The Better Leaders Better Schools Podcast with Daniel Bauer

Belonging and Empathy: Insights from Dr. Derrick Gay

Oct 30, 2024

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Dr. Derrick Gay is a globally recognized intercultural competency strategist, dedicated to fostering cultures of dignity and respect. With multifaceted expertise as an international speaker, author, researcher, educator, and university lecturer, Dr. Gay empowers individuals and organizations to deepen belonging and empathy by cultivating shared language, raising awareness, and fostering inclusive personal behaviors and organizational practices and policies.

Drawing from his extensive international experience, Dr. Gay designs meaningful strategies that resonate across a broad range of industries and cultures. His approach, informed by research and practitioner experiences in over 50 countries, facilitates meaningful connections and promotes belonging on a global scale.

Fluent in five languages, Dr. Gay has supported a broad clientele spanning the globe, including over 800 organizations in education, financial services, beauty and fashion, non-profits, and the arts. His clients range from Sesame Street to Oberlin Conservatory, Phantom of the Opera to Tom Ford, The International School of Panama to GCM Grosvenor, and The Business of Fashion to Barilla. He has also served as adjunct faculty/lecturer at Parsons Paris, University of Pennsylvania, Columbia Business School, International Fashion Academy, and Teachers College at Columbia University.

Dr. Gay's work has been featured in Forbes, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Huffington Post, NPR, TEDx, and The Business of Fashion, and other national and international publications. A global citizen, Dr. Gay delivers content in English, French, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese.

Show Highlights

Teach your students to have choice-filled lives and be good people.
Complexities in implementing diversity initiatives within schools.
Reframe diversity to encompass a broader definition.
The problem of diversity being seen as a proxy for historically marginalized groups.
Schools need to address how events like George Floyd's death changed the conversation about diversity globally.
Outlined steps for leaders to create spaces of belonging.
Emphasizes the importance of taking action to make the world better.
A framework that aligns with every school and every mission.
Discusses the challenges of politicization of diversity work.

“You are seen, you are heard, you matter. All the research is clear around this belief that one has about oneself, about their inherent value and how that can help in times of adversity, resilience. Life is going to throw challenges at you. If you have this fundamental sense of your worth, then there's a higher possibility that you're going to get through it. And it's our, certainly our job as educators and curators of a learning environment that everyone that walks to that building feels that way.”

-Dr Derrick Gay

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