Heavy on the heart, easy on the judgment

YYC’s Cleopatra Kierstead brings collaboration and kindness to create impactful EDI strategy

Q&A with Cleopatra Keirstead
Entrepreneur, Kierstead consulting

About Cleopatra Keirstead

Cleopatra Kierstead has two decades’ worth of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) experience with Not-for-profits, school boards, municipalities, and arts groups alike. The certified teacher, consultant, passionate educator, experienced project manager, and strategist is a pro at collaborating with different kinds of groups and organizations to successfully create social impact holistically and tangibly, from evaluation and design to delivery.

The entrepreneur (KiersteadConsulting) a momma bear of three beautiful children, grew up between Botswana and Canada and today calls Calgary her home. She is a lover of all things music, art, and culture.

Question and Answers with Cleopatra Kierstead

INTRODUCING Cleopatra

Q: What was your first experience with EDI work and strategy?

A: My first unofficial experience with DEI work and strategy was at 17 years old. I was a grade 11, high school student and mother at Fredericton High School. As a teenage mother, I wandered classrooms and hallways. Unfortunately, teachers, fellow students, and administrators often excluded me. While sitting in high school history classes, I read passages that erased the truths of Indigenous and newcomer voices and perspectives. One day while learning about our local demographics, I asked a simple question:

“ How did the local Black families in New Brunswick get to be here if not from immigration efforts?”, and “Were Indigenous relationships always so peaceful?”

I was passively aggressively and routinely informed that I had to wait until university to find that answer. I internalized that we (BIPOC students) were not part of the curriculum and that it was my responsibility to seek truths outside the school board, provincially mandated, prescribed texts.

Charged with curiosity and inspired to find truths, I made it my quest to ask the History department head why we were being filtered information by grade levels and asked the high school administrators who mandated the curriculum. The answers were not satisfying, so that year, I decided that I would not wait for university to seek knowledge. I would seek truths.

That year as a 17-year-old high school student and teen mother operating in a limited capacity, I created my first DEI strategy; create inclusion by developing awareness through an education initiative and fostering a sense of belonging among BIPOC students at Fredericton High School. For the remainder of my time in high school, I turned every term course project into a cross-curricular visual presentation, educating my peers and teachers on the impacts of colonialism on modern identity and institutional systems and how we can change.

Q: What’s it like to be the go-to expert in a field that is growing and impacting our communities, companies and sectors at the grassroots stage?

A: The fact that people and organizations approach me is a testament that there is more of a priority on the work. However, the value of this work was always there. Only recently have more individuals and organizations recognized the need and are beginning to understand the value add (the business case for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI)) attributed to this field in their respective businesses.

EDI work can be inspiring and exhausting. The work can be highly gratifying and defeatist. Given the organizational and individual commitment needed to achieve goals, folks are surprised at the brevity and resources required to do the work. EDI cannot do the work without a verbal commitment backed by adequate resources. Change requires absolute obligations, commitments, and investments.

Q: Who made all the difference in your career?

A: My father, Harold Rodney Kierstead, impacted my career in a way I can never forget. He never set out to be a community builder, but from the moment he opened his first business as a cis-caucasian male in South Africa in 1950, his strong values set the stage for him to be a legend. Those same values would be embedded in me, and evolve to be embedded into how I approach work and my commitment to work as an EDI practitioner.

Over the years, he invested in and developed his team. He also took care of his team, showing compassion, kindness, and empathy to foster mutual respect to develop a diverse, inclusive, and equitable culture at Multipak Ltd. . As his team became successful, so did his business. My Dad had one of the most loyal employee bases I have ever seen to date.

From individual and collective acts of activism against apartheid and colonial powers, and to acts of allyship to support local tribes’ path to independence and economic sovereignty, my Dad believed in supporting and empowering people. He taught me the most significant universal law; an individual is only as good as their community. He was a firm believer in being honest, asking questions, sharing (ideas and time), distributing resources, inviting feedback, laughing, being grateful, and empowering and developing those around him. My Dad would have been 90 years old today and always embodied equity, diversity, and inclusion principles in his personal and professional life.

“I have been designing and delivering social impact programs for over twenty years, rooted in intrinsic values and a commitment to increasing awareness in an engaging and inspiring manner. The content (aka the curriculum) needs to be accessible and inclusive!”

— Cleopatra Kierstead

Cleopatra’s Take On EDI Policy

Q: How have you witnessed the evolution of EDI work over the past two decades?

A: In 2007, I started my career as an EDI practitioner. The focus back then was on building the case for diversity in the Canadian Multicultural context, but Indigenous voices were missing entirely. As a Cultural Competency Coordinator and later Community Diversity Officer, my work was focused on organizations becoming “cultural competency” through education and awareness initiatives. Very few organizations were interested in analyzing their employee's demographic data to understand workplace culture or even review their policies to ensure they were being inclusive. It was all about delivering workshops to promote diversity as an imperative and checking the training and development box.

