The Two Piers Podcast

Reconstructing Inclusion: Amri B. Johnson on Systems-Level DEI and Interdependence

• Two Piers Consulting • Season 6 • Episode 7

Share episode

Reconstructing Inclusion: Amri B. Johnson on Systems-Level DEI and Interdependence

Episode Summary:
In this episode of the Two Piers Podcast, Erica D’Eramo is joined by Amri B. Johnson—epidemiologist, social capitalist, and CEO of Inclusion Wins—for a dynamic conversation on what it takes to build truly inclusive systems in organizations.

Drawing on his experience across public health, business strategy, and organizational design, Amri shares why many DEI efforts fall short—and how we can reconstruct them to be accessible, actionable, and sustainable. From the limits of representation to the power of interdependence, this episode offers a refreshing, systems-oriented perspective on inclusion.

What We Talk About:

  • Amri’s personal and professional journey—from Topeka to Switzerland
  • Interdependence as a foundational DEI principle
  • Why inclusion must align with organizational purpose
  • A case study on gender diversity and relational fitness in tech
  • The difference between treatment vs. prevention in DEI
  • How upstream approaches drive long-term culture change
  • Why engaging with dissenters strengthens—not weakens—DEI efforts
  • Practical ways to make DEI part of your organizational DNA

Resources & Mentions:

Like what you heard?
Please subscribe, rate, and review The Two Piers Podcast wherever you listen—and help us bring more courageous conversations to more ears.

Erica D'Eramo:

Hello and welcome to the Two Piers Podcast. I'm your host, Erica D'Eramo. Today we have guest Amri B. Johnson joining us. So for more than 20 years, Amri has been instrumental in helping organizations and their people create extraordinary business outcomes. He is a social capitalist, epidemiologist, entrepreneur and inclusion strategist. Amri's dialogic approach to engaging all people as leaders and change agents. Previously at the Research Division of Novartisas Global Head of Cultural Intelligence and Inclusion, has fostered the opening of minds and deepening of skill sets with organizational leaders and citizens enabling them to thrive and optimally contribute to one another and their respective organizations. As CEO and founder of Inclusion Wins, Amri and a virtual collective of partners converge organizational purpose to create global impact with a lens of inclusion. His theory of change is focused on building inclusion systems. Inclusion systems provide direction and momentum in the complexity of organizations that allow them to be anti fragile, leaning into and engaging with resistance, stressors, disruptions and disequilibrium and being stronger as a result of such engagement. His book

Reconstructing Inclusion:

Making DEI Accessible, Actionable, and Sustainable. Outlines how organizations can create inclusion, normative cultures and build approaches to DEI that are designed for and with everyone unambiguously prioritized and purpose aligned. Born in Topeka, Kansas. Amri has worked and lived in the US, Brazil, and currently lives in Basel, Switzerland with his wife, Martina and their three kids. So happy to have you on the podcast. Amri, thank you so much for joining us.

Amri Johnson:

Erica, it's a delight. Thank you. That was so long, I'm gonna have to change it.

Erica D'Eramo:

A lot of accomplishments.

Amri Johnson:

Oh, my God.

Erica D'Eramo:

So tell us a little bit beside you know, outside of the bio, a little bit about yourself, like, what? What's the story of Amri Johnson, like, what brought you to this work?

Amri Johnson:

Yeah, it's a good question. I was in a workshop this past weekend, and we asked, we introduced ourselves, to say by asking who we are. And I think one of the things that we do a lot in the DEI space is we try to get clear about what people are and who I am is the son of Harriet and Larry. Harriet is a has a PhD in early childhood development. And my father, late father, was a mortician, so I never lived in the mortuary, just FYI for all those that are listening. And I got a foundation and an education, both from my parents as well as my family, big families on both sides, about resilience, about agency, about entrepreneurship, about community, about family, about, you know spirituality that was, that's the foundation that I've been very fortunate to have. So who I am is the son of those parents and the the nephew, grandson,etc, of those people that came before me. And now I'm the husband of Martina, the father of my twins, twin stepchildren, Romi and Raphael and Kai, my son, age five. So that's probably who I am. I am a spiritual cultivator. I am an entrepreneur. I am a person that is committed to humanity at its core. And so that's who I am, in a nutshell, and all that other stuff is just stuff that I did. I just hope that this, who I am, actually resonates more than just what I've done.

