A Dog Called Diversity
A Dog Called Diversity
Racial understanding....with Brigid Trenerry, PhD
Brigid Trenerry, a savvy researcher dedicated to the rich tapestry of workplace diversity and anti-racism is our guest in this episode of A Dog Called Diversity
From Melbourne to Singapore to the USA Brigid shares her journey shaped by Aboriginal teachings and a steadfast commitment to equity and inclusion. Her stories of tackling racial identity and spearheading transformative reconciliation programs will resonate with anyone in the pursuit of systemic equality.
Brigid discusses the essential role of leadership and the collective action that ushers in genuine diversity and inclusion policies. The conversation highlightz the tangible strides organizations have made, to change looks like in the real world.
We hope you enjoy this episdoe!
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Welcome to A Dog Called Diversity, and this week I feel like I have an old friend on the podcast. Her name is Bridget Trenary and we met in Singapore. Welcome to A Dog Called Diversity, bridget. How are you today?
Speaker 2:I'm great. Thanks so much, Lisa, for having me on the podcast. I'm here Really honoured to be talking to you.
Speaker 1:I'm honoured because we've been talking for a little while of you coming on and talking about your work, so I'm so glad we could make it happen. What do you?
Speaker 2:mean.
Speaker 1:We are both fellow expats living in different countries and we're going to talk about that towards the end, but would you introduce yourself to our listeners. Tell us a bit about you and what I guess your expertise is.
Speaker 2:Sure, sure, I'm a researcher and consultant and I have quite a diverse background, I suppose, in terms of what I've been researching and the types of programs I've been involved in before I embarked on my research career. I was born in Melbourne and I do like to tell the story of how I got into the space, because I think we're going to be talking about my research paper, which is on workplace diversity and anti-racism. Reflecting on when I started in this space, it was around university days in Melbourne and I was studying political science and among other things, and I was really fortunate at that time to have some really great Aboriginal lecturers who really, really inspired me at the time. I just can't say enough how much that formative time shaped my understanding of, or my misunderstanding of, what was happening, what had happened in Australia in terms of colonisation, and I just didn't learn about that at school, whereas once I got to university I was horrified and shocked when I found out about all the things that had happened in terms of the stolen generations and all of that.
Speaker 2:And again, just having that time, ended up majoring in Indigenous studies and from there I did an internship actually with an organisation which was I'm not sure if your listeners will be familiar with it, but Australian Spirnative Title and Reconciliation, and that was the organisation and I was quite involved with them for a long time. And it was funny because I had to do this internship for one of my subjects and I had to reach out and at that time I was like, okay, I want to go work with an Aboriginal organisation in Victoria and I sent out all my letters and nobody actually got back to me, which is totally fair enough and the one organisation that did get back to me was this organisation called ANTA, and they were actually other white people like me wanting to support Indigenous issues and work on reconciliation and things like that.
Speaker 2:So it was actually the perfect opportunity and I spent some time there.
Speaker 2:We worked on some really big reconciliation programmes and, again, some really amazing colleagues and, yeah, from then I then worked on an Indigenous youth leadership and education programme.
Speaker 2:So that was another really great time and I got to travel to remote and regional communities all around Australia. Wow, yeah, it was amazing and just, I think, working with the young people like just incredible young people who are all doing like wonderful things now, which I knew they would be. So, yeah, that was again another opportunity to work here with Indigenous communities on the ground and I think probably that time as well, you know, there were some confronting things like being a white person in that space and I sort of came back to the knowledge that, yeah, I needed to look a little bit more closely at my own identity as a white person and you know what can white people do in this space, and that really is to kind of challenge racism and to look at our own attitudes and behaviours in the space. So that's how I kind of came to study racism, which was one of the key topics of my PhD.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's an incredible background, and definitely for a white person, to have all of that kind of knowledge and experience under your belt. How did the research project come about?
