Diva Tech Talk interviewed Amelia Ransom, currently Senior Director, Diversity and Engagement at Avalara, a Seattle-headquartered tech company dedicated to ensuring that global tax compliance is done right. Amelia is focused on “trying to solve a problem that the world has not solved. It is not for the faint of heart.” In contemplating her work and life, she said: “I stand on the shoulders of black women, some who we know and some we don’t know. To whom much is given, much is required.”
“I didn’t plan to be in diversity and inclusion,” Amelia said. “I joined (luxury retail giant) Nordstrom right out of college.” She started in sales, moved to management and eventually was tapped to be the regional Diversity Director. “That role was pivotal for me. I felt like I was using my skills, knowledge and background to help make the company better.” After seven years in that role she moved into store management and later led all the diversity initiatives for the company. “I wasn’t aiming to become a diversity and inclusion leader,” she said. "Like most executives, I was in another different line role." Then, like others, Amelia found the opportunity to leverage unique personal portfolio and experience, and combine it with individual skills, to lead diversity and inclusion.
Amelia emphasized that it takes the full gamut of business proficiencies to tackle employee engagement, diversity and inclusion. Amelia noted that much of her diversity/inclusion skills have come through leveraging leadership skills learned through solving business challenges, and also through reading, face-to-face management challenges, and trial and error. “You have to learn when to use your own voice, and when to pull back and amplify everyone else’s” noting that you can’t “be all things to all people, without leveraging all voices.” Her role requires that she be “constantly willing to learn, shift and change as the community needs shift and change.”
Amelia’s professional inclusion and diversity work began at Nordstrom where she was part of the team who helped open stores and introduce this Northwest company to places like Florida, Virginia and North Carolina. She learned quickly the work of truly inclusive teams would have difference challenges in the South. “Our challenges were different in the South than they were in Seattle, where Nordstrom is based. The structural components of discrimination and oppression still live on street names, flags and courthouses. Our folks really needed to know that we understood the history of the area we were going into and that we could create a safe space for all voices. I had to earn their trust through candor, authenticity and transparency." She forged partnerships with the store managers and HR teams to help them lead these diverse teams. “Difficult and honest conversations were at the foundation of our success. Some of our managers were raised not to talk about these things, but we had to in order to gain the trust of our teams.” She emphasized that success was often directly intertwined with the willingness to say "we got it wrong, that we needed to pivot and do something different when necessary."
Amelia believes successful programs depend on noticing repetitive patterns and internal situations coupled with “knowing what’s going on outside of the walls, what’s going on in the world.” According to Amelia, “You have to be part of society. What is happening in music? What is happening in the news? What is happening on TV? What is happening in the community groups your employees come from? You have to listen and be asking questions constantly.” To gain top-level support for her initiatives, Amelia critiques her own proposals. Then she goes to her “naysayers” to shoot holes in an idea. By the time she gets to ultimate decision-makers, she has bullet-proofed any concept.
Amelia joined Avalara in 2018. To evolve her organization, she supports the concept of ERG’s (Employee Resource Groups) which she sees as “a conduit to deeper engagement, a tool to drive more community…” She instituted them, beginning with a prototype woman-oriented global ERG, to “show everyone what could be.” This was quickly followed by three other groups: Ujima (for African Americans), Veterans of Avalara, and the Prism Group, geared toward LGBTQIA individuals. “We did not say what they had to be. We just said: ‘here’s the model and the framework.’ They have been very instrumental in driving more inclusion, more voices, and more ‘safe space’ for those voices,” said Amelia.
Avalara measures the success of its inclusion programs through raw data, anecdotal feedback, the level of engagement of various populations, as well as metrics around recruiting pools and populations, and recognition external candidates express about Avalara’s D/I efforts. Amelia’s goal is that diversity and inclusion are “deep and rooted in the DNA” of Avalara, and always connected to the overarching strategic goals of the company. “Avalara’s goal is to be involved in every tax transaction in the world,” according to Amelia. That implies reaching and engaging every possible permutation of population in the world, too. “My goal is to make us ready, truly ready to reach our global goals.”
Amelia’s personal practices for developing as a leader include:
Scheduling 30 minutes every day to read about something that she knows nothing about (“I force myself to stay curious;”)
Retaining mentors “who will tell me the absolute truth;”
Checking herself, including her “goals and motivations” before embarking on any project or important conversation;
For her last birthday, asking key people to give her the link to a book that changed their life, so that she could “drive deeper relationships.” The sheer variety of those literary recommendations have “made me a better D and I practitioner.”
Amelia loves to travel and situate herself in others’ cultures and environments. She then brings those experiences back to those who may not have had the opportunity to gain that knowledge. In her community life, she serves on the boards of Seattle’s Goodwill Foundation, Seattle’s Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, homeless advocacy nonprofit Building Changes, the Institute for Sustainable Diversity and Inclusion, and the advisory board of the Seattle chapter of ALPFA (Association of Latino Professionals For America). That community involvement makes sense since “If you are doing D and I, well,” said Amelia, “you are pushing people to be the best versions of themselves, helping them know where they are; and help them move along. My job is to amplify the voices of the marginalized, and underrepresented.”
In Amelia’s view, “the biggest threat to the planet, and to business, is the untapped potential in people’s minds.” She believes in plumbing that potential deeply. “I don’t have time to make people comfortable,” Amelia said. Instead she wants to inspire everyone to think, engage, evolve into their greatest potential, and “have seats at the table, which makes all of us better.” Amelia noted that diversity and inclusion leadership can feel lonely, at times, even Sisyphean. When Amelia feels like that, this quote of Presidential Medal of Honor recipient, famed poet Maya Angelou, gives her strength: “I go forth alone. I stand as ten thousand.”
Amelia Ransom can be reached on Twitter at @ameliajransom.
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