Erica D'Eramo:

Yeah, absolutely before this, we were talking about, like, the concept of snow and different areas we've lived in the world, and different Lane languages that we've picked up along the way. And some of that textural element and flavor of who people are is what's really interesting to me. And it feels like those are some of the inputs, right? That like, create who we are in the and the outputs are, the outputs, right?

Amri Johnson:

They are. They are in all of our flaws and beauties, beauty, I think the beauty and the flaws even, and so all of that is definitely who we are. That's the most important thing. And I think it's more important now, even. In this space we call DEI is getting clear on the who versus the what. Because oftentimes, when we talk about the what, we're talking about things that might get in the way of us understanding the who, rather than getting closer and having more contact with that who, which, you know, I think, allows us to do things that we're not able to do when we're just focused on the what?

Erica D'Eramo:

Yeah, I love the framework that you, that you share around inclusion and these, this concept of, like, really taking into account all of the different factors that you'll face during doing this work from as someone who thinks from a very mucha systems perspective that feels very like integrative, and I don't know, cohesive to me. So tell me a little bit about your your work and kind of your, your key theses.

Amri Johnson:

I think the principal kind of elements of it are one, that interdependence is kind of at the center. We are not one from the other. We are one with the other, and maybe even there's no other right. And so to get beyond that notion of other, we have to understand interdependence. And then if we want to build an approach to inclusion that is accessible to everyone, and when I mean accessible, what I mean is, when something is accessible to you, you understand. You ever heard that word Wiifm? W, I, I, F, M, the radio station. What's in it for me?

Erica D'Eramo:

What's in it for me?

Amri Johnson:

Yeah, people need to see that this work called inclusion is for them and not them, necessarily, if they identify as those pronouns, because we know that's been this controversial conversation that probably didn't need to be such, but it's likeclear that inclusion is about everyone, and that I'm a part of that, and I have to contribute to it. It's not something that I'm waiting for somebody to do is something that I exercise so that first is accessible to everyone, and that everyone sees what's in it for them, that it's actionable, meaning I know what to do. I have the skills and capabilities to create the conditions for others and for myself to thrive, and I expect, reasonably so, to contribute to one another as part of being in an organization, and that the organization prioritizes us building or us, as I was employee in a company, building the skills that allow us to help everybody do their best work. And then lastly, that the organization is clear that inclusion is connected to its reason for being. It's raising debt to its purpose, right? Otherwise, it's not sustainable and so accessible, actionable aligned with organizational purpose. Reason for being, mission are all critical, and those are principles that I stand on probably as firmly as I stand on anything else. In addition to clarity about interdependence, there's a lot of other stuff underneath our emergent inclusion framework, and I can talk more about that, but the but the real notion is, do we understand that we're not divided? We are interdependent. If we are in an organization or any human community, and that if we want inclusion to be normative, it has to be accessible to everyone, unambiguously prioritized and aligned with organizational reason for being, purpose, mission.

Erica D'Eramo:

Yeah, whenever I work with organizations who say they want to start doing some of this work. And I asked the question of, like, great, and you know, essentially, why or what? What's the driver for this? And I usually get, like, a look of confusion about, like, What do you mean? What's the why? Like, because it's the right thing to do. And it's like, well, okay, yes, I mean, sure, I don't disagree, and it was probably, if it's the right thing to do, is probably the right thing to do a year ago or five years ago. So what is it that's happening in the business or in the context that is an underlying driver for right now? I guess, right? And some of that's like basic theory of change. You know what's, what's the urgency now, but tying it to when it's just this, like, tack on element of, we're gonna do this, we're gonna add this thing on. We're gonna have a person who does this thing. It's, it doesn't sound sustainable, right? Like, that's not, that's not tied to how, what are are you producing widgets, and how does this relate to producing widgets, right? Like, are you, what is the impact you're trying to have in the world, and how does this tie to it? So I love your I love how you bring bring that into play.

