It’s Not Just Business: Healthcare Equity & leadership with Dr. Errol Pierre

Published Jan 23, 2023, 8:00 AM

Dr. Errol Pierre is a corporate executive, leader, mentor, and outspoken advocate for healthcare equity in the US and Haiti. HIs new book, The Way Up, helps underrepresented individuals from all ethnic backgrounds achieve their professional goals and elevate their careers in today's workplace. 

 

What you probably don’t know is that grief - in one form or another - plays a part in every one of those roles. 



In this episode we cover: 

 

  • Why a book about climbing the corporate ladder gets the spotlight on a show about grief
  • How little kid Errol’s delayed root canal influenced adult Errol’s entire career
  • Can we get behind the headlines and really understand the actual humans behind the crisis in healthcare access? (hint: yes, but it involves activating certain brain centers) 
  • Building the equitable world from the ground up: Errol’s work in Haiti 
  • Why making healthcare more accessible will prevent more grief (when it’s avoidable), and reduce suffering (when it’s unavoidable) 
  • Navigating racism in the corporate world

 

About our guest: 

Dr. Errol Pierre is the Senior Vice President of State Programs at a large non-profit health plan in New York. He provides leadership, mentorship, and guidance to professionals of color across various industries, ensuring the advancement of diverse professionals into leadership positions. He’s also fiercely committed to healthcare equity - building a world where systemic equity is built into the foundation of all new ventures. 



Find his new book, The Way Up: Climbing the Corporate Mountain as a Professional of Color, wherever you get books.

 

 Follow Dr. Errol Pierre at @ErrolLPierre on most social platforms, or visit errolpierre.com

 

Additional resources:

For more on grief in the workplace, read “The Burden of Bereavement: Grief is the latest challenge for employers in the coronavirus era” and “How to Talk to a Grieving Customer”

 

Get in touch:

Thanks for listening to this week’s episode of Here After with Megan Devine. Tune in, subscribe, leave a review, send in your questions, and share the show with everyone you know. Together, we can make things better, even when they can’t be made right. 

 

Have a question, comment, or a topic you’d like us to cover? call us at (323) 643-3768 or visit megandevine.co

 

For more information, including clinical training and consulting, visit us at www.Megandevine.co

 

For grief support & education, follow us at @refugeingrief on IG, FB, TW, and @hereafterpod on TT

 

Check out Megan’s best-selling books - It’s Okay That You're Not Okay and How to Carry What Can’t Be Fixed

