Well, absolutely. And it is a ambitious, but also a very positive goal. It's been born of some some horrible situations that have happened and practices over hundreds of years, but you're really bringing a positive action based approach to ending racism in the world.

Dr. Afua Cooper

Yeah, absolutely. And the question is, what can we do? What can be done? I mean, we have gone down some very dark paths in human history. Do we want to continue going down those pathways? 

With the pandemic, and with all kinds of just horrible things happening in the world, migrants crossing on the Mediterranean drowning, migrants crossing on the English Channel, and you know, their boats, capsizing and just people dying. So, we live at a time where we are technologically very sophisticated, you know, but at the same time, we have this other situation going on, people are dying. In the Mediterranean, the English and people dying from starvation, hunger, all those issues are plaguing our world. And what can we do? I always think that it's not because we lack something. We don't lack money, we don't lack the technology. What we lack is compassion. And what we lack is love. And so I see my work as part of that.

Because the planet is our home, we are all in inhabiting it. And what can we do to make it work for everyone? Racism is a scourge in humanity. It has really blighted the future of so many people. And in the past 400 years with respect to African peoples, black people, we have slavery, we have the slave trade. Within North America. Here we have Jim Crow. We have segregation.

Black communities all across Canada, black people were denied schooling, they had to create their own churches. They couldn't go to public places of entertainment. If we think of the case of Viola Desmond, who was ejected from a cinema in New Glasgow in 1946, or Lulu Anderson in Edmonton in 1922, black woman ejected from the cinema, or Charles Daniels in 1914, in Calgary, who was also ejected from a theatre because of the color of their skin. And we also think of economic injustice for the black community, certain jobs black people couldn't get. They were denied these opportunities. And right down to present time, we're still struggling for equality, struggling for equity, struggling for diversity, and inclusion. The time is now, because it's urgent, and it's imperative.

Maureen Farmer

In reading your material and listening to you speak, one of the topics we had discussed before was the misconception about the slave trade in Canada. And you know, I studied history in school and even in university, and there was very little that was taught on black history at any of those levels.

Dr. Afua Cooper

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, black history has been just covered over in Canada, when we think of black history, it's the United States we think of by default, and we ignore our own history, it's been covered over, you could go from kindergarten to grade 12. And University, as you just said, in a Canadian educational system, and not learn anything about black people and black people have been here since (we know) at least 1604. And also nothing about slavery. You know, I say in another context, that slavery is Canada's best kept secret. Because when Canadians talk about slavery, they are, again, they look at the United States, or they may think of the Caribbean, they think of the underground railroad in which enslaved African Americans ran away from slavery in the United States, to some of the Canadian provinces. And that's true, we're not denying that. But before you had on the underground railroad, there was slavery in Canada and slavery in Canada was abolished in 1834. Because it was a British colony. And in that year, Britain, abolished slavery in its overseas colonies. So, we've had slavery in Canada from 1628 to 1834, that's over 200 years. And that's a little known story. So part of my work, you mentioned, my book, the hanging of Angelica, and some of the exhibits that I've done and articles that I've written, is to bring this phenomenon to the fore, and to say, black people in Canada have been enslaved longer than they have been free. And the legacies of slavery, the way how blackness has been constructed and thought of, then are still with us today. You know, we're living these legacies.

Maureen Farmer

What would you say are the top one or two experiences that black people have today, that would surprise the rest of us?

