Building Trust Through Inclusive Design: Making Products and Workplaces Work for Everyone

[00:00:00] Welcome to the EVOLVE Talent & HR Show. We're building the rooms where HR and talent leaders learn, connect, and evolve. I'm Anna Morgan, and this is the space where people-first leaders come for courageous conversations. Whether you're leading from the C-suite, emerging as a new voice, building community, or driving change within your organization, this show is for you. Every episode brings voices that are driving change in the HR and talent community. We're going to get into the strategies, conversations, and the strategies, conversations, and the strategies.

[00:00:30] We're going to get into the process of the events that matter. Because here's what we know. Every conversation matters. Every introduction, every shared experience, it creates momentum that extends far beyond the room. And that is the EVOLVE multiplier. When we collaborate, overcompete, when we connect with intention, the opportunities, the relationships, and the impact compound across our entire community. You've tuned into a podcast, but this is actually your connection to the entire EVOLVE ecosystem.

[00:01:00] New episodes come out weekly. Now it's your turn to EVOLVE. Welcome. Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the Evolve Talent and HR Show. I am your host, Anna Morgan, and I couldn't be more excited today to welcome the well-known and highly respected Torrin Ellis. Thank you for joining us today, Torrin. Go ahead. I was just going to say thank you. I appreciate you. I apologize. I didn't know where you were going to go in terms of your introduction. I appreciate you. Thank you.

[00:01:30] Absolutely. So for those who may not be familiar with you, you are like myself. We've had some adventures regarding our careers and unexpected plot twist. So will you give us a little bit of an introduction, kind of where you've been, what you've done, and what you are building now?

[00:01:50] Awesome. So I'll start with there are no binaries in culture, emotions, and identities. We are much more complicated than that. One should never, ever remain silent for fear of complexity. There are no binaries in culture, emotion, and identities. We are much more complicated than that.

[00:02:13] But one should never, but one should never, ever remain silent for fear of complexity. Said by Elif Shafak. She is a Turkish author, a sayist, all-around humanist. And it is one of the lines and phrases that absolutely runs central to every single thing that I do and have done. So let me do it in 30 seconds. Started my first recruiting firm.

[00:02:42] All right. Those that are in marketing or job seeking, pay attention. Yeah. So I started my first recruiting company in 1998. Did transactional contingency-based recruiting from 1998 all the way up until around 2000. Did a couple of nonprofits in the middle of that.

[00:03:01] I moved from transactional consulting, recruiting to consulting. Consulting was around a year and a half, two years before the light bulb went off for me that no matter what these organizations were doing, they weren't doing a good enough job around representation and building inclusive, high-performing teams.

[00:03:20] And so I expanded the consulting agency to focus really on strategic empowerment, tactical execution, and really helping organizations understand this is the reason why you pursue diversity and inclusion. Did that from 2010 to 2025. We had a new administration come in. We had a whole lot of folks that hijacked the phrase and the work around diversity, equity, and inclusion.

[00:03:47] And I, Anna, spent a year angry every single day. Frustrated because of people's disingenuous posture around work that I had done for more than a decade. Beautiful work that others in the space were doing. And so it took me some time before I figured out exactly where I wanted to go. And with NOMA right now, we are building a trust assurance layer for products, systems, and solutions that are in the marketplace.

[00:04:16] Essentially, what we do at NOMA is we answer one pressing question. And that question, Anna, is this. What happens when your system or your tool is reached by, engaged by, the person it wasn't designed for? That's the pressing question that we answer. Two to three billion people on the planet have some form of a disability.

[00:04:40] We answer the question, what happens when one of those individuals from the disability community attempts to use your system, your solution, or your tool? Do they experience it the same way that you, Anna, or I would experience it? And saying that, Anna, presupposes that you don't have a disability, and I could be even wrong with that.

[00:05:03] Well, it depends on how you define disabilities. I would fall in that category as, you know, diagnosed with ADHD and neurodiversity back in 1989. And as a recruiter in many of my roles, noticing how I learn differently and recall information or have accelerated my own learning professionally,

[00:05:29] I always would ask the curious question, what are we doing from the candidate side at the very beginning to make sure they have supports so that they can perform to the best of their ability in their interview? It was a common problem that teams were not looking at that information until close to offer and wanted to have conversations with my leaders and HR tech teams to say, like,

[00:05:59] how can we reduce the friction for those that need extra supports? And my question to you with this platform, is it more so for within an organization or any type of business function, or is it specifically for those that have disabilities that are engaging the company as a job seeker or future employee? Yeah, so it's a very good question.