I can count endless stories of people who were sick and forego for when care because they knew the system was bad. They knew they were going to be on a waiting line for four hours. They knew they were going to wait a line just to get a script to go see another doctor. They knew they were going to get a bill in the mail for four bucks, and they have no idea how they're going to pay for it. This is Here After, and I'm your host, Megan Divine, author of the best selling book It's Okay that You're Not Okay. This week on Hereafter, business leader and mentor and author and corporate exact doctor Errol Pierre joins us to talk about the hardships inherent in climbing the corporate ladder, systemic equity, and why all advocacy at its root is really grief work. I know that's a hodgepodge of things everybody, but the conversation we're about to have is going to bring all that stuff together. So settle in. We'll be right back after this first break. Before we get started, one quick note. While we cover a lot of emotional relational territory in each and every episode, this show is not a substitute for skilled support with a license mental health provider, or for professional supervision related to your work. Hey friends, So, on the surface, today's guest might seem like an odd match for this show. I mean, okay, listen to the description of his new book in the Way Up, Climbing the Corporate Mountain. As a professional color accomplished executive, Dr Errol Prierre delivers a pragmatic and actionable guide to help underrepresented individuals from all ethnic backgrounds achieve their professional goals and elevate their careers in today's modern workplace. And here's his bio. Dr Errol Pierre provides leadership, mentorship and ideans to professionals of color across various industries, ensuring the advancement of diverse professionals into leadership positions. Okay, all of that sounds amazing and awesome and it is. But I mean, the tagline of Hereafter is conversations with interesting people about difficult things. So why exactly is a corporate executive, mentor leadership author a guest on the show. Well, as you will hear in today's conversation, grief, love, suffering, and a dream for a better world is at the root of everything Dr Errol Pierre does. We kind of came to that realization together in the course of our conversation, which is also really cool. So on one hand, yes, he is an amazing mentor and leader and guide, particularly for people of color looking to advance their careers. But he's also an advocate for equity and x sessibility in healthcare, which, when you think about it, is actually a ferocious, deeply embodied care for the well being of individuals and families and communities. The work of leadership, whether on a corporate level or an advocacy, isn't like to erase pain, the pain that is such a large part of being human. But the real work is to decrease the odds of that pain showing up on your doorstep, and to reduce suffering when that kind of pain can't be avoided. This conversation is really special, So I don't want you to listen to his accolades and think that doesn't sound like me. There is so much in this conversation for everybody. Now. When I first started talking to him, I kind of frontloaded, though. Let's go over your bio and why you being here is a topic of discussion before I even actually kind of properly welcomed him to the show, sort of a host faux pop. But you know whatever, I'm jumping in with my own over zealous awkward. Welcome to the awkward party is also a tagline for the show, so you know, I'm I'm just breaking it anyway, here you go, jumping right in with the over zealous awkward. My conversation with Dr Errol Pierre. So in the intro, I was telling people that you provide leadership, mentorship and guidance to professionals of color across various industries, ensuring the advancement of diverse professionals into leadership positions, which is a lot of business talk that I lifted from your books press release, but I want to get behind that. So first of all, welcome to the show, Errol. Thank you for having me pleasure. We were chatting before we got rolling about like the the work of bringing a book out into the world, and I think that's part of it too, that like there's this book about business that you have out in the world, but it's really more than a book about business. Can you tell me a little bit about that? Sure? Sure? So the culmination of the book The Way Up was after the murder of George Floyd and during the pandemic that disproportionately impacted communities of color, black and brown populations. I was stuck in a nine square foot apartment in the Bronx with too much time in my hands and was just retrospective on how I ended up being where I was at that point in time, and putting pen to paper, I really wanted to describe my journey from working in the beauty supply store warehouse to becoming chief operating officer of a large insurance company in New York and then still feeling some emptiness. And so the book is a culmination of, Hey, I got to where you're supposed to get to. You got to the top, but I wasn't happy. And I also interviewed eleven other executives of color as well, which are infused to the books. Their quotes are through there because unfortunately, under represented people like myself, we're not believed. So you need other people to have the same story so that you're validated. So I also wanted to infuse their input and their insights and their experiences, and then lastly back it up with data and statistics, so that again it's not just an anecdotal story, but that that's really the culmination of it. And the goal is twofold one. If you are a person of color, hey, here's a nice little rubric of tips and tricks that you can learn. That's great. But then I think the other major important piece is if anyone reads this book, especially someone in leadership at corporation, will realize like, wow, I didn't know my employees are going through this just to tread in place, and that's really the bigger unset story. Yeah, there's sort of this like lip service around caring about employees mental health, and I love that you bring that up, like you want some real stories about what your employees are bringing to our lives on the job, Like can we have that conversation instead of that sort of you know, pop psychology lip service will give you a gift basket for all of your hard work, but not address the real systemic issues inside corporate structure. Now you mentor professionals of color who work in the health care industry, and I imagine that there are conversations about really difficult things inside that work that you do. It's not just career strategy so you know my question was going to be can we talk a little bit about the grief spoken and unspoken for people of color inside the corporate climb? But I think I want to ask a question before that, which is, how does grief intersect with this work for you? If it does, yeah, it's a great question. It does intersect because I say this a bunch of times and throughout the chapters, the way society is is going to show up inside the office. And for some strange reason, we have this belief that when you show up to work like this different person, you're not bringing the baggage that you have in and so in society, if I go to a grocery store and someone follows me around because they think I'm going to take something, that sort of chip on my shoulder, that paranoia, that feeling is going to show up in the workplace when I don't get a promotion or I get passed on for a job, and delinking the two you do a disservice