Over the years, I have moved through this work with defeat, exhaustion, optimism, and enthusiasm. The links have finally been made, moving EDI to be an organizational imperative. Anti-racism, once seen as a radical approach, is now in conversation because we acknowledge the structural barriers we need to dismantle. The work done through TRC and UNDRIP ensured Indigenization and decolonization have a spotlight!

Healthy workplaces that are vibrant and inclusive require a strong effort and commitment to invest and support the initiatives required to ensure all voices and perspectives contribute to the whole. While buy-in from the top can set the stage, spread the message, and remind us of the commitment, and HR can reinforce commitments with compliance checks and balances, it is much larger than that. We all play a part.

The field has evolved tremendously since then, and we all recognize that Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and BELONGING create a ripple effect that flows through the entire workforce and our communities.

Q: Where do you see DEI work starting and why?

A: We are all responsible for the work. EDI actions taken in order to shift mindsets, behaviors, and practices toward equitable and inclusive leadership for individuals, teams, and organizations will require an authentic commitment, and it begins at the leadership level. People need new ways to think about and talk about these topics, and leaders need new skills to enable them — which is why their specific actions drive sustainable change.

Q: How important is it for organizations to measure their DEI efforts and why?

A: What gets measured, gets done. (*Mic drop*)

Q: What is the biggest challenge to DEI work?

A: Getting people to understand that it is not a check box on a strategic or work plan, and it is not a monthly calendar observance. EDI has value!

Q: What’s the greatest reward of doing DEI work?

A:Establishing baselines and benchmarks, developing evaluations and indicators, and diving deep into the data to see where we are, focus on where we want to go, establish how will get there, what we will need to get there, and then evaluate all activities to uncover how we did and how we can enhance!

Cleopatra’s advice on crafting dei policy

Q: How do you keep your team engaged in the process?

A: Collaboration is at the core of the process. I engage my team and all relevant stakeholders in the consultation, design, implementation, and evaluation process. We all own it! Therefore we are all invested, we are all accountable, and there is transparency.

Q: How do you ensure trust and transparency?

A: Building relationships leads to true authentic collaboration, and ensures that there is trust and transparency. Accessible project management tools, dashboards, and consistent communication are great assets as well!

Q: What do you wish people knew about the importance of creating diverse teams, and protecting each other’s diverse perspectives?

A: Respect 101! Respect means that you accept people for who they are, even when they're different from you or you don't agree with them. Respect in your relationships builds feelings of trust, safety, and wellbeing. When you truly respect people, it also reinforces that you value their contributions and perspectives and that is the secret to creating diverse, healthy teams.

Q: We know that statistically, DEI work improves not only company culture, retention, reputation and work performance as a whole, it also improves bottom line profitability. What’s the most important part about getting varied perspectives, voices, genders, races… etc. into tech organizations as well as startups and fostering those teams?

Psychological safety is critical! If staff feel safe to bring their whole selves to work, workplace environments and the work developed will reap the benefits of diversity; innovation! Psychological safe spaces create inclusive workplaces where staff feel comfortable voicing their opinions, thoughts, or ideas in a collaborative atmosphere.

Intertwining psychological safety with diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in celebrating, valuing, and respecting others’ diversity will lead to a culture of safety within work teams, fostering a more positive, open-minded, and innovative workplace culture.

“What divides us pales in comparison to what unites us”

— Edward Kennedy

summing it up

Q: This is tough, often emotional work. While it can be incredibly rewarding it also weighs on those at the forefront. How does being one of very few DEI strategy experts in the region and dare we say world, impact you as woman and human?

Being one of the few women of colour in an EDI leadership position can be challenging. It is a common experience to be tokenized. I have had my racial identity used in the context of my position or experienced recurring microaggressions and structural barriers. These experiences are not palatable and can impact my health, so practicing self-care and debriefing those experiences with other women with similar lived experiences is extremely important.

I will continue to do this work because I can see the value and want to be part of the change process. We can begin the journey now and make things better for future generations. Seven generations from now, history books will talk about how we colonized civilizations, embedded inequality into societal systems, and then tell how we challenged those systems and decolonized them to advance equity, promote inclusion, and celebrate diversity. Idealistic, I know!

Q: Tell us about your current role and where you see your own career growing and evolving?

As a sole proprietor and as an employee, I constantly challenge myself to learn more, understand more, and to connect more. At the heart of my business and my work, is the spirit of collaboration.

Q: ACTION takeaway -what is one piece that readers can take away to implement DEI?

A: Implementing EDI is no different than what it takes to successfully design, planning, implementing, and evaluating any program. Just start. And REALLY, start.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts are not just a “thing” like a program, department, or title. They cannot rest on a single person, initiative (Diversity Calendar), or place. To implement DEI, do not be a single scaffold that does virtually nothing. Be a scaffold that is an integral part that in the existing organizational structure, and is embedded into who you are.