Welcome to Season Three of Reconstructing Inclusion!Joe Gerstandt on Identity, Structure, and What Comes Next for Inclusion

Amri sits down with longtime friend and fellow Plains-stater Joe Gerstandt, a speaker, author, and advisor who has spent 25 years helping organizations rethink diversity and inclusion, both from inside corporate leadership and from his own practice. They cover why DEI settled for small wins, how the field lost control of its own narrative, why the real problem is structural rather than cultural, what AI means for the work ahead, and why lasting change always comes down to identity.

Episode Timestamps:

[00:03:00] - Joe's story: 25 years in DEI, and why it "was never big enough to begin with"

[00:05:00] - The missed opportunity after George Floyd: too long asking for small improvements

[00:09:00] - The flaw the field never fixed: taking care of its own language

[00:12:00] - How people with no direct DEI experience wrote the public narrative

[00:14:00] - Why practitioners need deeper, more honest relationships with each other

[00:23:00] - Corporate structure as part of the problem, and the B Corp question

[00:26:00] - AI, humans in the loop, and who wins the next decade of work

[00:32:00] - Why real behavior change always requires identity change

[00:38:00] - Lessons on collective identity from the Marine Corps

[00:43:00] - Communityship, Peter Senge, and 20 years of building peer community

Standout Quotes:

"We had been so long fighting for small improvements, a little bit more budget, one more employee resource group. We didn't even know how to think or act big or dream big." [00:05:00]

"I wish I cared about human beings as much as I care about robots." [00:24:00]

"I've come to believe that real sustainable behavior change always involves a certain amount of identity change." [00:32:00]

Guest: Joe Gerstandt, Inclusion Strategist, Speaker, Author

Connect with Joe Gertsandt: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joegerstandt/

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