Amri Johnson:

Yeah, I think I'll use an example. I had a client that came to me probably almost three years ago now, and they had done a lot of work on gender. They they were a tech firm, and they had, they were worried that they were looking around the office, and everybody was a man. They had a lot of diversity in terms of geographic they had people from all over Europe, US and beyond, but they were predominantly men, because, you know, you being an engineer, you know how that works. You've been in predominantly male environments and navigating them. Obviously, you could have the technical expertise and acumen, but sometimes men do men stuff, and it gets in the way of relating. And so they were like, well, what are we going to do about this? And so they decided they were going to start focusing on bringing in women. And they eventually did, and their numbers went up, but it was mostly Junior women, not a atypical scenario. But then something happened. Some of the men start saying, Well, what about me? Well, if I had to get hired here now, I would never get hired because of the diversity policy. Right? This company was based in in Europe, and so we started talking and having this conversation. And I said, Well, what are you doing right now? And they told me they were focused on women. I said, Well, is that creating what you want to create? And the answer was no, because they had a really solid culture, but they didn't necessarily understand that diversity of any kind means tension and complexity. And so when you enter in and you have more and more people coming into the space, you need to know how to manage the tension and complexity of differences and similarities. That's that's all it is. And so they didn't have that with women. They didn't even have it with the men that were there before the most of the new women came. So they didn't have the relational fitness to manage that tension and complexity. So what we did is began to examine that, examine what their paradigms were for diversity, understanding that that paradigm was oftentimes getting in the way of them building up their relational fitness, and then we start building some skills, how that relational fitness could help them work through team tension and and project tension and cross departmental tension, and all the complexity that their field was running into. And eventually they began to broaden out to Asia into the United States, and they then had to deal with the tension of distance and time and culture. And so we've been consistently building on that, and that's included a wider array of stuff that we do in our emergent inclusion framework, and it's allowed them to build their own skills. I didn't go there to be there indefinitely. I went there to share what we understand. Gets you the results you want and continue to build that as much as you need it, but have enough internal capacity that it might just be an occasionalcall, or it might be a new group of people that want to engage deeper into parts of the framework. And so that's what we did. And I think when people start with a single identity, probably the moral of that story, they'll usually run into issues, and that's what's happening right now around you know, this past few years has been heavily focused on race and racism, but it's been more of a race focus and a representation focus and representation, in and of itself, is insufficient and usually does not get us where we want to be. One of my mentors wrote a book in 1991 called Beyond Race and Gender. Dr Roosevelt Thomas. In 1991, Erica, beyond race and gender. Sit with that for a second. Where are we now? We're still on race and gender. We haven't transcended it, and because we haven't, because we didn't have and build the tools to do that, to create the systems, not just focus on the symptoms, tocreate the systems to get this to where we want to be. And so now relational fitness helps us get there. Understanding systems helps us get there. Understanding what our underlying paradigms are helps us get there. But bashing a President or his actions, whether you agree with them or not, doesn't, and it never has and it never will. What do we want to create? You ask the question at the beginning, what do you want to create as a company, right?

Erica D'Eramo:

Yeah. I mean, I talk a lot about, like, leading and lagging indicators, and so that's like this, this element of representation I see so often, it's like, Oh no, that's not, you know, we don't have the right mixture or the right ratios. And so, like bringing the curiosity and not just saying, like, Huh, okay, well, we got to fix that number, or we it's like looking at a garden, right? If you're if you say, Oh. I planted a bunch of tomatoes and cucumbers. All the cucumbers died off. My tomatoes are doing great. Let me just add on. Let me just plant more adult cucumbers and hope for a different outcome. Well, like, we gotta move a little further back, right? Like that. Those are, that's data you've got. Those are lagging indicators. Like something is not thriving, some there's a bottleneck in your system somewhere, or, like, the conditions aren't right. But ultimately, you can have a mono crop of tomatoes that might be actually very easy and efficient in terms of planting. And you know, like, you only need a very narrow band of, you know, environmental factors for that to work. And also maybe not as resilient as how, you know, like, having a mono crop is not as resilient, and doesn't set you up for success. And so you have one bad year, and you know, like, it's a big risk, a big risk factor. And I see, like, as you talk about the resilience that the team had to build and grow in order to, yeah, it's not easy, right? And it is often worth it to build in those skill sets of being able to adapt and and it makes you really get clear about what is it that makes you a good part of this team. Like, what do we really need here? And what are we missing by not not addressing these bottlenecks upstream?

