SUMMARY KEYWORDS

people, community, information, conversations, journalists, privilege, realized, narratives, journalism, talk, book, seattle, supposed, access, work, happen, city, black, folks, feel

SPEAKERS

Sherrell Dorsey, Amber Cabral

Amber Cabral 00:00

Three. Privilege is all around you. It shows up in your clothes, where you live, the places you frequent, your network capital, and even how you spend your money. It’s useless until you recognize it. So it’s time to stop feeling guilty and figure out how to use your privilege to make an impact. Welcome to guilty privilege. Welcome back to another episode of guilty privilege. My name is Amber Cabral, and today I’ve had the privilege of speaking to shirelle Dorsey. She is an author, a journalist and a podcast host, and also I am fortunate enough to call her a dear friend, and I can’t wait for you to hear this conversation where we delve into some of the things that I think are really connected to equity, as it relates to burnout, as it relates to being an entrepreneur, and specifically equity and access to information. Can’t wait for you to tune in. Hey Cherelle,

Sherrell Dorsey 00:57

hey Amber.

Amber Cabral 00:58

I am so happy that you’re here.

Sherrell Dorsey 01:00

I’m so fortunate to be here with you.

Amber Cabral 01:02

You know, everyone keeps saying that they are also fortunate to be here, and I’m not sure exactly why people are saying that, but I’m grateful that all of y’all said yes, because seriously, a lot of the conversations that have been going on in these podcasts have been about things that I don’t think we think critically about, and that’s why I’m also really excited to talk to you, and that’s why I’m excited to be here, because as long as I’ve known you and followed you in your work, you have been a deeply critical thinker about very heavy topics that seem to get a lot of, like social media spin and sound bites, but you are willing to go deeper. Yeah, even when it’s hard to on, you know, platforms where information can be ephemeral. And so to be here, it’s like, okay, we get to go deep. We do and that’s exciting. We get to talk about the real stuff. And so I want to start first with a little bit of your past work, and just touch on some of the experiences that you’ve had already, and then I want to talk about some things that you are working on and have coming up, because I think that’s really exciting and important work. But first, let’s talk about information. So you are a journalist, it’s in your bones, and as a result of that, you’ve been really committed about thinking about how people have access to information, and specifically in the tech world, right? How are we making sure that there is access to information about the inequities that can exist in the tech world? Can you talk to me about why you decided to take that on, like, what made that your focus area?

Sherrell Dorsey 02:38

So I realized I was afforded a lot of privileges. And you know, I do come from a very humble background. I was raised in Seattle, single parent, and yet I had this richness of community around me, and part of that community, including my grandfather, who we lived, you know, black people always say, Oh, they stay down the street. So, you know, he was down the street, and was someone who had really worked himself up from the bottom, you know, leaving Detroit in the 50s, moving to Seattle, you know, living at the YMCA, you know, working as an aircraft technician at Boeing and, you know, building this life where eventually he was able to purchase computers for me and my cousin, yeah, you know, gang Growing up a single parent household, even though my mom, you know, did pretty well, some of those extras were not always in the budget, right? And so having access to a personal computer at home in the computer room, because there’s always a computer room right in the computer room, in the mid 90s, as the internet was starting to emerge, that really set a a a precedent for the way in which I access information and opportunities. And the community which I came from was always about the curiosity of learning and getting, getting access to, whether it was internships or, you know, outings, access to like the Science Center or the performing arts. And so as I started to advance in my career, particularly within technology, I recognized going into environments where there were less privileged folks and folks who were dealing with some of the everyday struggles and challenges of operating in systems and in structures and and in cities that were quickly erasing them, whether it was through physical development of housing or entire neighborhoods that were in the heart of cities that now that the suburbs were no longer it placed to be they were being completely erased, history pushed out. And as I would sit in these environments, I recognized that the access to information was very limited. It didn’t matter that folks had a smartphone, it didn’t matter that folks could use Google. The literacy was not there around how to leverage these tools to find opportunity. And I realized and recognized that all of the literature and. Journalism was hyper, hyper focused on deficit, narratives on people being a problem, on this like poverty porn, yes, that people were funding right? Like we could always have money to do a study on how economic mobility traps people in poverty. But no one was talking about the opportunities that were taking place with people who were volunteering to teach computer science in some of the local schools, and how maybe parents or guardians or grandparents or foster parents could help their kids get into some of those programs and journalism, I fundamentally believe even before going to journalism school is supposed to be in service to the public. It is, and yet the information access has been just wrought with just heavy language and intimidation. Yeah, right. I remember I lived in Newark, New Jersey for about three years, while I was going to school at fit in New York. And I remember this was before downtown Newark went through his transformation. And there was this one family that opened up a restaurant. It was a beautiful, like Louisiana style restaurant. They actually happened to be from Seattle, by way of Louisiana. And I remember going into that restaurant and watching people pass by and look in the window and not decide to come in. And the owner was a family owned restaurant. He would go outside and hey, you know, Why don’t y’all come in? You know, we’ve got all kind of great entrees and what have you. And him, you know, people distinctively saying, like, that place is too fancy for me. Wow. And when we look at the way in which we have positioned mobility in this country, we’ve created this, like, fourth wall that’s prevented people from feeling like, I also get to have access to that, that it’s only for a certain group of people. It’s

