realize that eugenics thinking never disappeared.

The eugenics mindset, the eugenics ideology, it never disappeared. It particularly from white America, it was only cooked in different ways. And so the idea of the Civil Rights Act was like, yeah, go ahead and give them the civil rights, but they’ll never really be able to get that high because they’re not that smart anyway, so what does it matter? And that’s the part that nobody likes to talk about. And so now you fast forward 50 years and folks forgot because they don’t know their history that you didn’t steal Africa didn’t send their criminals, Africa didn’t send their broke down and beat up people that they didn’t want anymore. They stole some of the best and brightest out of our country and combined them with some of the criminals and people that Europe put out. And so you have the best and brightest from Africa combined with the legacy of the best brightest from Africa, combined with the legacy of the criminals and the people that Europe didn’t want combining here in America.

And again, it’s like, well, eugenics tells me that they’re naturally inferior and they’re naturally all these things that they’re not, and we’ve put up all these barriers. There’s no way that any of the ever actually be able to do something significant. And then in 2008, they saw Obama, oh Lord, today, and it is just so counterintuitive to what eugenics is all about, that it was like this can’t, how is this happening? He had to have not been a citizen. So there was this need to question everything around him because it did not fit the schema that they have been taught from their great grandmothers and grandfathers and their grandfathers and their fathers. And it’s like, whoa, my families have been telling me all this time that these people are filling the blank of whatever it is that they have been told. But I guarantee you it was not that.

They’re brilliant people that we stole out of Africa and persecuted for years and they survived anyway. I guarantee you that wasn’t a narrative, but it was some form of whatever works for the status quo. And so you bring that all the way forward. And in two eight, that’s why you just thought it was almost a shock. No one thought that Obama was going to win other than those of us who are actually listening to the messages and not paying attention to the hue of his skin, but truly doing what Martin Luther King did and look at the content of the character and the actual policies that the two candidates were presenting. And I mean, when you go back and look at those debates and that conversation at the time, it was a very clear choice not to say anything against his opponent. Now you take that in and you watch what happens after Obama. And during that time period with again, this eugenics thinking never went away,

Melyssa Barrett:  They

Shelly Jones Holt:  Are inferior. How is this happening? They’re less than us. How is this happening? How are they buying homes? What is going on here? And so in the midst of that, there had just before they had this idea of an ethnic cleansing, it’s just the same song on repeat. It’s just a remix. And so if you pay attention to that, you can see Now, when we come to this current era and age and we talk about different people having different needs and needing different things, that is what we need to realize what we are talking about different from what different needs than who being included into what.

Melyssa Barrett:  And

Shelly Jones Holt:  When you answer all those questions, realize that that’s why people who believe in white supremacy are really struggling right now because it’s different people that are different from white folks, people that have different needs than white folks, people that want to be included in what white folks feel is for them and have created for themselves under the guise of though in America we say all men are created equal, and all these would just not actually in the Constitution, but we’ll go into, we don’t into that. So when you talk about this need and why people understand diversity, equity, and inclusion differently for one group of people, they’re saying, yes, there are different kinds of people and they have different needs and they should have the same rights and opportunities in life, liberty and pursuit of happiness as everybody else. Folks go and then folks go over are going, yes. What do you mean diversity? Hold on. What different kinds of people? What you mean we’re all people,

Melyssa Barrett:  What

Shelly Jones Holt:  You mean? People have different needs. We all just need to go get a job and do it well. But the experiences in those places are a little bit different. And wait a minute, you mean to tell me you haven’t been included? We have all these laws say we don’t, right? And so embracing DEI for a certain population means that they have to admit to themselves that it has not been an embracing of diversity. It has not been equitable for everyone, and everyone hasn’t been included. And so this rejection of DEI, and that’s why I say it’s this notion that whether it’s conscious or unconscious, it’s a rejection of the notion that I have not been including diverse people, that I have not been getting people what they need. And for people that have for years operated under, well, they’re less than us, why are we even adhere their needs anyway, where people that have been taught kind and you’re nice and you’re Christian and you’re good, and other people, they just have their issues. But that’s not this notion that everybody is the same and everybody needs the same things as you. I think that’s the last piece of it, is realizing that we all have to get out of the 2-year-old narcissism. And what I mean by that is this idea that we all kind of walk through the world with blinders on thinking that the world is the way for us the same way for everybody else.