to your employees. So grief is absolutely throughout. Some of the chapters talk about traumatic experiences I've been through and how to harness them. First, you have to be aware of them and acknowledge them so that you can like distress and it doesn't create anxiety. And then once you get to that point, which can take a while, then harness them as you continue your climb. So grief runs throughout it greet not just my grief, also brief of my parents. Because I talk about my parents that came from Haiti and how they're America was different than my America, but yet they're America totally influenced how I operate in my America. Yeah, and your parents came to America from Haiti in the seventies, right, as you said, completely different world. And you write that while your father worked really hard and was in a union, health care was out of reach for your family, right, Like, that's just one example of challenges that people face. You talked about it a little bit, But what role does that experience play in the life that you've built for yourself and the life that you hope to help others build for themselves. I talked about in the book It's it's a I see it right now vividly. I had to get a hut canal when I was a kid, and I went to the dentist, and the dentist told my dad, and these are grown ups talking, so like you're off to the side, you don't know it's right. And it's interesting what kids remember right when they're older, and the dentist center tolding my dad we can't complete the work until January one of next year, so even though you started, it was like September, like he has to come back in January. I had no idea what this smet, and so they sort of like closed my tooth that was unfinished and we left, and I remember having this feeling of an unfinished mouth walking around, not realizing why I had to wait till January. Later on in life, I learned, oh, dental plans for union workers who have worked menial jobs my dad was dishwasher at a nursing home are not comprehensive. So we had an out of pocket max, which meant the root canal. The whole cost of root canal was more than the benefit I had per year, and so I end up ironically working in health insurance and that became my passion. It's like, this is crazy that in the country that is spends more money than any country in the world on healthcare, doesn't provide adequate comprehensive, high quality care to all of its citizens with dignity and respect. There's so much of a lack of dignity and respect when a father has to tell their son, I'm going to bring you back to finish your tooth next year. So I know he felt that as a hard hit, and I could see it as a kid that he was kind of like, I'm not doing enough, and I thinking, my passion. That's why I'm into health equity space today. Of no one, no one, no one should not get comprehensive care that they deserved that's culturally sensitive and high quality. Yeah. I mean again, we go back to sort of these are headlines and buzz words, right. The lack of comprehensive health care has real world impact, like all of these things, but until you live it, until you really understand the personal impact of that, it's just a headline. It's just something to be mad about. It's just something to say we should all move to Canada or you know whatever, the things that we do that are not in the muck of the real human toll of that. Yeah. The one thing I'd add to is we shouldn't wait until it happens to us for it to be validated. So I don't need to have someone else experience lack of health care for me to say, oh, it happened to my mother, so now I believe in it and unfortunate. Really, it happens a lot in America where it's like, well, I don't experience it, so it's not real until it happens to you. Then you're like, well, I'm speaking from you know, experience, just so real. It shouldn't be that way. If if one human experienced it, then it's valid. Yeah, and I would love that. I would love if if human brains work that way. But it does seem like there's something important that has to happen to sort of open those doors in the brain to recognize somebody else as deserving of support and access and care and all of those things. There's this great I'm not going to go on this tangent for too long, but there's this great book called General Theory of Love written by three psychiatrists. It's an older book now, but they talk about how there were experiments done on the limbic part of the brain in mammals. I promise this is related to what you were just saying, But what they found and sorry, this is an animal study, everybody, not my study, don't yell at me. But what they found was that if they damn of just the limbic part of the brain of female hamsters, that those female hamsters wouldn't recognize their own offspring, they would basically treat them as furniture, and that if they stimulated the limbic part of the brain, then everybody was family and they cared for each other. And they're like, so, so of course me. I'm like, so, what we're saying is that for the people who enact policies that do actual damage to real, actual people, they have limbic deficits, and there's some limbic damage in there, and what we need to do is find some way to help them reconnect with the part of their brains that sees every life as valid and deserving of care. And how the heck do we do that, I don't know, but I do know that some of that work is advocacy work. I told you I could bring this back right a lot of so some of the ways that we do that that we help people understand that things need to happen to make things better for others, even if it's not your own shared experience. Like, that's advocacy work in a nutshell, and a lot of your public advocacy work is in health equity. That phrase health equity is something that we sometimes see in headlines. So can you tell me, first of all, what that means in a business and policy sense, and then what it means for you personally. We touched on that a bit, but I like the two parter here. Yeah. Sure, So health equity the intent is it's different than equality health Health equality equal would mean everyone gets a visit to a physician. One visit to a physician, that's equal, But some patients may need six visits, and some may patients may be so healthy they need zero. So health equity looks from an economic lens, how to take limited resources and make sure that they're used in the most equitable efficient way based on the needs of the people. And so the example you know you can use is like one patient maybe a wheelchair. Doesn't mean everyone needs a wheelchair for it to be equal, But from an equino perspective, say give this person a wheelchair, this other person may need something else. And so we spend two point five times more than any other country in the nation. We don't need more money, we need better bureaucratic systems to make sure that the money flows to the right places. And so what health Equity fights for is today there is somewhere in New York City a mom who's a single mom with a child who won't go to the doctor because by taking off work means they won't make money, and so they stay at work and their sickness gets worse and they end up in the emergency room at the worst point, and then on the same vein. And there's another mom who can take off work because their salaried and they decide to bring their child to the off the doctor's office twenty times for stifools, earaches anything, And that person who's going twenty times can probably go four times. And then the mom who never went once should probably go twice at least for preventive care of visits in the follow up. And what Health