Episode 4: Anti-Racist by Design: Research That Changes the Workplace

May 8

Systems, Psychology, and Real Change

What Happens When Workplace Policy Ignores Structural Bias?

You can't behavior-science your way out of a broken system.

Summary:
In this episode of Hard at Work, Ellen sits down with behavioral science expert and co-author of Anti-Racist by Design, Dr. Crystal Hall. Together, they dig into how public policy, psychology, and design thinking intersect with workplace equity—and what happens when structural racism is left out of the equation. This conversation dives into the blind spots of research, the limitations of well-meaning policy, and why truly equitable workplaces need more than good intentions. If you've ever wondered why workplace "fixes" fall flat, this one's for you.

Takeaways:

The System Isn’t Neutral
Much of public policy and workplace design assumes a "default" person—usually white, male, able-bodied, and middle-class. Dr. Hall explains how this erases the lived realities of many employees and reinforces inequality.
Behavioral Science Has Biases Too
Even the best research models often ignore race, gender, and power. Dr. Hall calls for more interdisciplinary approaches that reflect the actual diversity of people and experiences.
Data Can Hide Disparities
Workplace metrics can obscure who policies actually benefit. Looking at outcomes by race, gender, or ability can reveal whether your initiatives are really working—or just reinforcing the status quo.
Designing for Inclusion Requires Listening
Equity-centered design starts with asking different questions. It means co-creating with impacted communities, not just designing "for" them from a distance.
Good Policy Can Still Do Harm
Dr. Hall shares examples of well-intentioned workplace and public sector policies that missed the mark. The key? Pairing behavioral insights with a structural understanding of racism and inequality.

Notable Quotes:

"Policies are often built for ‘most people’—but who gets to be ‘most’ in that sentence?"
"You can’t fix a structurally racist system with surface-level interventions."
"We love a nudge. But sometimes you have to move the whole wall."
"If you don’t include race in your analysis, you’re not being race-neutral—you’re being race-blind."
"Designing for equity requires more than empathy. It takes redistribution of power."

Chapters:
00:00 – Introduction to Dr. Crystal Hall
02:45 – What Is Behavioral Science Missing?
08:30 – The Problem with "Race-Neutral" Design
15:10 – Data, Metrics, and False Assumptions
22:00 – Real-Life Workplace Examples of Equity Design
29:30 – How to Do It Differently: Listening, Power-Sharing, and Accountability
36:15 – Final Thoughts and Where to Learn More

Links:

Buy Crystal and Mindy’s book Antiracist By Design
Crystal’s LinkedIn page
Book website

Transcript:

Ellen Whitlock Baker (01:57.122)

Hello everyone. And welcome back to another episode of the hard at work podcast. I am so excited to have my wonderful friend, Dr. Crystal C Hall on the podcast today. Hi, Crystal.

Crystal Hall: Hello, thanks for having me.

Ellen Whitlock Baker: Thanks for being here. I am so excited to talk to you because Crystal and her colleague, Mindy Hernandez have written this fabulous book called Anti-Racist by Design. And you can see it behind Crystal too. And it is this wonderful exploration of what is going on with actual behavioral science and research techniques that are causing harm in some ways because people aren't taking into an account you know, racist structures and, and things that don't work anymore, which is the whole point of this podcast. And there are some really, really good tips that all of us can put into play. And so I'm just excited to talk to you and like hear a little bit more about, you know, why you got there, why you wrote this and what you're hoping to do, what people can take away. So buckle in, we're going to have a good time. All right. So to start out, just give us the 60-second Wikipedia: who's Crystal Hall.

Crystal Hall: Yes, so I am for the last 16 years now, I've been a faculty member at the University of Washington in Seattle in the School of Public Policy and Governance, the Evans School of Public Policy and Governance. And I'm trained as an experimental social psychologist. So my background is at this intersection of understanding the psychology of decision making and how that applies to the way we think about the design and implementation of public policies and most of that has been in the social policy space, but I've looked at other areas as well. And a big part of my work over the years has been working with governments from the local up through the federal government, nonprofits to help them think about how understanding the psychology of decision-making can help them improve the work that they do. And so that really sits at the core of my research, my teaching, and other ways that I engage in my scholarly communities. And because it's Wikipedia, and there's also always that little personal section, the other things to know is that I am a mom, which of course shapes pretty much everything that I do. have three kids, and I also just love the outdoors. And I think since having kids especially have been reflecting a lot on how we engage with the outdoors and how that relates to our institutions and our other systems in the world. So I think that's something that has been creeping into the way I think about my work as well.

Ellen Whitlock Baker: I love that. It's part of it. I mean, the environment you're in is shaping how you are acting in a workplace or what everybody has access to and all of the things that come with that. So I love that. Do you want to tell us a little bit about Mindy, who's your co-author?