Amber Cabral 06:50

like a silent, unspoken, this isn’t for you. It’s like that feeling you get when you walk into a store and you’re like, oh, they think, I can’t shop here

Sherrell Dorsey 06:57

Exactly, yeah. And a lot of that is definitely put out there by, you know, the structures by designed, you know. And even when I had first started off in writing and in journalism and even doing PR for, like, exclusive and luxury fashion brands, the language was about being discriminatory, exclusive, yes, not available, right? And I knew that the kind of journalism I was being led to do was about giving people opportunity for their curiosity, to help them navigate whatever journey they needed to navigate. And I didn’t intend to become a storyteller. It just became part of who I was, I think, over time, as I started to look at my life and I looked at the opportunities I was afforded, the people who poured into me, who paid for like my debutante classes, who bought my computers, who literally came together and bought my laptop for college. It was this story. I had this unique story of everyone pouring into me to give me whatever their version of access was and I felt that, okay, I can’t do that for every single person on the struggle bus. It’s true. But if I can, through my work, through storytelling, by highlighting community, people who I thought were heroes in their own right, or were doing substantial and incredible things just by being regular everyday people. Yeah, then, by way of that, perhaps who somebody might click into an article, maybe they might read it in their newspaper, and they can pass that information on, and maybe that changes their trajectory. Yeah,

Amber Cabral 08:34

we underestimate to the accountability that journalism should be having. So it’s not, it’s not supposed to be the poverty porn. It’s not supposed to be just the narrative that tears people or cities or ideas down or what’s detrimental. It’s also supposed to be the thing that gives people information about where they can aspire or how they should be preparing, or, you know, potentially, what it is that is on the way, you know, like things like that. And I do think that journalism, specifically, when we are looking at data around black identities, does end up being about the detriments, what’s missing, why we don’t have enough? You know, almost like this, explaining away of why there are these gaps, instead of actually leaning into the actions, the ideas, the perspectives, the resources that are going to help people to figure out where they would like to be in the narrative and make different decisions along the way. So I do love that. That’s one of the things I feel like you did do really well with the plug. Was it wasn’t Hey, look who’s not doing a great job again. It was more like, here are all of the ways that we are winning, and we should also talk about this. And I think that that’s really critical, because to me, highlighting where people are failing doesn’t inspire them to do better. It