Melyssa Barrett:  I’m

Shelly Jones Holt:  Going to tell you a little bit about myself that’s probably going to throw people off. I grew up with nannies, so I don’t have a good story. I grew up in Southern California and I grew up with nannies in the home because both my parents worked and they wanted steady people, and they realized financially it made more sense to have somebody come in to send us out to daycare. And so in my mind, coming up when I went to school was totally a strange thing. You want to talk about mind blown? When I got to middle school and I realized everybody didn’t have a nanny was shocked. It’s like what you mean? I mean, it’s not anything that I would go to school and talk about, right?

Who reakfast with nanny? What are you talking about? How did you get breakfast? Well, kids don’t talk about those things. They don’t go like, well, Melissa, who cooked breakfast for you? That’s morning. It’s something we talked about in middle school, but I remember the day and I went to a friend’s house and I looked around and I was like, and the thing that got me was all the bedrooms in her house were taken my kids. And I was like, oh. And I remember thinking to myself, well, where does the nanny sleep? This is my mind, and it’s going to show you a little bit about my upbringing. But I was like, oh, okay. And so again, for me, the way that society, the normal and society was kids have a nanny. And so the idea that people went to daycare, I was like, what do you mean afterschool care daycare? Okay, I didn’t understand that.

So fast forward and put that into an adult’s world, and now you realize, and there’s all these jokes and memes about the way black families are raised and the way white families operate and the way Jewish families operate and the way Middle Eastern families operate, the way Asian families operate. And we can accept that all these families may have different foods, different religious beliefs, different. We can accept that, but we can accept that that means that I need to do something different when I interact with you. And that is particularly a challenge for people in white America who in their minds, everybody is just like them and should be just like them. Well, newsflash like you, and just because you go and colonize some spots and then you bring a whole bunch of people, y’all really think this all the way through. When you came and took somebody’s land and then said, send me your poor me this, these are all things that they said, Hey, everybody, come over here.

Think about what that was going to mean when everybody got here. And so now we’re at a stage where we’ve got to figure out that people have different needs, people have different beliefs, people have different ways of operating. And for white folks to have to face that, not that people are different from them, and it doesn’t mean better or worse, I said different. And I’m not saying white people are less than. I’m not saying they’re more than, I’m saying they’re different, and we all know that coming up. But for them to face that difference means I need to do something different. That’s where the breakdown comes in. And so again, what you don’t change, you choose. And so we are now in a place where they’re doubling down on this is what we want this place to be. And it’s almost like we got to keep having this fight.

And the other folks are saying, no, this is a place for everybody. And that means everybody needs to be there. And so at the core, that’s what diversity and equity inclusion is about. It’s a battle between folks that want folks to assimilate to what they believe is, and folks that are saying, this is a place that was built for everybody to be who they are, as long as they’re not harming and hurting other people and they’re saying, no, you need to be like this. Even if it harms, it hurts you. And these two belief systems have been clashing for centuries, and this is just the next iteration of that. So when we talk about diversity and equity inclusion, we’re really talking about a group of people who do not want to face the fact that people have different needs. And that means that we are going to need to change and adjust and support people in different ways.

And folks that are saying, we all do have different needs and we need to adjust and change. And so it’s a fundamental belief difference. And now I’m so glad that this conversation is bigger than black and white. I can’t even see straight, because now we’re going to have to have, it’s bigger than L-G-B-T-Q. This is going into disabilities. Remember, this is a country where we used to throw people with disabilities. Literally they will be killed at birth by the same folks that are talking pro-life. Mind you, these are the same folks that would throw their teenage daughters who got pregnant into convents and then have them raised as their niece or aunt or whomever because of a belief system that this is what we do in this place. This is what’s right, this is what’s not. This is what’s acceptable. This is what’s not. And this group is saying, you know what? People let people be and allow them to be who they are and create spaces for them. And so I think at a core level, that’s where the big issue is in DEI, it’s a matter of do we want to accept people for who they are and allow them to be who they are or do we not? And if we don’t, we got a problem.

Melyssa Barrett:  Well, and I think what’s interesting about how you went through that whole process is the fact that, and then you add on that we’re not a monolith. So I mean every person has so many degrees of difference to them.

Shelly Jones Holt:  Intersectionality is

Melyssa Barrett:  Quite easy. Yes. Yeah, you were talking about being acculturation. And I grew up, my mother is from Panama, her first language is Spanish. Did we speak Spanish? No, we did not. And so for me, I always felt like I lost out on part of her culture because she didn’t pass it on. I mean, my grandmother, her mother lived in the house with us. They would speak Spanish sometimes, but there was, I mean, I had to learn in high school, you know what I mean? And so it’s that constant catch up of like, oh man, I missed out on a piece of my true culture, my identity, because she was like, no, you need to speak English, because that’s what was acceptable. It’s just interesting how we talk about DEI. It means black and white, but it’s like there’s so many, there’s so much more to it than that. And I love the fact that you really pull in, it’s like, what are we talking about? These ideological thinking of? Is this for me or do I have to be like that?