[00:06:27] Anna, we are focused on seven particular and specific spaces, HR tech being one of those spaces, which is accessible, accessibility and assistive technologies being another finance, insurance, education, healthcare, hospitality. And the reason why we're focused on that is because we know that the two to three billion people are in those spaces. Let me give you a couple of examples. Yeah.

[00:06:50] You and I would probably pick up our mobile device and we would try to summon such for a driverless vehicle. I don't want to call any names, if you will. I don't know. I prefer the other cars or just a cab myself. But you may have the individual out there that wants to have the driverless vehicle. And so we can access the app. We can request the vehicle. It arrives at our location. We enter into the back of the vehicle.

[00:07:18] And then the question becomes, is the experience continuing to be the way that you would want it to be? What happens if you, like I saw in Phoenix, Arizona back in October of 2024, when I went to the client board for Paradox, I saw a couple of driverless vehicles rotating in a circular driveway and the people in the back waving and smiling at all of us. They couldn't get out. Right.

[00:07:46] I've seen a clip of something similar in a show or a movie not long ago. Absolutely. And again, I'll just use myself. If I'm in the back of that vehicle, I have all of my faculties. I have the ability to tap a button and talk to customer service. I can audibly hear customer service. If they come up on the screen, I can see the customer service person. Those folks eventually got out of the vehicle.

[00:08:10] But what happens if I'm blind and I can't see or if I'm deaf and I can't hear? And so when I say we're not just focused on any one particular space, we're not focused on any one particular persona, the job seeker or the applicant or the prospect. We are focused on the person who might have that disability inside of the organization who may be trying to pursue a promotion or a stretch assignment or whatever the case may be.

[00:08:40] So I just want people to think about Noma. Again, we are answering that one question when consequential AI data systems and tools are being deployed across your enterprise. Okay. What happens when a person it wasn't designed for engages with it? That is the question that we answer. Amazing.

[00:09:00] And, you know, this has been a little bit of an unexpected plot twist for you from what kind of impact and projects that you championed in the past. How did you come up with the name of Noma? G is silent. Yeah. This is part of my disability. It's like the processing piece, Noma. If we were on the African continent and we were speaking the language, the G would absolutely be pronounced.

[00:09:29] It would be N-Goma. But I pronounce it silently. And how did I come up with it? So Noma was formed in my head almost three years ago. And what I wanted Noma to be then was a manager intelligence platform. Okay. Essentially, what I was suggesting to the marketplace where I was headed was we were going to automate and operationalize our D&I work.

[00:09:56] And the premise and thesis for me was that the more I knew about Anna, the better I could be as a leader. That I have a responsibility to give you everything that you need in terms of resources, development, support, and the tools. I have a responsibility as your leader to make sure you have all of that. And when I make sure that you have all of that, then I can hold you accountable.

[00:10:22] Well, we wanted to do a manager intelligence platform, but unfortunately, we saw what happened in the D&I space over the last couple of years. My name heavily associated with diversity and inclusion. And so when I would reach out to CHROs and others, the first thing that they would say is that this is a D&I play. We're not going to invest in that or we're not going to pursue deploying that in our organization.

[00:10:48] Just because I'm D&I and they assumed it was D&I and it wasn't. It was really around how do we create better relationship between our employee and their leader so that we have more engaged, more retained, and higher performing. Higher performing. Yeah.

[00:11:07] And, you know, when we invest in our employees and managers, and I can say this from my lived experience as a full cycle recruiter working and helping promote doing internal mobility, the middle manager roles before they get to senior executive and VP oftentimes get the short end of the stick.

[00:11:31] And like they are not given the tools as you're describing to really look at the whole person and understand the strengths, weaknesses, cognitive preferences, communication styles. Because, you know, in this industry, we have to over communicate so much. And how many times have we been butthurt by misinterpreting how someone has communicated through an email or a text?