Sherrell Dorsey 09:51

makes it feel like there’s this impossible maze, yeah, and system around us that we will never escape. And yes, on the surface, that is. Very true in so many different ways, in the levels in which American good, old fashioned American racism has shown up in this in this country. But there’s also a lot of narratives that haven’t been shared, and that’s by default. Yeah, that’s by that’s by default, and that’s also by design. And so when I look at the level of missing stories, it comes down to the lack of diversity in newsrooms alone. Absolutely. When I’ve spoken to veteran journalists, black and brown and they were told by their editors they couldn’t go and report on communities that look like them because they were afraid of bias, I legit almost dropped out of graduate school at Columbia because I got into a fight with a professor in an ethics class. And there’s this whole notion that some people believe journalists should not vote because you can demonstrate a bias. And as journalists, you’re supposed to remain objective, which is absurd, because we’re not robots, and also objective, in and of itself, is subjective to Absolutely, there’s no there’s no one holds the truth on what adjectives correct. We’re all coming to this with biases, which is also why we have different kinds of platforms. And I, I just kind of had to stay and so, like, no, well, you know, my grandfather was paying taxes and building this country right at the in his 30s, and I think at the time, I went to grad school at like 30. So I was, like, in his 30s and did not have a did not have the privilege of or the right to vote in this country. I better believe I will be at every singing single voting booth, yeah, because you all can say that in a way that I can’t right, and that is a disservice, exactly. And so when we look at who has held information, and why, why? Why? When we think about civil rights movements, when we think about the Jim Crow era, when we think about Ida B Wells, B Wells, her entire business, her newspaper business, was burned to the ground, yeah, when we look at the Tulsa massacre, correct, we didn’t learn as a country about the Tulsa massacre until two years ago. Exactly that happened in what 19, exactly one, exactly what was the first thing they hit. They hit the local public publishing press, right? And the editors and journalists had to flee for their lives so that they could, they could, they could actually live. That’s right. And so when we think about the control, the control of information, and how the details of history and the details of covering communities whose stories don’t get to be told because they’re not usually the ones in power, we remove the narratives that showcase how substantial we truly are. Exactly Tulsa business owners, business builders, there’s so many instances of the bombings and the removal of black and brown in native innovation, right? That did shape this country, even when we look at like the Chinese and the railroads and the entrepreneurship that shaped this country and helped groups of

Amber Cabral 13:15

people like New York, literally a model of exactly that, the great

Sherrell Dorsey 13:20

city, absolutely. And so when you think about the depth in the the bloodshed, the literal bloodshed of controlling information and controlling access, yeah, the you know, they they call, you know, they call. You know, journalism is part of, you know, the the, the you know, the estate, and so all of it is so relevant, and we’ve, we’ve neglected to understand the difference between media and journalism, yes, and there is a difference. There’s a difference because journalism is media, but not all media is journalism, that’s right. And there’s definitely a significant threat, you know, and there’s also this resurgence in like local news and storytelling. But I think that overall, being able to uncover and to have these conversations out loud, and the work that me and my team did at the plug was really started with this idea of that, like my grandfather gave me my first computer right he worked at Boeing for $2.38 an hour, and 10 years prior to him even having the opportunity work at Boeing, because companies like Boeing and IBM and Jason, they had policies that were like, do not hire black workers. Do not hire any people of color, any immigrants, none of that and like, like, don’t be gay. Don’t be like. When they changed that, there were still only certain jobs, still only certain jobs, yeah, exactly, exactly. But 10 years prior to my grandfather coming there, they had changed that policy, and there were black women stenographers who they had their own little group. Yeah. And they were among the first people, first women, first black women, to be hired in such a role, yeah. And unless you happen to be doing that research, you would not have known their stories. Yeah, you don’t just like we didn’t know the stories of Katherine Johnson and the women of the black women of nasty Exactly. So imagine the work that journalists have to do to keep uncovering because there’s so much hidden treasure in this country that we now have the tools to tell that story exactly.