Speaker 2:So, yeah, again, I just fell into a really great project. So I was two of my supervisors, so one, yen Parities, in Melbourne. I met him through my previous company and then my main supervisor, kevin Dunn. He is the leading the challenging racism project in Western Sydney. So I was doing my PhD through Western Sydney University. So they were involved in this big project and it came out better than I expected. And then through my PhD, they came in and impacted. Well, actually he was my supervisor, but the project it's a bit roundabout. But the project itself was with Melbourne University and that was funded by Vic Health in partnership with other organisations like the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission, also two local government organisations in Victoria. So all of my field work was actually in Victoria and Melbourne, where I'm from. But I was doing my PhD with Western Sydney and, yeah, it was great to have kind of Kevin overseeing that, because he's obviously got the challenging racism project, which is like a national research project around racism and anti-racism.
Speaker 2:So yeah, but, the specific project I was involved with from my PhD was, as I said, funded by Vic Health with partnership from government. We did sort of like an intervention, basically. So it was looking at, and the premise behind that was that a lot of the research in the field of anti-racism is we don't have a lot of evidence for what works, so mainly what we do know about is training. So how to anti-racism training or diversity training, and that's very much targeted at individuals. And there's been a lot of studies on that, as you probably know, about diversity training and whether or not it's effective. And you know there's a lot of debates sort of in academia and I'm sure in practice as well, that it can be effective for individuals but does it create that kind of long-term systemic change? That's arguable.
Speaker 2:So this project one of we did do training like that was part of the whole project. But the other side of it was to look at some more structural, systematic kind of discrimination and how do you address that. And the project was very ambitious. It was looking at different settings. So we're looking at workplaces within schools, within retail and with kind of the community as a whole. So they did some. Really I wasn't involved with everything. They did some amazing stuff like social media campaigns, like posters on bus stops and then measuring pre and post. You know people's attitudes, like how they changed in relation to these positive messages around diversity, like in the community. So and then some. But yeah, my focus was on the workplace.
Speaker 2:So, I again. I just got really lucky that I was part of this program where I could actually go into the workplaces and these are two councils, one in a sort of outer suburban Melbourne and one in a regional area and I got, yeah, it was a huge privilege to kind of be welcomed in and to do some kind of real ethnography. So I was there for nearly a year or so in each council, or all together about a year, six months in each council and I got to. We developed this tool which was sort of like an assessment tool to look at some of their practices and, yeah, my role was as a researcher to guide them through the tool but also to evaluate the process of them undertaking this assessment tool and a lot of it is probably the stuff you're familiar with, like workplace HR processes, language within job, within recruitment and hiring. How do you create a welcoming organizational culture? What else do we look at? What sort of data do you collect around race and ethnicity and are you monitoring Like, do you have a policy to kind of increase the diversity in the workforce? So these were kind of the things that we were looking at through the tool and then and that assessment process and at the end of that process, the council's developed like a kind of action plan, so a diversity plan basically.
Speaker 2:And yeah, there was some really great outcomes from that, and not just from the work that we did. But there's a lot of other initiatives that were going on as well, like some Aboriginal employment programs and yeah, and, as I mentioned, they were also doing training. So there was kind of and that was part of the evidence, what the research says as well instead of just having like one intervention, you should have like multiple things going on, yeah. So yeah, it's really like multi-level, multi-strategy. So, yeah, that was the work and, you know, I think good on for these councils to be actively in that space as well. Yeah, yeah, I agree.
Speaker 1:I think your experience with those councils really reflects the work I've seen in organisations around changing safety cultures.
Speaker 2:So safety cultures, you know.
Speaker 1:Well, psychological safety, but also physical safety, and I have a real interest in that because I've always worked in companies where safety, physical safety, has been a massive issue. So one organisation I worked in, someone would die on one of our sites every single month.
Speaker 2:It was terrible yeah.