Shelly Jones Holt:  And here in America for a long time it was, you need to assimilate to be like that. And when that doesn’t work for everyone, including those that it was designed for, right?

Then we started saying, well wait. Allow for more folks to be able to do these certain things. It’s when though the issues start to feel like they are infringing upon the entitlements of a population who has believed that they are more intelligent, more capable, and more entitled to positions of power. And the thing is now, which is beautiful, is they’re outright saying it. So now it’s like, well, what do you agree with? Do you agree that in order for something to work, it needs to be run by white men? That’s literally what some folks are saying right now. And I don’t, I do not. I am very clear. I do not believe white men are the smartest people on this planet. When you took a talk about the fact that eugenics thinking was never fully addressed, it was almost like it was covered up by this idea of we’re supposed to be kind. We can discuss the impact of Martin Luther King, but many of us seem to forget he was assassinated, he was murdered. So there was a reason he was murdered because he, and there’s way too much around the conspiracy of that around white supremacist thinking that existed.

Melyssa Barrett:  Your background is just so awesome. So I’m going to go a little bit longer just because I’m like, I think this is so interesting to me. I know one of the things you said to me earlier was, DEI needs to become DYJ. And instead of diversity, equity, and inclusion, we need to be talking about do your job,

Shelly Jones Holt:  Do your job, do your job, just do your job right now.

Melyssa Barrett:  I love it.

Shelly Jones Holt:  And realizing, and I say that to mean our first job that we are given is to take care of our families. So let me be very clear. When I finally was able to embrace the concept that I earned money to take care of my kids and my family, that’s why I go out and earn this money.

That’s why I do this thing called work, not, I don’t live the work I work to live. So when I’m saying DYJ job, take care of your family right now, especially for those of us in the 92%, we really need to be just taking care of our families right now, watching, paying attention, getting yourselves in order, but also understand where this is coming from and why it’s happening. And just like we have these large swings that happen in our society, we swing way too far over this way, then we swing way far over the other way. And it’s hard for folks to face that some of these things swung a little bit too far too fast for some of these folks that are in these positions of power. And they’re now folks like, oh, they’re abusing power. Well, yeah, they’re blatantly abusing power right now.

And you can get mad about it if you want to, but what are you going to do about it? And if your house is in an order, you can’t do anything about it. And so right now, folks need to take care of themselves, do their jobs and taking care of their families, making sure that, going back to that five pillars of courageous family leadership, lead your family first. Make sure you are raising wonderful children, making sure that they’re getting the education and the historical relevance that they need. I don’t expect, but also realize that we swung way over here and now we’re swinging way over here. The other way back when we start talking about expecting folks to teach black history in schools, let me be very clear. This is coming from an educator. I don’t want educators teaching black history. You dunno it. So let me be very clear. You don’t want my history to be able to teach it. That’s like me asking a ballet instructor to teach quantum physics. That doesn’t make

Melyssa Barrett:  Sense.

Shelly Jones Holt:  I get the idea, I get the purpose, I get the rationale. It’s a public education and everybody should know about it. I get that. But when you swing this far and say you need to do this, and you make the power structure too uncomfortable too fast, you’re now going to see what happens. And so with this time around as we’re planning and thinking about how we’re going to move forward to truly achieve diversity, equity, and inclusion in workspaces and in school houses and in communities, we first got to make sure that we’re making sure that the different people in our households are getting their needs met and all of our children feel included. I think about the fact that right now, when you look at the percentage of school shooters there are and what demographics they fit, it is white on white crime that we don’t necessarily want to talk about. It is the result of children when the children are speaking because many of them are children. They’re speaking about not feeling included and not feeling like they belonged and not right. And this starts at home. It starts at home.

