E42: Elevating Black Women's Voices: We Must Be Clear About What We Want Next

You're like a circle that floats around me, keeping me safe and sound. And when I fall, you tied a rope to me. You're blessing me every day. I was down with an illusion, like a sparrow with broken wings. But now I shine with your reflection on me.

Hi everyone, welcome to Inclusion Unscripted. In today's episode of our live podcast, we're going to talk about elevating Black women's voices, but I'm not talking about us yelling in the arena. I'm not talking about you giving us permission to speak. I'm not talking about your saying that in order to speak, I need to be validated by you. What I am saying, and I'm speaking directly to Black women in this episode, what I'm saying is I want you to elevate your voice as a Black woman to ask a simple question: What do I want next? I want you to elevate your voice in the room. Elevate your voice in your room. Elevate your voice so that you are really clear about what you want next. So thank you for joining today's Inclusion Unscripted. I am super excited that you're here. I'm happy to have all of you joining us live. If you've never joined before, my name is Margaret Spence. I'm the founder of the Inclusion Learning Lab and the host of Inclusion Unscripted. We are live every Friday at 2:00 PM Eastern time, and we talk about topics that are built around diversity, equity, inclusion, equality. What I know as a woman of color is that I am not just talking about diversity and inclusion, I'm not just creating inclusion and diversity and inclusion, I'm living it every single day. A part of the work that I do is to empower voices, and so for Women's History Month, I decided to focus on my sisters, my Black and brown sisters, you. A lot of women's history occurs outside of the places that we occupy. A lot of women's history that gets posted on the internet this week that I've seen, especially for International Women's Day, which was a couple days ago, what I saw was an extreme focus on professional women, an extreme focus on professional women. There wasn't a huge focus on women who are frontline, the hourly workforce, your factory workers, your people who are not in the executive or the exempt suite. There's always a focus when it comes to career navigation and career building on the people who've already arrived at the executive desk. There's not a lot of focus around the hourly employee, the employee who's in the trench doing the work in your organization, particularly the Black and brown women who are in your organization doing the grunt work, the work that is often invisible and missing from the development phase. So I am talking to women at all levels of the spectrum of work, the hourly employee, the woman who is advanced in her career, the executive in, in the career. So today we're going to ask some bold questions. I'm going to ask questions to make you think about your career. I'm going to ask you questions to make you reevaluate your career, and I'm going to ask you and challenge all of you non-diverse women who are watching this to look at your workforce and ask yourself a simple question: where do we exclude Black and brown women? Where do we not talk about Black and brown women? Because here's the thing, we focus our development opportunities, our dollars and cents on women who are already in the exempt spot, but we don't focus on the women in the hourly workforce. And so I'm bringing today a new voice to the table because I think if I don't advocate effectively, I personally, Margaret Spence, is not being inclusive enough. So here's what I think. I think the women that are forgotten, the women that we don't elevate their voices, are inside of our hourly workforce. We don't elevate the hourly workforce. We talk about elevating women, we talk about empowering women, but women— the only women that we want to empower and we want to build and we want to move are the ones that are in our comfort zone. We don't want to move the women who need the most help to move. And so I'm challenging all of you who think you're inclusive to think about how you elevate Black women's voices. See, you can't just elevate our voice when we— you want to develop leadership development programs. You can't elevate our voice when you want to develop, work for the exempt employee, the peoples in your corporate offices. When you think about elevating Black women's voices, brown women's voices, Latino women's voices, Asian women voices, I want you to think about elevating our voices at the most microscopic level in your organization. Many of you are blinded by the fact that you're pouring the resources on one part of your organization and not pouring the resources in the other part of the organization. But here's what I know: the part of your organization where you're not developing, where you're not amplifying Black women and brown women's voices, is the part of the organization that's building the dollars and cents that you get to pour into the other part of the organization. See, you don't get to pour into the other part of the organization if the hourly workforce doesn't do the work that they do. See, the money that gets generated comes from the sales department bringing a contract into your organization, but the hourly workforce is who actually gets it done. And so we don't focus enough on elevating Black and brown women who are missing from the development languaging. So today our topic seemed pretty simple. It seemed pretty simple: elevating Black women's voices. And if you looked at that topic, you thought, oh, she's talking about executive development. No, not really. I'm talking about every woman at every level in your organization. If you want to truly