Amri Johnson:

And I like that word upstream is critical. I think we've been spending a lot of time in the so called equity conversation that, you know, I was an I'm an epidemiologist, so I worked in public health at the beginning of my career, and so what I saw was that health equity was about looking at the economic indicators, looking at the various social determinants that actually were creating the health outcomes that people wanted and people didn't. So economic, educational, environmental, all those were are part of the makeup of social determinants. So for me, equity was always upstream. I'm interested in prevention, not treatment. Ironically, work for a pharmaceutical company, but I'm still interested in prevention, and so the equity conversation that we've had for the past few years was in the paradigm of treatment. It was in the paradigm of righting past wrongs, and some of those wrongs have been actually adjusted for over time, maybe not to the extent that we'd like to see, but they've been adjusted for so why is this important? It's important because when we are consistently focused on what is right in front of us, we don't see what happened at the mouth of the river that got us to where we are today. So upstream, you probably saw where the issues are, but you you're not going back upstream to address them. And so you're just like, we got to fix this right now. But what are you fixing? It's a you, you've been around business enough, there are no solutions or only trade offs. And so what's the what's the best trade off for that approach to fix this problem right now, versus understanding what might be creating it and shifting or changing the system so you can get the downstream results that you want. It takes a bit longer, but it's way more sustainable and you're in the case of DEI, it doesn't produce the kind of you know, reaction and kind of allergic reaction that a lot of people and organizations have gotten by focusing on the problem that probably is a problem that can't be solved by just focusing on what's in front of you, because there were so much more context that needs to be addressed upstream. And so for me, you know, upstream is the thing. If equity is your thing, I should patent that or copyright that. Upstream is the thing, if equity is your thing, because it doesn't work, otherwise, it's just remediation after remediation, and it goes up and go down it there's no continuity. There's no real stream of possibility that's created in that when you move in that direction.

Erica D'Eramo:

Yeah, I mean, you mentioned my background as an engineer and being in these predominantly male spaces, and I just, I keep reflecting on, you know, working on a facility, there were about 200 of us. I was usually the only woman in a fairly senior position, and I remember consistently being told, like, how I had gotten unfair advantages. I was only there because I was a woman and neat, you know how all these guys, like, didn't have the same opportunity that I had? I know I had to laugh, because I'm like, I know that that's your takeaway from hearing all this. Like we need more women.We need more women. And y'all look around like there are literally 200 or us and like I am point 5% of the population out here, like the numbers don't jive. So what the real message is is that we are missing out on talent, and so. It hasn't been a level playing field, because if it had been, we would have had more more of us, right? So what we want is a field where your demographics do not impact your ability to bring your talents to bear in the workforce. That's what we want, right? Not just more women, more women is an indication that we're doing a better job of that upstream goal. But, like, it's just a lagging indicator, and it's not necessarily, it's a corollary. It's not a causation, right? Like these are...

Amri Johnson:

Nope nope

Erica D'Eramo:

Yeah

Amri Johnson:

The way you articulated that is spot on. And you know, those upstream effects, oftentimes don't have that much to do with the company, and they have everything to do with the company. If you wanted downstream, the to have the most the greatest variety of talent, backgrounds, perspectives, life experiences, viewpoints, whatever, however you want to frame it, you need to start upstream. You need to start looking for people when they're young. And that's what I get. A little irritated about higher education, particularly the elites of the elite institutions. They were really upset when affirmative action was overturned, but they had 20, years to actually go upstream. Like there's a lot of, I would say, hidden gems in the educational system that these schools had enough resources to tap into, but they didn't, and companies are moving in that direction to tap into those resources early. It's not expensive to actually put and people will feel good about it. You have some of your employees engaging with some of these schools early, helping these schools out. Our education system in the US needs a lot of help. Why wouldn't companies contribute to it? You know, they're getting what they need, and they can be, you know, not the greatest corporate citizens, but if you're thinking about an investment into the future that's little to nothing. Go upstream, do something in the schools, create those conditions for as many kids as possible, the majority of them you'll never see again. But all it takes is one or two that you did touch to come and work for you or work for one of your suppliers that pays it off in in droves and that, and that's what I if you really want to address talent diversity, don't do it right there in the midst. Do that upstream and continue to retain the ones that you have by creating a culture where everybody can make their best contributions to the organizational mission that's inclusion. Create those conditions incessantly for everyone, and you'll keep the people you want to keep, and you'll begin to create a reputation because you've engaged and had more contact to get the people that you purport to one a have.

