Ashley T Brundage
Ashley T Brundage is a force to be reckoned with. As the Founder and President of Empowering Differences, she has transformed her personal experiences with harassment, discrimination, and homelessness into a source of empowerment for many. Despite her challenges as a woman of transgender experience, including missing traditional college during her transition, Ashley’s dedication saw her rise from a part-time teller to National Vice President of Diversity and Inclusion at a major financial institution in less than five years. Her transformative 4-step empowerment process is detailed in her book and online course, Empowering Differences. She credits her success to the allyship of those closest to her. Today, Ashley inspires as a leader, keynote speaker, trainer, and activist, and has announced her candidacy for the Florida State House of Representatives.
Lisa recently met Ashley at an event hosted by the Women’s Business Enterprise National Council (WBENC) and we were fortunate enough to speak with her about her work, empowerment, and the ways in which she is helping to transform corporate environments into more inclusive, diverse, and equitable environments.
Do you have any advice for readers who are starting their own journey of empowerment?
“Yes, we recommend people begin with Step 1 in the 4 Empowerment Steps which is Know Yourself. To aid in this process, we build an emotional intelligence questionnaire which can be downloaded for free from our site here. Aligning what you feel empowerment is and how you drive empowerment for others — along with how your differences are impacting your lived experiences — is central to any empowerment journey.”
What is your favorite part of the work you do?
“That is easy! It’s the people for sure. Step 2 is to Know Others, and getting to meet different people to help everyday is so rewarding. Hearing stories around the world of people who are empowering differences is very exciting. Many people know this, but I always reply to every message I get… It isit is a chance to learn from someone else. Never discount what you can learn from others, especially from unlikely sources. I make my content accessible to anyone that presents a need simply by sending me a message. I never want there to be an obstacle to gaining leadership development programming and resources.”
How do you approach intersectionality in your advocacy work, considering factors such as gender, education, ability, and religion?
“This is the really exciting part of my work, because everyone is impacted differently based on each person’s intersectionality. We built the world’s first empowerment measurement platform through a 90 second empowerment assessment survey. This closely aligns to Step 3: Developing Your Strategy because depending on which of your differences have empowerment and which ones need empowerment, you will need to be focusing on different actions. For example, based on someone’s intersectionality, they may need more socioeconomic class empowerment and then we help that person focus their efforts internally by using these actions: Access, Invest, and Educate. Likewise, if someone is empowered for their gender, then they should focus towards other people’s gender by using these actions: Inclusion, Educate, and Access. So our work to connect intersectionality for people lies with each person to make the decision to drive empowerment for others based on their makeup and circumstances.”
What strategies do you employ to navigate difficult conversations around diversity and inclusion within corporate environments?
“We recommend that organizations focus on leadership as the foundational principle in building DEI strategies. Step 4 focuses on Empowering Actions, and all of the empowering actions connect to a leadership principle. Focusing your actions specifically towards the differences that people have allows you to conduct business through diversity. Diversity is the presence of differences that make us each unique, so by definition every single person on the planet represents diversity. Sometimes I wonder why people wouldn’t want to learn about the differences that we have as humans because this helps us to understand them better which can lead to more business revenue and more productivity.”
Visit the links below to learn more about Ashley and her work:
Website: https://empoweringdifferences.com/ & https://ashleybrundage.com
Instagram: @ashleytbrundage & @empoweringdiff
Facebook: Ashley Brundage for Florida & Empowering Differences
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/AshleyTBrundage
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/empoweringdiff/
Twitter: @BrundageforFL & @empoweringdiff
