We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Kesha Hamilton. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Kesha below.

Kesha, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear from you about what you think Corporate America gets wrong in your industry and why it matters.

Corporate America gets placing the proper value on the impact of race in every part of our existence wrong – as a result corporate America does not invest appropriately or significantly in understanding the impact of race and mitigating and eliminating the negatives that come from the impact of race.

Kesha, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

My name is Kesha Hamilton and I’m first and foremost a mom. My most important role is that of being a mother. I have six amazing children. Four young ladies and two young men.

I was married for sixteen years before I was forced to make the difficult decision to divorce my children’s father. While married I was a stay-at-home wife and mother. I was married a couple of years after high school. Because of the teachings of the church I attended at that time, I did not place a proper premium on college and therefore did not attend significantly.

So, when I went through my divorce, I had a high school diploma and many years of church involvement experience – many transferrable skills that I use to this day, but corporate America did not recognize.

As a result, I was stuck seeking entry level positions into the work force. I immediately noticed the lack of diversity within, particularly upper management, in the few places I worked. I also recognized that while I was being told I needed more education to advance, others in positions I sought did not have the higher degrees – they just had a personal connection to the CEO.

I see a problem and I seek to understand it in order to fix it. The problem I identified was a lack of diversity, a lack of seeing myself represented in most management positions and especially in executive suite positions.

I recognized that there were too many people in positions of authority who looked alike, thought alike, and decisioned alike.

I attended a conference, Facing Race in November of 2018. The nation’s largest multiracial, intergenerational racial justice conference and from that conference was given the terms to apply to the conditions I was experiencing and exploring.

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI). I then created a report and power point to present to my then CEO.

My focus was on the benefits of DEI to the organization and included action steps and deliverables. From that report some surface level changes were made.

I saw that they were not producing the desired outcomes, not only in my place of employment but around the world – as I continued to research, study and attend conferences and be in spaces with likeminded individuals who were also studying and solving for this issue.

I understood and saw that in order to get to the heart of the lack of DEI we had to get to the heart of why we currently exist as we do – we needed to understand our foundations of becoming a nation to better understand why we operate as we do.

Our nation was built on bloody soil and with stolen labor. Bloodied by the slaughter and deaths of hundreds and thousands of Indigenous people. And the stolen labor of Black people through the Transatlantic Slave Trade.

Understanding those foundations, the resulting systems, structures, laws, policies and mindsets – helps us better understand where we are today and also helps us to mitigate and eliminate when we have the courage and humanity to do so.

Thats where Diverse Minds Consulting, LLC was born – recognizing the need of those with lived experience as the first teacher and also recognizing the need to be historically based in the education in order to produce results that are more than surface level.

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

I applied for a grant, which I was awarded. My business is consulting. I work out of my home so share most overhead costs with my household. I keep costs low for my clients but require them to provide printing and materials.

We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.

I met my business partner, Myeshia Jones, while I was solving for the discrepancies I witnessed and experienced in one of my first jobs. She too was about to go on a journey – unbeknownst to she or myself, but that initial meeting sealed our friendship, opened up our awareness of our shared passion around racial justice and set the stage for the work we do together today.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.diversemindsconsulting.com
• Instagram: DiverseMinds_w/KeshaHamilton
• Facebook: A Meeting of Diverse Minds
• Youtube: Diverse Minds Consulting, LLC
• Other: https://www.keshahamilton.com

Image Credits

Lane’s Perspective