Dr. Afua Cooper

Some of the experiences, I think people are beginning to not be so surprised anymore. But previously, and you know, I have to call his name, I have to call the name of George Floyd. Before that, you would get this attitude of people, you know, mainly from the white community and other non black communities who are saying, Oh, well, you know, you guys don't have it so bad. I remember someone saying to me one time Oh, Afua, you have a PhD, you went to the University of Toronto, you're a professor, you don't have it so bad. So she was, you know, taking me out of the black community and she said, Look, you know, you're so privileged, why are you complaining? And so it's this idea that when black people talk about their pain, talk about their suffering, people kind of poo-poo it, you know, they discount it. And when you show people the statistics for the percent of dropout from high school of black kids, the mass incarceration that's happening in our prisons here in Canada, it had to take something like George Floyd, for people to say, oh my god, it's true. We have been talking about police brutality for decades, and with the rise of Black Lives Matter in Canada, finally people could say, oh, I think you guys are telling the truth. You know, so I think it surprised us in the black community that people always wanted to interpret our experiences for us. We're saying well, you know, I have a black eye, I'm bleeding. And they'll say, Oh, well, it's not so bad, bandage it up. And it wasn't until George Floyd, that brutal public murder of the man that, you know, was shown on screens all over the world, that non black people took a pause and said, okay, okay. It's true, what you're saying. And so that constantly surprises me how people always want to interpret the experience, the black experience.

Maureen Farmer

From their own perspective...

Yes. And to bring them comfort because they don't want to imagine the eight minutes and 46 seconds of the end of George Floyd's life. It's a brutal, absolutely brutal experience, but he would not have been the first.

Dr. Afua Cooper

No, no. And before him, we know that there was a case in I think it was in Oregon, certainly in one of the Western Pacific North Western states. We know there was a case in Florida. There were many cases like that. But because no one filmed it, there was someone there that day, that brave woman, Ms. Frazier, who had a camera and held it, and didn't flinch. And so finally, we were believed. when people don't believe you, it's really discounting your humanity when you say you're beaten by the policeman, your son, your husband, you know, we have the phenomenon driving while black, eating while black, walking while black. And people would still want to diminish your pain and your experience of it. And that Maureen comes out of slavery.

You know, these are one of the legacies of slavery where, you know, black people are still in many ways cast out of the human race. Because remember, during slavery, black inhumanity was apart of the American Constitution, it said blacks were three fifths human being. Within the British world, black people were considered property. So, you were a commodity in the same way that a horse or a pig or a bale of hay, was property commodity. So, non-human or subhuman. And so we still see, you know, slavery ended, you know, 100, and over 150 years ago, depending on where you think of this in British world, or the American world, or Brazil, and so on, certainly, at least 150 years now, you still see the attitude towards a black body, your property, you are insensitive to pain, so you could be in pain, but you're not really feeling pain, because you're not quite human. And so that's one of the legacies of slavery that we're still grappling with today. So, that cop could have his knee on Mr. Floyd's neck and take his life, because you're not really dealing with a human being. I can do this and get away with it, as they have been getting away with that kind of practice for literally centuries.

Maureen Farmer

Well we would say, you wouldn't treat an animal like that, wouldn't we? Yeah. I'd like to ask you a couple of questions about...it feels a little bit superficial to ask you this question now, based on what we've just talked about, but I'd love to know, what are your top highlights from your career so far that support your vision to end racism in the world?

Dr. Afua Cooper

Oh, that is a good question. I always think that everything I do is is top...

Maureen Farmer

Haha, of course! I read your bio!

Dr. Afua Cooper

In the sense that well, you know, a highlight in 2007, the province of Ontario hired me as the Chief Knowledge Coordinator for the bicentenary of the abolition of the British slave trade. In 1807, Britain abolished the slave trade, not slavery...

Maureen Farmer

Can I interrupt you for just a moment? So, I'm hearing something for the first time that I hadn't discerned before...the difference between slavery and the slave trade.

