Christine Michel Carter
00:00:01
Hello, everyone, and welcome to The Work-Life Equation, a Bright Horizons podcast. The only podcast featuring candid conversations, stories, and strategies from corporate leaders, public figures, and every day people like you and me who are putting the pieces together to make life work. I am one of your hosts, Christine Michele Carter.

Priya Krishnan
00:00:25
And I'm Priya Krishnan, the Chief Digital and Transformation Officer at Bright Horizons.

Christine Michel Carter
00:00:29
I would be remiss if I didn't point out that I have on these gorgeous giant headphones because we had some technical difficulties for this week's episode. But I think we've got it together now. I think we're making it look fashionable and making it work. Priya, how have you been?

Priya Krishnan
00:00:44
I can tell you that your hair looks gorgeous in spite of the headphones, and that's definitely not the case with me. But I've been well. How have you been?

Christine Michel Carter
00:00:53
I've been good. I've got on two hats today. I've got on the headphones and the wig. So I'm making it work by layering. We have a fabulous guest today who is a mom like us who makes it work, a New Orleans resident, my favorite city in the world and a social justice warrior. But before you meet her, everybody else before they meet her, Priya, I want to hear this week's “Here We Go” conversation that you had with your kids, which is like the ‘oh, here we go. I have to have this conversation. Are we really about to have this talk?’ Other people call it the dinner table talk, but I think that nowadays people don't even eat dinner at the dinner table. So it's more of a here we go. Like, let's just have this conversation in the car and get it over with. What was yours this week?

Priya Krishnan
00:01:36
My repeated theme is with my here you go conversation with my kids is, oh, my God, mom, you're so old fashioned. You have no clue of what's going on in the real world. As I was growing up, I think diversity was around being a woman, a woman of color. These days, when I can't remember one of their friends’ gender pronouns, there's this rolling of eyes and like, mom, can you please keep up with the times? And so that seems to be my thing these days.

Christine Michel Carter
00:02:06
Priya, how dare you not keep up with the times of TikTok? How dare you keep up with regular news and get your news from TV and trusted sources? How dare you? That's how I feel. I feel like we're so old, and how dare we not be able to keep up with everything that's going on on TikTok. My kids are the same way. My kids are always making fun of me for not knowing what's going on on TikTok, which is where groundbreaking news occurs when you're a preteen and a teenager.
 
Priya Krishnan
00:02:46
Yeah, but you also learn so much from them, right? Like, I'm learning about new terms and new things that they bring back home. The other thing they spoke about was they are called third culture kids. They were born in one country, they were raised in another, and now they live in a third. And I was like, okay, you live and learn every day, and clearly your experiences are different from mine and so much better because you get to see so much of the world.

Christine Michel Carter
00:03:13
I love that because my kids are third room kids. They move from their bedroom to their kitchen to my living room all day long and just eat me out of house and home. So at least your children have some culture. I love it. So today's guest with us is a civil rights leader and a professional and spiritual support to countless activists across Louisiana and beyond. As the first black woman to lead the ACLU of Louisiana in its 65 year history, she has answered the call to defend the Constitution and the Bill of Rights by challenging systemic racial and gender injustice, vestiges of slavery displayed most prominently in Louisiana's epidemic of mass incarceration, immigrant detention and deportation, and racist policing across the state. My goodness, what heavy topics. And on top of all of that, if that wasn't enough, she is also a single mother to what I hear is a fantastic, special, amazing girl that I cannot wait to ask her about. Welcome Alanah Odoms to The Work-Life Equation.

Alanah Odoms
00:04:20
Christine and Priya, it's my pleasure to be here with you. I'm really so excited.

Christine Michel Carter
00:04:24
We are so excited to have you. So we were just talking about how the world has changed since we were being raised as a young woman. How has the world changed since you were being raised as a young woman?