Amber Cabral 15:31

I hope you’re enjoying today’s episode, and if you happen to also be looking for tools to help you navigate tough conversations, to be able to show up as a more impactful ally, or just to have resources about how to navigate equity in your world. I’ve written two books. My first book is called allies and advocates, and this book is really focused on helping you show up as a more impactful ally. It has actual tactics and tips and things that you can practice to help you get there, both for yourself and for others. My second book is called say more about that now. Say more about that is more about helping you to speak up, to push back, to challenge, to be able to have those conversations that sometimes get a little bit difficult. And in fact, I’ve given you actual scripts to help you to be able to do that. So if you’re interested in just having a few extra resources in your pocket to be able to help you to navigate any of those things, you can go pick up those books, anywhere where you buy books, or you can pop down into the show notes and click the links and buy them there, back to the episode. So I want to honor that you shared all of that history with us. I think two things are true. One, a lot of us are not taught history, and so we don’t have awareness that it’s existing. And then when we do get it, it’s given to us in a way that is not rich. So it’s hard for us to connect to the idea that I should know about, you know, the Chinese railroad men. It’s disconnected for me that I should have a good working knowledge of how, you know, the first group of folks that moved to Detroit worked, you know, in the plants, it’s not, you know, like that kind of gets missed, because we don’t always connect the history to how we build the country. And I think that’s one of the jobs that journalism does really well, that sometimes the way we learn history doesn’t do well. And so the stories get lost, and people pass on and, you know, things end up being uncovered later, after something like George Floyd happens, and suddenly, now everyone is like, but wait, you should know these things, and we prioritize that. So I’m really grateful for journalists, because I recognize that that’s a job that is a part of that to your point, that’s not media, that is journalism, and so I’m glad you made the point to highlight that in the work that you did at the plug. Because, I mean, honestly, I don’t know where my team would have gotten data on what’s happening in black tech, right? Like real measurable, here’s what’s actually happening. The reports that you have do not have this part. And so that was valuable to us, because as we were having conversations with clients and helping them, you know, them to set goals and prioritize what areas of their business they needed to recruit differently, right? We didn’t always have the data. And I can’t also be a researcher and run the company and do Hrn, etc, right? I have to be able to rely on a source of information. So for me, you. Thank you.Thank you. Very helpful. I mean, I needed that. So you wrote a book. I did. So for those of you who don’t know, shirelle wrote a book. It’s called upper hand. Okay, maybe yes. And this, this here, please go out and grab your copy of it. Can you tell us which I feel like you gave us some hints in what you just shared with us. Can you tell us about this book? Yeah.

Sherrell Dorsey 18:40

I mean, it really is about giving people access to information and insight on how the country is moving forward. I’ve had the privilege of being in spaces and in environments where all the latest and newest technology and the newest jobs, all of those things, I’ve been so privy to where technology is going to create new kinds of disparities in this country? Yes, unfortunately, all of the conversations on what happens to people who haven’t been skilled or educated appropriately, those conversations happen in silos. Yes, they happen in policy rooms and with researchers and PhD researchers and all of this great academic language and like no shade to anyone, but no one’s actually sitting down with folks at their dinner table, right? Saying, here’s how we can create, here’s what’s coming a strategic plan, right? It’s always about that deficit language that we spoke about earlier, right? And so I purposely named this book upper hand, because everything was about, how do we not get left behind? Yes, how do we make sure that, like you know we are, we survive? And I thought that if you had a toolkit to help you navigate this new world and you can, you can work on exercises with your family, you can host discussions. I did an entire chapter on the back end about the jobs that were. Coming, the salaries, some of the prerequisites, I also talk about some of the certifications, because not everyone will be going to college, that’s right, and not everyone can afford college based on what these in, you know, these inflation Tory insulation rates. But there are companies and organizations that provide certifications, and I realized that not everyone’s gonna go and do that research themselves, but if you give them some kind of a guide and an opportunity, yeah, that they can digest, then they can share this and spread this within their communities. So that’s why I wrote upper hand. It was like consolidating my years of work and learning and wanting to make it accessible to that grandmother that is never gonna go become a coder, but maybe she’s raising, you know, her teenage kids, and that’s actually, I partly dedicated this book to Ms Smith, who I met at the bottom of a church basement, who was raising her grandson was 17, and she’s like, you know, I know he needs to be in technology. I have no idea how to get them there? Yeah, and she was coming there for some solutions to this conference. I was speaking on the panel for some solutions. And she’s like, I don’t She’s like, I’m raised. I’ve been raising him. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know where to go, you know? I don’t know what city resources are available. And I said, You know what? I don’t want to write a book to sound smart for other smart people. Yes, I want to. I want to write a book for for folks who have been overlooked in this conversation and who have the wherewithal to ask for help. Yep, and they have the the drive in the nobil of, you know, wanting their next generation to do even better. Yeah, and they just need a little help along the way. And so that was why I decided upper hand was going to be, you know, my my level of service to this community.