[00:12:00] Because that context or the relationship, as you said, wasn't there because they didn't have the foundation or the trust and understanding to support them in executing to the best of their ability or lead effectively. So I'm really sad to hear that. And even more sad to go back to what you shared at the beginning about just having to sit with anger for a year. And I know so many of us had similar situations.

[00:12:28] And I can only hope that we continue to come back to the whole person and focus. And DE&I gets its credit and value that it deserves within the workplace today. Yeah, the seminal piece for me was part of the transition to NOMA was because I had felt like I had done all that I needed to do in the consulting space. I needed to do and drive and deliver a technology solution.

[00:12:55] I wanted that to be the next chapter, the evolution of who I was. It wasn't about turning my back on or abandoning my love and commitment for DE&I work. It was how do we operationalize that work? Well, one of the seminal points, Anna, was that in September of 2020, if I'm not mistaken, Citibank dropped a report.

[00:13:17] And the report that Citibank dropped was basically, had we addressed racial equity and the disparity of such in education, health care, housing, and compensation, we would have added $20 trillion to our economy. Or said a different way, we had lost $20 trillion. So here's the reason why I bring that up. Here we are now in October, November of 2026.

[00:13:46] That report was six years ago. And even with such a demonstrative document and artifact that executives all across the globe either had access to or even reviewed, and to still suggest that DE&I was not and is not important is a major misstep on corporate America.

[00:14:10] It's a major misstep on our associations that say that they care about the human being. I'm a humanist. I absolutely care about humanity. I've always cared about the human when I was a sales leader inside of MCI Communications back in the 90s. As a recruiter, all throughout my entrepreneurial career, I have built and done everything that I can to make work better for humans.

[00:14:38] And I'll continue to do that, which is the thesis of all of what we are doing at NOMA. How do we build better products and solutions for the disability community? Because if we do that for them, we'll all benefit for that. So I'm encouraged. I'm excited about the direction in which the team is going and growing. And we know that we're going to make a difference. Yes, absolutely.

[00:15:03] And I'm so grateful for the work that you're doing and coming up in a privileged, very not diverse environment and really having the curiosity and the heart for just caring about humans like you. I wish that I had access or had found better tools to educate me as I was navigating early career up to even where I am now.

[00:15:29] You know, we never graduate from understanding the human needs in this regard. And I mean, this work is immense. And how did you find that particular resource? Because the question that was brewing in my head was, did the spark come from all the conversations that you had hosting the weekly show as an executive director of disability solutions?

[00:15:56] I think that was like four years that you had those conversations, right? Was that the touch points and the data that kind of sparked you to go find more? And was the bridge to what you're building today? You're absolutely right. I mean, literally, it is a matter of going through life's experiences.

[00:16:17] When I started doing D&I consulting in 2011, 2012, I was a different individual than I was last year in 2025, suggesting to you and to your audience that I have evolved tremendously over that 15-year period. And when you talk about disability solutions, I was doing my podcast with Julie Sowash, Crazy and the King. At the same time, I was on SiriusXM.

[00:16:43] Two, three million people a week were listening to what we had to share both through my podcast and through SiriusXM. Julie was a jewel as it related to introducing me to what disability looked like for the disability community. What diversity and inclusion looked like for the disability community.

[00:17:05] And so when I say, just as you just said, it was an absolute and complete submission as much as I possibly could to people's experiences. Cornel West has a saying, and he says, a condition of progress is to allow those that are suffering to speak their truth. And so I never went into a room suggesting that I had all of the answers.

[00:17:29] I never went into a client engagement feeling as if there was no reason for me to sit in a posture of learning. Like I would enter into my consulting engagements with a deep posture of just talk to me. I want to know what's going on. I want to be able to feel as much of your culture that I have not been introduced to. I know this is like a fire hose, but I want you to just talk to me. I want to be able to understand.

[00:17:54] So when I am making suggestions, when I am forming discovery questions, when we are putting frameworks together, we are doing that with a bit more insight and not just working off of what we did a moment ago. I'll give you a quick story. I worked with one of the biggest athletic vendors on the planet in 2017 and 2018. And I remember when they first reached out to me, they kept saying, Torrin, we want best in class or best practices. I can't remember now. It's been 10 years.