Dr. Afua Cooper

Exactly. So the slave trade was the commerce, the bringing of human captives from Africa, to these parts of the world, it was a slave trade that populated the Americas, with Africans or with black people, because they were taken here to work as slaves. So, the British and the French and the Americans and whomever else...Swedes, the Dutch were involved in this trade for over 400 years... So in 1807, for a variety of reasons, Britain ended that commerce, the trade, but still continued the practice of slavery, on its plantations in the West Indies, and in its colonies, in places like Canada and South Africa and Mauritius. So in 2007, we had the Bicentenary 200 years since the ending of the slave trade, and the ending of the slave trade really was a step towards the ending of the overall practice of slavery. So British former colonies around the world recognized 2007 as an important year, and in Ontario, I spearheaded this movement of lobby in the province of Ontario, where I was living in at the time to recognize this important milestone in the history of human rights, in the history of black empowerment, because I should say, this morning, the debates around ending of slavery, the ending of slavery  in our slave trade, these debates, these discourses, these practices provided a platform for the debates and the practices that we have today, this thing that we call human rights, you know, all across the world, you have Human Rights Commission's in 1947 48, the United Nations came up with its own human rights, mandate and discourses and platforms, so on and so forth. What the discourse and the whole thinking about it came out of the discussions that people back then had around the slave trade, and slavery came out of the practices of enslaved Africans themselves who resisted slavery, and fought for their freedom. So in Ontario in 2007, we said the province should recognize it, in fact, all of Canada should recognize it. But you you sort of deal with where you are, I was in Ontario and approached the government and with the collaboration of someone like Honorable Jean Augustine, who was the Ontario Fairness Commissioner at the time, we were able to successfully get the government to commit to this movement. And, were able to get $1 million from the government to do bicentenary programming. It was amazing. It truly was.

Maureen Farmer

And in fact, I had a conversation with Honorable Jean Augustine earlier this week, or maybe it was last week. And she explained to me that you coordinated and collaborated with more than 3000 people. People you didn't know!

Dr. Afua Cooper

No, I contacted everybody. We worked with academic institutions, trade unions, mothers groups, high schools, we had two high school conferences within the year, we brought scholars and speakers from the Caribbean and from the United States and from England. And think one person, one person came from Germany. We had two academic conferences. It was incredible. And monies were dispersed to over 33 organizations, community organizations, some of them were academic organizations. Well, I tell you, a small organization that was restoring a historic black cemetery in the Collingwood's area...they got like $5,000 to clean the headstones and to put up a plaque or put up a sign rather, and I went to the opening, if you can call it an opening. That cemetery was beautiful, you know, the community came together, they cleaned and they refurbished the headstones. And so think of that as a project and a bigger project in terms of money. And in terms of size of the University of Ottawa law school. We did a conference looking at the migratory migrations of enslaved people from Africa today to these parts of the world. So, it was just tremendous. And we did five plaques that talked about the history of black people in Ontario in the 18th, and 19th, and 20th centuries and so many other things. So it was really, really incredible.

Maureen Farmer

Well, it sounds as though it was for certain. I have a good friend who lives in Collingwood, and I'll be going to visit that cemetery. I can't wait to see it.

Dr. Afua Cooper

Yeah. And so that was a highlight. Another highlight, I would say, was the publication of my book, The Hanging of Angelique: The Untold Story of Slavery in Canada and the Burning of Old Montreal, which looked at the life of an enslaved woman, who was actually born in Portugal, but ended up on this side of the world, lived in Montreal, and in 1734, was accused of setting fire to the City of Montreal, which she was arrested and condemned, and eventually hanged, her body was burned. And the ashes cast to the four winds, as a scribe tells us in his in his report, on on her hanging. I think it lifted the lid off this part of secrets that we have in Canada, about slavery, and about black history. And that was published 2006. And it's still, you know, from many people, it's still a work of discovery. My publishers HarperCollins, they told me that it's used in over 200 courses in universities across North America. And these courses range from history courses, to women's studies courses, to courses on colonialism. So I'm very, very proud of that work. It's, again, it's part of the contribution to my legacy.

And, you know, I'm happy to say (as you said) in my biography that I received another million dollars, I'm thinking whoa!

Maureen Farmer

Yes! You're currently working on one right now here in Halifax?