be diverse, if you want to be truly inclusive, if you want to deal in equality, if you want to build equity, if you want to help me feel like I belong, if you want to show me that I can thrive in your workforce, then you actually focus on the hourly employee. You don't go to the exempt employee first. You go to the hourly employee and you ask me a simple question: what do I want? Because here's what I know, here's what I know. Hourly employees have dreams. Hourly employees have vision. Hourly employees want more. Hourly employees are demanding more. But we are still stuck in our triangles. We are still stuck in our places of comfort. We are still stuck in the places where we think women should occupy, because God forbid you empower an hourly employee to see and build and and create her potential. God forbid you do that because that doesn't fit the norm. It doesn't fit the square. It doesn't fit the languaging. It doesn't fit. So as I watched Women's History Month on Wednesday, the one thing that I saw that was missing was the hourly employee, the person who's working in the trench of your organization who you don't even care about, who you don't even care about. That hourly employee, that clerical assistant, that clerical support role, that manufacturing operations person, the person who's taking the drill and putting the widgets together, who has a dream. That woman at that level has a dream for herself. She may even have a dream for her children. She may be carrying the dream of her parents. She may be standing on an opportunity that was created by an immigrant parent. See, let me tell you my story a little bit. My mother came to this country when I was a year old. She came here as a housekeeper to clean people's dirty houses and take care of their bratty children. She came here as a housekeeper and nanny, and for a year she left her baby behind in Jamaica to come to this country to clean houses. I remember when I came to the United States in the early '60s, when my mother would go to Manhattan to Park Avenue, to the places that she was working. And we couldn't go in through the front door. We had to take the underground service elevator. I remember my mother working for this extremely rich family. If I named them, you would be shocked. I didn't even connect until I was much older who they were. And they lived in this ritzy place on Park Avenue. This ritzy apartment on Park Avenue, and my mother was their housekeeper. And my mother would be doing their parties in the evening, so they would serve the parties and they would have my mother be the host. She would go into their kitchen, they would have their pre-prepared meals, and she would be passing out the trays to everyone. And my mother would bring me to that, and she'd bring a pillow and she'd sit me in the kitchen and she'd say, sit here quietly and read a book. It, it created my love of reading because I would sit there for hours and my mother, the hourly worker, the domestic worker, would get on the train from the Bronx to Manhattan and she would serve 100 or 200 people at these lavish apartments. She would have to go back to the kitchen and wash the dishes, and she'd go back to the kitchen and clean up after the party. And at 1 AM or 2 AM or 3 AM, she would bundle me back up and we'd get back on the train and we'd go back to the Bronx. See, that experience is what allowed me to find my purpose now. Because I knew that if my mother could live that, no organization or person could tell me who I could become. No one could tell me who I could become. My father, who is 94 years old, worked on the World Trade Center. It was a basket of racism building that World Trade Center. Basket of racism. My father was one of the few Black men allowed to work on the construction of the World Trade Center. History, I'm teaching y'all today. And they wouldn't give my father his pay on a Friday. They would stick it in a little envelope and shove it through the window. So my mother would have to get— leave her domestic job, get on the train back down to Wall Street to the union hall, which was above a funeral home. And so I would get in the escalator with my mother next to a casket so my mother could go pick up my father's paycheck from the union hall because they didn't give the Black men their paychecks. So when I have that experience as a child and I'm watching that and I come into your workforce As an hourly employee, do you think you get to dampen my purpose? No, you don't, and you didn't. Which is why I told my boss at the time to go pound sand and die, and I started my own business. See, those are the stories that frame us. That's how Black people find our voices. But sometimes Black women talking to you, you forget your voice. You forget to find your voice. And so today in this episode, I want you to get clear about what you want. I want to ask you the question: what do you want and why don't you have it now? I wrote an entire book about this, an entire book. Here it is: Leadership Self-Transformation: The 52 Career-Defining Questions Every High-Achieving Woman Must Answer. Because there's questions that we have to answer as women. We have to answer them as Black women. We got to get clear about what we want. See, here's the thing: if you are not clear about what you want First off, let's take half this question. If you are not clear about what you want, other people get to tell you what you should be. And if we're not clear about what we want and why we don't have it now— and the why we don't have it now is not because your organization leader doesn't want to give it to you. It's not because the organization doesn't see your potential. It's not because they've told you yes and then withdrawn the opportunity