Alanah Odoms
00:04:35
We saw the nation reckon with the killing of George Floyd and the global outcry for police accountability. We watched our nation's capital attacked on January 6 with the riots. We saw 50-year precedent, and the United States Supreme Court overturned in the Dobbs decision, essentially eviscerating a woman's right to choose in the United States. And so just in these very short four years, the world has changed. And unfortunately, the way that the world is changing, it is not changing in the direction of more rights, more equity, more freedom. It is actually going in the opposite direction. And I think for working moms in particular and for folks who are leading organizations, I don't think you need to be a civil rights leader in order to be, I guess, at the appropriate kind of awareness level to kind of realize the changes that are happening in our country and to be able to kind of talk about those changes in a way I think that is powerful. And also to be able to use our networks and our resources to be able to affect positive change. And one of the ways that I kind of think about doing that, as you mentioned, my little girl, her name is Elan Jolie Hebert. Most people think I named her after myself, which I would have, but I did not. Elan is actually a French word in its origin, but in the English dictionary, it means to have confidence, style, and grace. So if you perform an activity with Elan, you are doing it with style, with a little bit of savois fair. So she's definitely lived up to that name. Absolutely. And honestly, in my parenting and in my mothering and in my leading, I'm thinking about kind of this thread that runs through all of it, which is empathy, compassion, dignity, and thinking about how can we really make our laws and policies reflect the dignity and humanity of our people. And of course, when we're thinking about our people, we're thinking about our little ones, right, because this is the world that they are going to inherit, right? A world that either can protect their identities or a world that is going to be hostile to their identities. And the really crazy thing about becoming a parent is you have no idea what those identities are going to be. They are very often very different than the ones that we inhabit. So it's first the work of recognizing the true work of how to fully accept ourselves, how to fully accept our children, and then how do we think about creating the kind of world that we want them to inherit.

Christine Michel Carter
00:07:20
So let me ask you this question. When it comes to generation alpha, which would be Elan and my two children's generation, I've read some data that said by the time that they're five years old, kids that are born after 2010, they've already attended their first march. So I feel like Elan, yes, she probably carries the empathy, the dignity, the grace, the style, everything. But she has this powerhouse of a mother who is very much so rooted in social justice and racial justice. How does your work shape your parenting style?

Alanah Odoms
00:07:57
Yeah, really great question, and you're absolutely right. These young people have been exposed to more elements of citizenship, as I call it, than we ever had. And I mean the practice of citizenship, the practice of democracy. So about three years ago, actually, right before or actually right in the midst of George Floyd, the ACLU hosted its first children's march for racial justice. And even in the midst of COVID about 300 children participated and their families. And essentially what we did was we tried to metabolize what was happening in the news for our kids and give them a safe space to be able to actually exercise their first amendment rights, their rights to assemble their rights to protest, but also to really create, I think, a counter narrative to what potentially a young person might on television as just violence, just hatred, just outrage. And I think at the ACLU, one of the things that we always think about is how do we give children and young people a seat at history's table? And frankly, one of the things that I think about is I think we kind of all think about this. How much do we actually share with our children? Do we want to share with them all the harsh realities of the world? And do we want to kind of pierce this veil of, I guess, purity that they have? They come into the world and they don't know a lot of these things? And I'll tell you kind of what I found in my work and in my mothering. More often than not, it is appropriate and best to actually tackle the difficult subjects, and it's best to do so in a way that is you're not trying to aim for perfection. You're literally actually just trying to aim for providing them an opportunity to understand humanity, empathy, compassion, dignity, these really core principles and values. And sometimes it's really, really hard to do that, especially, for example, if you're talking about an issue like police violence, if you're talking about an issue like white supremacy and the attacks on the Capitol, children see so much violence. But I really find that if we're able to kind of counter those narratives with just with conversations, but also with reading material, with art, with things like that, we can really start to have open conversations. And the thing about my work is I do have a platform, which kind of makes it a little bit easier, but parents who don't do civil rights work also have these same opportunities. And it's really a journey that you can just say to your children, hey, we're going to go on this journey together. There's been a lot on the news, a lot on television, a lot on the radio that I'm certain that you've heard. What questions do you have? What exploration can we do together? What can we read? What can we watch on television? And what kind of open dialogue can we have? And how can we also just say, you know what, we're not really sure. Who else can we have and involve in this conversation? Many times that might mean talking to neighbors, talking to friends, talking to other community members that might be able to share this identity. It's basically keeping an idea around, curiosity and openness. And I think that is something that is really powerful to our children because it lets them know we're not trying to solve the world's problems for them. We're trying to empower them and give them the encouragement to know that they are going to be the folks who are going to take over this mantle, and we want to give them the tools that they need to do it.