And so when I talk about diversity and equity inclusion and where it needs to begin, it needs to be begin in your own house and realizing that your kids have different needs, but they are different people. I have eight children. I love them all. I love them all differently. I do not love them all the same. I love them all, but I love them all differently because they need me to love them differently. Sometimes they need stern mama. Sometimes they need loving mama. Sometimes they need you. Figure it out yourself. Mala, right? And all good and all those. And we got to figure out what version of ourselves we need to be. That’s all that diversity and equity inclusion means is that as leaders, we determine the type of leadership that the people we serve need. And right now, that is something that when we talk about the biggest beneficiaries, when you look at the actual data, the biggest beneficiaries of diversity and equity inclusion work, were not white people. Guess what I mean? We’re not black people. The biggest beneficiaries of diversity and equity inclusion work, were not black people, was white folks. White women starting with white women we’re at the top. Absolutely white men we’re next. And depending on which demographic you look at with white women, the beneficiaries of diversity inclusion meaning us doing the work and people that benefited. You have white women, you have L-G-B-T-Q, you have people of Muslim descent, you have all these folks, you know where black folks hit seventh

Way down, we didn’t even get bitch until seventh, right? The number one recipients of diversity and equity inclusion efforts that created that change were not black folks. It was white men. And so when you talk about this anti DEI movement, you got to realize that they figured out real quick, you talk about us, we don’t need help. We don’t need any education. We don’t need, we’re perfect. And so if you don’t tie it back to the eugenics thinking of white is right, right is perfect because we’ve done the science and we believed it, and then we put it into our churches and then we put it into our white Jesus, and then we put it into all of these different spaces.

You have to make the leap to diversity and equity. Inclusion is saying there’s something wrong with the way that we’re leading and the way that we’re treating people. And basically they’re saying, you’re not going to tell us that we’re doing anything wrong or that there is anything wrong with us. And so folks had to realize how that message sounded to people, which is why when you deliver this message and folks talk about, well, why is yours so different? Why don’t you have folks getting up and walking out and getting all upset in your meetings? Because you’ve got to create a safe space for folks to be able to face that I was wrong.

Melyssa Barrett:  That’s right.

Shelly Jones Holt:  And right now, America is not a safe space. America was not ready to admit they were wrong During George Floyd when George Floyd was murdered, it caused a spark to folks to realize, oh, this racism thing is not okay. And so some white folks figured out that that was not okay and they were wrong. Others were like, well, that issue was wrong, but I’m not.

Melyssa Barrett:  Right.

Shelly Jones Holt:  So it’s, I think one of the biggest things that we can do as diversity and equity and inclusion specialists is help people face the fact that Auntie Maya said it best, when you know better, you should do better. And this idea of we know now that these things are happening and we have to be the ones unfortunately to create a safe space. And I say, we, let me be very clear. I’m not clueing me in this. White America has to be the ones to tell white America it’s okay that we were wrong on this. We got this one wrong. And they’ve never done that even since 1865, if you look at all the never in any of the doctors should they say, locking up black people and shackling them was wrong.

You never get that because there’s the belief system that it was wrong. That they’re like, oh, well we need them to do this or we need them to, oh, okay, well I guess we have none of the legislations that were created to make sure that we had equal rights ever took into account or or forced white America to admit that they were wrong in what they had done. And so now we’re at a space where we’re watching this happen. And as I’m watching it, the reason why I’m saying that we need to get our own houses in order is because white folks have got to be able to tell white folks that they were wrong. We can’t do it anymore. It’s not our role, it’s not our place. We’ve already done it. We’ve said it. We’ve shouted it, we’ve protested it, we’ve boycotted it, we’ve done all these things.

And I’m not saying we don’t need to do the boycotts and the protest and things like that, but what I’m saying is in order for this to truly change right now with the time for many of us who have been on the front lines of this work, especially people of color marginalized folks alongside of us, we have to let folks that are in power tell the other folks in power, this was wrong. And I think it’s going to have to get much worse. Now they’re doing things that are, you got planes falling out the sky right now. You got like, I dunno how wrong it’s going to have to get before folks finally say, yeah, but you can see with leaving MAGA becoming a hashtag and things like that, you’re starting to see how fragile and fickle people are. They will sway like this, like that. And the thing is, these folks know that. And so it’s a very delicate dance, but at a certain point, just like Germany had to finally mea co copa and say Yes, burning millions of Jews, that was wrong. And they have done the work as a country to begin to heal from that. America never did that.

Melyssa Barrett:  They have

Shelly Jones Holt:  Never admitted they were wrong and they still haven’t. And now they’re doubling down on it. And now we’re seeing what our ancestors warned us about. We got a little too comfortable in these spaces. We got a little too comfortable doing things that the power structure was not quite ready for, and we did not do them in the best and most strategic ways. Now is the time to get strategic and to teach our children how to do the same.