Crystal Hall: Yes, thank you. Mindy is a very, very dear friend. I've known Mindy for a long time. She has a master's degree from the public policy school at Princeton University, where I got my master's and my PhD in psychology. And that's how we initially connected. were there at the same time. And she brings a slightly different perspective because she's not trained as a PhD, but does have a deep expertise in thinking about how behavioral science applies to public policy. And a lot of her work has been in the international development space. And so there are a lot of ways that we've really complemented each other. We have worked together in a couple different capacities. One of the most exciting ways was we led a training, a behavioral science training that was in South Africa that had folks from a handful of different countries from across the continent of Africa. And she's someone that I've just known for a long time, trusted and connected with, and also in so many ways, we compliment each other. And so I think when the opportunity came to write this book, which we can talk about, it was really exciting to really feel like Mindy was the right partner to do that.

Ellen Whitlock Baker: That's awesome. And I would love you to tell us about how you got to this book, because it's not necessarily a traditional, and I'm doing air quotes, academic book. It's really accessible.

Crystal Hall: Yeah, thank you. And having folks tell us that it is accessible has been like the biggest compliment to us because we we worked hard on that. So like I said, Mindy and I are really good friends. We've known each other for a very long time. We've worked together and we had an experience. This was in the summer of 2020 where we were leading a training and we got a lot of pushback from one of the experts that we brought in on how what we were teaching was really genuinely relevant given all of the big institutional factors that we know also matter, right? So why would we focus on individual behavior in psychology when we know that institutional racism, structural racism, for example, exists? it came at a time, of course, when as a country, really in the whole world, we were reckoning with this issue of racism in particular. And it really gave Mindy and I pause as we were debriefing because these were things that she and I had talked about occasionally and really felt as if we didn't have the power to do anything about it. And so we, that summer, started writing something that we weren't sure what it was gonna be, trying to just express how we felt about that experience and why we agreed, but also why we also felt like our field did have the opportunity to try to engage with these questions. So that ended up turning into basically an op-ed, a commentary piece for an outlet called The Behavioral Scientist. And that piece, when it was published about a year...

The following spring it was actually published very close to the first anniversary of George Floyd's murder that piece Caused a publisher to reach out to us and ask if we consider writing a book For anybody that has written a book or considered writing a book that is not the typical way that people fall into writing a book. Yeah offhandedly talked about this while we were doing the research on the commentary piece and that led to the process of all the other pieces of writing a proposal and making a lot of big decisions. And so it was a four and a half year journey to go from the seed of this idea, which really was, I think, pushed forward by that moment in 2020 where we really felt like maybe this was a time where people would be ready to hear it. And we are not where we thought we would be in 2020.

And in some ways it feels like, yeah, and in some ways it feels like the best time to have a book like this come out or depending on how you look at it, maybe the worst time. But I think we're both just really grateful that it's out in the world and just grateful for opportunities like this to be able to talk about it at a time when many are shrinking away from that. But of course, we can talk more about that.

Ellen Whitlock Baker: We'll get into that. was, I loved it because right at the beginning, you know, I was like, they did not come to play. Like that was in your preface, which I loved because it really explained why, you know, your, partnership and why you wrote this. you said as two women of color with decades of experience in this field, have witnessed the daily challenges of working in an environment that centers the wealthy white male perspective. And I was like, boom, they said it. I love it. Did that feel good to like just actually publish that and get it out there?

Crystal Hall: It did and you know there were so many moments where we really you know spent a lot of time thinking about the way we wanted to say certain things and when did we want to say it very plainly? When did we want to be a little more careful? I mean that was also true for some of the stories that we tell where we realize like you know the person who we wrote this about if they read this they're gonna know that this is them right or there are gonna be other people who are in the room that are gonna know and so it was really incredible to be at a place, I think, for both of us in our careers where we felt like, you know, whatever risk we were stepping into was worthwhile because, and I feel this so much more now as I've reflected and having conversations about the book right now, feeling like I am in a position, relatively speaking, in my career where I have the privilege, I have the safety to say some of these things. And I think, you know, it's not without some risk, but I know that for many of my colleagues, they're not in a position to do that for a wide range of reasons. And so, yes, it has felt great to say a lot of the things that we were able to say.

Ellen Whitlock Baker: It was great to read them.

Crystal hall: And it was hard to, you know, sometimes to find the language and to want to get it right. And I think there are sections that would look really different if we went back and rewrote them for this moment that we're in right now.

Ellen Whitlock Baker: I know there's a whole section on, I think something Obama put into place that requires institutions to have a DEI plan or I can't remember the exact language and I was reading it and I was like, no, it's probably gone now.

Crystal Hall: It'll come back. Yeah, unfortunately it is.