Speaker 1:And when I look at the industries that are typically dangerous so mining and stevedoring and construction you know, 20, 30, 40 years ago people were still being killed in those industries. We don't hear about it as much now and it's because they worked at all the layers in the organisation to make that change. So we didn't just go, oh, let's train people and how to be safe at work, because by itself that doesn't work. It's the same for diversity and inclusion. Sending someone on unconscious bias training, well, that's great, but by itself it's not going to do much. No, it's not that effective, right, but when people were looking at the safety culture, they looked at what training do people need, what tools do they need? What do leaders need to be behaving like talking about, what do we need to be measuring and how do we need to be communicating that measuring? And there was more than that as well. So those layers that you're talking about.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And so the work I do, I talk about. Well, we can't just do this one thing, you have to do all the things which is really hard right.
Speaker 2:It is really hard. Yeah, yeah. And yeah, you're right about the leadership. I mean, that's number one, yeah, Important, and I think that was to go a little bit kind of academic. Yeah, One of the three theories I talk about is like structure versus agency. So you know you can have these structures in place, like whether that's a diversity policy or a commitment statement. You know we are committed to diversity, but if you don't have leadership and if you don't have resources to implement that plan, then nothing's going to happen. So that's the agency. You know it's the people that are made up of within an organisation, the agents. So, yeah, there's a real tension between those two factors.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. What would the, what would the key outcomes from the research? I guess at a community organizational level.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Well, I mean I can't speak too much to the full program because, as I mentioned, I was just involved with the workplace stuff, but I know that I do believe they developed. I think probably, yeah, the best, one of the best outcomes is, you know, they really developed a plan, a diversity plan within the workforce, because this is looking at the workplace, the internal council, and you know, I think one of the action items was around bringing somebody in to HR from a diverse background and I think you know, normally, yeah, like as in a lot of D&I roles, it kind of might be someone who sits, you know, separately in a D&I sort of thing, but this was actually in HR. So that meant, you know, you had that lived experience of a person who's then recruiting and working on the strategy to increase the diversity of the workforce and I felt like that really showed a commitment. One of the councils did that. So that was one thing and I think the other thing, interestingly and this is where I drew on the work of a scholar called Sarah Ahmed.
Speaker 2:She's based in the UK and she's just wonderful. She's written another book recently on sexual harassment called Complaint, and she, yeah, she talks a lot and also around anti-racism, that you know, and diversity, that you know, organisations will make these statements Like we're committed to a diverse, we're committed to diversity, we're committed to being a diverse organisation. And then that's the work that's already done. We've made the statement, yeah, exactly, and nothing's changed. So she says you know, our task is we need to follow these commitments around and see where do they end up. And yeah, I did notice, kind of at one of the councils, there was a lot of this talk of like yeah, we're going to do this, we're going to kind of have a positive discrimination programme where we can ensure that 1% of the workforce is, you know from, made up of diversity, you know underrepresented groups in the workplace. And yeah, some of those things didn't happen.
Speaker 2:So, but some other things yeah but that's interesting because I think you do need to follow these commitments around. Like I'm sure you're familiar with. You know, there's even like the Black Plains Matter movement, like there was a lot of momentum and everybody's out there going yes, we're doing this, but you know what happens, like in three months or six months or two years down the road. So that issue and that's the agency. Again, you know that who's going to really drive it? And, yeah, how can you kind of institutionalize some of the things so that if somebody leaves that, it's sort of embedded in the culture? So so that that's. Yeah, that's some of the things I mean. Other things I think I talked about in my paper.
Speaker 2:I had a really great, very senior guy who worked at the depot. You know, like the, the council depot, and and one of the things on our tool was like is the physical environment? You talk, going back to that physical environment, is it kind of inclusive and welcoming? And you know, is there an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island flag out the building, out the front of the building? And there was within the main council site, like in the corporate Site? But he said, oh, but we don't have one at the depot, and and he's like, okay, you know, as a as, because I've been in this assessment process and on this tool, I'm gonna make that happen. And he was the kind of guy that kind of makes stuff happen right. Yeah, you know there might be some, some backlash and all of that, but you know, this is what we're committed to, it's in our policy, you know, and I'm just gonna tell them, yeah, so, and yeah, I guess the difference that that might make to somebody who's employed there, so, yeah, I think those are sort of some of the really positive things that that came out of it.