Dr. Afua Cooper

April of 2021, I received a grant to do a project called the black people's history of Canada. And it's a three year project. And it's we're going to be doing we actually have started as a team of researchers research in black history, from coast to coast to coast. And the other coast includes the north, nobody, we have no think of the North when we think about black history, and to write curriculum. So we're gonna write through curriculum based on the research that we have done for all the grades from kindergarten to grade 12. Because oftentimes, you hear teachers said, well, we can't teach black history because they're nothing there is nothing in the curriculum. So after we finish your project, and we it's three years, we are funding for three years, we hope to get more money to extend it to, you know, to two more years, so we get the five year project, then people will not be able to say that anymore. Because we're also going to write, we're going to write books, we're going to have a website, we're going to put the lesson plans there, but we're also going to do videos and graphic novels and, you know, other than use other digital tools to bring this. This history to our Canadian is not just teachers and but to everyone or anyone who want to peruse it, they can go on the website and take what they want from it. So that's another major highlight. And I, you know, sitting on the UNESCO commission on the slavery project is a big thing too, because it's that's International. That's, that's global. Global is not just the Americas, we're looking at the Indian Ocean, the Middle East, global, everywhere, everywhere.

Maureen Farmer

Getting back to the curriculum, I would like to ask you a little bit if it's okay, about your, your personal background as a child. We talked a little bit before about your experience in school and with your parents and, and in fact that you as a young child knew what you wanted to be when you grew up. And that was a poet, historian. And, and the writer. Yeah, yeah. So I would love to explore a little bit about about your background and how that influenced the work that you're doing today.

Dr. Afua Cooper

Yes, thank you. I was born in in Jamaica, the island of Jamaica in a rural parish called Westmoreland. And it was just magical, really a magical childhood, I would say live with my parents. And my parents had nine kids. I was nine. I was I lived in a community where everyone going up the road or down the road. Everyone was was a relative. I remember my mother telling us as we the girls started growing up, she's like, Don't marry anyone from this community. They are your cousins. So what it was, it was very comforting, right? Because down the road, you had one grandmother on the road with another grandmother down the road. My grandmother sisters. And my playmates were my cousins, I had dozens of cousins. And so they were my playmates. And my grandmother, my father's mother, she was a storyteller, not in the sense of fantasy stories or mythic stories, but more history. She told us about history. What happened. In this year, there was a riot on the sugar plantation. And then her husband died. My grandfather Cooper died when he was only 33 years old, with a young man, and my grandmother was 29. And she was pregnant when my grandfather died. So she was would tell us stories about our grandfather, because, you know, we never knew him. So her way was just to tell a story about him. He spoke Spanish, she had gone to Cuba for a while he came back. And she was very much interested in politics. She talked a lot about politics. And, you know, she grew up in Jamaica as a British colony. So she grew up under the, you know, the monarchy and the colonization. And she talked about some of those struggles. So I always felt that here and then my uncle, my father's brother, he would tell us like ghost stories and fantasy stories. So there, for me, it was a really rich environment. And then when I went to live in Kingston from the age of eight, onward, it Kingston is a city, it's an urban center, different kinds of things. There was music, you know, reggae music was really taking the world by storm, then we're talking coming into the 70s. And again, people talk politics. You know, Jamaica is a very oral society, people are people of a critical mind. I learned about apartheid in South Africa from the streets, just hearing men, one of my uncle's had a little refreshment shop. You could go and buy, you know, pop and sweet stuff, muffins, that kind of thing. And the men would gather there, they would play dominoes and card games, and they talk about politics. And that's how I learned about apartheid in South Africa, which I thought was shocking. I'm thinking how could that be happening in the world? And my school you know, I in Kingston, I attended a school called St. Michael's primary school, and are all age school as they call it, then all agement it went up to grade nine. And we ever Friday was poetry. You you had to read points. You had to memorize poems, and you had to write your own poem. We had to write a poem every week. And we were also involved in the spelling bee competition. And there was a lie Berea down the road called the junior Center Library, which I thought was heaven. You know, the library is just the most beautiful thing that we can add.

Maureen Farmer

I completely get it!