Ellen Whitlock Baker: Yeah. And maybe like, let's just take a minute and talk about that. it, it's such a time. And I ask you this because you have researched in the space, your psychology major, you you, you bring that into your work and people are feeling awful right now and scared. And the institutions that people with, you know, public policy degrees and lots of other people work with the federal institutions, the state, they're having some really hard times specifically with what you're addressing in this book, which is that like basically just acknowledging that the system is racist and not working, you know, and then trying to take those steps toward it. And now in many of those institutions, you can't even say it. Are you seeing the fallout with your colleagues and or friends that do work like you and what I don't know what to ask you because it's like, I don't know the solution, but you know what? What are you seeing and what are you hearing?

Crystal Hall: Yeah, it's, there's a lot I think. It's an important question and it's it's right it's the it's the like enormous elephant in the room right

Ellen Whitlock Baker: Right. I figure we should just name it.

Crystal Hall: For somebody that wrote a book with anti-racist in the title, It's there. Like, we have to talk about it. I think one thing I would say is it is really scary. Things are very scary right now. And I think for me personally, it's so much worse than I thought it would be. I did an event in December shortly after the book was released at the University of Washington, the Evans School hosted an event. And I talked about how while things felt scary, I had genuine optimism about how we could not take these drastic steps back. And it makes me really sad when I reflect back on that because it has been scarier than I think. many of us expected, certainly more than I expected. I worked in the first Trump administration. I worked with a research team and we had a couple projects that I was really proud of that had a big equity focus. And so I think what I would want people to know right now that I think applies to all of us is that our, you know, the core of what makes us a democratic society is under massive threat right now. And for me, being in higher education, we have been a very clear target and institutions in more liberal leaning states have been targets and people are really threatened both at the level of their individual livelihoods and for the science that they do and the work that they do. And so I would hope that anyone, no matter where you sit, recognizes that. In addition to there's a lot to pay attention to right now. And this is not the only thing that's under threat, but I do think as a society taking away the ability for...independent research and scholarship and evidence building to happen is going to impact all of us at some point, right? And so right now I see it in my colleagues who can't get jobs and grants and things like that. And so that's having a direct impact, but down the road that will impact all of us. And so I could spend an hour getting into the specifics, but I would just say that. And then the other thing I would say about the DEI piece of this, And this is something Mindy and I have been talking about a lot as we've been reflecting on the potential place that our book sits, is that to us, there's really two things about this book. so, and just to be clear for folks that aren't familiar with behavioral science or the book, in the book, we're really giving an argument for why we have to not take this race-blind, color-blind approach. to how we think about understanding decision-making often in the service of public policy. And I think that can go for other forms of diversity and equity as well, right? We can think about that when it comes to gender, we can think about that when it comes to religion, sexual orientation, there are all these places where we have to acknowledge the role that the systems treat different groups differently, right? And so what's important is that Our argument about anti-racism in particular, there's one way to think about that is like, this is this social justice woke doing diversity for diversity's sake. And I deeply believe in the social justice element of it. But what I believe equally is that we have to do this work to be effective in what we do more broadly. And so if we ignore the role of structural racism and I'm a nonprofit or a government entity trying to do whatever it is that I do, right, I'm going to run the risk of being wasteful with effort and money and time. And so that's been something that we've really been trying to underline is that this isn't about equity for equity's sake or whatever folks want to call it. It's about it's about being effective and in a world of scarce resources, it's irresponsible to ignore the reality that systems and institutions treat different groups differently and they experience different outcomes as a result. And this is something that's at the core of how I think about my research, what I teach in my classes, and what I think is most important about this book and I just worry that with all the fear that we're experiencing right now, that that will get lost. that I think, and again, this is not just respect with respect to our book, but I think more generally it, that is going to have big impacts if we, if we lose sight of the fact that we can't just treat everybody as the same because we have this myth that the world treats them all the same.

Ellen Whitlock Baker: Totally. it's so the point of this podcast. We talk about it a lot, which is that, I mean, at a slightly different level, but like in a workplace, everybody's different and they're showing up with different lived experiences and they have those differentiators in terms of race and gender and sexuality and religion and all of those things. And yet we treat them all the same and we expect everybody to, you know, take feedback in the same way and be reviewed in the same. And so it's, I feel very fancy because I have an actual researcher telling me that that's true. it's so true. And it also is just really, it's bananas to me that this hasn't been thought of sooner. You know what I mean? And especially in the research community, because my experience as I was a grad student in the Evans School and you really comb through what the variables are in any sort of equation you're doing to study something. And it's bananas that the structures themselves and how they are different for different people never has been thought of.

Crystal Hall: And I think, you know, I think from my perspective as a researcher, when I look at the field of behavioral science, I feel like it's been a place where we know, but we feel like it's not really, it's not our place. Like we do this one thing and if we do this well enough, we can learn enough so that we don't have to think about this other big hard scary, difficult thing, right? And so I don't know the extent to which that's the right explanation always for why we do that, but I would certainly say in my field, it just feels like, we don't have the space to do it. And so it's been hard because I think what we did in this book was like, we took a hard look at like our own work and we use a lot of examples about the things that we've done wrong and how we would do them differently. And so it..You know, as a psychologist, like we know, we like to take the, you know, the shortest route between A to B and when we make it complicated by adding in these big, tricky, complicated issues, right? It's, it's just, we don't want to engage. It becomes, it feels harder.