Melyssa Barrett:  Yes, absolutely. Well said. I think what’s interesting, and I know last time we talked, I don’t know if you’re going to tell him story, which one, I think storytelling is so powerful, and I know you told me that I think it’s like one of your great aunts house was one of the houses. I’ll let you tell the story because it’s amazing in setting context for all of the things that you’re talking about because you have so much family that we’re right there,

Shelly Jones Holt:  Right there. And learning that as I’ve been in this work, the more folks that are seeing me, I like being in the background. Let me be very clear. I like being kind of on the underground railroad, if you will, of this work. I’m not trying to be all out in front and big and all of that because it’s just, it’s not where I want to be and not the place I want to really do the work the best. Where I want to be is where my family has been for a very long time, and we don’t talk about the families that were behind the scenes of the Civil Rights movement. And as I was doing some learning about how did the Civil Rights movement become a movement, because when you think about how big the Montgomery Bus boycott was and how much we had to come together, you have some that tell us as black folks, we can’t come together for nothing but free before 10 at the club.

They’ll say, we just can’t get it together. But somehow, some way 60 years ago without, over in the 1960s, without the help of social media and newspapers and all of these different means of communication, we organized in our communities to do a 300, and I believe it was 67 days, if I’m not mistaken, a boycott of the bus system where our primary means of transportation. And so I started doing some work on that. I wanted to find out what exactly was happening during the times. And what I found out was amidst things like the Green Book to help us get from place to place and amid because these laws were in place that did not allow us to ride in certain places that did not allow us to stay in certain hotels. And so what I found out is that part of the ways that Martin Luther King and Malcolm X and many, and Ruby, not Ruby Bridges, she was a baby at the time, and some of our leaders 381 days, thank you, which is a long time, by the way. Think about that.

Some of us are talking about a seven day boycott. Some of us can’t even do a seven day cleanse. And we are talking about this folks doing 381 days, walking, walking and figuring out how they were going to work amongst each other to get to the grocery store, to get here, to get there. We were not going to participate in your system. And so when I started thinking about how would you even bring things like that together, what I found out amidst my research was that I have to get the right, I don’t know the right family connection because I think it was my aunt’s aunt, if you will, right? Or my mother’s aunt, I think is the right way. Yes. My mother’s aunt’s house in New York was one of the places where Martin Luther King used to come and stay when he was in New York.

And then I found out that I also had family in Mobile, Alabama, and he would stay there when he was in Mobile Alabama, not recognizing this is different sides of my family. And so I found out that there were two spaces in my family because they weren’t allowed to stay in hotels. See, we don’t like to talk about that side of Martin Luther King that y’all didn’t even let him stay in certain places and you didn’t let him eat in certain places. I just saw, what do you call ’em, a little reel talking about how when our black soldiers were bringing back these POW Nazis from Germany, the Nazi German prisoners of war were allowed to eat inside the restaurants while the actual American in America, while the actual American soldiers had food thrown out the back door, out of the pickup, off the floor.

We’ve got to remember when we’re talking about these things that the America that we know today is very new in the grand scheme of things. The America, where we all can apply for jobs and get an education and all of these things. It’s very new in the grand scheme of the history of America and the history of the world. I mean, when I looked at the fact that between 1950 and 19 75, 19 54 is Brown v Board of Education, and then 1975 is the, I want to say it’s the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, and then right in the middle of there, I want to say it’s 1974, you have the Individuals with Disabilities Act. We seem to think that these things are older than they are. They’re not

In the grand scheme of things. These are all relatively new and relatively fragile because they were not in existence. This was literally a white man’s country built in a white man’s world as they see and as they’ve created it to be. And so when we don’t know those stories, when we don’t understand that the leaders that we now are holding up as examples went through absolute hell to do that. Now we’re going to pay for it. We’re going to pay for that as a society because we’ve forgotten it wasn’t in the history books how hard it was for Martin Luther King.

We just celebrated the speech. It wasn’t in the history books, how hard it was for women when we couldn’t own homes and we couldn’t have credit cards and we weren’t allowed to be our own women. We don’t remember that. We don’t talk about that. We just thought, oh, okay, the right is now here, so we’re going to have it forever. Well, newsflash now folks are realizing how fragile this is. And so the beautiful part of this is that when you know your history, these stories and you’re able to even connect them to you personally, you understand how much it’s going to take from us in order to move forward. So right now, you’re darn right. I’m telling especially black women and leaders that have been on the front lines right now is the time to rest and do your job at home, take care of family, get your stuff together. We are going to be needed to clean this up just like the 6 68 88 or 6 88 or I forget all the numbers, I think it’s six eight. Eight eight was needed to clean up the mail system that everybody couldn’t figure out, right? We’re going to be needed on the frontline because we understand what is happening on a deeper level. Those of us that have been in the DEI space and right now, this is their battle to figure out and bring awareness to how unjust and unequal this world really can get. And I just pray that it’s not going to get so far economically damaged that we can’t come back from it because on top of race and ethnicity and all these other identities, one we haven’t talked about is the financial part, the wealth gap,