Dr. Afua Cooper

I get that library and I, you know, it's like my mind opened up. I could, I could daydream, I could. I read a lot. I was a, I was a reader. And but that library also had enrichment programs like poetry, they had a pottery class, they had a dance class, they had a violin class, somehow, I ended up in the violin class. I was, I was, I stopped, but I persevered for about a year. But you know, the teachers, most of them, you know, you always have the bad teacher. Teachers were wonderful and, and nurture those and, and we had singing classes. I mean, it wasn't, you know, we're not talking about private school here. This was public school. This was a working class environment. But somebody at the Ministry of Education felt that kids should have good education. And I was I was part of the cohort of kids that really had above. And so I loved going to school, and I went to high school. And you know, the subjects are getting more concentrating. Now. We in primary school, you just have one teacher for everything in high school history teacher, yeah, the math teacher, you're the biology teacher. And, and I just fell in love with history. And I thought, when I grew up, I knew I was going to university and I knew I was going to study history. And I thought, I'd like to be a historian. And I like to be a poet, and a writer, and there was a historian that influenced me his name. That's Walter Rodney. He was a Caribbean historian, originally from Guyana. And he was a historian of Africa under slavery, and I felt I wanted to pattern myself of him, you know. And then there was a poet by the name of Louise Bennett, and another poet called come on Brathwaite and come on. Brathwaite also wrote a play that my high school or a drama group performed that play for the national Drama Festival, I was one of the actors in the play, and we won a gold medal. And the author of the play, he was teaching at the University of the West Indies in Kingston. And when we were rehearsing, he came and sort of guided us and mentored us and gave us a pep talk. And that was a tremendous honor to have this distinguished. He's a he was also a historian, historian, poet coming to your school to, to say, you know, just to be there. So I thought my environment was rich. And I am grateful for that. I'm grateful to my parents, I'm grateful to my aunt, who helped to raise me here on felida. And I'm grateful to my teachers, because that was that was a background that was a stage that was set for me to become who I am today.

Maureen Farmer

Well, they were all role models, very positive role models for you. And I believe this to be true today to the degree that we can do it here is that it takes a community to raise a child. And I firmly believe in that it comes in different forms these days, but I really, truly believe that. And I think the library experience mirrors my own experience as a child, although I didn't know what I want it to be when I was a young child. But having a library and access to that information. It sounds as though the librarian was an ally for you as well or a role model?

Dr. Afua Cooper

Yes, definitely. Because when I was thinking, Oh, what am I going to be when I grew up librarian was in there, too, because I admired the librarian. And I thought the librarian had the best job in the world, because she'll read books all the time. Yes. librarian was there. But yeah, the librarian was one or librarians. They were a few of them, and they were very nurturing. And I would just borrow books, and I'd stay up and read the books and I returned them the next day, and they said, Cooper, you finished reading all of these already. Yeah. And I'm ready to take out more. So those experiences really, they give you wings.

Maureen Farmer

Oh, absolutely! My mom always said the most important gift you can have is the ability to read. If you can read you can achieve.

So, maybe what you need is a biographer then. You need a biographer to write it for you. I'd love to go back for just a moment as we come to the close of our call to talk a little bit about the education system. As you mentioned, you had very nurturing teachers in elementary school. And of course, teachers are by nature nurturing.

 How can teachers today and a teacher listening to this conversation...How can they help end racism in the world through their classrooms today?

