Turning Feelings into Action

As a CEO, a father, and an American, this past week has been one of the hardest of my career. I feel the weight of inequity borne by friends and teammates, and our nation’s inability to solve our long-time ills. I also recognize my responsibility with a sense of both urgency and gravity that those of us in positions of privilege should have had all along. 

In 1952, my father took a trip from Florence, South Carolina to Charlotte, North Carolina with his golf team. A Jewish boy of 10, he walked into the golf clubhouse and read the sign: “No Jews or Niggers allowed.” Too young to be offended, but old enough to be sad and understand the implications, he walked back out and asked his golf coach if he should stay on the bus. The coach told him he thought it would be okay and that he should play. 

He did play that day, though had he been Black, he would not have. I tell this story because it is one of two pains: one which holds an identity not believed worthy of respect or equality (and the fear that accompanies it), and one which holds that experience coupled with an inability to hide it. For many of the BIPOC (black, indigenous, people of color) communities, there is no way to simply “pass” unnoticed. From that day forward, my father’s perspective was forever changed. The intersection of his privilege with oppression, and the impact and implications of race, became all too real.

The murder of George Floyd is a highly visible drop in the bucket of the racial injustice that Black people continue to face in society today. The problem existed in 1865, in 1952, last week, and it will continue to exist tomorrow without a truly conscious effort to change it. Each one of these high profile events of racial injustice has the potential to sow compassion in each of us if we are willing to listen, to learn without defense, and to acknowledge where privilege blinds us - and also where that intersection between privilege and oppression confuses us. Feeling impassioned in a moment is easy. Continuing the work necessary to create meaningful change is hard. We have to be willing to do the work.

Now more than ever, we must turn our feelings into action. 

Like many organizations, our leadership team and employees are navigating how to best devote our time and resources to make our actions more than a trending hashtag. Here are our first steps:

1. Creating authentic space to dialogue and grow: Over the last week, our team has solicited input from throughout the company and one thing is abundantly clear: To turn our feelings into action, our employees - members of the Black community and allies alike - need space, safety, and support from us first. As a result of this, we are taking our on-demand mental health services offline for 60 minutes on Thursday, June 11th. During this time, every Ginger employee will be participating in a facilitated forum to help us process these events, share perspectives, and begin our journey of devising action together, to the benefit of our employees and members alike. This will be our first step of many to educate, listen, and affect meaningful change over time.
2. Enabling employee advocacy: We’ve also made adjustments to our company matching program. For employees who donate to a 501c3 organization supporting the Black Lives Matter Movement (such as these), we will double match their donations, up to $500 per year.
3. Giving time when time is needed: 14% of our employees are part of the Black community. (The other 86% are allies.) Last month, we encouraged all employees to take at least one day off as part of our #TakeTime campaign. We’re asking them to do this again to ensure they take the time to recharge and rest. Advocacy takes energy.
4. Empowering others with our advocacy: We recognize that as a mental health platform, one of our primary roles and opportunities is to inspire and enable people to change. We have trained our providers on racial trauma, published content on how to be an ally, and will continue to build our corpus of high quality and evidence-based training and information to help drive positive change.

I write this in the spirit of sharing with other organizations and leaders as we all grapple with how to have a meaningful impact. These four actions are only a start. We recognize that this is a process; one that for many is long overdue. We are committed as both an employer and healthcare provider to eradicating racial inequality, inequity and injustice. If there is a silver lining, maybe, just maybe, the pandemic is the backdrop and foundation needed for this time to be different.

I hope so. And we will strive to be leaders in this fight.