Ellen Whitlock Baker: Well, and that's what so many people do now. And if you have the privilege to ignore everything that's going on and live in your little bubble, then you are wanting to do that. And so I love that there's some really practical takeaways here, which we'll get into that, you can start doing for yourself, those of you who are listening and as a manager and in your workplace, is absolutely, it's, very cool to have like science backed, you know, things to do. And that's what I really like about this too, is that, you you're, it's drawn on a lot of experience and a lot of thought about research. And I think it would be cool if you could give an example of one of those studies that you realized was compromised by not bringing that institutional inequity into it.

Crystal Hall: Yeah, so I'll give an example that is tied to some of my own work because I like to do this because I think especially when I'm talking to fellow academics, I think it makes them feel a little less threatened. And then I'll talk about another example that we unpack in detail in the book. So, and actually both of these come up in the book, but one of them is a study that I did with the federal government trying to understand a better way to identify students experiencing housing insecurity. And in school districts around the country, there is a requirement to have some staff person whose primary job is to find those students that are experiencing housing insecurity and help connect them with the services that they are eligible for because of their housing status. And it is a really difficult job for a lot of reasons that many of them are probably are pretty obvious. And what we did in this study was we went back and we looked at the existing communication that was sent out to these school districts. And we considered some psychology, behavioral science informed strategies to improve the communication. So we put them in emails, we changed the frequency with which they got them, we made them just easier to read. We did a lot of the typical things that we like to do in the field. And we did this across three states. So we had a very large sample and we found what we argued and what was published as a positive result where our improved communication when tested against the status quo, resulted in more students being identified and being presumably supported with these services. And so was a really exciting project. We got an academic publication out of it. But one thing that we didn't do was try to make sense of whether that worked across districts based on a wide range of demographics, right? One explanation could be that this just worked in general, no matter what the makeup of the individual educational units were, the groups of school districts. Another explanation could be that maybe it worked, it was more likely to work in districts that were of a certain racial makeup or had some other characteristics. And it was hard to...look at that very closely with the data that we had access to, but it's something that I think we could have had more conversations about. I think we could have had more conversations about could we follow up to try to understand when this was likely to work or not. And so we had a result that was exciting, but left a lot of questions as to what are the conditions under which an intervention like that would work. And that's really, really common in the behavioral science space. We have this big intervention, we roll it out, and then we say it worked or it didn't work based on what we find, but often not with a lot of digging to really try to understand for whom. And so that's one place where if I could go back, I would take some time to think about like, do we have anything that would tell us that we might need to look at some of these differences, right? And that might be something specific to race or something else, right? But we didn't take a lot of time to try to figure that out. The other example is also an example in the education space, but it's a little bit different. And we talk about this in the book as well. And these are studies that are designed to help improve the rate at which students apply for financial aid through the FAFSA. And there's great work showing that providing support makes it more likely that students complete the FAFSA and get access to financial aid.

Ellen Whitlock Baker: Especially the new version which broke everybody last year.

Crystal Hall: Right, exactly, exactly. And so, yeah, it'd be interesting to think about all that work now because this predates all of that. generally what was found was that, you know, this is helpful in increasing access to financial aid. But those studies don't look at are there racial differences in how that plays out? And more importantly, are there different downstream effects? Because we also know that students of color, for example, black students in particular, are less likely to finish school. And so one, again, one narrative is that this intervention is good for everybody and it increases access to post-secondary education, but that's gonna be a good thing across the board if those students are still just as likely to finish. Another narrative could be that you make it easier for some students to access aid, but then if the Black students are less likely to finish, they might be more likely to finish with a bunch of debt. And so this is nuanced and it goes a little bit downstream. It's an empirical question. We don't know if that was the case, but this work didn't look closely at that. And that's another place where thinking about what we what we know or what we might hypothesize about some of these differences might cause us to think a little bit differently about not only the way we designed some research, but also the way we might be a little bit more nuanced and how we talk about it. And so those are two examples. And with both of those, think one of the important things to keep in mind is that this isn't arguing that either one of those studies is bad or shouldn't have been done. It's really about the fact that they would hopefully raise other questions. And in the design of those studies would raise questions that we might think about, are there ways that we might try to get a little bit deeper and find a little bit more nuance?

Ellen Whitlock Baker: Mm-hmm. If you were going to go back and redo one of those with this different lens, what are some of the changes that you might make?