Christine Michel Carter
00:11:30
So, Alanah, let me ask you this because Priya and I were talking about gender equality. I know there's a question she wanted to ask you around that, especially the fact that you were the first black woman to lead the ACLU in 65 years. Priya was telling me beforehand that she was fan girling over that. But how do you have that conversation? And Priya dig into this a little bit more when it comes to gender equality and when you wanted to ask Alanah but I thought that you made a great point.

Priya Krishnan
00:11:58
I also think it was interesting when Alanah was talking about this because one of the I remember this conversation specifically with my own kids around the George Floyd incident, Alanah, and I remember my eleven year old at that point had said, isn't black just a color? And my 14 year old at that point had said, isn't skin just a cover? And I thought it was so poignant. And they do hear about this. So the fact that you said there is a surround sound that takes place and how do you create a safe space for having that conversation? You seem really thoughtful about how you're raising Elan. I love the name, by the way. But I've always wondered, you see so much and how do you not bring that back into home? How do you present a hopeful vision of the world? You do see everything that's wrong and you want to fix in the world through your work. But how do you make sure that she sees hope and positivity from it?

Alanah Odoms
00:13:01
We are juggling so many responsibilities. We have work responsibilities we have, of course, responsibilities at home, responsibilities for children, responsibilities in the community, that many times we're kind of just going through and kind of checking off the list and not really taking time to smell the roses, to actually really being in our presence and our joy to the actual work we're doing, because everything is just so fast paced and fast moving. So the first thing I really do is I really try to take time to show myself a lot of gratitude, kind of beginning from this principle of gratitude. But our children also have to see us practicing grace for ourselves. So if you want optimism and you want hope, a child that is hopeful and optimistic, that child has to know that in the inner sanctity of the home, there's space and grace for mistakes and fullness for that child to be who they really are, how they really are. And also you have to have the space and opportunity to be who you are and how you really are and that full acceptance for yourself. So if we're noticing criticism and judgment in ourselves that comes up, that's something that's going to be passed on to our children. The capacity that we have for self-love is that capacity that we place and that we pass on to our children. Capacity for grace and mercy and all those things within ourselves is what we pass on to our children. Not everything is age appropriate for our kids. And limiting some of that content, I limit it for myself because some of the time it's very difficult for me to keep an idea or keep an ideology of hope and optimism when there's so much onslaught of violence and content that's really harmful to kind of, like, just the sense of peace. So I think we have to kind of moderate that as well.

Christine Michel Carter
00:14:46
So, Alanah, I'm sure that leading the ACLU wasn't your first job. So that means that you were approached with this position. You're the first black woman to be in this position in 65 years. What kind of conversations did you have to have with yourself about gender equality and owning that seat at the table? And then how did you have that conversation with Alanah that had to have been frustrating to think about, okay, this is the first time this has happened in 65 years. I can't let this get me down. How did that conversation go with yourself and then with Elan?

Alanah Odoms
00:15:25
So when I became the Executive Director of the ACLU, I didn't know that I was the first. But as soon as I learned that I was the first, I felt really committed to having my tenure be one that would reflect this idea that I shouldn't be the last. So that's one thing that whenever I'm thinking about my work, I'm thinking about how do I create a pipeline of leadership of women's leadership? Because I believe women's leadership changes things. Or black leadership, because I think black leadership changes things, especially in the civil rights context, and also the very many other pieces of intersectionality of identities that really change the way an organization is led. So that's how I kind of think about myself. Not centering myself as the first, but also thinking, how can I make sure that I'm not the last? And with Elan - and I think you've probably experienced this with both of your children, and many of us do - we are oftentimes kind of presenting our children into spaces where they are the first. My daughter is a horseback rider, and she is the only child of color that rides at her particular farm. That's one example. There are very many others. And I'm sure you all can kind of in your head, think about places and spaces where your kids are first. And so what I tell her is that I need her to be courageous, but I don't need her to carry the weight of every black girl and every black person being in this space, because I think that's what racism does, right? It makes us feel like we're not just showing up as an individual with our individual hope streams and aspirations. We're carrying the entire race on our back. So we can't make mistakes. We have to work twice as hard. We have to be perfect, and we have to get it right all the time. So I just want to completely disabuse her of all of that. I'm like, you are showing up as Elan Jolie Hebert. That's who I want you to be. And I want you to be able to grow as her, which means you need to be able to make mistakes and there's going to be space for you to make mistakes. Just like Mama is the first here, but she's not going to be the last. What can we be doing to make sure you're not the last? So are there things, there ways that we can be using our platform to make sure other little girls and boys can come and have the same experience? That's something that we need to be thinking about because centering our children is wonderful. Our children have a great deal of privilege, no matter what background they come from, because we are well educated and because we have kind of made our way up the socioeconomic ladder to whatever extent that is, that privilege that they have, thinking about how they can use that privilege to help other people. Right. Because when you really start getting down about the world, what's the first, best and easiest way to start feeling better is to give up a little bit of what you have in service of someone else.

