Last week an amazing thing happened! Audrey Gelman appeared on the cover of Inc. Magazine. Not only is she the CEO of a successful startup, Wing, she manages an all-female executive team, AND she chose to appear on the cover visibly pregnant. It’s the first time in history that a visibly pregnant woman has appeared on the cover of any business magazine, EVER. That’s a big deal, and I say that as a woman, who has been the first at something, and who has been pregnant, given birth and nursed for several years all while trying to balance a career—much less successfully than Audrey Gelman, I might add.

Elated at the article published by Business Insider about it, I went to the comments section of the person who had posted it on LinkedIn, with mounting dread. I knew what I would find there. Amidst all the congratulatory comments were sprinkled in the negative comments. The worst part is that I don’t honestly think these people knew what they were doing. Things like outright misogyny, racism and bigotry are fairly easy to spot these days. But often we all fall prey to the trap that fake ‘woke-ness’ presents. I saw this in the military all the time, with messaging of ‘I don’t see gender, I don’t see race. All I see is green.”

The problem is obvious with comments like these (paraphrased), “This is so great, but I wonder when things like this will stop being news? What about all of the dads who are CEOs of companies, you never hear about them. I can’t wait till we are all just equal.” Fake woke-ness at its best, and I bet this man (of course it was a man) doesn’t even realize it. This is my favorite kind of comment, because the great thing about news is that it’s self-correcting—the second that something is no longer rare, it stops making the news. Just think about it, Jackie Robinson was a big deal, yet we no longer see news stories every time a black man makes it big in professional sports like baseball or football. When a woman makes it into an ivy league college or finishes a marathon—not news. All of these things used to be on the cover of magazines, and all of these things used to be talked about with the same rhetoric that we hear now—“of course we want equality, we just can’t “compromise quality for someone’s equality”. Looking back at these stark examples, it’s pretty obvious that that line of thinking was wrong back then. It’s just as wrong in its new forms today.

I had an experience like this when I commissioned into the Army, a female officer, not rare, but women still only made up about 11% of the Armed Forces (it’s around 17% today). I still remember my shocked amazement when I learned that there were actual laws that prevented me from holding certain roles in the military because of my gender. You couldn’t convince me that in America of 2009, I was still being legally barred from holding a job that I was totally qualified for, because of a group that I was a member of—women. When, on my way to Afghanistan, I brought up the fact that my combat vest was designed in a way that protects men but not women from the fatal impact of bullets (because our chests are a bit different), I was told not to worry, that I wouldn’t be in direct combat anyways. Turned out, that wasn’t exactly true. In 2011, I was in the right place at the right time in history to have the honor of volunteering as part of the first group of women to conduct deliberate ground combat operations—integrated right in with traditionally all-male units. And yes, on those patrols, we wore armor that was still designed only for men.

The Army learned some incredible lessons, which is a whole other blog post, and we saw incredibly rapid change. In less than two years, the combat ban on women was repealed, women were allowed to receive the same rigorous training that the men we fought alongside of had received, and we were even consulted on the design for a combat vest that would help to keep women alive too. In 2015, the first amazingly badass women graduated from Army Ranger school, and the floodgates opened. In less than 10 years from those patrol experiments, we’ve seen women become infantry officers, special operations helicopter pilots, snipers and much, much more. This year, the first 4-star female general took command of a major infantry division. Like with other forced de-segregation experiments that the US Military has been through, we very quickly learned that all of the arguments that we’d used to keep women out of combat were not actually issues. And we found that women bring a whole slew of other experiences—ones that are incredibly useful when there are men AND women out there trying to kill you. It’s almost like we have whole different life experiences and world views. We learned out in the improvised-explosive filled sands that the importance of diversity is not social justice or making everyone feel good, it’s about lowering your risk and increasing the chances of mission success.

There’s a lot of danger in the idea that ‘we hire only the most qualified person for the job’, because the ‘most qualified’ is a subjective argument, decided by those currently in power. And it’s human nature to want to surround ourselves with people just like us. As Emily Chang shows extensively in her book, Brotopia: Breaking Up the Boy’s Club of Silicon Valley, industries like tech created their own pipeline problem by how they defined ‘qualified’—and are now suffering from the many dangers that lack of diversity presents. Jackie Robinson was qualified to play baseball, but someone had to let him through the gates, and the same is true for all of these ‘firsts’ that we are seeing today. If we truly believe that only the most qualified make it through the gates, then we’d have to agree that for the last two and a half centuries only men have been qualified to be President of this country, and does anyone really believe that anymore?