Equity trying to do is shake that. It turns into sometimes controversial because it's like you're taking something from someone, you're rationing care. Ironically, every developed nation on the planet besides us, that's health care that way, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Norway, Sweden. That's how they do care. They say, the people who need it get it. The people who don't need it, they will be a little bit longer. That's just how it works when you have limited resources. So that that's really help. Equity you layer on to it as well cultural competency. We happen to be some of the most diverse citizens in the world in America, and so you're thinking through English is not the first language. What happens when someone's telling you, you know, discharge information on how to leave a hospital. So if someone is saying to you you need to have a meal with these medications that you take twice a day, and it's not in their native language, do they understand those instructions that will be abide by it. The example I always used to is some only with pneumonia shows up to the emergency room. You stabilize them, you give the medication, you send them home. They end up going back to a nitia house building public housing that doesn't have heat. We didn't solve the issue. So how that But he also thinks about the other determinants of health that's outside of just getting access to care, but other things that also lead to health outcomes. Yeah, it's really looking at the whole complex picture of things and understanding that we don't operate in a vacuum. And I think that industry and corporate levels often think just in one channel, right, yeah, just one channel and not in systems. And it's like, you know, I'm listening to you say the you know, the economic benefit of equitable care like it, we have to actually make it fit into the language that industry speaks, which is economics. Right, it's it's r O I And that actually caring for people in the ways that they need to be cared for is to your economic benefit. Is that a hard sell? Now, I'm just now, I'm just indulging my curiosity, But is that a hard sell inside the health care industry for you? I don't think it's a hard sell. I think the work needed to get done to make it happen is the hard sell. So the example we can show is other developed nations like Norway, Sweden. They do lots of social programs for their citizens, stick paid leave, child care, free healthcare, and what they find is their healthcare costs are reduced because they're investing in things that keep people healthy. Right. People believe that in concept. Now in America, when you say, okay, we agree with the concept, let's make it happen. Songbody has to change, and that's what the rubb is. No one wants to change. Like I agree, eral health equity, let's do it. But can you leave me alone and start with them? Right? I mean, I think this is this is probably you know, the response to a lot of behavioral and worldview changes, right like, yeah, yeah, yeah, that sounds great. I'm on board as long as I don't have to do anything different, as long as I don't have to feel any discomfort, as long as nothing in my world needs to change. And of course there's a direct bridge here to addressing systemic racism in the medical industry, right like, oh yeah, I'm totally on board with you. I get this. That's a terrible outcome. But I like, I've got managed care, and I've got this, and I've got that. Like, so we think about the health care industry, insurance especially as this like anti human monolith from a consumer that that is definitely how I feel about it. But I was listening to an interview with you the other day as I was preparing for our time here together, and you were talking about systemic racism and what we call poor medical outcomes for people of color. And you used a term of systemic equity as a counterpoint to systemic racism. Can we talk about that for a minute, and then I then I do want to get into like the reality of health outcomes for communities of color. So systemic equity, what does that mean? So I'll say that we're trying to fix the issues. And so when you think from a perspective of solving things, you hear the term that people use a systemic racism and systemic inequality because it's embedded into systems that we have. I like to say, let's start from scratch. Let's have a clean piece of paper. What would be the world we would imagine. So you start with systemic equity, and from that perspective, you're like, here's all the dollars, now, let's rationally think about how to get it federated to the right places. Systemic equity would then say, okay, the best most efficient way to deliver care is to preventive care visits. Awesome. Here are a group of people who are unable to show up to the doctor because transportation is an issue, because there are a senior who lives on a shift or walk up that doesn't have an elevator because they are salaried, and any time that they take off work, they're not putting money in their pocket. They can't find a doctor speaks their language. Of the vaccination websites were only in English, so if they speak or do Chinese Asian creole, they won't even know how to book an employment. So we would make sure there was more funds for those to get their preventive care visits, and then folks that can navigate the healthcare arena would eventually get their care as well because they have health literacy, they have the capabilities, they have transportation and things of that nature. And so instead of speaking of a deficit like oh my gosh, that's systemic inequity and it's so bad, Like, well, how would we create the perfect model where we start with systemic equity. It's embedded in the system. An example is when they created those vaccination websites for everyone to get vaccinated. Obviously, the people who were around the table, we're thinking through the lens themselves, but like I use a desktop and it's English, not realizing that the people who had the highest hesitancy don't use desktop as their formal way to get into that access to use a mobile phone, and English is not their first language, so systemic equity would have built a mobile app in Spanish and Chinese first, So that that's the type of thing that I like to solve publes with. From that perspective, it's like, let's look at it from a systetic equity lens. Start with the way you want to create it, as opposed to trying to move the deck chairs on something that's broken. That is brilliant. It really is, because it's like I think, when you start talking about systemic racism systemic inequity, people get their hackles up. Just is what you describe, Like that sounds great, but don't make me change anything. But I think if you present things as let's start from scratch and what dream can we build, I think that maybe that engages people's limbic systems. I don't know, but there's something really welcoming about this idea of collaborating on the world we most want. I remember a teacher of mine I used to say years ago, like everybody can agree that we want clean water. Where we argue is about who gets to have it right. So I hear what you're saying there is like we can all agree that we want to be cared for, and we want to care for other people. We want to like indulge is the wrong word here, but like indulge our better natures because at some core level, I think also what I really love about that approach is it sort of has an unspoken baseline of people are good and want to do good right, which I think can easily get lost in the choices that people and industries and countries. And you mentioned