Ep 98: Amelia Ransom: Inclusion Leadership -- Not for The Faint of Heart

Diva Tech Talk Podcast

Diva Tech Talk interviewed Amelia Ransom, Senior Director, Diversity and Engagement at Avalara, a tech company that ensures global tax compliance is done right. Amelia is dedicated to “trying to solve a problem that the world has not solved. It is not for the faint of heart.”

“I didn’t plan to be in diversity and inclusion,” Amelia said. 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 lead all the diversity initiatives for the company. Amelia emphasized that it takes the full gamut of business proficiencies to tackle employee engagement, diversity and inclusion. Her diversity and inclusion skills have been self-taught, 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.” The role demands that she be “constantly willing to learn, shift and change as the community needs shift and change.”

Amelia believes a key component of successful programs depend on noticing repetitive patterns coupled with “knowing what’s going on outside of the walls, in the world,” according to Amelia. “You have to be part of society. You have to be asking constant questions.” To gain top-level support, Amelia critiques her own proposals and then 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, where she supports ERG’s (Employee Resource Groups) who she sees as “a conduit to deeper engagement, a tool to drive more community,” 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. “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. Amelia’s goal is that diversity and inclusion are “deep and rooted in the DNA” of Avalara, connected to “Avalara’s goal -- to be involved in every tax transaction in the world.” That implies reaching and engaging every possible permutation of population in the world, too.

Amelia’s personal practices for developing as a leader include 30 minutes each day to read about something she knows nothing about, and retaining mentors “who will tell me the absolute truth.” For her last birthday, she asked people to give her the link to a book that changed their life, so that she could “drive deeper relationships.” She loves to travel and bring those experiences back to others. 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). “My job is to amplify the voices of the marginalized, and underrepresented.”

In Amelia’s view, “the biggest threat to the planet, and 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. When Amelia feels 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.”

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