Christine Michel Carter
00:18:15
I find it just so amazing that you are dealing with such hard-hitting topics like racial and gender injustice and everything that you're doing in Louisiana, but at the same time, you are a single mom and I feel like you are the person who pulled the glove off of Thanos and was able to save the world. Like, you can just do so much. In my eyes, Alanah, you just have a fan for life. How are you balancing though, all of that, all of those distinct roles in your life, this heavy work that you're doing, the single parenting that you're doing, caring for yourself, giving yourself the affirmations as you talked about?

Alanah Odoms
00:18:57
So I have a team and I talk about my team all the time. My team is comprised of my mom and my dad, who are some of the most kind of sacrificial and generous human beings that I've ever met in the world. And none of this would be possible but for their kind of involvement in our lives and the support of what we do. So that is, first and foremost, I don't do it alone. The other piece is that Elan's dad is very involved in her life and he is a good dad. And for the times that Elan is in his care and custody, he does a really good job of being the kind of leader and father I think, that she really needs. So I think that's really important to say and that's not an easy thing to say because I'll also say that going through a divorce with a child that was four years old was by far the most difficult thing I've ever had to go through in my life. And the work that we're doing in co-parenting is also some of the most difficult work that I could ever do. I kind of put the co-parenting work right up alongside of the fighting for freedom and justice in this country. So it's equally challenging. It's a lot of fighting going on both sides but there's still a lot of support and a lot of love there. So I think that's really important to name. And then like I said, when I'm talking about this piece about grace and mercy, I'm talking about having a lot of that for myself, like recognizing that I'm going to make some mistakes, right? When you talk about work life balance I think every caregiver, let's just make it as open as possible, knows that there is no such thing as balance. I had a national conference, ACLU conference in town last week in Louisiana where I had several hundred people here and that was a time where I really had to lean into the work of the ACLU. I was able to bring my daughter to several events. She's a longtime ACLU-er, has a lot of fans at the ACLU. So for where it was appropriate, I did bring her.

Priya Krishnan
00:21:04
I was actually just going to make the comment that I don't think the guilt ever goes away. All you can do is try many mechanisms to alleviate it. But as a woman leader, I'm sure and I found it really interesting, Alanah, that you said I'm the first, but I don't want to be the last and I want to create a path for other women to follow. How is that then, as a woman leader? One is the work that you do at ACLU, but I'd love your perspective on how other women have seen you as a leader. What do you think you bring different?

Alanah Odoms
00:21:38
That's a tough one because it requires me to kind of really think about the kind of leadership style that I have and I think about it in terms of a conscious leadership style. A couple of years back I read a book by Dr. Shafali about conscious parenting and literally kind of trying to think about kind of turning parenting on its head. And I don't do everything that she says perfectly and I don't always bring presence and I don't always bring truth or authenticity. But my intention is to do those things. And sometimes as a woman leader, especially as a black woman leader, it's really hard to show up as fully authentic because we wear so many layers of armor to protect ourselves because we don't get automatically thought of as credible or brilliant or powerful or the things that you really need to be a good leader. Those are lots of things that we have to fight for in our spaces. But what I try to do is I try to bring a mentality of abundance and not of scarcity. So when I don't know things, I actually say that I don't know them, right? When I am unsure of something or when there's a question that I need answered, I actually tried to ask the questions and really ask the question that I want to get the answer to, right? So just really pushing myself toward authenticity and really trying to push myself toward thinking about how I can use the platform that I have to raise up this next kind of generation of leaders. And that means that they've got to be able to see the cake making, if you will, around leadership, which means they've got to be able to see the tough decisions. They have to be able to see the pushback that you get. And it's really hard to be able to kind of always tell people the truth about those things. But in my experience, especially in the last few years, since I've become 40, especially, I've been really real since I've been 40, I just try to tell the truth as much as I possibly can. And I also really am always thinking about how can I use this light that I've been given to pass that light on and light other people's candles? Because I've found the passion for myself, right? This is the light that shines in me. It's a passion. But me kind of using that light to light up other people, it doesn't extinguish the flame in me. It actually just continues to grow, right? Not thinking about that as competition, because, as you know, for women of color, unfortunately, our society sometimes determines that there can just be one, right? There can be one leader in this one organization, and she's going to be the person that everybody has to look to and everybody else kind of gets pushed to the side. What we all know is that when leadership is held among rather than over or there's power among rather than power over, that's real, true power and that's transformative power. And I am not going to be diminished if there are other amazing, talented, thoughtful, hardworking leaders in my organization who shine brightly.