this, the phrase systemic racism can denote that it's impossible to solve. They say, oh, it's systemic, So now you're absolving human beings from their individual behaviors. Well, it's not me, it's systemic. And then to its systemic, so you're like, well, how am I going to change healthcare? That's too big, it's too and so I think it's defeating too from people of like I don't don't even know where to start. This is too big, and I absolved of any responsibility because it's the system. So I also think the phrase also leads to some of that cynicism. I love that it really is a welcoming in thing like, um, you know at the time that we're recording l A County and well all of California has been getting pelted with a lot of rain, and there's a lot of pissy tweets out there saying, good job, Billy, you didn't keep the water right when like, um, okay, you clearly have no idea how water reclamation works on a big systemic level. But like, these are really big complex issues and it's not just up to the big complex forces to solve, Like, there are things that we can do as individuals to help make things different. It's not just passing things downstream just somebody else whose job it is. Right, Yeah, and we go back to sort of advocacy and finding places that are important to you to take action. Right. I want to talk a little bit about your work in Haiti, if we could do that, Feminant. We've been talking with Dr Errol Pierre, author of the new book The Way Up. Let's get back to it. I want to talk a little bit about your work in Haiti, if we could do that, Feminant. So you're on the board of Minnova, which is a nonprofit that provides free medical character residents of North Eastern Haiti and as I was reading about that work and we talked a second ago about like the lenses that we look through. I see everything as a grief issue. Everything is a grief issue in my opinion. But reading about that work, I was like, this is this is a grief issue, right, Advocacy and policy are a grief issue. But I want to I want to hear that from you, is do you think that's accurate? Is my assessment that, like policy is a grief issue? I think so, I've never thought of it through that lens, But as you say it, I'm like, yeah, that makes sense. So Haiti and I said this earlier. I mean, what they've gone through is just traumatic as a whole for a nation. God is independence at eighteen o four from but the biggest empires at the time the poem bought apart and ever since then they've been sort of punished because back then, to see a country gain as freedom as former slaves would have been, you know, lead to other countries to the same. So a lot of countries didn't even recognize their independence, didn't trade with them, and they sort of that's stuck in a rut. France ended up charging them debt, so they basically bought their own bodies, which is just insane that that happened. One of the few countries I actually had to pay for their freedom. And so that all you fast forward to a country that is consistently just getting bombarded by whether natural disasters, hurricanes, earthquakes, or just coups after coups, like right now, they don't have a stable government as it is. Their former president was was assassinated and they still don't have a new president. And so I'm thinking through that lens of like what can I do. I'm an American, my parents grew up in Haiti, but I feel like I can do something because I'm so thankful for I am in my career. And that's where I stumbled upon many Nova. There was a major earthquake, seven point something earthquake in two and that was sort of the impetus for me to know that I had to go back to the country of my father, and so I was like, I need to do something. I can't just sit here and donate to American Red Cross, like I felt the need that I had to be there, And so was my first visit to Haiti on a mission trip and we just like at that point in time, it was literally like all hands on deck providing food. We were at a tent based hospital, providing like immediate care. And the ironic thing is things that we take for granted, that we buy over the counter at CVS and Walgreens, these were medications we were giving to people in Haiti because they don't have it. So, you know, someone suffering from diarrhea, like simple things. And so I didn't think we would be getting out pep to bisball as a as a need, but that's what people needed at the time because the water was so dirty as an earthquake, and so it was just something I knew that I wanted to give back, and I felt the purpose to MEDINVA does these trips every year. So I've been back to Haiti every year since, with the exception of because of COVID, but I've got every year besides that, and we've since raised enough money to have a full time clinic. So one of the things with nonprofits are you know, you do these meditarian humanitarian trips and you just show up, you give out care, and you leave, and people always say, well, how is that continuous? What do you do? It's you're just a drop in the bucket, and so we really wanted to be have a stable, long term healthcare access point for the people of Haiti. And so we've since built a clinic in the city of Karacoll that's now open twenty four hours, seven days a week. It's staff by Haitians, it's run by Haitians, it's ser Statians, and so we we still n race for keeping that clinic open, and I sit on the board just always thinking about advocacy on how to keep those patients that are working they're safe, and then when it's safe again, bringing Americans to Haiti so they can see it for themselves. So as you're describing that, I'm wondering. We talked a few minutes ago about building the world that we want from the ground up. Do you feel like that's part of what's happening with Mannova and the work in Haiti. It's it's tough that things impacting Haiti are so big and multi layered. However, if the least I can do is and this gets back to health equity, provide culturally competent care. So these are Haitian doctors and nurses getting care to Haitians what tends to happen is a lot of NGOs show up and they're providing great care to doing what they need to do, but it's not in language, is not culturally relevant. So I love the fact that this clinic is run by Haiti and and and staff by ations um So we're doing our apart from that perspective, and then we're helping the economy because we hire from the community where the clinic is. I would love to think it can expand the hardest part about it is trying to think through how to make it sustainable on its own so it does it doesn't need donations. I will continue to obviously raise funds, but like we have to think the next step of how to become sustainable. Over time, I think we'll get to the point of creating the new future when within Haiti there could be systems that are sustainable on their own, that can help their own people. Yeah, there's a point here that I want to pull out that as we start to build into that dream of systemic equity and to place care where it needs to be placed. It doesn't mean that things don't suck. It doesn't mean that there isn't still suffering and complex issues and being in the path of natural disasters like that, the best organized health care system is not going to stop hurricanes. And bringing this back to the States, it's like health care equity. Systemic equity is not going to stop people from getting sick. It's not going to stop people from dying. If that's not our goal, what's our goal? So it doesn't stop people from getting sick, but what it will start is that person who was sick to say, I'm actually going to make effort to get