We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Kelley Bonner. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Kelley below.
Kelley, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Too often the media represents innovation as something magical that only high-flying tech billionaires and upstarts engage in – but the truth is almost every business owner has to regularly innovate in small and big ways in order for their businesses to survive and thrive. Can you share a story that highlights something innovative you’ve done over the course of your career?
A defining moment in my professional career happened at my first professional job. I started my career as a social worker in a prison system. I worked at the largest maximum security prison in New York state. I was in my early 20s and at times the only black woman on the staff. I know it might sound strange to your readers, but this was actually the job of my dreams. And yet, only three years later, I found myself in a puddle on the floor, unable to do what I loved. That process from being so bright-eyed and so excited about my work to being a puddle on the floor in what I call “spectacular burnout,” change my life and my career.
Over those three years, I saw many systemic and overt acts of injustice, sexism, and racism. These acts were both against me, but predominantly against the men incarcerated there.
Bearing witness to these injustices broke me down. That it systematically broke me down until I found myself unable to do the thing I loved and having to quit my job. I learned from that painful experience that I also, for me, burnout is a betrayal, and in so many ways, what I’ve come to know about burnout, I learned in that experience.
I learned to be clear about my value and what mattered to me. I learned that when those values get betrayed, even in small ways that’s your big flashing red light to either adjust your circumstances to improve it or leave. I learned that when you’re not true to yourself when you make compromises, the only result is burnout. Losing the ability to help people, burning out, and leaving was my first real heartbreak. But it also set me on a path to rediscovering myself. And led me to what I do now.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers
So for folks who may not have heard of me before, I am a company culture strategist, licensed therapist, burnout expert, and podcaster. I transform toxic workplace cultures and help companies understand that the road to profit starts with people. By centering people’s safety and wellness profits and innovation happen at an accelerated rate.
I chose my career because of two things: I’ve always wanted to help people and I was naturally curious. I love science. I love studying things. I love to research. I love policy development. I’m a big nerd for all things social science.
But I also love working directly with people. I love the energy exchange that happens when you help someone. So I was really drawn to being a therapist and helping people live healthy lives.
I also as a black woman had a great love of my culture and so I was always looking for ways to uplift women and BIPOC folks.
These passions naturally intersected when I started noticing that while I loved being a therapist I wasn’t making the kind of large impact that would change the lives of the people I worked with. If I wanted to help change the inequities I saw and the pain associated with them, I needed to work on a systems level to make a change. And so much of what caused people’s distress (including myself) originated in the workplace. Looking at the data and realizing that as much as I loved helping people individually, I noticed a lot of people had depressive symptoms and anxiety symptoms that were related to burnout. So I started looking at how I could help companies transform their workplaces.
I think two things set me apart from my peers in this field. One is the intersection of being a therapist and a systems thinker, which allows me to transform the science of culture change into simple practices and strategies. Second is that I have the ability to take even the most complex and messiest of issues (discrimination, sexual violence, burnout) and break them down into “bite-sized” pieces that give organizations the confidence to make the changes need to improve the workplace.
What am I most proud of when it comes to the work that I’ve done? In my career, I’ve had many proud moments, but I will say that the work I did in the prison system, despite how painful that experience brought me a lot of pride. Some of my best experiences as a therapist were working with those amazing men incarcerated there. As far as systems work that I’ve done I would say it is the work I have down around preventing sexual harassment in the workplace. That work gave me a chance to shape national policy, working with WhiteHouse staff and other international agencies to develop impactful strategies in this area. I was able to develop programming that was truly unique.
What do I want potential clients to know about the work that I do? I want people to know that burnout, sexual harassment, discrimination, and workplace wellness, discrimination, have actual solutions to them. And the best way to tackle them is by understanding that all of these issues are interconnected and that when you try to deal with them separately you will fail.
It’s when you develop strategies and training that tackles all of these things together that you see results.
Secondly, I want workers to setting limits and boundaries that will ensure that they bring your best self to work and prevent burnout. This is at the heart of my podcast “Black Girl Burnout.”
Which is all about helping black women opt out of a legacy of struggle and opting into a life of boundaries and joy.
Where can you find me? You can find me across all social media platforms as @kelleyabonner. At my website kelleybonner.com and via my podcast Black Girl Burnout, which returns for season 2 on January 23rd, and is available on all major streaming platforms.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
As a black woman I think that every day there are moments of resilience in my life. When I think about that young woman who was in a puddle on the floor burned out and heartbroken from her first professional job to the woman I am today, every part of that story is a lesson in resilience. I think about the life that I live now which is a life where I am actively pursuing joy and pursuing wellness is resilience. My journey to establishing and setting boundaries in my life, aggressively seeking clarity on what is important to me, and doing the hard work to fill my life with mentors and other people who support and help me are what helped me be the resilient woman I am today.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
A lesson that I’ve had to unlearn as a woman of color is to stop fighting to be seen and validated. Society is conditioned to make women and people of color feel invisible. It’s common in the workplace to have your expertise minimized or rejected. For a long time I was in a battle everywhere I worked for people to see me as the hard-working expert that I am. I was your classic overachiever who had a smile for everyone. I spent my days making sure everyone saw me as “likable” and not just competent but extraordinary. And yet I kept finding myself in situations where I felt either invisible or my accomplishments were ignored. I was never paid or promoted properly and I was chronically miserable at work.
So I unlearned fighting for visibility and instead just focused on the work I was doing. When I let go of the need to be validated by the outside world my career took off and more importantly my satisfaction what my work increased. I attracted amazing collaborations and opportunities into my life. I stopped wasting my time trying to be validated and valued by someone externally; I started validating myself. This “unlearning” helped me mind my life’s mission. This is to not only change the way we talk about burnout at work and at home but to also teach women to reject societal lies that keep us fighting and suffering to be seen.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://letsburnbright.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/letsburnbright/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/burnbrightllc/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kelleybonnerlcsw/
- Other: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/black-girl-burn-out/id1598362678
Image Credits
The Branding Babe