Melyssa Barrett:  Because

Shelly Jones Holt:  That transcends everything. And we don’t understand the wealth gap and how to build our money. And that right now, money equals power. Aaa, thank you. You’re get it right? S did the mail. I love it. But if we don’t get our money, especially in the black community, we have over $1.35 trillion. However we get the money, I ain’t going to go there because we only 12% of the population, but we have 1.35 trillion of spending that they want. And they’re trying to say, you’re going to spend where we tell you to spend. And so right now, the movement that is happening underground is really, it’s a spending movement because at the end of the day, now you’re trying to, the tariffs and all that stuff is coming into play and that’s going to quite a lot of folks. But we as a community have to get really smart, much like the Jewish and the Muslim and the Armenian and other communities that could become very smart with their money and keeping it flowing inside of their communities. At one point, the reason you see folks think that Black Wall Street was just burnt down. They hated black folks.

Black Wall Street was broken down because in the community of Black Wall Street, the black dollar would change hands amongst black folks up to 12 to 14 times before it would leave the black community. Imagine that it’s just going around and around us. And then until we need something from the outside, the Armenian community is doing that. The Korean community is doing that. The Jewish community has been doing that since they got here. And so now within the black community, we’re trying to figure out how we can do that and with our families and our culture being so in disarray, it’s hard, but it is not impossible.

Melyssa Barrett:  Well, and this is yet another reason why we need our own businesses, and we have to make sure that we have the ability to transcend that, right? I mean, right now, if somebody said, okay, you’re over here, have a nice day. We don’t have enough entrepreneurship in order to deliver what we need for that market. So I think what I mean, I love it. I asked you because it’s Black History Month, happy Black history Month. I’m always trying to connect Kwanza elements and principles to kind of every day. Everybody thinks that Kwanza is like once a year. Leave it alone. I’m all about the principles. These are principles we can carry with us every day. So I wanted to ask you about what principle you rely on or focus on. You’ve talked about a lot of them today. And so tell me, when I talk about Kwanza every day, I’m like, Hey, I could be talking about Unity or any of them. Which one resonates with you the most today?

Shelly Jones Holt:  Today? Okay, so I have to give a shout out to, I have two daughters who were born on the day of purpose. Literally both my daughters 13 years apart were born on the same day, which is the day of purpose. And so Nia is always at the front of my mindset, and I feel like God blessed me with that to remind me you have a purpose. And my purpose is my family. And because my purpose is my family, cooperative economics is always on my mind each and every day, especially right now. We have got to embrace how we do more with our money together. And because in our community, in our culture, we talk about a whole lot of stuff, but we act like it was plague to talk about money, right?

Melyssa Barrett:  Yeah.

Shelly Jones Holt:  You didn’t touch mama’s pocketbook. Don’t worry about my, and those are all things that

Melyssa Barrett:  Don’t ask me how much. I don’t

Shelly Jones Holt:  Ask me how much it costs and take the tag. And so we didn’t talk about money. We don’t talk about money much. And we were taught that it was almost taboo to talk about money. But here’s what I have learned in my travels and becoming a CEO of a large school district and being in the circles where these discussions were happening. These people that have power, they only talk about money. I kid you not every time that I talk with these folks, there are conversations around money happening. And so we have to get more comfortable having conversations about money. The problem is people that don’t have money have not been taught to talk about money because you’re not supposed to. And then you have these black folks that finally do get $5 to their name, and then they all they talk about, but they don’t.

Sometimes they forget how to connect with the folks that don’t have it or were where they were and how that felt to hear somebody who’s a billionaire or a millionaire and you’re a rapper or whatever it is. And I love following people like John Hope Bryant. I love online. I love following people like Dr. Boyce Watkins. I love following people that talk about our finances. I even follow Susie Orman, if you like some of Dave Ramsey’s stuff. His is a little bit different. I don’t always go with the Dave Ramsey stuff. He says some stuff that’s a little bit counterintuitive and counterproductive, but we have to get really comfortable talking about how we multiply our money, how we make it together, how we spend it together. And it’s not just about, oh, well go support the black businesses and they charge too much and all of that. I’m not even talking about that. I’m talking about how we grow our wealth. How do you invest?