The same day that all of this was rattling around in my mind, I attended a pitch competition, hosted by my good friends at Business Impact Northwest, and it was incredible. I was stunned by the amazing businesses that were being launched by people in the community, and I wanted to literally invest in all of them. Only after loving the quality of ideas, did I look around the room, noticing something strange. In 3 years of being heavily involved in the entrepreneur/start-up community in Seattle, I’ve never seen a pitch competition where the majority of faces in the audience, on stage, and at the judges bench weren’t straight, young, white men. There was so much diversity reflected in the room, that it was obvious how such cool ideas had made it on stage. Community impact was highlighted in every idea, and yet their missions were still producing a profit.

During the awards section, I noticed something else interesting. Not only did they have the overall awards for best businesses (the equivalent of talent above all else), they had smaller awards for best woman, LGTBQ, veteran, refugee, and person of color-owned businesses. To do this, they hadn’t taken anything away from the overall winners, they’d just gone out and secured additional sponsors for additional awards. It seemed so obvious for me. Of course they’d had more diverse applicants, of course they’d created a better pipeline.

As I was talking to the hosts after the events, I learned that, even with the impressive pool of applicants, they still see that members of minority groups, like veterans and women of color, have a harder time getting through the rigorous selection, and I had to smile. I love when veterans are added in to lists of other minorities that struggle, because all of a sudden it makes people pay attention, and maybe question their unconscious biases—wait, what? But those are ‘normal, white men’. YES! Anytime your experience is significantly different from others in a large group, you have more challenges translating it into relevant data, experience, or ‘successes’. It highlights just another reason that diversity is important on selection committees, on boards, and yes, as CEOs.

Well, I hope you’re still with me, because this stuff matters. Here’s 3 ways that you can increase your focus on diversity without ‘compromising’ talent. And I bet, the more different types of people you talk to, the more ideas you can come up with.

1. Showcase diverse faces in materials that represent your org

It might take some specific planning, but it’s not ‘inauthentic’ and those people aren’t ‘tokens’. Many studies have shown that people want to work at places where they see other people who look like them. You’ll find out that it’s not that there is not highly qualified, diverse talent, it’s just that they are applying to other places and not yours.

2. Put diverse people on the leadership and outreach teams

Putting diverse people on the important teams makes a huge statement, and helps organizations change very, very quickly. If you think that ‘compromises talent’, challenge yourself to find someone extremely different from you who is highly qualified. It won’t be as hard as you think once you make it a goal. The effects will multiply quickly. I once helped host a military veteran, tech event (two communities with very low percentage of women) where we drew a 40% female audience.

3. Listen and believe minority voices when they recount their experiences and perceptions

This one is near and dear to my heart. When people from any kind of social, economic, minority or any other groups that you are not a member of tell you about their experiences, listen to them, believe them, and think about how they (most likely) have a completely different world view from your own. I’m guilty of denying people’s experiences, I’m sure we all are. We can all work on just believing, and only leaving comments that say congratulations.

And, at the end of the day, if you really can’t see the difference between a growing a human inside your body, birthing that human (an action that puts both baby and mother’s life at risk), feeding that tiny human from your body, and countless other roles that fall heavier to moms—all while running a large and successful startup—and a dad being a CEO, then I have no further comment…

I’m just happy that Inc. Magazine can. I’m glad to live in a world where pregnant CEOs can (now) grace the cover of business magazines as successful and respected professionals, and I can’t wait to see what ‘we consider to be news-worthy’ next.

And remember no company is perfect: just do your best to Be Great Every Day!

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DANIELLA YOUNG IS A TEDX SPEAKER, AN AUTHOR, COMBAT VETERAN, BOARD MEMBER OF OPERATION CODE, & THE CO-FOUNDER OF CAVNESSHR—AN HR-TECH COMPANY WHO’S MISSION IS TO MAKE BIG-BUSINESS HR AVAILABLE TO SMALL BUSINESSES, THROUGH INNOVATIVE SAAS AND VIRTUAL CONSULTING. DANIELLA SPECIALIZES IN HELPING BUSINESSES CREATE CULTURE ROADMAPS, LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT PLANS & EFFECT TEAM TRANSFORMATION. WANT TO LEARN MORE? VISIT OUR WEBSITE AT cavnesshr.com.

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