Erica D'Eramo:

Yeah, that so another anecdote that I think highlights your your point was, I was chatting with the CEO of a you know, fortune 10 company. And they were, who will remain unnamed, but they were bemoaning the fact that they were they had a lot of pressure to put a woman on their executive team, and the one woman who was being prepared for that actually decided that she preferred to spend her life doing something that she really enjoyed, like somewhere in the Mediterranean dealing with boats, I think, right? And, and that was the one that they were counting on to have that representation. And then, you know, the response was, Well, I'm not going to lower, I refuse to lower my standards, to pull somebody through who's not ready. And I had to laugh, because it was like, but you've been the CEO for 10 years. Why was there only one woman ready? I mean, like, okay, sure, in the moment maybe you have a limited set of options. But like, let's think about how we got here and ensure that in the next 10 years, you're not still looking at a slate with oneperson. Like, what happened with pull through, or what happened with incentives such that people either opted out or didn't, didn't make it, because that's not what the slate looked like, if you go back, you know, like earlier in the progression path. So that moment of like, just looking at the right now and then saying, oh well, all the options to fix thisare bad. Like we need to be taking a longer wavelength view, a longer wavelength approach. Yeah

Amri Johnson:

Absolutely.

Erica D'Eramo:

Yeah. So tell me a little bit about how people can access your work or what's out there right now that people can connect with or interface with.

Amri Johnson:

Great, you can always go to Inclusionwins.com which is our website, and all of our channels are there. We have a Sub Stack that also includes our podcast that Reconstructing Inclusion, podcast on SubStack and blog on SubStack. And, of course, I recommend everyone buy my book Reconstructing Inclusion. It's available on any bookseller near you, at least online. And I'm on LinkedIn, so it's Amri B Johnson, and love to interact. I, you know, I really want to hear from dissenterstoo, like there's a, there's a, sometimes a place, space, that we quiet people who dissent in this space. And I think now with what's going on amongst the federal government and what's been going on in the blogosphere and the kind of social sphere for a while now is people are saying what they see as negative about DEI and it's it's right. They have a right to do it, and we needed to have that conversation. And as practitioners, we haven't done that enough. So I want to interact on channels with people who are like, yeah, what is this stuff? Let me tell you what I think it is and how bad it is. And I'll say, well okay, let's talk more about that. What are we really trying to create for what, reasons for who, and how can we do it in a way that creates the conditions for everybody to thrive? They might agree. They might never evenget close to it. They might think that DEI is just about hiring darker skinned people indefinitely, and they had at least heard something that contrasts with that, because I think what's happening now is people are throwing out the baby with the bath water, and the baby is great if the baby has been really clearly identified in that dirty bath water, because There have been some practices in our space that probably should have been left behind and should be thrown out with the rest of the dirty bath water. And I think it's an opportunity for us to really hear the signal clearer than we've ever heard it. So on my channels, I have those conversations a lot, and would love people to be on any of them, engaging, engaging with me, engaging with what we do.

Erica D'Eramo:

Yeah. And so who you mentioned dissenters, like, Who do you kind of see as being your prime audience? Like people that can can gain some value from these insights, in terms of, I think sometimes people think like, oh, that's for DEIpractitioners. They don't really know what that term means.

Amri Johnson:

No, that's a great question. I don't know if I even wrote Reconstructing Inclusion for diversity practitioners. Honestly, I wrote it for people who are interested in creating the conditions for people to thrive. Now, obviously, from a business perspective, I'm focused on Chief People Officers, people that are in learning and development, people that are a part of employee resource groups or commit culture committees or something of that sort, both at the more senior and junior levels. But in terms of my messaging, my messaging is really universally applicable to anyone who believes that inclusion matters and that creating the conditions for everyone to thrive and make their best contributions to the organization they if they believe in that, if you believe that you want to create the best conditions for yourself and for your colleagues, engage with what we're up to. And of course, if you want to go deeper, engage deeper.

Erica D'Eramo:

Yeah, cool. I love that. I think any there is a definition that people have in their head of leader, but really, like so many of us, have impacts that we don't even realize in creating the future on our teams or, you know, the impact, you know.

Amri Johnson:

I'll leave you. I'll leave you with this. It's the definition of leadership. From Peter Singa. He says"leadership is the capacity of a human community to shape its future." Let me say that again, leadership is the capacity of a human community to shape its future. So that means everybody is playing that game, and if you're not, you're not playing the game that you could be playing that is way more agentic than waiting and standing behind for somebody to do it for you.

Erica D'Eramo:

Yeah, powerful. Well, I really appreciate you coming on and having this conversation with us, and we will link to your contact details, your LinkedIn and where people can find some of your work in the show notes here, and folks can find they can find that in the show notes. They can find this episode on our website, twopiersconsulting.com. We also include a transcript for and a summary for folks that are like to read more than listen. So again, thank you so much for joining us and sharing your insights, and we look forward to catching y'all next episode.

Amri Johnson:

Thank you, Erica, it was a delight.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Erica D'Eramo

Host