Amber Cabral 21:48

So one of the things that I love about you is that you are always thinking about community like you have a heart for the world. And I mean, like the literal world, the planet you have, you know, ways that you demonstrate that, like in the behaviors that you do in terms of sustainability, you know your purchasing power, how you spend your dollar, is always with the thoughtfulness of what is the impact of this spend. But you also have a really big heart for community, like it’s not just about me. What happens when I make this decision to this community? How am I potentially going to shape the experience for someone else later? And so this, to me, this book, is you in that sense, like your ethos, your way of being, everything I’ve ever known about you from the moment we’ve met has been, how can I make sure that all this wonderful stuff I got, I get to spread it around, so that folks get to take what they need? So I love that. Yeah, I love that you do that. And so let’s pivot a little bit from that point, because we’re friends. I know you are on a journey. You are you are on, to quote your podcast, a road to reinvention, shout out to Epic networks. And I know that you are, you know, confronting a few different topics, one of which I’m going to lean into specifically, but I’d love to hear from your own words, what, what’s this road to reinvention? About what is the pivot that you’re in right now?

Sherrell Dorsey 23:09

You know, I always thought that reinvention was about becoming the next version of myself, as though it was something new, yeah, but I realized the more that I’m on this journey, I’m returning back to who I truly am. Oh, I love that. And I think that life will beat out of you some of those rough edges. Yeah. And then as you decide to come back to yourself, they’re smoother edges. They’re still edges, they’re still there, but they’re a little smoother. And I think, you know, it was like, first, you know, leaving Seattle, like, very granola, very like hippie Seattle, like, and going to New York, lot more cosmopolitan, refined, you know, you know, I was in a fashion oriented school, like studying business, and you had to show up a certain kind of way, you know, moving to the south and like that culture in the way that, like, women are supposed to be, right? It was like, I was just loud and liberal, and I’m like in an environment where

Amber Cabral 24:04

I do not like that is not

Sherrell Dorsey 24:06

necessarily like acceptable. And so I felt like I’d always been an outsider, the way that I even built being an outsider and as I’m reinventing myself and realizing that, you know, some of the narratives that were given around how to be, you know, a girl, boss, or, you know, how to do life, and, you know, and partner, and all of these things, I realized, like, I am a very interestingly unique individual, and it is totally fine for me to take some of the things that I See and there’s, and then I can also, like, give some away, right? And or just decide this is not for me. This is not in alignment with who it is that I am. So my reinvention is partly, of course, like deciding that, you know, the plug needed to say goodbye. You know, we did some phenomenal work, absolutely. We did the work we set out to do. I wanted to tell the stories and narratives of black innovators, and I wanted to create the data around that, right, so that people like yourself, like I didn’t build it thinking that, Oh, someone in de and i is going to leverage this to help teach and train. I literally was just like, Huh? I wonder how many black owned co working spaces exist in the world. Hmm. I wonder how, like, you know, the the diversity makeup of companies are in alignment with what they say, that their values exactly. And I could never imagine the ways in which having access to that information would influence various industries. And one day, I woke up and realized I don’t want to compete for just views and clicks anymore. I don’t want to play that losing game. I don’t want to sit on panels and have the exact same discussion. Yes, I built this to put this in the world, and my work is completed, yes, and it lives on. The people that helped me to build it up are now moving on to the next level of their careers, and there’s so much more in me that I want to see in this world and in my lifetime, that I have to get to work, and I have to create space for that, right? But I also have to create space for myself, yeah? Because I was, you know, in my most formative years, especially living in New York, it was Do or die all the time, go, go, go, always, Go, get the internship. I remember at one point in undergrad, I was working two jobs, an internship, and going to school full time and running like a blog, and it was just like, it still didn’t even feel like enough, right? And that mentality, it enabled and opened doors for me, yes. But I would hit these moments of, like, severe burnout, yes. And even after all of the things I’d accomplished, after all the stages, after all of the like, great, oh my gosh. Like, you know, Cheryl, you’re on the on this or in this magazine, whatever it was, it never felt fulfilling, yeah. And

Amber Cabral 26:58

I really never enough. You’re like, Okay, that’s good for today. It’s good for today, and then tomorrow.