Crystal Hall: I think it would be great to try to do two things. And these are things we also talk about. One is find out if there are ways to get data so that you can disaggregate results. And then both of those, would say by race, maybe by social class, maybe by even thinking about students that live in like urban versus rural contexts, for example. And so thinking about are there ways to just get to get more of that nuance. And again, I should say in this type of work, this is not to say that we get none of that, but I think more would be better, right? Some of these, we get a little bit of that, think, but prioritizing that I think is important because the worst case scenario is you run the risk of exacerbating some existing disparity. And in this case, we're talking about racial disparities. The other thing that I think would be important is think about is there a place for qualitative research to help us understand? could you interview the staff members in a sample of schools that are responsible for trying to connect with these students experiencing housing insecurity? Could you talk to students going through the FAFSA process or their families or counselors to try to get a sense of is there a difference for certain groups that we might want to explore in more detail. So those are two, I think, are the big approaches that for many researchers could potentially be accessible to help them get more nuanced in understanding their findings.

Ellen Whitlock Baker: That's huge. That's huge. what I want to get into is the, mean, I think everyone needs to acknowledge how much that will change if allowed to continue, I guess, in this stupid time we're in, but how much that will change results over time. And it's this concept of sort of looking at downstream and following up and keeping the systems in mind as you are seeing how results play out. I think that's so interesting and also what we need to be doing everywhere. And it's the easiest thing to just like you were saying earlier, it's the easiest thing to be like, not gonna talk about that. It's too like, especially, I mean, since this podcast is a lot about work in the workplace, you're afraid to say like, anything that might get you labeled as, that's the person that always speaks up about blah, know. So I'm really happy to see this because it starts maybe in the research space and maybe it'll trickle down more into the other spaces or maybe it's the other way around. I don't know, but it feels like these conversations are happening and that's really important. So when we look at the things that people can do. There were some great, you have a great section in the back where you talk about practical application of what you wrote, which I almost fell over because you never see that in a book that's more research based. So I loved it or more academic, right? So again, this is not an academic book in total, but tell us a little bit about, know, okay, I'm listening to this right now. I work a nine to five job. What are some things that you learned or takeaways that you want to share that people can put into place right now?

Crystal Hall: Yeah, I think the one of the big things I would say is something that really emerged organically when we were writing the book that I think it was somewhat of a revelation to us in the context of just how we like, practically how we wanted to structure the book, but I think became kind of a good analogy for a big takeaway. And that is taking the time to prepare to do the work and to be really concrete about what are your goals? What are your blind spots? Like who's not in the conversation with you or who's not speaking up in the conversation? Like who is the subject of the assumptions that the people with power have to make? And so we structured the book to kind of mirror the typical process that researchers typically go through in this space to design and test an intervention. And we kind of added this, we started out by calling it step zero, which we call this prepare phase, which is about just pausing to say like, okay, what's our readiness? in this, again, in our book, we're talking about anti-racism, but I think it can apply to any other form of diversity or equity is just think about like, what is the goal? Like, what are we trying to do? And what are the lived experiences or the perspectives that aren't being represented? Who's making assumptions? Have we tested those assumptions? Where are our own biases? And I think if we took the time to do that, it would..that will trickle down into a lot of spaces. I think part of what's hard for people is sometimes we worry about doing the wrong thing, which is very natural. We worry about saying the wrong thing. But I think if we take the time to pause, that can happen. And I think in any workplace, like when you do that, it's gonna be different. But I think we all kind of know, right? If it's about hiring or if it's about like setting some strategic priorities. deciding how you're gonna allocate a scarce budget. Like there are these places where I think we have good intuition about where we need to do that, but it's hard, of course. But I think leaning into, okay, what's the hard work we need to do in this space? And to me, that's a big takeaway from the book, I think, as a whole. And...being ready to ask questions, like engaging questions and knowing where you can. And then like also sometimes like listening better when people try to tell you. Because sometimes we ask the question, but then we don't listen to the answer from the person we need to listen to. So I think this has been something that I've been really trying to think about in my own work. And this like even just comes down to teaching. I remember once years and years ago, I had a friend talk about how in their workplace they noticed that when there were small teams, the attention often went to the males. this person realized that it was because they were usually the ones that were speaking up. And at the time I was teaching the statistics class that I teach and the students do these small group projects. And I started noticing with myself that the same thing would happen. If I had a team come in and if it was a man and a woman, typically the man would be the one to speak and my body language would shift and I would look at, and we all naturally, right, we look at someone when they're speaking, but I realized like, this is a real thing that has when in this, you know, professional development experience for my students, I am reinforcing and essentially giving this little micro moment of professional development to this person because they're the one that starts asking the questions. And so I started really actively trying to remind myself to look at both people and to make eye contact and to ask both of them questions. And it was one of these things that I think it was really hard, but also because I...paused and thought about it for a little bit. It was something that I could identify and it was something that I identified that I could do that was I thought would have some impact.