the care I need because the barriers have been removed. I can count endless stories of people who were sick and forego for when care because they knew the system was bad. They knew they were going to be on a waiting line for four hours. They knew they were going to wait a line just to get a script to go see another doctor. They knew they were going to get a bill into mail for four bucks, and they have no idea how they're going to pay for it. And so if you think about a model war, yes, we when we can't prevent people from getting sick, but can we make a model that when you are sick, at least you know you're going to get the care you need, and you're gonna feel respect and so that you actually go and get the care your need. The vast majority of our pain that we feel on the system is because of people avoiding care one because of cost, too, because of fear, and then in three just because they don't feel the system is built for them. I have to say share one stat so mortunity I Mortality in America is as bad as third world countries are stats. So if you take a hundred thousand women and they're pregnant, on average, fifteen of them will die giving birth. And if you look at other countries like Japan or Norway, it's like seven and six and five, and you're in some European countries, so it's low. We're fifteen. Now when you look at African American women, it jumps up to forty, and then specifically Haitian women in Brooklyn where of it's like sixty eight. Wow. And so in America we have the average of fifteen, but different people have much higher numbers. And the question is, well why is that? And when you look at the data, when a black woman gives birth and goes into the hospital, one their level of pain is not believed that this happened to Serena Williams. So it's it doesn't matter if you're lowing tone or you're a billionaire. The level of pain is not believed. So they say, you know, on a scaffulment to tend, how's your pain? Black woman says eight, And they're like, Oh, you're exaggerating because I think you're strong. Maybe you're a big woman, you have I think your skin looks tough. You guys just know how to get through things. So they're not believed from that perspective. And then too, for some strange reason, and this is from bias, typical regiments that's supposed to be provided aren't provided to patients of color because they're like, well, they don't need that. I don't I'm not going to give it. I'm not going to do that. And you actually see patient mattern changes that happened specifically to a woman of color giving birth Black women, and so we know the reasons why it's sixty eight patient mothers are going to die when they give birth out of a hundred thousand verses fifteen. And then it's like, are we going to have the intestine afforded to to call it out and say we can fix it. We know we can fix it. We're gonna believe them when they say what pain level they're at, and we're going to give the same level of care. So this mother that we would any other mother that walks in, and we're not going to let the color of their skin have like implicit bias and have us do something different. There's a good book called a tool one day called Checklist Manifesto, and essentially it's like, make it checklist that way, there's no bias. Everyone who comes in that presents this way, they get this, and you remove the bias of this like subjectivity of the doctors saying, ah, they don't need that, I'm gonna do will do this, which then leads to death, you know, with with with that type of process. Without having a checklist manifesto, all of this awareness and advocacy and a resting systemic patterns, all of these things, the work you do is grief work, right because again I'm going to go back to headlines, right, Like we see the articles and the news stories and the clips of maternal death rates for black women, and it's a headline, right, and it might be something that we say, like that sucks, like that's not right, and then we go back to, you know, if that hasn't been in our personal sphere, we go back to, you know, everything is a dumpster fire. If that has been in our personal sphere, we say, yeah, I lived that, and it's it's this big thing that we can't we can't seem to get people to pay attention to. But these are like, these are actual, real people and families and communities that are living the effects of these practices. And so you know, you don't have to claim that you do grief work. But from where I sit, like all of this advocacy work on so many levels, is to reduce pain where there is pain of aoid pain where pain can be avoided, and where we can't avoid pain, we care for the suffering of the individuals, the families, and the communities to surround that suffering with support. And that's grief work. Appreciate it. I want to go back to the focus of your book if I can. It kind of feels like a sharp detour from what we've been talking about. But again for me, like I don't see the territory that we've just been exploring, and your book as two separate things because we can't divorce. I think you started out by saying this, like you can't take the social and communal lived experience and separate it from your experience in the job force, in the work world, Like there is no what is that? What's that show that I haven't watched? Where like there's a an enforced separation between work and your world or something severance, right, Like I sorry, everybody, I am under an entertainment rock and I haven't seen it, but I do know what it is enough to reference it here, But like that doesn't exist, right, And so a lot of what you do in your book is naming those on the job and off the job issues and helping people navigate them. One of my favorite things about your approach is, like, you know, you think about a business a business coach. You're not a business coach, but you think about like business coaching, and they're like, you can do anything, nothing is impossible. And what I love about you as a human and you as a leader is you don't say that stuff because the reality is is that some things are impossible and you can't do everything that you dream And if we could start having those conversations, that could really change things. Yeah, I call out specifically the example of not becoming the race police in your corporation. So, yes, diversity, equity and inclusion is important. Yes, you should call out bias that you feel in the workplace, and you should do it in the right way, and there's there's tips to talk about how to do it and giving people grace to the process. But you cannot be the police for the company on what's racist and what's not as a person of color, navigating through what's biased and what's not, what's discrimented by what's not, because it will take you so far away from your day job. You will be let go not because of your bringing up these issues, but because it's impossible to perform the way you need to perform while trying to police human behavior. And so I always say, like, like we talked about earlier, society comes into the workplace there, it's not two different worlds. So you know, you're literally trying to say I'm going to throw every starfish back into the ocean. It's impossible. So do what you need to do to navigate for your career, help out your peers, But by no means are you going to change the world. Because trying to say, like, my company is going to be perfect, like society is not perfect. Until society is perfect, your company won't be perfect. But don't try to have that goal. Your goal is make sure that you have the right mental health, make sure that you're taking advantage