from you. It's not because you've applied for the job and you didn't get it. See, I've been in that circle now for the last couple weeks. It's us, us. What do we want as Black women and why don't we have it now? Is the reasons that we don't have it now, us. See, we can't ask folks to elevate our voice if we don't know how to open our mouth and ask for what we want. See, this is a simple thing. It's a hard thing though, because oftentimes, because we've lost so much, because we've been cowed down, because we've been told to wait for the opportunity, because we've been given mixed messages about what should be important to us. We forget to vocalize what we want. See, here's the thing. My housekeeper mother said to me one thing: people only do to you what you let them do to you for as long as you let them do it to you. My mother said that almost every day. I never understood it until I was a massive adult, but I'm going to say that again. My housekeeper, 8th grade educated mother, you know, she's not with us anymore. My mother's been gone over 20 years, but she is the foundation of who I am. She said to me, people only do to you what you let them do to you for as long as you let them do it to you. So if you're not clear about what you want, they will do to you what they think they want to do to you. Lesson number 1: Why you don't have it now could be you. See, here's what I know. Many of you as Black women and brown women are apologizing for wanting more. Let me let that sit for a second. Many of you are apologizing for wanting more. My sisters, my daughters, my nieces, I want you to hear this: don't be sorry for wanting more. Our purpose in life is not to settle for what's been given to us, but for to ask for what we want. Don't apologize for wanting more. Don't apologize because you didn't get more. Don't be sorry for that opportunity. Evaluate and step back and ask yourself, what do I want? Because if we don't elevate our Black voices and our brown voices, nobody else is going to elevate it for us. They will take a crap on you if you don't say what you want. See, here's the thing that I want all of you to get clear about. We will give up the decisions about our life if we don't ask for what we want. We will turn over our life and our purpose to other people if we don't get clear about what we want. Let me say that again. We will give up our life purpose because we are not clear about what we want. I want you to never say I'm sorry when you ask for what you want and you don't get it. Don't be sorry. Evaluate the message and the messenger, because the message and the messenger is not worth an apology. Keep wanting more even if you are told no. It's your life. It's your life. Ask for more. Many of you who are sitting in these mid-level leadership roles where they've given you your first promotion, they've said, oh, you're good enough to be a supervisor. So you can go from hourly worker to supervisor. And so we get to that supervisor role, and then our eyes are opened, and we ask ourselves, wait a second, I could do more. I want to go on to be a full-fledged manager. And so when you make that leap to become the full-fledged manager, they shut the door on you because they only see you as a supervisor. They don't see you as a leader. And it's easy for organizations who are doing diversity, equity, and inclusion to say, we got D&I, look over there, Margaret, she's a supervisor, she's a supervisor. It's also easy for them to say, well, we put one of y'all in leadership, that's enough. We put one of y'all in the room, hold that place. Here's the thing. Leaders, Black women leaders who have— who are placeholders in your organization, I want you to make sure that the place you're holding gets held for another woman of color. See, oftentimes when we land in the career process, when we land in the career process when the organization develops our career, we forget who we are in the development process. So let me point this out. Women are not making progress into the executive suite, and when women get into the executive suite and we decide we want to leave the role we're in Most women do not groom another woman to take her place. Then the reason why we don't do that is because we are the most insecure creatures in the planet. We are insecure, we are threatened, we operate in a scarcity mindset. And because we operate on the principle of if I tell my fellow sister how to get here, the pie won't get divided up enough, and I will lose my big piece of the pie. And it doesn't matter if you're white, Black, Asian, Hispanic, Native American. If you're in the woman category, we come as a creature called woman with a certain level of insecurity. As us, as women, in the place we occupy as women, we come with insecurity, and our own insecurity, um, contributes to our bad behavior when we are leaders, and it stops us from bringing other women up the ranks with us. And so what happens is we'll publish some data that said we have 25 new, um, CEOs of corporations that are women, and then 4 of them will decide to retire or resign, and they automatically get replaced by a man because we don't understand the assignment. Women, your assignment is developing your career, but your assignment is developing another woman so that she can be your replacement. And so the question I ask all the time is this: If you are a woman in a role, you are the only woman in the role, are you able to go into the ranks of your hourly workforce, your early exempt workforce, and pick out a woman that you think is such a diamond and groom her to replace you, but in addition groom her to become your boss? Can you do that as a woman? And I guarantee you, there ain't a woman alive who will answer yes to