Sherrell Dorsey 27:03

What do I have in the pipeline? There was no contentment. There was no satisfaction. It was just always this, like, never ending cycle of, I have to keep getting more and then I just kept waking up. In the last year, I just kept waking up like, this, isn’t it for me anymore. Now I feel bad because it’s supposed to be it, because it got me here, and like, I should be excited to be in these rooms, and then realizing, like, I don’t really like half of these people, and I also feel like we’re doing a lot of the same things, and like we’re not getting anywhere. And this doesn’t feel like movement. I don’t feel like I’m learning anymore. And once I stop learning and I’m tired like I am. I’m not a functional person, right? You’re not you. I’m not me. And so I was adjacent to myself. I was adjacent to mission. I was doing good work, but I am not fundamentally operating in the purpose I’m supposed to be operating in. So I have to reinvent I have to come back to myself. Yeah, and I had a hard time making that choice, because who am I without my work, right? As Tony Jones, you know, good old sister Fran from Detroit, Tony Jones says, Who am I without work? And I lost myself in Cheryl’s the plug. Yes, that’s what I’ve been doing. That’s what people have known me and called me for last time. And that is how people have introduced you and introduced me. And it’s like, even today, when people ask, Well, what do you do? I mean, I’m like, I don’t I’ll just be chilling.

Amber Cabral 28:27

Hey there. I hope you enjoying the episode. And in fact, if you are, you can bring me to your organization or event to help you bring conversations like this to life in your workspaces. This is something I do for a living. I do coaching, I do training, I do executive consulting, whatever it is that you might need as it relates to trying to figure out how to activate allyship or equity in your space, it’s probably something I can support. So if you’re interested in how we can work together, you can reach out to me@cabraraco.com or pop down into the show notes and click the link book a discovery call, and we will chat with you soon, back to the show.

Sherrell Dorsey 29:03

So, yeah, so that’s my like road, the my my podcast, the road to reinvention. As much as it’s like, you know, me having these interviews and talking to interesting people, it’s also like my reintroduction to myself, Yes, you know, and being honest about my experiences and wanting to build differently. Like to still be on mission and to still be ambitious, but to do that in such a in a drastically different way, and be comfortable with saying that was great. That was a, you know, as a well played hand, and I want to go play a whole different game,

Amber Cabral 29:37

right? I also think that it’s, I think it’s ironic to me that you are on a road to reinvention with other people, again, speaking to like this tribalness, this community nature that you tend to carry with you. Can you tell me a little bit more about why community is so important for you? Community

Sherrell Dorsey 29:53

is just validating, and I’m not talking about validating in. What you’re able to produce, but fundamentally in who you are, yeah, and I used to go home every year to Seattle and to get re centered, yes, because, I mean, people were proud of me, but they weren’t impressed. You know, was like, if your grandparents tell you to come in and help, you know, move something or like, it doesn’t matter that you just went right, you know, left the home, like, that’s nice, that’s nice, but I still need you to do this. I need you to come get this together. Not too good for Right, exactly, and, and that sense of groundedness, I think, is what community is, and it’s and I realized I had lost my sense of community through the process of building my companies, even when I had companies that were hyper focused on community, yeah, I personally had a hard time building community and partner. Partnership can be isolating, and that’s, that’s the part, because part of it is that, like, Oh, we’re competing, yeah, we can’t tell you how hard it truly is. Or, you know, I was trying to raise money, or I lost this deal, and like, you don’t want to have this sense of vulnerability and embarrassment. And then, if you’re moving around a lot, you’re on planes all the time, which seems glamorous when you first start out, and then you realize, like, there were times I’ll wake up in a city and forget

Amber Cabral 31:12

where I was. Happened to me?

Sherrell Dorsey 31:16

I was like, okay, where exactly, where is this that I am?

Amber Cabral 31:20

Literally, I like, I would wake up and say, I know I’m safe, but I have no idea what city I’m in. Or I would wake up and not know what rental car I had, what color was the car again, no, I don’t remember.

Sherrell Dorsey 31:31

And if you would have asked me, Where were you last week, it would take, I would have to go back into my calendar, because I would forget Yes, and like, not to mention the challenge of attempting to date, while having a schedule like that, and just all of the all of the challenges that come with that kind of a lifestyle choice. And so for me, it was always a sense of, okay, my family is spread out, but if I get sick, like, Thank God for Instacart, right? And someone can send me some some NyQuil Exactly, right? Or I’m gonna have to pay for the conveniences of what community would do. And so I had to make a couple of decisions, which was, really, really get vulnerable and develop high quality friendships, yes, and be intentional about that, because it wasn’t just gonna be like you, you know, again, you when you grow up in community, you know, folks just you, have the privilege of, if you’re if your family created that for you, you didn’t have to do any work, yeah,

