The Power of Positive Disruption
By John Elsasser
November-December 2020
Following her keynote address, Carolynn Johnson, CEO of DiversityInc Media LLC, led a panel discussion on diversity and inclusion, which covered a variety of subjects, including positive disruption:
“Positive disruption for me is to surround yourself with leaders who are going to challenge you, but don’t necessarily lead you to the solution. [It also means] to look at different ways to pass on power, and make sure you share it with others. Finally, explore different ways to look at your hunches. And when you have a hunch, act and move on it.” — Bill Imada, chairman, IW Group
“It is to challenge the status quo, which is sometimes masked in a diversity initiative. When I was elected as inaugural vice president of diversity and inclusion for PRSSA [in 2019], I created a subcommittee because I knew I didn’t check all the boxes. So I made sure that we had international students as well as other Black students and a Caucasian person on the subcommittee. I made sure that all voices were represented.”
— Adriênne Bolden, CEO, Leverage Miami
“Positive disruption is a change in dialogue and having conversations that may not necessarily be comfortable. These don’t come naturally to people in a lot of large organizations. At Hilton, we recently sponsored a series called ‘Courageous Conversations.’ The objective of that was to talk about things that are happening around us right now. So positive disruption can be a great way to start — a change in dialogue … for some positive change.”
— Anu Saxena, business unit president and global head, Hilton, Supply Chain Management
“There has been systemic racism and systemic inequality for way too long … current times call for proactive, vigilant leadership that’s working toward us achieving comprehensive and measurable results. For me, positive disruption is not doing the same old, same old because we’ve been here before. We have to take this moment to strive for what is new and different.”
— Esther Aguilera, president and CEO, The Latino Corporate Directors Association