that. There isn't a woman alive that will say, I will groom a subordinate, a woman that is lower on the totem pole than me, to become my boss. And here's why: because you want to be the boss. And because you want to be the boss, you're not willing to see the potential of the women below you. And maybe there's a woman who's smarter than you, who's more educated than you, who would be a better boss than you. But because we can't be selfless, we are selfish, and we stop that woman's growth. And we as women do everything to disempower that woman so she does not rise above us. Oh, hallelujah! Today I'm taking y'all to church. Yep, we're doing the church thing today. See, this is the truth. So when we elevate Black women's voices, we gotta elevate and address all of our voices. See, I'm not here to sugarcoat the how we elevate women's voices. I'm not here for us to, to, um, sugarcoat getting clear about what we want. What I'm here to say to you is when you get clear about what you want, you understand the assignment. See, you understand the assignment. The assignment is who are you in your own career development? And who are you in the development of another woman? See, that's the assignment. When you figure out who you are in your own career development, you get to ask for what you want. You get to demand what you need. You get to get clear that if you don't get it where you're sitting right now, then it's time for you to clean up your resume and pack your little bags and move on. We as women cannot be more loyal to the organization than we are to ourselves. See, the question is, where are you as a woman? Where are you? Are you loyal more than you're self-serving to yourself? Are you willing to put your needs and desires into the back burner or flush it down the toilet because it makes your organization uncomfortable? It makes your leaders uncomfortable that you want more? Have they so demoralized you into thinking that asking for more is a bad thing? Let me give you this one. Let's stick a pin right here for a second, and my Jamaican Caribbean self is coming out now. Here we go, right? So we're gonna, we're gonna drop a pin here, right? Okay, you know, inside of organizations, when Black women and brown women and women in general ask for additional roles, oftentimes our leaders take it personal that we want to advance. They make you feel like crap because you've asked for something else. They make you feel that you should not have asked for anything else because you don't deserve anything else, and they are still the master of our destiny. Because many leaders think that they are still the masters, that we are still on the slave island. And so if we as Black people ask for something, they take it personal. How dare you want to leave my team? How dare you want to rise above? Who do you think you are wanting to rise above from here? Who do you think you are wanting to leave this role? You forgot I gave you the opportunity to be on my team. How dare you ask for more than what I've given you, darlings? Let me tell you The human that thinks that way is not the human you should be working for. And if an organization is comfortable with its leaders having that mentality, then that's an organization that's never going to empower you. If you look around the room and year over year you don't see Black women rising in your organization, I want you to get the message pretty quickly that you will never rise. Let me say that again. If you look around the room in your organization and Black and brown women aren't rising and women in general aren't rising, then rest assured, as a woman, you will not rise because they don't see women for the value we bring to the table. And if we are not the value, then we are just the worker. We will never be the leader. And if they see you— and let me say this again— if they see you as the person who is the subject matter expert, if they see you as the person who's most qualified for the role, they will never see you as the leader. If they say to you and verbalize to you— and we have to be willing to hear what people are telling us because they are telling us what they're going to do. We just don't hear them. See, if they say to you, you're the best person for this job, darlings, please start packing your bags and go if you want to be a leader. If you're comfortable being the subject matter expert, sit in the role. But the longer you sit in the role, the less equity you will create for yourself. See, the, the purpose of Women's History Month is elevating equity. And if we elevate equity, we recognize that equity comes with the organization pouring into us, that the organization accepting our skills but also empowering our ambition. I say this again: many organizations want your skills, but they don't want your ambition. And we have to get clear about the fact that they don't want your ambition, because if they wanted your ambition, they would create the opportunity for you to grow, for you to learn, for you to be ready for the opportunity when it falls in place. See, take a stop for a second. Another stick a pin in it, right? How are regular women, majority women, viewed in your organization? Is the language used to describe them different than what is used to describe you? Listen, ladies, my women of color, listen to what is being said. So the question is, where are you? Where are you in your career? Where are you in your mobility? Where are you in asking for what you want? Where are you in moving the needle for yourself? Where are you? That is the question. Where are you? As we move on to the label that defines you, what label defines you and why? See, as I said a second ago, if the label that defines you is, I'm the best in this role, if