Amber Cabral 32:25

it’s just present. You just had to be and not talk back exactly. But

Sherrell Dorsey 32:29

when you enter into your adulthood, or you are advancing your adulthood into your life, you have to be so intentional and showing up for people. And that doesn’t necessarily always mean physical. It might just be a check in, that’s right. So I had to be in start to become intentional about that, and not just family or close friends, but like people that I wanted to build relationships with, yeah, and you know, just like you get intentional with like, oh, I want today, I want to have, like, an amazing romantic relationship and Healthy Love. And so realizing, as well, when I think about community these days, it has required me to be vulnerable and to say, y’all like, y’all saw my social media like, you know, highlights you saw the great things. But oh, I could point to every single picture on my Instagram feed and tell you, like, the days that I couldn’t, I could not get out of bed, or, Oh yeah, I did that. And then, like, I did a team retreat, and I broke out in hives because all the stress going on and like, my team was, like, really concerned about me, yeah, you know, or the days that I could not pick up the phone because I was so encumbered with, what am I doing at this stage right? Or the times that you had to get rid of team members, you know, for not performing, right? You didn’t have all of the answers. And you’re like, oh, like, I hired people, and I I thought that I was doing a service by creating employment opportunities for folks, and this person burned me, yes, and now I’ve got to recover from that. You’ve got to recover because you feel like a failure. You like you genuinely feel like, well, what is wrong with me? Right? You feel the shame, you feel the guilt and

Amber Cabral 34:06

and irresponsible to a degree, because everybody else that was subjected to that experience as well,

Sherrell Dorsey 34:10

absolutely and so community truly is for us to have those spaces of vulnerability and to realize that, like we’re human, and everybody has gone through their life journey, and sometimes they can also help you navigate through because we’re not supposed to be here alone. Yeah, you know. And, and I think that a lot of this hyper individualism that we have in America is so false, which is why people say, Listen, you, there’s no self made anything. And we have to get back to this space of, no, I am. I am built by community. And I think that even in writing my book, I did this like in the pandemic, and I was forced to do family and community in isolation, yes, which meant I had more frequent conversations with my grandparents, which is how I started to learn more of my grandpa’s story that I really prefaced here. The book, right? And that reminded me that, my goodness, this is someone who grew up in the Jim Crow South that migrated north and continued to be in this space of searching for more opportunities, and was was treated like a complete second class citizen, and did not complain, right? Never heard one complaint from this man. Yeah, he just continued to move forward and say, like I wanted to build a better, stronger life for my family, right? And because of that decision, because of his decision to be in community, even when he didn’t have one single family member in the city of Seattle, right, he served as a launch pad for my mom, right? He started as a launch pad for my aunt, for everyone. He was the beginning of the community. He was the beginning of the community and the enablement for every single opportunity that we had access to. And I’m sure that, you know, he probably didn’t have, like, a master plan, right? Right? Of like the Serena, Serena and Venus Williams, like their dad, was his whole Master Plan King Richard, right? Or Richard had a master plan. My grandfather didn’t have, I don’t think had a master plan, but he just, he needed a job. He went to work, yeah? And he was like, I gotta buy a house. I gotta provide for my family’s old school black man. Like, that’s what they did, but not realizing, like, the seed that he planted enabled that idea of community. And still, and still does, and so that’s what I’m finding. You know, is the benefit of it.

Amber Cabral 36:22

I love that. So I’m gonna ask you two more questions. Yes, we could talk forever. Honestly, I

Sherrell Dorsey 36:28

just I know they won’t let us do that.