Christine Michel Carter
00:24:48
I'm going to ask you a very quick question, because I know that we have to let you go pretty soon, but I want to ask you about Elan and the fact that she is such a confident and powerful young woman. You have to give us an example of her being confident and powerful, something that we don't have. My babies are getting older. I want to hear something funny that she said that you were just like, man, she's going to be president one day.

Alanah Odoms
00:25:13
We were in South Africa, and what she told me is we were riding in a car, and she said she rides horses, and she says, hopefully I won't screw up the story because she told it so lovely. But she said, Mama, children are like horses. And when you ride a horse, you've got to be able to give that horse a little bit of slack in the reins, right? If you give the horse a little slack in the reigns and you let they can walk, trot, run, and they can be really strong. She said if you hold the reins too tight, though, they buck. And so she's like, that's just a little bit of what I kind of want you to know. 

Christine Michel Carter
00:26:01
Want you to know.

Christine Michel Carter
00:26:01
Okay, Elan Roosevelt. She raised you in another life. You know that, right? She raised you and your mama and your grand-mama in another life, is what happened.

Alanah Odoms
00:26:18
I've been told that. I’ve been schooled. I’m like goodness gracious. I was like, all right, I got to think about these reigns.

Priya Krishnan
00:26:23
I used to call them Aadi-isms. Like, my younger son's name, Aadi-isms. You should have an Elan-isms that you put together.

Christine Michel Carter
00:26:34
Thank you so much. I really appreciate and I'm sure Priya appreciates as well, you being on The Work-Life Equation with us. Where can listeners learn more about you?

Alanah Odoms
00:26:43
Please come follow [email protected]. We'd love to have you as members of our organization. We'd love to kind of keep you updated on all the amazing work not just of the ACLU of Louisiana, but of the national organization and just have really enjoyed this opportunity to speak with you both this afternoon.

Priya Krishnan
00:27:04
Everything we do at Bright Horizons is about saying how do we enable parents to talk to their children in safe environments. So we actually have another podcast which is called Teach. Play. Love. And there is an episode, the 26th episode, which actually talks about how to have important conversations on social justice. So I think it'll be really interesting for listeners to listen in to see how they can be parents like Alanah. And then if they go to BrightHorizons.com, there's enough resources on not just how to raise children in these uncertain times, but also things that you and I go through, which is we're a sandwich generation. We're raising parents alone. We're trying to balance work and life. Heck, I'm trying to separate work and life. So there is enough and more that parents can find on BrightHorizons.com. So it's great to hear how you think about Elan. I've been the big believer in children turn out okay in spite of parents, that you're so thoughtful, and she's going to turn out to be amazing because of you. So congratulations on the wonderful young woman she's turning out to be.

Christine Michel Carter
00:28:17
All right, let's get to the thought of the week then. I feel like my thought of the week is that you can be a powerful mom. You can deal with heavy topics like racial justice and everything that Alanah is working on and still be somebody who's raising a very kind and empathetic and gracious child. And sometimes as women, we're told that we have to have one or the other. We have to be very defensive and not be in our soft, feminine, those two can't exist. But I feel like Alanah has taught me that they can and we can raise children who are that way as well. Priya, what are your thoughts?

Priya Krishnan
00:28:51
My thought based on that conversation was that Alanah spoke about grace and gratitude. They actually share the same Latin origin, which is gratus. And I feel like we forget to be kind to ourselves and we forget to say thank you often enough. And so my thought for the day is how do you make grace and gratitude part of on a daily basis? 

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Christine Michel Carter
00:30:03
Well, listeners, you have just listened to an episode of The Work-Life quation with Christine Michele Carter and Priya Krishnan. Until next time.