Speaker 2:The other big thing that this happened kind of a year or two later, actually, the United Nations Got in touch with With myself and Ian Parity is who's the other academic who worked on the tool and my supervisor, and yeah, we sort of help, we advise them. They were doing this Review of their own internal processes so very much what we did and using, again, multiple methods, like they looked at all the policies within the UN and hiring and things like that, and they also Did interviews and surveys with staff and I think to see it that sort of impact With research is like amazing because you, you just don't know where it's gonna end up, but that's available now like as a report where they've actually published you know how can they make the United Nations more Diverse and more welcoming and and look at issues of racism.
Speaker 1:So yeah, that's so brilliant. Yeah, I mean, it's a great.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a really great report. I think people should read it, because I'm yeah, it's very impressive what that they're doing, this internal work. I think it's easy to kind of Look At something outside, but when you know organization like, it's definitely More challenging, right, yeah?
Speaker 1:What were the the things about that research project that you learned about yourself? Hmm? Doing that work? That's a very good question. Well, I think this work changes you. It really it changes your perspective and makes you think about things differently. So what was that for you?
Speaker 2:Oh well, I've been on a journey and I'm still on a journey like it, and you know, I think it's being a labor of love. It's just, I mean, even the time that it's taken for me to Publish this paper, which I really wanted to get it out into the world, but it's, it's been about 10 years or so and in that time I've had like two kids. I've moved twice, like interstate and overseas, and you know, throughout that whole time I've been thinking on these issues and I think, yeah, coming back to like being a white person as well, like you've got to Think deeply about that and you know, yeah, what does that mean in the research process? Like, yeah, and how can I kind of Make sure that there's a lot of caution? I guess that can come into it, yeah, but I can be kind of immobilizing as well, because you're always thinking I'm gonna say the wrong thing, I'm gonna do the wrong thing, and yeah. So I've had to work through that a lot and I've been pulled up on it at times, like you know, where I probably yeah, my whiteness, I I've not been as aware as I could be, and so, yeah, it is a process of working through that continuously and the education, the self education just never stops learning, and it, you know, it's very it's
Speaker 1:challenging, Challenging yeah it does not stop at all and I'm always being I'm always being confronted by the biases I know about, about myself in this work, but then having to learn new biases that I didn't know about when there's a new situation. Absolutely, it's super challenging.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, no ideas, and I think it's just yeah, it's hard, it's yeah, having the commitment to keep going as well, when you know there's so many setbacks like along the way, and I think it's just such a long, and I think, again, going back to some of even the first sort of lecturers and mentors that I had, it's like well, this isn't going to be like a short thing, it's a lifetime or a long term or maybe not even in our generation thing. Like you know, you've just got to keep going, no matter how hard it gets. So I think having that commitment to continue doing the work is another thing. That and you know that can be hard when you've got family responsibilities and other work or whatever. But yeah, I think. But I guess one thing I would say to kind of take away is I think it can be hard as a white person navigating this space, and you know, I do.
Speaker 2:but I think there is a role that you don't want to be like take over, right, that's no, the whiteness again, that's the, the yeah, that's the superiority kind of thing. So it's you have to be really careful and really critical and, um, yeah, but I think it is hard to know, yeah, whether you're doing the right thing and is this the right action? Like, say, in the workplace, if there's a racist incident? You know, as a white person, you can do a lot in that situation, you can stand up. We call it the bystander effect. So there is a lot that and, you know, just supporting, um, supporting, yeah, people if some sort of microaggression or whatever happens. So, yeah, I think white people do need to have a lot of training, or even just experience, or you know just. But then there's that constant need for kind of being. We call itself self-reflectivity. So you're always, you know, reflecting back on your practice and knowing that you're not going to get it right all the time, and trying to learn from that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I am as you were talking. I like I so get what you're saying, because I might as well and a lot of my work is in Asia, so I um, for me it's the balance of how can I be humble in the work when it's not my. It's not my experience. I'm not in that minority. And how can I be curious with the work? How can you be an?
