Owning Your Voice

During this talk, we'll be discussing the importance of owning your voice and being heard in a world that tries to mute you.

"I raise up my voice - not so that I can shout, but so that those without a voice can be heard...We cannot all succeed when half of us are held back." Malala Yousafzai

In 1975, Edwin Ardener and Shirley Ardener created the Muted Group Theory (MGT) that focuses on how marginalized groups are muted and excluded via the use of language. The term mutedness refers to a group's inability to express themselves due to this inequity. In corporate America, some of us call the mistreatment by the term microaggressions. The writer Audre Lorde refers to it as "oppressive silence."

How many times have we sat in a diversity training or seen a social post from our company about the importance of diversity and inclusion or BLM but reported into a boss who was the curator of the toxic and misogynistic culture?

This Let's Talk features our special guest, Nandini Jammi, co-founder, Check My Ads, an independent brand advocacy company guiding a new generation of marketers towards safe and sustainable advertising practices. Nandini was also one of the original co-founders of Sleeping Giant, a loose organization of activists that singlehandedly took down Breitbart by pressuring advertisers to stop funding websites that peddle hateful content. Breitbart's ad revenue dropped 90 percent in 2017, crippling one of the most inflammatory and influential right-wing online platforms. This year, Nandini left Sleeping Giants when her co-founder Matt Rivitz "gaslighted" her out of the movement that they built together. She speaks of her Medium article journey I'm Leaving Sleeping Giants, but not because I want to.

During this Let's Talk, we'll discuss the importance of owning your voice and to quote Nandini, "why taking credit matters and why you must fight for yourself as you do for your cause." See recording from the talk down below:

Let's Talk is a bi-weekly conversation with leading executives, thought leaders, and changemakers. There are no presentations or talking heads, just people having a conversation about career, family, and what matters the most to them.

It doesn't have to be lonely at the top.