of all the opportunities you can, make sure you don't get walked over, and taking advantage of you speak up when you see things, and you navigate on behalf of you and your your peers. But that's to the point of you know, it's I'm not going to be someone as like raw you can change the world. Everyone's going to be perfect panacea. It's like it's not it's not worth it, and it's not possible either. It's not possible. And I love how you know, when we very first started our conversation, you said that a lot of your work is about acknowledging the challenges for people of color in that corporate leadership climb. And for me, like, the acknowledgement is such powerful medicine, right, having spaces that where you can tell the truth about that, And I think that's some of the beauty of your business leader work is you're naming what's true, right, and and not from this and we will fix it all place. And also not from a collapsed we're all screwed, but from like this real position of awareness and support and encouragement in the things that are within your sphere of control, so that you can meet the level of success that you most dream of for yourself while acknowledging the real difficulties on the road to get there. I think that the goal of the book was one and I've the feedback I've gone from people that started reading it is Wow, your story is so much like mine. So that's great. So now you're not alone, because I think there's a lot of people of color passing through the workplace thinking they're by themselves and their alone, not realizing that other people are going through it. Two saying it out loud so you can point to black and white and saying, oh, okay, Like now I know what impostor syndrome is. Now, I know what code switching is. Now, I know the impacts of performative allied ship. I know what to call it when I see it. I didn't know there was a vocadality award for that. Bad bosses, you know, sometimes bosses are bad, not because the racist just because Darren asshole. You know, think about the boss you're gonna work for before you get the job. I think people worry about d E and I after they get the job and they walk in and say, oh, what programs you have? You should be asking those things during the interview. And I call it out specifically in the book, like, hey, and you share with me on your team, what was the last It was the diversity metrics of the last round of promotions. Actually, did you know? That's a reasonable question to ask. I'm just curious because as a person of color that's going to be in a room where I'm the only one I want to know, like, how do you have experience and history of having emotions in the past. But we have to get better at asking those questions up front, and if someone's uncomfortable about that, it tells you whether you should work there or not. Yeah, that is clear information. If you ask that question and they're like deer in the headlights like that as information, that's important, you know, And I love I love this. I mean the as you're describing that. Of course, my brain is also thinking making the parallels between what you just described and the work of building equitable systems from scratch. It's like you can't stop the crap of the system, like you can't take on that giant. However, there is so much that you can do to reduce your own suffering and to name the pain that's in the room. And I think, you know this is this is a band wagon that I'm on a lot that like, you know, when we're talking about grief. When I'm talking about grief, I'm not just talking about grief related to death. We're talking about the pain and suffering of being alive and all of the friction points where that shows up. And the approach, you know, the the approach that I believe in for grief is not just It doesn't just belong to death and illness. It belongs to every part of human life. And again, I I want to pull that, pull that out, or pull that back that That's so much of what I understand as the as the core of the work that you do in the world, across all of the sectors, is where can we name the pain that's immovable and create systems of support around that pain so that our suffering is reduced. I can share an example, and I talk about this specifically in the book, So people have mentored before that are frustrated with their careers that they feel stuck. I'm just stuck, right, and so I have this chapter on being an entry level job and just feeling stuck and describing to an employee. Think about it this way. One job entry is going to get three thousand resumes. There's already bias in the machine that's going to shrink that three thousand resumes down to the ten that the recruiters actually gonna look at. So there's a there's probably a long shot that you'll be selected because what they're using is people who have already been promoted and I'm already at the company and using those words to put into the algorithm to get new people. So most likely you're going to get squeezed out. Then you have ten resumes left over, and then human intervention happens. Probably the resumes are not diverse, right, the ten resumes that they they're selecting, and then the panel of the people that are going to do the interviews are not diverse. So you're like, I'm not editing at a job. But just take a step back and realize, like all the barriers along the way that you went through to get there, and what I was like, it is what's actually happening. Someone has a mentor. That mentor says, I have a job that's getting posted in June and it's only in January. They know about it ahead of time. Then they get an email the job's posting like tomorrow. Okay, great, they already sent their ransome. They tell the recruiter Molly's applying for the job. Make sure that you find her away. You know, she's the one that I want to interview. Other people come through, you do, we do the interview, everyone already knows Molly is a chosen person, and then voila, Molly got the job. So you're submitting resumes just really nearly to all these websites going through that path. What I would advise is you have to build relationships. You need to find the mentor to find the relationships with people internally that are gonna tell you about the role before it's posted, and go from that perspective. And then if you're in a position of power. What I now have the control to do as a as a leader in my company is when I look at the ten resumes, I'm like, I will not start the process until the ten resumes represent the community reserve. I need a diverse late to candidates, and then the people are going to do the interview. I need a diverse late of interviewees. I won't even accept the people until I have a diverse late. And so I can do that from my perch from power. But then the person who's applying can also do their part and saying I got to navigate this system differently because just posting a resume is not gonna happen. And so to your point, yes, you can be you can have grief of the process, or you could just say this is the way it is and then what can I do about it? Yeah, there's there's the truth telling in there. And you know everything every thing comes down to relationship building, doesn't it. Everything always comes down to relationship building, for good or for not good. But that is that is what it is all about. And I think that the way that we build the worlds that we want across all sectors is relationship building by telling the truth right and finding which part of the suffering we can reduce. And now I wonder not as I say that out loud, I'm like, oh wait, but Rol is talking about don't start from a deficit. Start by