[00:18:23] But they kept using the phrase. Whatever the phrase was at that time. They kept using the phrase because I'm in the backyard of another major athletic vendor and retailer. And so they kept wanting to be like that other one. And I said, after like 10 times, it's not about me bringing to you what they do. It's about understanding how do I unlock all of the beauty and potential inside of your organization. You all are in a totally different geography.

[00:18:53] You've got a totally different community around you. I mean, everything about where you're located is different than Baltimore. So let's be best in class where you are. And that's the way in the work that I did when we were doing D&I consulting. And that's what we're doing right now. It's not about going in and trying to shine a light on organizations, be it an HR tech vendor or some other support service.

[00:19:19] It's about how do you identify what that experience is like for people from that community? And then you get to prioritize and decide how you want to course correct.

[00:19:29] Yeah. And it's sad that I feel leadership and those that we would want to help unlock what's possible are still suffering from pandemic burn and decision fatigue and burnout and lacking trust within the organization that they haven't been led or seen leadership in such a capacity to be willing to drop the armor

[00:19:56] and share from a radically honest place. And for humanity, that just the empath in me is just like, oh, so deeply sad. That was pretty much the profile that I encountered. And I can't imagine when you would go in to partner and explore what types of stories or resistance that you and your team encountered during those days.

[00:20:21] I mean, again, some of the stories, they still rattle the heartstrings, if you will, in terms of disappointment. I mean, I just, I see so many individuals and sitting in some of the one-on-one conversations of how they were disappointed with their organization, what they expected from their organization. I remember supporting one client out of Nashville, Tennessee, and their marketing team went, they were inside of a very large building. And the entrance to the building, of course, is all glass.

[00:20:51] And this particular client took one of their LGBTQ stickers and placed it right in the bottom corner of the glass framework when you were coming into the building. Somebody inside of the organization scraped the LGBTQ sticker off of the glass window and put it on an individual's desk upstairs. It had that individual in tears, crying.

[00:21:19] And that was not the individual that placed it on the glass. Not at all. And the person who scraped it off, the person who scraped it off didn't want people coming in the building to know that the organization was supportive of the LGBTQ community. So when I say that we have traversed through a number of different stories and situations and scenarios around privacy, around support, around compensation. I mean, we've done it all.

[00:21:48] And so here's what I would say to you. Although I didn't build Noma the way that I would have built it, if I were a leader today inside of an organization, I feel like I have a duty. And my duty is to develop you, to inspire you, to resource you, and to support you. That is what my responsibility as a leader. If I look at you, Anna, and know that I'm not giving you the proper onboarding of 90 days or more.

[00:22:15] If I'm not inspiring you to dig deep, even after you made a mistake, to make another call, even after you messed up the first one. To go after a new client, even though you put forth a proposal that was, you know, if I'm not doing the different things of development and inspiration. If I'm not providing you with the resources that you need, here's where you can find certain information. Here's other departments or individuals in the company that could collaborate with you.

[00:22:42] If I'm not doing the things that are required of you, then it's going to be extremely hard, one, for me to build a relationship with you. And that's going to keep you from wanting to be engaged. It's going to keep you from wanting to stay with the organization. And it will certainly, in many instances, suppress the beauty and the boldness of your ability to produce. And so I know what my responsibility is as a leader.

[00:23:05] And so I operate that way, whether I'm inside of an organization as a consultant, as I'm building my team of NOMA, we are four strong and getting stronger. I am absolutely focused on how do I make it so that the people that are connected to me, both directly and indirectly, they feel like Torrin is supportive. I don't always get it right. I make some mistakes. I got to say I apologize. But the problem for me is not apologizing.

[00:23:33] The problem for me is being too deaf to recognize, too blind to recognize when that apology is necessary. Whew, man, you gave me goosebumps there. Thank you, Torrin. Speaking of a deaf, there was a case of a deaf employee who was once flagged as needing to exhibit better listening skills. Did I find that information correctly?

[00:23:58] And how would NOMA or leadership in your expertise self-correct a situation such as this? Yeah, first of all, if I had my druthers, I would have been with that organization back in 2018, 2019 when they started the organization. That's the first thing. I know exactly which case you are referring to. Okay. I would have preferred that we had an opportunity to help them with the development. And that's the reason why when people go to my LinkedIn profile, you'll see trust upstream.