Ellen Whitlock Baker: What a good example of that, like getting a little uncomfortable because you're like, I don't want to be the one who doesn't look at the woman, but realizing that you're doing it and changing that behavior, which is totally doable. And we often, we fear the uncomfortable, we fear change. so we just ignore it, which is horrible. And what you're saying is it's just making me think more and more. If, if there is somebody in a workplace who is a leader, and they are not doing that. They're not being curious. They're not making sure all of the voices in the room are being heard. They're not respecting the fact that everyone's gonna show up with that voice in a very different way, depending on how they're feeling about being in that particular workplace, which could feel more healthy or could feel very unhealthy. And it's just, don't like... No one has any business being in a leadership role if they can't do that. And yet that is not true. And it's so interesting because, you I think maybe it's because I live in Seattle, but I rarely am now in a room where it's like all the speakers are white men. It doesn't happen as much anymore. And so when I am, I'm like, is this? know, and It's so true because, and again, not all white men are the same and they're not all bad. And we've talked about that before in this podcast, but the, have watched panels recently where it's four men and a woman and she just gets steamrolled and it's awful to watch. And then you have this thought of like in 2025, how is that still happening? You know? And so there's this real change of mentality that has to occur and that people are resisting for lots of reasons, but it's just, that was such a good example, because it's small, but it's meaningful. And that might show up for you in other ways that you weren't even thinking about. And so now you're looking out for it and, know, I don't know. It just, feels like it's so hard to get the people who really need to hear that they need to change to hear that they need to change.

Because those are not going to be the listeners of this podcast, unfortunately. I probably will scare them away with my first sentence. So I guess maybe that leads to another question because we have been talking a lot about, I'm not a leader. I'm a worker in the workplace and I'm experiencing the effects of the patriarchy, structural racism, and all of these workplace norms that were developed from those places that still bear the -- What is that? DNA code? You know, they bear the DNA of how they were created. So what the heck can I do? I mean, I love this, like, okay, you can look in yourself, stop, listen, try to be really clear about what's going on. Anything else that would help the person who maybe doesn't feel like they have a lot of power to make change?

Crystal Hall: I think there's a lot that can happen at the level of our peers, right? And the way that we support the folks that we work with. And this is something that I think can also be hard to recognize. And this is something else that I think I often have this conversation with students is, it can be so easy to see the places where you don't have power, right? And often we are in positions where we don't have a lot of power. But I do think thinking about how can I support the people around me? And sometimes that can just be like noticing like, this looks like this thing is really hard for you in this way. And like, this is like just having people see and be seen, I think can be really powerful. And I think it's a way to cultivate empathy that requires quite a bit of mindfulness, but I think just that practice of that mindfulness can be really powerful. And just finding, because I do think that there are rarely places where there's nothing we can do, right? And again, this is not to downplay the fact that some people really are in positions of extreme oppression and don't have power. But I do think for many of us, if not most of us, we can find those places. Like where can we...Where can we make sure that somebody is seen? Where can we just acknowledge? And even sometimes just acknowledging like, wow, this person's experience of this might be really different. And like having some curiosity and just that ability to be engaged in a way that is coming from a place of wanting to genuinely learn and understand, I think, can be really powerful.

Ellen Whitlock Baker: That's such a good reminder because that makes even just the word curiosity, it's so much less scary to think of it like that, you know, rather than like, I have to take a stand and, you know, resist and I don't exactly know how, and maybe I'm not that political and, you know, but if it's just like, get curious about your coworkers and, know, I say, if you see something, say something, like if you see that someone is affected by something that's going on, find a time to talk to them about it. You know, or if you're seeing somebody perpetuate something against someone else, like telling a woman to smile in a meeting, take them aside. Say, don't do that. Don't do that.

Crystal Hall: Yeah, and sometimes it's, you know, I think what can be hard is, and I think we've all been in a situation where something happens in a moment. You don't respond. You think about it later. And there's this feeling of embarrassment of like, should have I should have said something. And maybe you don't feel like you have the power to go to the. Perpetrator. But, you know.

finding the courage to maybe go to the person that was impacted and say, I'm sorry I didn't say something in the moment or I wish that I could or I thought about it and I didn't. just being vulnerable in that place, I think can be really powerful. been in a, I can think of times when I've been in a position where something has been said and I have thought like, cannot believe nobody is speaking up about this. But then I've had people come up to me afterward. I've had people, you know, it's funny.

This is a little bit of a separate tangent, but I had multiple experiences during the course of writing this book of these like racial microaggressions that Mindy and I kept joking that we should put into the book.

Ellen Whitlock Baker: You did a couple, which--call them out.