the label that defines you is, this is the best opportunity for you, If the label that defines you is you'll be next on the platter for the next opportunity, and if the label is I'm the next opportunity or I'll be given the next opportunity, then recognize that that bar can be moved in any different direction. So in your career growth, in your process, What label defines you? Is the label passive? Is the label empowering? Is the label stuck? I want to actually read something from my book for you, okay? There are 4 types of career folks as women. They're climbers, they're hedgers, they're coasters, they're scanners. Okay, there's 4 labels that could be attached to you in your career. Climbers seek advice within their current company. They actively use strategy to help them advance within their career and organization. They actively politic to gain visibility and advancement opportunities. See, you could be a climber, and that's a good place to be. You could be a hedger. You seek advancement inside and outside your current company. You focus your energy on potential opportunities both within and outside the current organization. You hedge your bet to ensure that you're advancing and you're prepared to move if necessary. So you could be a hedger, which is not a bad place to be. But you could be a coaster. Coasters are inactive with little emphasis on any tactic. They're least likely to be proactively managing their career, limited activity to advance their career. They're a single career strategy: I got hired, I'm hired, this is where I landed because I landed here. It's a touchdown on my plane. I ain't going nowhere else. I'mma be a lifer, right? Because anything outside of this is scary, and I'm just gonna sit right here. And then there are our scanners. Scanners keep the pulse on the entire job market, right? They keep the pulse. They consult with others on how to improve their future work prospects. They conduct continual scans of the job opportunities that are available to them. They all— they're always poised to change jobs. Now, to be effective, you need to be a climber, hedger, scanner, right? All three of those roles need to define you. They need to be the definition of how you manage your career. Seek advice within your current company, seek advice outside of your current company, and keep the pulse on the entire job market. Because if you get laid off, you want to be clear about where you're going next. Because here's what I know, having lived through 2008, 1994, 1989, 1983, all these job market dips that have occurred in my lifetime, right? If you're not prepared, you are unprepared. You know, I did a program and, and still contribute sometimes. There's a gentleman by the name of Mike Powers. He's on LinkedIn, and Mike started this, um, HR in Transition program. And in 2008, we were running HR in Transition, and the most— the people who were laid off the most was HR people in 2008, 2007, 2009. And the people who had the hardest time finding a job were HR people because they were so tunneled. I am here for the organization. And they never lifted their head up to see where they were going or what they needed to do. And so when they got laid off, they were scared to death. So the question is, if you are proactively empowering and elevating Black women's voice, you can't be afraid to do that. Right? And we as Black women, when we ask for what we want, we can't be afraid to ask for what we want. We cannot live in fear to ask for what we want. We gotta be clear. This is what I want. What are the specific steps required to get this? I would like you as my leader to sit down with me and give me the list of skills and competencies that I need to have in order to be promoted. I want you to sit down with me and align my skills and competencies so that when the position opens, I am the only option for the job. I'm not the multiple choice option for the job. Let me say that again. When you're clear about what you want, when you understand why you don't have it now and you seek out advice to make sure that you get it, right? When you seek out advice to make sure that you get it, you're very clear about a couple things. The alignment of your competencies. The alignment of your competencies. What do I need to move to the next level? Please tell me specifically with actions, with steps, with process, with learning. Don't tell me you're gonna get a position in a year, and when the year comes you say, well, you know, Margaret, I'm so sorry, we— you don't have all the skills, but, uh, here's some learning things you can go take to get the skills. See, before they set you up for failure because they're setting you up for the no. Black women who were elevating their voices, get specific. Figure out where you're going and who you're serving. Are you serving folks who will never serve you, or are you serving so that you can get what you need? See, where you're going is just as equally important as what you want. Who you're serving is equally as important as why you don't have it now. Because if you're serving on a team where the leader has never promoted a woman, rest assured you ain't gonna get promoted. Let's get clear. If you're on a team that the team leader has never had a person of color on their team until you landed there, You got a lot of work to do to help this person see your possibilities and your potential. See, we gotta know everything about what we are doing, see? And so the question is, what's missing from your career and life right now in order for you to build a foundation for your family, for your children, for your parents maybe, I don't know who is in your stakeholder group. I'm a caregiver. I'm a caregiver to my 94-year-old dad. Yesterday my son