Speaker 2:ally, right? I mean yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely, definitely. One of the things I think that's made a big difference in my work is being able to live and work away from Australia Because, you know, I grew up I grew up on a farm, I grew up in a white family. I went to school where mostly white kids. I went to university, you know, I don't. I don't remember there being a whole lot of diversity in my experiences growing up right, particularly around race.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I can remember I worked on a project in India for 12 months. I was the HR manager for a project and as part of that we worked on site with the software developer and in their building and we had a like an emergency evacuation practice. One day and I found myself standing outside with lots of Indian men and it was the first time I'd kind of been conscious of being in the minority, and not that I was scared or afraid, but you know, if anyone's been to India, people stare at you. So I was standing outside in the hot.
Speaker 2:Yeah, blonde as well.
Speaker 1:And I can remember noticing that, but also still knowing that I was in a position of privilege, even though I was in the minority and that, yeah, and having lived in Asia for a long time and having the opportunity to live in different countries, even in New Zealand, which I am living now, which I thought was similar to Australians and it's really really not. It has been interesting, so I'm wondering how your experiences of being an expat has helped you think about this work.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. Now that's a great question. I feel like, um, yeah, moving to Singapore was like one of the best things that could have happened, because, you know, singapore is a very diverse country and you know that there's the multi ethnic mix of cultures there as well, and I have a privilege again of working with, you know, a Singapore University of Technology and Design so Singaporeans mainly and yeah, I just value that being just having colleagues from all different backgrounds and getting to know a bit more of Singapore probably than you would if maybe you're just you know, and I think it's sad that people don't have that opportunity to kind of, yeah, really get to know local culture in Singapore and the history of Singapore.
Speaker 2:So, and yeah again, being the, I wasn't the only white person, but you know, I think that was, yeah, humbling and important in terms of, yeah, just having to really step back and learn. And you know, this is I'm learning here and um, yeah, singapore's got its own. We're doing things like, yes, so being respectful of that as well, and you know, and.
Speaker 2:I've said this to people within where I worked and it did shift. I think in the West we kind of you know, we do have this kind of liberal, like you know, we can say whatever we want and blah, blah, blah. And then you know, in Singapore it's like well, no, we're that, there's more that community sort of approach.
Speaker 2:And you, you know that they yeah it's just a different way of not being so outspoken, I guess, and there's some benefits, like a lot of benefits to that where you can, it's kind of more cohesive, right, and I feel like it's, yeah, there's not the kind of divisive like that you get in countries like Australia and, you know, maybe, the US. So I learned a lot about the importance of China, yeah, and I think Singapore does that very well. It kind of, yeah, it does that very well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and for me, I think Singapore teaches you that the collective can be more important than the individual.
Speaker 2:That's the word I was talking about.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so one of the cultural I guess I can never think of the word, but the ways to look at culture is on the spectrum of individualistic to collectivist. Yeah, and Singapore really taught me about collectiveness and it took me a little while to understand what was going on.
Speaker 1:But coming, you know, I think Australia is much more individualistic than you go to Singapore, very collective, and now you're in the US, which is also individualistic, probably, you know, more individualistic to an extent than Australia. So how has that transition been, I guess, from Singapore into the US would have been noticed.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, it's been a very big leap of climate, very different climate even just driving everywhere.
Speaker 2:I mean, I've come from a very like a small city that's very densely populated. I didn't drive and I could just walk, and I have to literally get in my car every time I need to go somewhere here. So then that's quite individualistic, isn't it? Like people see me in cars, you don't have the beautiful hawker markets and things like that. But yeah, I mean I'm still. I've only been here about eight months now, so I'm still trying to suss it out when.