[00:24:28] And what I mean by that is the further we can get up in ideation stage and product development, the better the product and the solution is going to be. Here's how we would have helped that organization. I assembled through NOMA a strike team of people with various disability dimensions. And we simply test the solution and we annotate with artifacts, various types of artifacts of what that experience is like.

[00:24:56] And again, we are answering one central question. Do I know what I'm supposed to do when I get to the site or the solution or use this tool? And can that happen for me? If it can't happen for me, then I am documenting what is happening so that I can return that in a report and dashboards to the organization. So that's how we would have helped. We would have assembled a strike team of people with different disability dimensions.

[00:25:22] We would have tested the solution and they would have known you don't tell a deaf person to exhibit better listening skills. They would have known that their screen 13 and screen 17 and screen whatever may not be accessible to a screen reader. They would have known that screen number one works with this type of screen reader. But screen number seven doesn't work with the other 14 screen readers.

[00:25:46] So we assemble strike teams to test these systems, these solutions, these tools, and then we give the client a report so that they can make the necessary corrections. Here's who we report to. We report to the general counsel. We report to executives and senior leadership team. We report to the board of directors. And we report to the product development team. Those are the audiences in which we are doing the work that we are doing.

[00:26:13] We are focused on making sure that you are compliant, you operate within your governance, you mitigate or minimize risk, and we try to help you protect your brand reputation. Amazing. Well, I am just blown away and so excited for this. Based on the additional research that you've done, the population that needs these tools and those that need the education,

[00:26:40] is there a golden thread of commonality of their priorities of needs that you're seeing through these conversations and search and strike teams? Yeah, there is. The first commonality is that anyone can enter into the disability community at any moment, at any point. That's the first thing. And we cannot minimize or ignore that.

[00:27:01] I can walk out of my home or an establishment and anything can happen and I can find myself as part of the disability community. So the first common thread is that anyone can join this community and most will join the community. That's first thing. Second thing that's common, and I think that this is probably equally as important. Okay. They like their independence.

[00:27:25] People in the disability community want and like their independence the very same way that you and I like and want our independence. And so when we think about accessible design and the equality of outcome, I just want you to think about it from just a myriad of examples. I'll give you one.

[00:27:45] I was at a conference last week and then there was an individual on the stage who used their agent to book all of the travel and lodging associated with this particular trip. Okay. And the person said that the agent was wonderful and successful as it related to the air travel, wonderful and successful as it related to scheduling, the pickup and the vehicle transportation.

[00:28:12] They struggled, the agent that is struggled to confirm the hotel. So that person had to step in and work with the agent, work with the hotel so that they could secure their lodging. All I'm suggesting to you is that I don't want us to think in a very myopic and small way. This is not a sanitized experience. People from the disability community want to experience travel. They want to experience restaurants.

[00:28:40] They want to do entertainment, sporting events. They want to do professional conferences. They want to do all of the things that we want to do. They want to live in their homes and be able to access their appliances. They want to get mobility to go up and down. They want to turn on. They want to do all of the things that we want to do. So that's the common group. Now I'm starting to see it like the hearing and experiencing that story. That hotel group potentially would benefit from NOMA. Right. Absolutely. Yeah.

[00:29:09] Now I got it. But now it's like, bam. Absolutely. And to that point, I would imagine, as we talked before we hit record, that there is a massive mental health issue around loneliness. And we are just seeing people flooding to in-person events, big conferences, small conferences, home parties, all the things.

[00:29:32] And as an event organizer now and someone who's had a little bit of a steep and somewhat some unfortunate situations because of my lack of lived experience in this space, I always try to step back and consult with experts like yourself.

[00:29:51] Hey, this is the event where people are going, how can I be more inclusive and reduce the friction and make sure this table, this conference, this group is being sensitive and inclusive to all. Do you have any pointers based on the number of stages and events that you have been at throughout your career and now with your NOMA knowledge?

