Culture at Work: Keenan Turner and Kalani Leifer
A Q&A with the leaders of COOP, a nonprofit with the mission of empowering young people, colleges, and companies to create a more inclusive, connected economy.
Last month, our co-founder Shane Snow led a discussion with COOP founder Kalani Leifer and CMO Keenan Turner on education, diversity, and how to talk about differences in the workplace. Here are the highlights of that conversation:
Understanding the challenge
“The implicit idea was that if you get a college degree, you’ve held up your end of the deal and you get a ticket to the middle class.”
Kalani pointed out that only one in 10 students from inner city schools will make it to college graduation in six years. Even though multiple entities are invested in hiring new grads, finding one’s place in the job market often falls on the grads themselves, who may or may not have all of the digital tools they need to succeed.
“Good people know good people, and that’s a social organism working well, [but] our networks tend to be fairly homogeneous.”
Kalani and Keenan have found that the barriers new grads are facing don’t necessarily look like obvious discrimination or even unconscious bias, but rather an uneven, albeit human, way of distributing benefits. Take referrals for example: There’s nothing wrong with the logic that good people know good people, except for the fact that there are tons of amazing people who lie just outside of our network. But by being aware of our own network’s limitations, and purposefully working to broaden it, we’re already headed in the right direction.
Lessons from COOP
“Not all bachelor’s degrees are created equal.”
This maxim may seem obvious, but consider what else goes into getting a degree. Keenan noted that many CUNY grads (who make up the majority of COOP’s cohorts) started at a community college before transferring to a four-year school, and many held full or part-time jobs while attending classes. He also points out that, having already graduated, COOP students work during the day and come to COOP in the evening: “They’re extremely hardworking and they’re hungry for this.” Kalani noted that in many ways, “their degree stands for a lot more than some who go through a traditional four-year program.”
“Being white, we all too often walk into a room and don’t have to be conscious of our race.”
Things may get uncomfortable and that’s okay. “As a white guy, I think about this a lot,” Kalani said. “One thing I can do is focus on being the best ally I can be.” It’s also important to understand that we aren’t playing a zero sum game, and increasing access for minorities is not about taking it away from white men.
How does COOP fix this?
“If they were trained on all the platforms, it wouldn’t automatically fix anything, because the relationships are key.”
Both Kalani and Keenan noted that there is a gap between what’s being taught in schools and what employers look for in candidates. Many grads don’t know about relevant tools like Google AdWords or that industries like content marketing even exist. This is part of the problem, but thankfully, it’s not difficult to fix. Keenan said that in the digital industries COOP focuses on, “you can learn enough skills in a fast enough time, and you can identify the meta-skills and tools you’ll need to use in the industry.”