Dr. Afua Cooper

I think, one way, a main way is just to love, love your students. You know, I, when I see when I look at the Canadian statistics for some of our major municipalities, you know, Halifax, Toronto, Montreal, so on, and the high dropout rate for black kids in high school, it's a national, it's a disgrace, national disgrace. If you begin high school at grade nine grade 10 500, black kids and grade 12, at graduation, it's only what 30 Kids black kids walking across the podium, something is wrong, something is wrong. And so, you know, and it's not just the kids, because I tell you, through all my years of going to primary school and high school in Jamaica, marine, I don't think my parents ever once came to the school. They drop you off at the school gate, the first year school, and they they see that data again, well, maybe they have another kid the next year to drop, parents weren't so involved, because they trusted the teachers, teachers believed in their mission that they had to educate a mind and, and that they had to love their children, the children that have been entrusted to them. Well, here in find in Canada as a parent, because I'm also a parent, I've put two sets of children through the education system...you have to be on top of it all the time. It's like a full time job. And so still, teachers have to see black kids, as their children and have to love them. I mean, it sounds simple, isn't it? Love your students? Because and in doing so, when you love them, then you're gonna say how can I make their lives richer? Well, you can get, you know, as you decorate the classroom, let's say a grade three classroom, you're going to decorate the classroom, right? With images that speak to the children, but images that speak to their experience some beautiful pictures of the diverse peoples of the world, so that your students can identify and they can feel proud...

Maureen Farmer

...and included.

Dr. Afua Cooper

Yeah. You know they'll say, oh, you know, my grandmother's from Jamaica and, and she makes curry goat or oxtail, or patties and, or whatever it is, you know, a seven year old is so proud when, when they can talk about their heritage, whatever the heritage is, indigenous, black, Canadian, whatever the heritage is. And they just leave school that day, and they're on top of the world. You know. So it begins early. When I was teaching at the University of Toronto, had a young man in my class, he is now a PhD, and he is now a lawyer. He was one of those he did a PhD and a law degree. And when he was doing undergraduate at the time, and he said to me, you know, everyday I wish, I think I'm going to go back to my high school and tell that particular teacher that he was wrong. Because he said, Professor for a year, that teacher told me I would never amount to anything. Some people should not be teaching. And he said, I want to go back and tell him, I'm at this university, I'm gonna graduate with a BA and I'm going to go to law school. Black children get that message all the time. They put them in those classes, the IPP classes, where the standards are low, they don't expect much from them. And because again, this belief in black inferiority. Where did that belief come from? You know, when we see all across the black world, black people striving and thriving and inventing, and they're scientists and technologists, and medical researchers and historians.  And so we have to love our children. And when we let love be the guide, when this whole issue of racism will disappear.

Maureen Farmer

Yes, indeed. In terms of the world of organizations and corporations, how do you see CEOs and Boards, supporting these same types of initiatives in our organizations today?

Dr. Afua Cooper

Right, exactly. In, in the recruit, when you go out recruiting or wanting to recruit people to your organization, you have to recruit from a wide pool, a wide pool in terms of gender, race, sexuality, religion, and so on. And you have to believe that when a person puts in his or her resume, that they're qualified, that is a qualified person, whatever the the ethnic background of that person, this person is qualified, you want an engineer, a black engineer puts in her resume, that person is qualified. So you, you may hire that person. But there's another challenge in hiring that person, how are you going to make that person feel included in the organization? So it's one thing to get the diverse pool and to show, hey, we are diverse, we have, you know, these people across a wide range of, of ethnicities and age groups, etc. How are you going to make them feel included. So what we know in many companies, including academic institutions, is that after a few years, some of these diverse people leave, because they do not feel included, they do not feel a part of it. Sometimes they are overburdened, all the work is piled on their desk, for example. So the challenge is the in the inclusion piece, how to make these diverse peoples feel included, they have to be able to think that I'm not just working for this organization, I am a part of this organization. I'm contributing my skills and talents to this organization. You know, I'm invested in this organization.

Maureen Farmer

So how does that happen? Then? how do organizations do that on a daily basis? What what practices will help people feel more included? I know, it sounds like a simple question. But I'm here thinking, how would I do that? Aside from treating everyone, as I'm being and have the humanity, right acceptance and have an equitable distribution system for work? But how else would someone do that?

