“It’s changed the language we use from fear and negativity and how not to do the wrong thing, to how we can positively do the right thing! This has been such a positive move in how we can talk about race.”
Olivia Von Halle is a successful luxury fashion brand company based in London.
They were one of the very first companies to contact YMI to find out about YCI in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder.
Their founder explains, “The events of 2020 prompted us to consider how best to act as guides and advocates for our staff members through this time. As a brand, we wanted to take action, and as people, we wanted to educate ourselves.” The company had heard about YMI from a friend, and once their founders had found out more about the YCI approach, they signed up immediately.
She recalls in the immediacy of July 2020 they understood that “The spectre of the crisis could be the engine of innovation–a prompt to look at our history, understand our collective responsibility, and take new action. The thing is, we were seeking a structure and framework within which to do so, so our actions were accountable and quantified – this is where YMI came in!”
A close team, staff were plugged into the desire at leadership level to make sure everyone at the company were supported to do the work. She says, “As a brand we have always been motivated to do more than the minimum … we were conscious of engaging with a programme that would be as stimulating as it was challenging–something that would help reframe our perspective as much as it would bring us together.”
Though there was some nervousness about embarking on a programme that lays the ground for uncomfortable conversations and introspection, the whole team embraced the process fully. The Founder reflects, “Whatever existing fault lines it exposed were the same ones we were looking to redress; sometimes when looking through the prism of a crisis large enough to refract your entire lives through it, uncomfortable things are thrown into the light. But that is the same reason we knew we wanted to partake.”
“As a brand we have always been motivated to do more than the minimum … we were conscious of engaging with a programme that would be as stimulating as it was challenging– something that would help reframe our perspective as much as it would bring us together.”
The team as a whole found that the role-playing exercises as part of the module ‘What Would You Say If…’ (designed to give participants the practice to speak up as anti-racist allies in the work place) were the most dynamic and challenging facet of YCI. The founder says, “You are acting spontaneously, and subconsciously, while facilitators provide a ‘safe space’ – but you’re still walking on unfamiliar turf. That was the sort of challenge we knew could be tense or overwhelming.”
Asked what has changed as a result of taking part in YCI, the founder reflects on the final module ‘Activate Your Allyship’, which separated departments into different meeting rooms to discuss how things could practically change at the company having gone through the course, she shared, “Each team came back with an action plan – be it setting new diversity targets and quotients for our casting process, identifying weak points in our messaging, or considering new collaborators.”
As a result of investing the time and money into ensuring all staff journeyed through YCI together, the founder says that here has been a shift in morale amongst staff and that the company has, “Encouraged open dialogue in-person and online about ways to improve as a company – suggesting policy or strategy ideas that help us to be better. We have also been able to address how our brand is represented externally and make sure that this is diverse and culturally sensitive.”