[00:30:21] Yeah. So let me tell you, I've been on more stages than many. Not the most, but I've been on more stages. Well, it was about 300 plus rooms I think you've stood in front of in this industry, talent and HR. Probably more than that. And I don't say that to impress you, but to impress upon you that no one has done a good job of including the disability community. So let's start there. Full stop. No one has done a good job. So here's the first thing that you do.

[00:30:48] And it goes back to what you and I exchanged in the very beginning. We both acknowledged a posture of learning. And so Alex Coban, I know the book is up there somewhere on my shelf. The book is titled The Uncounted. And inside of the book, he asks two pressing questions. One of those questions is, who are you? And the other question is, how do you want to be counted? Here's the translation, Anna.

[00:31:14] As you are preparing your Evolve event, one of the very first things that you can do is go to the disability community and include them in the planning. Torrin is able-bodied. To my knowledge, I don't have any disability dimensions, which is the reason why the strike team members for us all have a disability. I would encourage you to include someone from the disability community to help with the planning.

[00:31:43] And then that way you will begin to start to touch on things that just are unfamiliar to you. And if you can't get someone from the disability community, certainly find someone adjacent, you know, like myself. Absolutely send you some things that you should be thinking about. Here's an example of one. You go to an event, and this is really simple. You go to an event, and when the lunch or breakfast scenario is established,

[00:32:10] all of that food is placed on a table at a certain height. Is that height accommodating to a person who may be in a wheelchair? Right. It's real simple, but it's something that we don't think about because, for the most part, we're all walking up to the table, and we're able to see down in the dish to get what it is that we want. And so think about that.

[00:32:35] Think about when you have the event wheelchair, is it accessible for them to roll over carpet, or would it be better? Or are they going to be running into a table skirt or getting caught? All I'm saying is the flooring conducive to people that may be in a wheelchair, to people that may be using a stick for sight. There are so many things that we can think about that are important to inviting and bringing them into our community. Because they recruit, too.

[00:33:05] They are in HR, too. Innovations, too. And, you know, my goal is always to surprise and delight, but most importantly, provide a safe container so that people know where they're going, what they can expect, and what they can hope to leave the event with. And each year, my knowledge through wins and humble lessons has evolved myself.

[00:33:31] And as someone who appreciates the brilliance and value from a wide population, that was also part of the why in building Evolve, was to have the opportunity to pass the microphone to a diverse population. You know, I see up to executive, not just the whole practitioner piece, in service of hearing the stories that matter relevant to the conversation that we're having today.

[00:34:01] So any other pointers as I keep building my notes in this space to be the best ally and most inclusive person I can be in hosting? I think that, again, just the way that you are approaching the scenario with curiosity, with a willingness to learn and to be better, is a wonderful and necessary start. And so it's not that I have other pointers.

[00:34:25] I would continue to be tethered to that as feeling like I need to learn, never stop feeling like I need to invite other people and other voices. Don't take offense. I remember a scenario where people in the disability community took me to the woodshed. When I say they took me to the woodshed, they took me to the woodshed. And I had to go to Julie and I was like, yo, am I wrong? And she was like, yeah. She said, all you should have did.

[00:34:51] She said, your premise and how you started was right. Where you went wrong is going back and forth with them. You should have just listened. Interesting. Well, it is a basic human need, right? To be seen, heard and understood. And that ties directly into trust, which is a topic that I've been paying very close attention to for about the last year and a half.

[00:35:17] Because you see different segments of this industry, pain points, opportunities. And I kept coming back to trust. And it could be from job seekers mistrusting and being taken advantage of. And the brand from a trust perspective isn't portraying what the actual culture is. Sadly, so many of us have said yes to an opportunity and then 98 days later been like, why?

[00:35:45] How did I not see this? Or why did I miss that question that may have prevented me to be in this collusion now? You had mentioned building out the trust index. This is part of the NOMA tool. Can you tell us more? Yeah, the NOMA trust index is based on five key factors. It is human impact. It is equity, accessibility, reliability, and transparency.

[00:36:14] And so we feel like there's a combination of those five categories or core evaluative metrics that combined should give every organization a score. I will tell you ultimately what I'd like to do is to be able to get inside of a number of organizations. And at some point, you'll find yourself watching a commercial on television. And at the very end of the commercial, you'll see a heart score. You'll find yourself in the middle of a flight.