Dr. Afua Cooper

Yes. So let's listen to the opinion of your your staff or your worker, if you have an issue, if there's a problem that you're trying to solve, and your staff member has certain ideas, listen to that idea, not just the ideas of the the young white males, because the diverse person could have the solution to your problem. So that's one way. Another way, Maureen, I think of Muslim people who are in places of employment. And who pray, you know, a practicing Muslim prays five times a day. At least two of those prayers are going to take place at work. If you're in a physical workplace, I know what is most of us are made not most, but many of us are at home, but in the physical workplace. So you said okay, there's, the person will need just about seven minutes, five to seven minutes, a clean place, a quiet place, you may pray right there or under proper bathroom facilities for the person to meet their ablutions. Because if you make an ablution and you know, wash your hands, etc, wash your mouth, and then you make the prayer three to five minutes. So provide a space and I brought this up because I do know that this has become an issue for some places of work, where Muslim people are saying they do not respect us. I just asked for five minutes to do a prayer. There is no clean space. I was told I couldn't do it. So So provide something as simple as that. During the month of the fast Muslim fast for one month, 28 days during the month of Ramadan, be aware of that. We are weird, you have some Muslim workers, they're coming in and they ate at breakfast time. Just before it is the sunrises and they will not eat or drink during the day. So just to have that awareness that this person is fasting, right. And because we not, we're now in a multicultural society, it's not a cookie cutter situation anymore. We're not all white, male, Anglo Saxon, Protestant, whatever, there are people coming in who are Hindus, Jewish Rastafarians, and when you are able to use the talents and use the talents effectively of all those talented people that you have, then you're gonna have better results, people are going to be happier and your your company is going to perform wonderfully. So those are just some some of the ways to make people feel included. There's also I'm also thinking about, you know, the Friday evening get together after work. So, typically, you know, people go to the pub, and they kind of unwind. Well, not everybody does that, because not everybody. That's true. That's right. That's really not and don't hold it against someone if they said, Well, I won't come to the public, you guys. Or if they do come to the pub, they order a ginger ale, respect that. And this may sound like, Oh, that's so simple. Of course, they don't have to drink. But sometimes people get sort of offended if you don't do what they do. And so much, you know, a lot of promotion, well, I wouldn't say a lot, but sometimes advancement and promotions, it's it. Rest on networking, yeah. So if you're going out to the pub, if you're going out to play golf, and if people are not involved or you know, sort of locked in to those to those streams, then they may not get the promotion that they deserve. And they may not get that letter of recommendation, or they may not be spoken highly of. So the old way of networking is it doesn't work for many people come in from diverse communities, they just don't have the background, they just don't have that kind of genealogy. And so we have to be aware of of those things.

Maureen Farmer

100% Agreed. So, it's thinking about innovative ways to develop relationships in organizations that don't include exclusively going to the golf, the golf course, or are in the pub or the pub or whatever it might be. So I think that that's a challenge for organizations organizations to to create those opportunities, and maybe, maybe have the employees figure it out. And exactly involve them in the solution, or the solution, not because it's not a problem, but in to create an opportunity for inclusion to happen for everyone, because that's what inclusion is all about.

Dr. Afua Cooper

Yeah, exactly. And you know, it is a commitment. And commitment requires work. If we're saying it can't be the same old, same old anymore, then we have to work toward creating, and being committed to that work—toward creating the kind of work environment that we want and the kind of society that we want to build.

Maureen Farmer

It's so interesting. I've said this before, but I was in Dublin one time, and I saw on the side of a building on the way to the, to the hotel from the airport, it said, don't wish for it, work for it. And I think of that all the time. I think what a great saying and I think organizations can achieve anything if they put their mind to it. And I really believe in the work that you do. Dr. Cooper, it's been an absolute pleasure speaking with you today. And I want to say thank you so much for your leadership.

Dr. Afua Cooper

You're most welcome Maureen and thanks for having me.

Maureen

It's been my pleasure. And if anyone listening here today, if diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives are on your radar this year, reach out to Dr. Afua Cooper at info @ afuacooper.com. I'll spell her name: A F U A C O O P E R. Thank you again, Dr. Cooper, and maybe we'll get to do this again sometime.

Dr. Afua Cooper

Thank you and sure anytime!