Michelle MiJung Kim on tension, unlearning and sustainable change.
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Photo of Michelle MiJung Kim smiling and looking at the camera. She is wearing a white button-down shirt and gold earrings. Photo by Andria Lo.
I have had the immense pleasure of working alongside Michelle remotely over the past few months. One thing I deeply appreciate about our relationship is our check-ins – quick, casual notes of love and care when the news feels overwhelming. Today she joins us in the newsletter to share more about her upcoming book, her work, and her hopes for the future.
Through your work at Awaken, you lead uncomfortable conversations to create more inclusive workspaces. What do you see as the most common forms of hesitations from managers new to this work?
There are two forms of tension that I observe often when doing equity education work inside the workplace. First, there is tension that gets created as a result of contrasting goals held by the organization and by its people. Managers often feel they're caught in the impossible middle trying to meet the needs of the organization (e.g., profitability, operational efficiency, productivity, speed to hire, etc.) as well as their teams' (e.g., mental health, psychological safety, individual career development, equitable hiring, etc.). To reconcile and integrate these needs, managers require an org-wide and executive-led alignment that make their priorities, values, and tradeoffs explicit.
Second, there is always tension that emerges from within, not just for managers, but for all of us, especially when entering the work of equity, inclusion, and justice for the first time. This work requires us to unearth our own lived experiences through the lens of systemic oppression, which can bring up a lot of different emotions including shock, denial, anger, guilt, sadness, and shame. Given the professional setting, some may feel hesitant to be vulnerable (especially if there is a potential penalty, real or perceived, for being vulnerable) or feel resistant toward broadening their consciousness because it challenges their worldview and inherent sense of self. Some managers may feel like they don't have the capacity or skills to take on the added responsibility of being equitable and inclusive (though, it should really be an expectation for every manager) and resist accountability. It's important to create a thoughtful learning container to address these issues and to have skilled facilitators who can navigate different situations with nuance.
As an entrepreneur and soon-to-be-author, how do you manage the stress and anxiety that often comes from this work?
I'm not always successful at managing my stress, anxiety, and depression, and I'm constantly reminded that my healing journey is never-ending and non-linear. What has been helpful for me over the years is practicing setting and honoring my boundaries, trusting my bodily wisdom (e.g., when something feels off, I've learned to voice it without prioritizing others' needs for comfort over my need for truth-telling; when my body feels tired, I try to rest, etc.), and going to therapy. I also have an incredible community of values-aligned friends and mentors who care for me and remind me that I'm deserving of rest, joy, and compassion even during difficult moments.
Your upcoming book, The Wake Up, offers tactical ways for leaders to move from good intentions and real change. Many people view that setting intentions is sufficient for supporting racial equity. What are the fallacies of this perspective?
I'd like to believe most of us have good intentions--that we don't wake up in the morning desiring to hurt other human beings and perpetuate systemic oppression. But despite our good intentions, we are all capable of causing harm. I, despite my proclaimed values and years of intentional advocacy work, can, and still do, cause harm. Good intentions alone do not make good impacts -- good intentions that are acted upon consistently over time with accountability, on the other hand, do. If good intentions alone could dismantle systemic oppression, we would all be free by now.
Where do you hope the field of DEI grows in the next 5-10 years?
I hope we move away from surface-level DEI work largely driven by checklists and "best practices" that serve corporate interests to being more firmly rooted in prioritizing social justice. I hope the work gets shared and taken up by everyone, not just by those with DEI in their job description who often hold marginalized identities, and that DEI becomes the lens and framework through which all workplace decisions are made, rather than it being seen as an extracurricular activity or a one-time program. I hope we can become more discerning about what progress looks like: differentiate between what sustainable change looks like vs. what stop-gap solutions look like; what pragmatism looks like vs. what complicity looks like. I hope we get to see more self-accountability practiced by leaders and people in positions of power, where they strive to lead and live according to their proclaimed values every single day rather than performing activism in order to evade public critique. Ultimately, this work is about our collective humanity -- I hope more people can begin to see that (hopefully sooner than in the next 5-10 years!).
What have you found yourself unlearning as your work evolves?
This is such a great question, thank you for asking. I'm on a never-ending journey of unlearning everything white supremacy and capitalism taught me--everything from how I see myself to how I view the world. I'm unlearning how I define my self-worth, which used to be bound up with my ability to serve others and be productive rather than for simply being. I'm unlearning binary thinking (e.g., good vs. bad, all vs. nothing, etc.) that is so prevalent in today's punitive, carceral society, and instead choosing to practice existing in the grays, in the complexity and nuance. I'm unlearning my need for external validation, and instead learning to trust myself.
Michelle MiJung Kim (she/her) is a queer immigrant Korean American woman writer, speaker, activist, and entrepreneur. She is the author of The Wake Up (Hachette, Fall 2021). She is CEO and co-founder of Awaken, a leading provider of interactive equity and inclusion education programs facilitated by majority BIPOC educators, where she has consulted hundreds of organizations and top executives from Fortune 500, tech giants, nonprofits, and government agencies to spark meaningful change. Michelle has been a lifelong social justice activist and has served on a variety of organizations such as the San Francisco LGBTQ Speakers Bureau, San Francisco Human Rights Commission’s Advisory Committee, LYRIC nonprofit’s Board of Directors, and Build Tech We Trust Coalition. Michelle currently serves on the board of Asian Americans for Civil Rights and Equality (AACRE). Her work has appeared on world-renowned platforms such as Harvard Business Review, Forbes, The New York Times, and NPR, and she has been named Medium’s Top Writer in Diversity three years in a row. She lives in Oakland, California.