Crystal Hall: There were couple. were a couple. I think about like I was once, mean, one of the themes, and I think this is like very much something that happens with Black women often in particular, not only black women, but you know, think Mindy's experience as somebody that is often white passing, we've talked about this a lot, but being in a place where somebody essentially thinks you're the help, right? And I was at a conference And it was so incredible in a certain way because I was literally working on the book. was at a conference and it was the last day of the conference and I was flying home and I was sitting in the middle of like a big hotel lobby. We've all been in these spaces, like big hotel lobby with like a, you know, generic Starbucks in the middle. And the hotel was kind of empty and I was sitting at a table. I had headphones on, I was huddled over my laptop and this older couple walks kind of in between. I'm at a table and there's an empty Starbucks kiosk and they walk in between. And this woman went out of her way to come and get my attention to ask me if I knew, like if I could like open the Starbucks. And I was.I was genuinely dumbstruck that I was like, wow, what is it about me that makes you think that I'm the one that's gonna I'm like on a laptop, I've got a suitcase next to me. I'm like, you know, clearly working. and of course, like, you know, and this is the thing about these interactions is like, you think like, you know, would that have happened if I was a white man? Would this person would have come and grabbed me to ask about the Starbucks? But what always is something that I I reflect on is when I have those situations and then the person apologizes and so I had another situation in Seattle once where I was Going to meet some friends for brunch and it was at a restaurant actually in my neighborhood where you go up and you write your name on a clipboard and it Hacked Saturday morning. I go up I write my name on the clipboard. I walk back outside I'm on my way to go back outside and a woman came up to me and said, do you know how long it's gonna be until I get seated? And I just, again, kind of stared at her and then I said, I don't work here. And she said, and she got embarrassed and I continued walking outside and then I'm grumbling to either my husband or my friends, whoever I was with. And to that woman's credit, she came outside, found me and said, I'm so sorry. I bet that happens to you a lot. I'm so embarrassed.that was not okay. And I was so grateful and that doesn't happen very often.

Ellen Whitlock Baker: No, because it's scary as hell. Yeah.

Crystal Hall: Right, and I think those are the things that we need more of right is people being able to say hey, I Messed up. I'm sorry. That was not okay. And I think if we could all Find the space to do that more like we would have different workplaces and different interactions with each other in the world

Ellen Whitlock Baker: I agree. I won't go into the details, but I've been in a situation where I've been the one sitting aside, just rolling right over that microaggression that somebody perpetrated on someone else, not even really realizing it in the moment. And then afterwards found out that one of the people I was with was deeply hurt and affected. And it's just this, it's this awful feeling. And I know that that first experience for me, it put me on my ass for so long. Like it affected me so much for so long. And a lot of that I'm now realizing is this white guilt and like all that stuff that I have to come to terms with. And so I guess I'm saying that to say, the first time you might realize that you have done something like that, it feels bad. It's not gonna feel good. It feels uncomfortable. You're embarrassed. You feel bad. You're like, shit, everyone's gonna think I'm X, Y, or Z. But what you're saying is, like what she did, how many of the people listening would have done that? I mean, that is, that takes balls or lady balls to come out and do that. And it wasn't hard, but she did it. And I think that that's, not to make her the hero of the situation, but it's that simple in some way. It doesn't fix it, make it better at all, but it does. It shows she learned.

Crystal Hall: And I would say that, you know, it probably was hard and that was, I appreciated it. And I think also this is another, this kind of goes back to what we talked about with this idea of preparing. Like we've all got these blind spots and we've all got these biases. you know, I was in a position recently where we were in a professional context talking about the extent to which people are or are not engaging with genuine and informed conversations about anti-Semitism and anti-Semitism in education. And that was a place where I teach a class on intergroup relations. I kind of, you know, dance around it a little bit. I don't feel like I'm somebody that has a lot of expertise. And so I avoid it. And having someone say, like, I bet many people don't even say the word. And I was like, that's me and that's not okay. And that's a problem. And so this was another thing. Now, before teaching this class, this year I made myself like sit down and think about, okay, how am I gonna raise this? Because this is not a moment to me in history where I can teach a class on intergroup relations and its relevance to public policy and ignore that. so, you know, we've all got these places where we have work to do. And so I think that can be another piece that we can gloss over, right? And thinking that like, it's like, you know, that there are some of us who things only happen to us and we get like, we don't get it all, nobody gets it all right. And everybody's got their biases and their blind spots and it's about recognizing it and figuring out how you do the work in a way that's appropriate.

Ellen Whitlock Baker: Yeah, not drowning in the shame, you know, because you can. And ultimately that's weirdly protective of you in a weird way. Okay, I want to say on page 83 to 84 of the book, I wrote it down and we'll put a link to all of this in the show notes, but there's a great checklist for good anti-racist practices, which I thought was one of the great takeaways from this. And it's just what we were talking about, but it's like, things like acknowledging the privileges within the team and, you know, intentionally recruiting BIPOC staff and partners, which I think people are trying to do and or are checking the box that they're doing the things that are supposed to be. Actually, that's exactly like what you're talking about. It's like, OK, well, I will advertise this job. This is how it worked, you know, even at the U.W. when I worked there. I will advertise this in a network for women of color.

I'm not going to look at the job description. I'm not going to look at the qualifications. I'm not going to look at how our entire team is white. And if I bring in a person of color, it's going to be a really interesting experience and maybe not safe for them because we don't know what we're doing. There's just so much nuance in that. And I think that's, I just had this epiphany. That's exactly what you're talking about here in the sense of, okay, maybe that was an intervention that somebody came up with that, okay, well, if we show this job to more women of color, then more will apply and we'll have a more diverse workforce. And it's just not that easy.