Amber Cabral 36:32

So the thing I hear in what you’re sharing is burnout. I have my own experience with burnout. It happened to me while I was still in corporate. I had a very close brush with it in 2020 when I suddenly was in incredible demand. Because, you know, both the combination of covid and George Floyd and working in dei was just like, Okay, well, people are asking for the things. I should deliver them, and so I really want to just offer a small piece of advice. Yeah, I’m here for it. When you find yourself in the position of feeling like you can’t, or you don’t want to, don’t, yeah, like, actually don’t. And that’s a sounds so incredibly simple, but it’s hard. It’s hard when you have people that you pay. It’s hard when you are responsible for, you know, bringing in the business. It’s hard when you are no longer in a corporation. So like when I saw the brush with burnout coming after I was not in corporate, I was like, Oh, I can’t I can’t do that. I have to stop because I understood that the me that I was in corporate had other people who could do my job, but the me that I am today doesn’t, and so I have to be willing to be well enough to do the work. Now, I will tell you that there are probably people in this room who could say that I’m not the best at it still, but I do think that being really honest with myself about whether or not I can has made a huge difference, because there are many times that I did even when I couldn’t, yeah. And I think that that’s what I’m hearing in what you’re describing,

Sherrell Dorsey 38:27

yeah. It’s finding the balance between perseverance, yeah and delusion. That’s right. And I’m so much more comfortable saying no, that’s right. You know, blocking time on my calendar so my teams use, look, y’all, I’m in therapy. Um, I’m actually just gonna go play with the birds or take a nap and take a nap? Yeah, I’m quick to be like, I’m about to go take a power nap, because I’m not feeling it right now,

Amber Cabral 38:49

because a lot of it’s muscle memory. Like, for me, I could do my job on muscle memory. So I could very easily have half a bottle of champagne and then decide to go do the thing, and no one would really know Yeah. And so it was, yeah. That’s a because the delusion, yeah, yeah. And I

Sherrell Dorsey 39:07

realized too, that when I leaned more into that and creating those boundaries for myself, my team would do that as absolutely they were leading by example. Yeah, I’m I have a therapy session on Thursday, or, you know, I’m gonna take half a day because, you know, I just need a wellness day, yeah? But you have to hold yourself accountable for that, you know, and not just if you’re running a team, it’s your whole life, yeah? So it’s the community, yeah? But I definitely, you know, I definitely appreciate that as well, because, yeah, saying no, sometimes it’s hard, especially when you’re used to over performing. It’s

Amber Cabral 39:43

functioning, that’s right, that’s right, and you don’t even see it. And so I think what you have to say about community is really valuable, because there are times you will need the community to tell you, yeah, that you are over performing and over functioning. My

Sherrell Dorsey 39:55

girl, Leticia Burt used to tell me, this was like, years ago. She was like, your Instagram. Makes me tired. Oh, she used to say that

Amber Cabral 40:02

sounds like her. Though she’s like, that sounds like teacher, yes, because

Sherrell Dorsey 40:06

it was like, I would, I would literally be doing two or three different cities in a week, yep, and documenting and running through airports, yes. And she’d be like, Girl, this, I’m exhausted. It feels like a television show, like, what are you doing? Right? Yeah, right. She was like, I am so exhausted. And I was and I would laugh, but I was like, Okay, this probably is

Amber Cabral 40:25

pretty impressive. Yeah, it is. I can relate. Okay, my last question. So this show is called guilty privilege. The reason I named it guilty privilege is because I think that people do not always realize that they have privilege first, and then, when they do, sometimes they feel guilty about it, right? They are, you know, they hide it or deny it or whatever. And in reality, you know, much like we’ve talked about in our conversation, we actually can use our privilege to make an impact. It’s not a thing that you need to run from or hide or feel shame about. So my question to you is, what is one privilege that you have that you refuse to feel guilty about?

Sherrell Dorsey 41:02

Oh my gosh, I think I got this from my mom, because she used to drag me with her to all of her board meetings and speaking engagements. And so I’ve had the privilege of knowing how to walk into a room and take up space because of her. I love that.

Amber Cabral 41:17

I love that we all could use a little more, actually. So, yeah, absolutely. I mean, I

Sherrell Dorsey 41:22

just watching her, it made me so, so fearless, you know. And I know that sometimes a lot of folks have struggles and challenges with, you know, knowing how to navigate certain spaces. And I think that she showed me like, no matter what room it is, where it is, you belong in that room, and you have something to contribute. And I think I just kind of naturally followed in her footsteps in terms of how I show up. And so it really hit me like, huh, my mom used to do this is why I feel so comfortable. Yeah, spaces, yep,

Amber Cabral 41:52

familiarity. I love that. Well, thank you for coming on the show.

Sherrell Dorsey 41:56

Thank you so much for having me, of course. All right. You