3 Ways Philanthropist Tonya Parris is Promoting Diversity and Inclusion with Tonya Parris

Feb 21, 2022

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From a Wall Street Executive to an Altruistic Entrepreneur

Her love for computers, her childhood life spent in the Bronx, and the thoughtful upbringing of her parents made Tonya Parris the resilient and tenacious woman who paved her way to Wall Street. These are the same attributes that turned her to becoming an altruistic entrepreneur founder of The Parris Foundation: S.T.E.M.ulating Minds as well as CEO of the Parris Group, Inc.

3 Ways Philanthropist Tonya Parris is Promoting Diversity and Inclusion

Through The Parris Foundation: S.T.E.M.ulating Minds

STEMulating Minds is a nonprofit under The Parris Foundation that promotes educational opportunities and fostering awareness in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) by servicing disenfranchised communities, providing scholarships to students from disadvantaged, socio-economic backgrounds, and collaborating with organizations focused on improving access to technology for low-income families.

The Parris Group

The Parris Group is a consulting, training, and coaching company that creates corporate consciousness, corporate transformation, and expansion while providing continuing emotional intelligence development for employees through seminars and workshops, and retreats. Through The Parris Group, Tonya reaches out not only to corporations but to companies where the parents of STEMulating Minds students work so they too can benefit from the tools that cultivate exploration, self-observation, emotional intelligence and have a level of awareness that enables them to have a reflective conversation, powered by masterful listening from coaches and trainers.

The Transformation of Race

Tonya co-created The Transformation of Race with the world-renowned executive coach, management consultant, entrepreneur, and trainer Bettie J. Spruill.

The program is a safe place for all races, colors, creeds, ages, ethnicities to come together and have a conversation and gain another level of awareness around varying worldviews and ecologies.

It is a safe place to explore knowing what you thought you know or don’t know, and discuss social responsibility. More than that, it’s a place of powerful discussions about oneness over separation, commonality rather than differences, and community over clustering or isolation using a myriad of learning tools such as exercises, journaling, etc.

These are the episode highlights you shouldn’t miss:

02:25 How Tonya pivoted from being one of the women of Wall Street to an altruistic entrepreneur

07:41 What the Parris Foundation: STEMulating Minds is all about:

14:23 The transformation of Parris Group from a technology consulting company to one that focuses on holistic corporate consciousness that encompasses the emotional well-being of employees and social responsibility

19:40 What fuels Tonya and how she takes care of herself

23:27 Living the commitment to excellence and coming from a place of responsibility

26:41 The 10/10 relationship

33:19 How The Transformation of Race training was conceived and what it’s all about

40:19 Managing racism through resilience and absolute tenacity

45:33 The actions between different people or different communities that could open up and move the conversation around inclusivity and diversity

50:17 Are we really free or is freedom just a promise “embedded” in the Constitution?

52:56 How to challenge ourselves to be in a space of understanding people who are perceived to be different by opening up conversations.

55:05 Being mindful that what we buy into supports the ESG (Environmental Social Governance) model.

57:27 Tonya’s greater vision for the world

57:56 The most influential people in Tonya’s life

59:46 What God means to Tonya

1:01:18 Tonya’s reading vault

1:03:57 The daily habits that have Tonya showing up effectively

Episode Challenge

Start off with a 30-day challenge to begin breaking barriers and understand “others” more through the power of open conversations, because it’s through understanding other people's worldviews that we learn and grow.

Challenge #1 (53:00-53:44)

Approach someone that you might perceive as different. By different, it doesn't necessarily mean that his/her skin color is different from yours. It can mean that someone grew up in another area, urban versus suburban, from another community or tribe, or a different economic or socio-economic status.

Talk to that person. Create a meaningful conversation.

Listen to their views and learn where they are coming from.

Practice mindfulness when you buy something.

Challenge #2 (55:06-56:47)

Really think about the businesses where you’re putting your money into. Do they support the ESG (environmental, social, governance) model? By ESG we mean, are they sourcing materials responsibly, paying fair wages, going by ethical standards and their moral compass puts people, animals, and the environment’s welfare over profit.

Be critically altruistic.

Challenge #3 (56:22 -56:47)

Be altruistic and be a contributor. If you're going to give your money anywhere, giving it to education is all worth it more than you think. It could be something like Parris Foundation: STEMulating Minds or something else, but give your money to something that supports education because education is the only way that we're going to break the cycle of racism.

Have you opened up to these challenges in the hope of starting change from within yourself? Tell us what having opened such conversations made you feel. Have you bought from an ethical business recently? Or, have you supported any foundations?

How does doing any of these challenges change you as a person? Does it change how you relate with people you perceive as different? Tell us about it. Tag us @thebtopodcast on socials. Let’s make this change happen!

About the Guest:

Tonya is the President and Founder of The Parris Foundation: S.T.E.M.ulating Minds as well as CEO of The Parris Group, Inc., a technology, financial, professional and personal development consulting and coaching firm that supports social and emotional learning, intelligence & responsibility through seminars, workshops and retreats.

Tonya earned her Masters on Science in Engineering Program at the University of Pennsylvania’s Moore School of Engineering. She completed her undergraduate studies at Binghamton University where she earned a Bachelors of Science in Computer Science at the Watson School of Engineering.

Before her commitment to be in service to others, Tonya followed her passion for technology and pursued a career as a Software Engineer in the Financial Services industry where she lived amidst the few Women on Wall Street in the IT Application Development space.

After over 20 years of working for premiere companies like Deutsche Bank, JP Morgan Chase, UBS, Credit Suisse and Goldman Sachs, Tonya achieved the significance and the certainty that was lacking from her life as a child who grew up in public housing in the Bronx.

On the other hand, her experience volunteering her weekends to support people with all sorts of things such as women’s shelter and children’s welfare was what made Tonya feel full in her heart.

This experience and her vested interest in the economically distressed communities that she serves sparked the idea of starting The Parris Foundation, an organization that is dedicated to promoting educational opportunities, servicing disenfranchised communities by providing access to STEM education through scholarships and collaborating with other organizations that supports access to technology for low-income families.

Tonya is also an ICF (International Coaching Federation) certified coach, a transformational trainer, the co- developer of the training called The Transformation of Race.

To know more about Tonya Parris and what she does:

Follow Tonya on Instagram: @tonyaparris

Like The Parris Foundation: STEMulating Minds on Facebook: @ParrisFund

Visit https://www.stemulatingminds.org/

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