Are you building land? If you are still renting? That is a problem. If you do not own a piece of something, and I’m not talking about that old raggedy car, I don’t care if you just bought it yesterday. That is a depreciating asset. If you don’t understand what that means, let’s get into some financial classes. We’re talking about owning land, owning property, owning dirt, owning right to something, owning an idea, owning a business, owning your time, owning your all ownership is going to have to be huge. If you don’t own it, it means you are borrowing and you are on somebody else’s schedule. You are a slave to somebody else’s desire for you desire because that landlord can put you out tomorrow. Absolutely.

That house you’re rent, they can decide they’re going to sell it tomorrow, that car that you could crash. And if you don’t have insurance, good luck to you. And so we have got to get to a place where we own our land and we own our ability to provide our own food. We own our ability to multiply those assets when we need to utilize assets to acquire more assets. So right now, cooperative is huge for me. And teaching our children to run and operate their own businesses is my priority. Teaching our young people to save up and purchase their homes on top of owning their business, that’s a priority. Showing families how to use money, not as something that’s going to tear you apart, but something that can bring you together. We should not be fighting when grandma dies about the $5 that grandma left.

We should be thinking about how we’re going to put that to you so that we can multiply it for everybody and not, oh, who going to get the house and who going to sell it? You better not figure out how you can take the equity in that asset, put somebody in it if you want to and rent it out or whatever, but then figure out how you’re going to take the equity in that asset and multiply it to purchase more assets and do more with it. And so cooperative economics, and thank you for listening. That’s at the core of everything. How do we use good credit, good debt. I don’t even know. Good debt. That sound like an oxymoron, right? It’s not. I promise you it’s not. Yes. Yes, absolutely. I think so. We got to figure those things out.

Melyssa Barrett:  Oh, thank you so much. I think that was awesome. I could probably go on with two for five, six more hours, but

Shelly Jones Holt:  Well, you know what? I wish I had took, because we’re doing gallon times tonight and I’m almost irritated because I didn’t invite you. And we will invite you next time. We have a group of women that are coming together. It’s a couple of my so wars and we can bring a D girl in the mix, but we are all literally coming together to talk about, I’ve started my business. They’re still, one of them is in the stages of starting her business. She has a retreat center here in California that she’s opening. I’m reopening my retreat center down in Alabama. So we’re talking about what are all the logistics of that? One is the deputy superintendent for the state of California. So she’s coming and she’s talking about her next step If she decides, well wait, not, but it’s just when she finally decides that she’s done with that one’s a principal in the area and she’s like, all right, my kid’s going off to college next year. What am I going to do with myself? And so we’re all literally, when I tell you cooperative economics is my thing.

Melyssa Barrett:  I love it.

Shelly Jones Holt:  So we’re coming together the night, everybody’s bringing a charcuterie board and we’re going to talk business. And so it becomes a business meeting. It becomes all the things. And we’re committed to doing this once a month with each other and just growing each other. What knowledge do you have? What knowledge do you have? And so we eat every time we come together, everyone comes with a goal of what they want to accomplish. And sometimes it’s just us all sitting in the room drinking wine, talking mess. And it’s like, girl, you almost done with your shit. I’m almost done with my shit. Okay, we get done with our, and then we’ll go out to do karaoke. Or we’re like, okay, we got a deadline. We got to be out and ready by eight 30. That means well, we can’t go unless everybody finishes. So that means if you finish early, you’re jumping on to stop what you need help. Come on girl. We trying to go, oh, I need to do this and this. So it’s a beautiful sisterhood that we are forming because if we don’t help ourselves, if we are not the ones to help one another, I don’t know anybody else who will. And so we’ve got to get together and not see each other as competition. You are nothing but a colleague, honey. And we going to go together.

Melyssa Barrett:  All right. That’s awesome. I love it. I love it. I love my AKA sisters. What can I say? I’m a delta. I love all the D nine.

Shelly Jones Holt:  We need all the Greeks. Yes. I mean, imagine if it got to be big, and it could be like this D nine thing that we do, all the D and entrepreneurs and you got the bras, and imagine it can be, it can be Dr. Kelly girl. This ain’t nothing but a thing. And we can do this.