Crystal Hall: Yeah, yeah. And this is actually the place where I think the field that I'm in and the work that people like me do can be a tool for helping us understand like what are the interventions that work? And when we think about wanting to create the most effective dynamic workplaces and workforces, like what are the right tools to do that? Because it is, it's an important question about, you know, whether expanding the pool, like is that ever gonna be enough? Is it about, you know, I mean, it's probably about all of the above, right? How we engage with people when they're a candidate, how we onboard them, how we check in, like there's all these things and I think there's a lot of potential to do good behavioral science to understand like what does work in these spaces and what is, you know, to do that, we have to be able to define success, which can be hard. But I think that the reality is that a lot of these big systemic things they do, and this is how Mindy and I make the connection. A lot of these big systemic things play out in these very specific patterns of individual behavior. that finding those connections and then finding how to explore those is one, it's not the only tool, but it's one tool for trying to make progress.

Ellen Whitlock Baker: Hmm. Yeah. And I'm thinking too, if you are an HR person or someone who has worked to try to make a hiring system more accountable, more anti-racist, I know you're trying. I mean, this is no, no shame on the people that are trying really hard to make changes in the system. And the system just doesn't allow it in so many cases. And I think about giant institutions like UW where there, and it's a state institution, so there's all these rules about equality, which is not how it works. And so just to say, if you're listening to this, I know a lot of people are trying and I know sometimes it just feels like you're banging your head against a wall, but I'm hopeful that with more research like what you're talking about, at that sort of public policy level, maybe those institutions, maybe not right now, but maybe those institutions will start changing and it might be easier to make change. So here's hoping. And I know just to bring in the realness, Crystal's got two kids to get to sports activities because not only is she a badass researcher, teacher, amazing person, she's got kids to take to games. So we're all real people here. I'm gonna ask you my final question on that note. If you were gonna give a TED talk on anything that is not about your work, what would it be and why?

Crystal Hall: I love this question and I've been thinking about this question so much and it's so hard for me because I do genuinely feel like everything is so interconnected.

Ellen Whitlock Baker: In your work particularly.

Crystal Hall: In my work. So it's gonna connect back a little bit but one of the tangents, we'll call it, that I took was about, wow, now maybe 10 years ago I did a very intensive yoga teacher training and was teaching yoga for a little bit on the side and that experience was really powerful.in terms of giving me this other way to think about just my own mental health and self care and how I show up in the world. And to me, like yoga was the gateway to thinking about mindfulness more generally. And I like to think of yoga as a way to practice mindfulness. And there are a lot of ways to practice mindfulness. And as I get older and a lot of things begin to feel more complicated and maybe things only start to feel more and more complicated as you age. I come back to mindfulness a lot. had a period early on writing the book where I was just really dealing with some like very, very severe anxiety and mindfulness, a meditation practice was really what helped me come out of that with the help of my very excellent therapist who is thanked in the book. yes, yes. yeah, actually it's, I will say my, my therapist, my acupuncturist, my naturopath and my boxing coach are all, are all in the book because they are my very important part of my support.

Ellen Whitlock Baker: Love that. We love therapists. Look at you being a whole person.

Crystal Hall: And so I think if I was going to give a TED talk, I think it would just be about the fact that mindfulness isn't just about sitting and meditating. It's about a lot of things. so I really love movement. I'm training for my third triathlon in a couple of weeks. And the joy that I find in movement and being really mindful in my movement has been such an important tool for me. And I think that's something that I wish that I could share with like every whether it's like whether you like running or lifting weights or boxing or like all of the above. Just like finding ways to find mindfulness in our day to day. I think is just like such a game changer on so many levels. And again, it's simple and really hard at the same time. But it is I wish more of us could do it and find more space to just continue to cultivate that kind of practice.

Ellen Whitlock Baker: I've recently rediscovered yoga and it is game changing, just game changing. the way that it's your body, your mind, it's all that somatic work that is connecting it all. And it's connecting to sort of what season we're in. when we were in winter, we didn't do as many active poses because we're in hibernation mode and just kind of connecting to the earth in a way that is super cool. So I love that. Well, thank you so much for joining me today. I really appreciate it. And I hope that everybody does well at their sportsing tonight.

Crystal Hall: Thank you. This has been such a fun conversation and thank you for supporting the book and Mindy and I were so grateful.

Ellen Whitlock Baker: I can't wait and I will put a link to where you can buy it, in the show notes, but also Crystal, where can people find you if they want to learn more about you?

Crystal Hall: Yes, if you want to learn more about me, you can find me on LinkedIn, which is the like always the generic professional way to do it. you can connect with me through there or through the the Evans School. I'm very easy to find and always happy to chat with folks about this work.

Ellen Whitlock Baker: Awesome. Well, thank you so much and thanks for listening everybody and we'll see you soon.