[00:36:42] And before you get into your pre-flight movies and entertainment, it'll be a commercial from a corporation at the very end. And they'll provide their heart score or they'll do that on their LinkedIn page, provide their heart score. And ultimately, what I want is for people inside and outside of the community to know that this particular product was evaluated through a very specific lens of what does the real life experience look like?

[00:37:11] Listen, we're not an accessibility test. We're not a bias test. Yes, bias testing and accessibility testing are necessary, but that's not who we are. We are an assurance organization that is providing you with a layer of trust that simply says when people with that disability and different disabilities are engaging, this is what their experience is like. Here's the thing. Full stop, Adam. And this is not Torin saying this is from the disability community.

[00:37:41] When you've met a blind person, you've only met a blind person. Meaning my blindness is not the same as your blindness. The way that you navigate through life as a blind person is different than the way that I navigate through life. And so I recognize going in that in my earnest of efforts is genuine and authentic as we are.

[00:38:04] When we assemble our strike team, we are giving you a modicum of a peak inside of what it's like to be disabled. But here's the win. Most organizations don't have that peak. If they had that peak, then you wouldn't have given me the example of the entity that is being sued for what they told the deaf person around exhibiting better listening skills. So I'm just simply suggesting to you that it is absolutely necessary. It is required.

[00:38:31] And when you want trust, you get trust by being transparent. And so we don't have to be perfect. As an organization, you don't have to be perfect. But when you can share with an audience, you can share with the marketplace. Here are the things that we consider. Here's why we may or may not have deployed them. Here's what it looks like for us to go after them in the future.

[00:38:55] But that transparency goes a long way versus we didn't think about it or we're not thinking about it. It's a very different posture to hold. Yeah. And if they're not thinking about it at the beginning of the process or within the user experience platform product wise, that also signals the vibe or the message of how they would be potentially treated if they were to work for that brand or organization, etc. So very fascinating.

[00:39:25] Well, I will definitely take you up on that offer and support the Evolve team. We are also now a team of four. So lots of evolving and growing and learning. And this conversation has ignited and elevated me in so many ways. And thank you for saying yes.

[00:39:43] And I do have to share with our audience that while we hadn't spoken probably in eight months to a year when I reached out or my team reached out to schedule this conversation, you were so kind and gracious, but said, I'm not sure this is the right fit for me.

[00:40:03] And I immediately said, oh, hell no, this is a conversation that we need to have because this is not a show about TA and HR people just chatting with each other. It's those topics and tools and human impacts that are outside of the normal funnel, which is really part kind of ties into my brand as well that, you know, I don't want to do what everyone else is doing in this space.

[00:40:31] And why not try something different? But from this lens and being in a position of privilege to support various diverse communities in different capacities to pass the mic, to employ, to give them a volunteer experience, whatever it may be, absolutely just makes me so grateful. So thank you for saying yes and trusting me in this conversation. Thank you.

[00:41:01] No, I appreciate you for inviting me. I appreciate you for the follow up when I wasn't sure whether or not I was the best voice for your audience. Yeah. You assured me that I needed to be here. And so I'm glad that I am here. And my hope is that as a listener, you're able to take something away from this conversation, whether it be at the very, very beginning, somewhere in the middle, but that you were able to take something from the conversation that makes you and your organization better.

[00:41:31] Amazing. Thank you so much for being here today. Definitely follow Torin. We will put his relevant information in the show notes. Please share with your teams, with your leaders. Reach out and book a call. Learn more about the solutions, products, and the expertise of this human-centered first amazing leader, Torrin Ellis. Until next time, keep evolving and have a great rest of your week. Bye, everyone.

[00:42:03] Thanks for joining the EVOLVE Talent & HR Show. If the conversation landed, share it. Tell it later. Pass it forward. That is the multiplier in action. One connection at a time, building momentum across our community. And that is what Evolve is. We build the rooms where connection compounds into impact. So don't sleep on the in-person experiences, the IRL conferences, the executive tables, the fringe events, our community. Show up. That's where the multiplier multiplies.

[00:42:32] If you know, you know. Head over to evolve-conference.com to see what's evolving and how to stay connected. We'll see you next time.