Speaker 2:I'm at my place here and I feel like a minority because everyone around me is American. My kids attending local schools, they're the only sort of non-American yeah, I don't know, I mean not everybody you know, because I'm, we're in Austin. Not, I'm realizing not a lot of people are from Austin. They've moved from other parts of the state so we definitely have that in common. But there's so many things like mannerisms and yeah, in some ways the culture shock of moving here has been more than Singapore.
Speaker 2:I mean, yeah, it's fine, but you probably know what I mean.
Speaker 1:I do, because we did a move. We lived in Singapore for two years and then did a move to the UK, right, and I think when you look and sound similar, you speak the same language, you kind of look the same. I think that's harder when you move country because you get it's so much easier to get tripped up, like in Singapore. Literally everything was different, people look different, the way things work is different and so you expect it to be different.
Speaker 2:And you're.
Speaker 1:I think you're ready for it. Whereas I can remember the UK and also moving to New Zealand, particularly New Zealand, I the assumptions I had around it being similar to Australia, yeah, are not true and you know, taking some of the things at face value here. So people are very friendly, they're quite jokey, they love to tease and Aussie, so sometimes taking some of that stuff at face value has been really, really challenging. And yeah, I think I wonder if that's the same for the US and I think we we often understand about the US culture because of television and movies and culture.
Speaker 2:But yeah, I it's not like that. Yeah, no, it's not like that.
Speaker 2:But, um, yeah, there's definitely a different culture here. Like that's what's so interesting, Like it's just not, yeah, and you've got it. Takes a lot of time, I think, to work out the subtleties of that. And, um, I think I've probably lucky that I've had the Singapore in between. Perhaps I kind of can manage that a little bit better. But you're absolutely right. Like you just can't make assumptions that it's going to be the same, even like an English speaking country. Like sometimes I feel like people don't understand what I'm saying With my accent.
Speaker 2:Yeah, or particular mannerisms, even just the way you know, and I'm learning now to adjust my language, but yeah, that's taken time as well. Like when you're in supermarket or the pharmacy, like, they just sometimes look at you like what are you talking about?
Speaker 1:Is there something that surprised you the most Like? Is there something you just like? Oh, I didn't expect that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm just trying to think.
Speaker 2:I really think sometimes yeah they're just like and I talk a lot to my kids about this, like the different terms that we have, like, I remember I was talking, yeah, something about like a. You know they call it marker here, and this was in Singapore as well, but we call it text up in Australia, you know, like a text up. I know it's like a marker and it's just. My daughter was telling me about this what are you talking about? What's a text? So, yeah, a lot of things like that. I think it's funny, yeah, it's funny. I mean, yeah, they can then joke about it, but yeah, I think, yeah, you just can't. There's a lot of differences in the language here. The trash can rubbish bin, even what do we say toilet and they say washroom, yeah, washroom.
Speaker 1:Restroom.
Speaker 2:Is it restroom or washroom?
Speaker 1:I've changed my language, I think just through travel, by talking, asking, like, saying bathroom, like where is the bathroom? Because I wonder where the Aussie, where's the toilet. So I often use bathroom.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think I started using bathroom, but now in here they don't use that, and then it's like what are you talking about? What are you asking when you're asking Where's the bathroom? So I think it's restroom, yeah, so yeah, it's very much a learning process.
Speaker 1:It is, it is. Oh, my goodness, it's been so nice to talk to you, bridget. It's huge, yeah, wonderful. I can't wait to see what you do next.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I think the research and the work you've done with Indigenous people and I guess, around race more broadly, will hold you in good stead for whatever the future comes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely yeah. I've just been lucky. I think I've fallen into the right projects and just had some excellent mentors and colleagues and things along the way, so yeah great for that.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you so much for coming on. A Dog Called Diversity. I know people are going to love hearing about your work and will put links to your research papers, and I know that some of your tools have gone into other places, so perhaps we'll put the links in for those as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much, Lisa.
Speaker 1:Oh, really Such a pleasure.
Speaker 2:Thank you.