talking about the world that you want to live in so that you can inhabit it. So I'm going to have to think about how I talk about the reduction of suffering in my dream vision of the world. But that that is, that is some self work for another day, the growth of the growth of joy. But I think I think that gets really really tricky, at least from in the work that I do, because we so often rush joy without naming the pain, and so that means that we leap frog over it. It's that same sort of thing that if a person of color is saying, like the cards are stacked against me and like there's this and this, We're like, but focus on the joy, right So there, For for me, there's a lot of beauty in naming the pain and allowing it to exist and then finding ways to reduce the suffering around that, and to me that actually feels really hopeful. But this show is not about my hope. It is about your hope, which is a really lovely segue for me. So much of the work that you do is with these really big dinosaur systems, and change takes a really long time. You're quoted in an article for Essence magazine about the tech industry's slowness to diversify its workplace and like empty promises, and there's a lot of that in the book. So thinking about the long view of things, or maybe the wide view of things, because I'm trying to and I'm trying to like put my linguistic arms around all of you, not just the exact knowing what you know and living what you've lived. What does hope look like for you now? Yeah, hope to me is giving a dose of energy and optimism and I guess passion to people who were just about to give up. I talked about in the book Guarding against Synthicism and every once in a while you just need another dose of energy to keep moving. For me, I want to go to bed every night saying, at bare minimum, my passion and my purpose on life has moved forward at least one inch, at least one inch before I go to bed. And so today I'm doing more than one inch talking with you when I want to make sure at least one inch my passion and my purpose moves forward. And if I can inspire a new set of leaders that are going to be like I'm going to push for this and push for an extra inch, and that's person Now it's just about to give up to say I've been trying this for so long. I'm about to give up. What's the point? Hopefully there now reinvigorated to say I'll push on for two more months, you know. And that's really the hope that I have is that if we all can collectively boost each other, inspire each other, we keep pushing for the work, because I do think at the end the place we will get better. You know. It's like two steps forward, one steps back, but we will get to a better place. H I love that, And you're doing such big work to build that world into being. Yeah, okay, this sounds like a really good place to wrap us up. We're gonna link to your website and to your new book in the show notes. Anything else you want people to know about you or the book, or places they should look for more information about the little sparks that you set off in their minds. Sure so, yeah, The Way Up is out now. It's available anywhere books are sold Amazon, Target, Barnes and independent bookstores, independent stores stores. Absolutely that your point clock and please find me on social media, let's speak, let's talk. I'd love to engage and talk about anything about, you know, advancing just an inch e r R O l l P I E r R e uh pretty much all social media ro LP are on instat Ram, linked in Facebook, anywhere you can find me excellent, And obviously we will put all of those into the show notes for you everybody, so that you do not have to furiously write them down and figure out how to spell everything. It'll all be in your show notes, all right, Errol, thank you my friend for being here. Everybody. We will be right back with your questions to carry with you right after this. Each week I leave you with some questions to carry with you until we meet again. Now you know what really struck me in this conversation with Dr Errol Pierre, Well, okay, first, surprising nobody. I definitely look at everything through a grief lens, and I know that, but it's also really like wow, that came up again. And not only do I look at my own life in the world around me through a grief lens, but I look at everybody else's lives through a grief lens for them. Okay, Second thing that I'm taking from this conversation, I felt truly optimistic after the time I spent with Dr Pierre me being optimistic is a stretch a lot of days. So feeling optimistic is really cool. And I love that. I love his vision of systemic equity. I love the phrasing of that, this idea that we can build the world we want to inhabit from the ground up every time we have an opportunity to do so. That all just feels so much more achievable than trying to fix a system that is deeply, deeply broken. So what parts of the conversation stuck with you today? What made you think or cry or feel even just the tiniest bit more seen in the life that you are living. Everybody's going to take something different from today's show, but I do hope you found something to hold onto. Hope really is a crowdsourced thing, And as we've learned, grief is a really big motivator behind a lot of important work. Whether we name it that or not, grief, hope the world we most want to inhabit, it's all the same work. Anyway. I don't want to put my grief lens on your life. I want you to tell me what's true for you. Check out Refuge and Grief on Instagram or here after Pod on TikTok to see video clips from the show and you can leave your thoughts, your comments, your feedback, your AHA moments in the comments on those posts. You can also post your own clips and thoughts and ideas about the show on your own social media. Just be sure to tag us in your conversation starting posts so that we can find you. Use the hashtag here after pod on all platforms. We love to see where this show takes you. Remember to subscribe and leave a review, especially on Apple Podcasts, which is the easiest place to leave a review. Those reviews help more, and you know. If you want to tell us how today's show felt for you, or you have a question or a request for upcoming explorations of difficult things, give us a call at three to three six four three three seven six eight and leave a voicemail. If you missed it, you can find the number in the show notes or visit Megan Divine dot CEO. If you'd rather send an email, you can do that too. Write on the website Megan Divine dot c O. We want to hear from you. I want to hear from you, this show, this world needs your voice. Together, we can make things better even when they can't be made right. I want more of this cool. Grief is really the foundation of all things conversation. Grief education doesn't just belong to end of life issues. As my dad says, daily life is full of everyday grief that we don't call grief. Learning how to talk about all that without cliches or platitudes or simplistic dismissive statements is an important skill for everyone. Find trainings, professional resources, and my best selling book, It's Okay that You're Not Okay, plus The Guided Journal for Grief at Megan Divine dot c. O Hereafter with Megan Divine is written and produced by me Megan Divine. Executive producer is Amy Brown, co produced by Elizabeth Fossio, with logistical and social media support from Micah, Edited by Houston Tilly, and music provided by Wave Crush and background noise provided not only by the helicopters in the distance, but by Luna asking very quietly, very polightly, but very repeatedly for a little doggy care and attention