called me and asked me to babysit my 15-month-old grandson, and I declined respectfully because I don't have that much energy anymore, right? I will keep him for a few hours, not for a weekend, but that's another story. Why digress? Right? So the question is, what's missing from your career in life right now? It's the what do you want and why don't you have it. But let's target what is missing from your career right this second, and is the organization you work for allowing you to address what is missing from your career right now? Or are you going home every evening in anxiety because you're unhappy in the role and you have no one to discuss that with? What's missing from your career right now? And so as we wrap up with the questions from today to elevate Black women's voices so we can get clear about what we want next, we have to ask ourselves, what is your I am? Because if your I am is, I'm frustrated, I'm angry, I'm disappointed, I'm sorry, I'm apologizing, I'm unclear, I'm just stuck in unhappiness, that's where your whole career is going to sit. That's where it's gonna sit. It's gonna sit in unhappiness. We have to be willing to say, I'm empowered, I'm powerful, I'm releasing my voice, I'm asking for what I want, I'm focused on what's next, I'm empowered to take on my career in a bold way. I am not going to sit back and allow opportunities to pass me by with my head buried in the tactical part of the work. I'm gonna lift my head up, I'm gonna look out on the horizon, I'm gonna say, what is this role preparing me for? What is this role I'm in right now as a Black, brown woman? What is this role I'm in right now preparing me for? Is this a cul-de-sac role? Many of you are in cul-de-sac roles. You will never go anywhere because the job you're in is not preparing you for anywhere else. If you are sitting in a cul-de-sac then you need to hire a career coach. Not me, I'm not that person. You need to hire somebody to help you transfer your skills, and you need to lift your head up from being tactically strong, from being the best at the job, to managing your career to figure out where you are going. And if you cannot ask— so here's a, here's a tool I remember years ago, many, many years ago, I was working in a doctor's office in St. Petersburg, Florida, and the wife of the doctor was a very charismatic, um, African-American woman. And for me, she was almost mean, but she said to me one day, you need to go look in the mirror. And I was like, what are you talking about? And she said, go look in the mirror and get comfortable with yourself. And I was shocked when she said that to me. I was like, what is this woman? How dare her say that to me? Another day she came back and she said, you need to talk to the mirror. And I thought, how rude, why would I want to talk to the mirror? But then I realized what she was saying to me. See, if you don't have the backbone or the strength or the empowerment to ask for what you want, go stand in front of the mirror and ask the mirror, 'This is what I want. This is what I want.' Have the conversation with the mirror. Have the conversation with the mirror. Say it over and over until you feel strong, you feel empowered, you feel ready to have that conversation. Get a friend who can say to you, Margaret, when you're ready to have the conversation, text me 2 seconds before the conversation. When you're ready to ask for what you want, text me and I'm going to tell you that you're ready. And then if you practice that, then you say to yourself, I'm ready. One of my teachers, his name is Willie Jolly. He's a keynote speaker, an amazing man. I met him one day, I don't know, 15 years ago or so, and he said to me, Margaret, if you don't write down your goals and you don't look at them every day and you don't read them every day and you don't see them every day and you're— they're not in front of you and the salary that you want isn't there in front of you, and if you haven't asked for it 100,000 times from yourself, you're not gonna ever be able to go ask for it from somebody else.. And I listened to Willie Jolly talk about that, and he said, write down the fees you want to charge. Write it down. Say it over and over and over and over and over again in the mirror. And once you've said it enough, you're comfortable saying it, and nobody can change it because you know what you want. So I challenge all of you today as we wrap up Inclusion Unscripted. I challenge you today to say to yourself, if I'm uncomfortable asking for what I want, I'll go stand in front of the mirror and I will ask the mirror for what I want until I feel empowered to ask for it myself. So thank you for joining me live on LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube. You can download the episode on your favorite podcast app. You can join us this coming Wednesday as we talk about talent development for women, and we really focus on developing diverse talented women. We have that on Wednesday at 1:00 PM Eastern, and it is live on Zoom. It's on our website. You can go to our website, inclusionlearninglab.com, and you can go to the, to the events tab. You will see the event. Sign up for Third Wednesday. Thank you all for joining, um, and thank you for joining live and the comments that's been put in from LinkedIn. I appreciate all of you. So have an amazing weekend. We are back next week with another episode of Elevating Black Women's Voices for, for Black— for Women's History Month. Take care, everyone. Have a phenomenal weekend.

Your reflection on me.

Thank you everyone, take care, see you soon. Thanks again for joining us today, and tell a friend about our livecast and listen to the recording and share it on your social platforms. Take care, bye-bye.