Melyssa Barrett:  We

Shelly Jones Holt:  Don’t need their permission. And this is my thing. We don’t need to put it all on social media. Stop telling all your damn business. In order for us to lead and do this work, we have to remember that during the civil rights movement, there wasn’t no social media fake God because somebody would’ve put the secret meat in place on damn TikTok or somewhere and they would’ve blew it up, right? We’ve got to, when you are planning and when you are doing the work behind the scenes, you do that stuff behind the scenes, right? They don’t need to see nothing but the protection. They don’t need to see all the rehearsals. They don’t need to know about those. They don’t even know the rehearsals are happening. So we as a community, in order for us to lead courageously, you have got to do your planning and your strategic work behind the scenes out of the view of everyone.

And that is why Dr. Martin Luther King was at my relative’s house when he would sleep. He didn’t even trust the hotels if you really want to be honest, because he knew that the FBI was listen listening in. And so he would stay at home because you know what? I know who been in my house. I know it’s only been me. And so they didn’t have to worry about those things. So as we are doing this as a community and we’re preparing for this next piece, you do your job and recognize part of your job is taking care of your community and doing the work behind the scenes. That’s why taking care of your family yourself is so critical. It’s important they post. Realize your business out there on them. Thanks now. I love it. Owned by all the people want you listen everything, knock it out, right?

Melyssa Barrett:  I love you Dr. Shelley. Nobody wants

Shelly Jones Holt:  You in our business.

Melyssa Barrett:  I love you Dr. Shelley. Oh my goodness. You are too funny girl. Right? And my husband,

Shelly Jones Holt:  I’m so serious. And I know it’s funny. So serious. Oh, now don’t stop telling everybody every damn thing you’re trying to do else. They own all the platforms. Einstein. Guess what? Your Facebook group that ain’t private either. I WhatsApp. They own that too.

Melyssa Barrett:  Don’t started. I dunno what you going to do female. But look, don’t get me started on privacy and governance. We can have a whole nother conversation. That’s the next episode. That’s the yes. We can have a whole nother conversation. I live in that world and

Shelly Jones Holt:  There is no privacy. I’m trying to folks,

Melyssa Barrett:  And here’s the thing. When we think about digital transformation, when we’re talking about the infrastructure of our communities, do you think there’s a governance standard that is talking about throwing up that sensor and now you’re on the sensor. You have no private, there’s no privacy, right? Who’s using the information? Where’s the data going? I mean, we could go on and on and on,

Shelly Jones Holt:  On and on and on. And that’s why they’re getting rid of it because they want. And so this idea that these things are private, it’s not. But we definitely got to get our stuff together and stop telling everybody, all our darn business and our plans and our thoughts. I love that little girl. I shouldn’t call her a little girl. She’s a grown woman, but I just love her. Her name is RNA Vannie or Lana Vanay. She does the, it’s Friday. I would keep it black, but I would keep it brief. Not the lot. You talking about, yes, she’s spilling the tea in the parking lot, right? I’m Friday, I’m keep, but I’m keep it brief the way she, that journalistic genius that she brings. But you got to realize all she’s doing is essentially reporting the news.

Melyssa Barrett:  Like

Shelly Jones Holt:  Baby girl, she’s not telling you all her business. She’s not telling you all the stuff that she’s doing behind the scenes. I did look at her little page today. I learned how to look at, I learned that if you click the person’s name on Instagram, you could see all the things that they do. Yes, I know. That’s a new thing. I know. Hey, I’m GenX. I’m a proud GenX here. We figure out shit like, did you know you’re hilarious? But looked at her. This child ain’t nothing but a go real newscaster list. Exactly. She ain’t telling anybody business but theirs. Keep telling their business. But stop telling your own, I’m telling you, we need to figure this out behind the scenes.

Melyssa Barrett:  Yes. Strategy, strategy, strategy and strategizing people. That’s it. That’s it. Well, Dr.

Shelly Jones Holt:  I know we could talk for hours and running for these ladies to get here, but

Melyssa Barrett:  We can talk. It’s truly a pleasure. A pleasure. Thank you so much for joining me. Enjoy Gallant Times’s day. I think that’s awesome what you guys are doing and sending positive vibes to all of you.

Shelly Jones Holt:  Thank you. And to all your listeners folks, realize that the work that we do at Courageous Leadership is for everyone. If you need anything, if you want to connect with me, you are more than welcome to. Please do not hesitate to reach me on any of my pages. Know that the work that we do in courageous leadership is all out of love. So if nobody told you they love you today, please know I love you. I appreciate you. Thank you for listening to us talk together. And you know what? If you better go ahead and make it a great day. But if you can’t, don’t ruin anybody else’s one. Love

Melyssa Barrett:  Folks. There you go. I love it. Thank you so much. Thanks for joining me on the Jali Podcast. Please subscribe so you won’t miss an episode. See you next week.