Beyond The Classroom: Why SEL Matters More Then Ever

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Opinions expressed in this episode are personal. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this streaming platform. [00:00:10] Speaker B: Good day, wonderful people, and welcome to another edition of let's be diverse. I am your host, Andrew Stout. This episode is dedicated to all my loved ones who've supported me through this journey. Those who have left us will always be in our hearts and will never be forgotten. Today, our topic is beyond the classroom. Why sel matters more than ever. My guest today is one remarkable human. Her name is Caitlin Kindred. Caitlin, thank you so much for joining us today. It's such a pleasure to have you on here. [00:00:40] Speaker A: Thank you so much for having me. We've had so many great conversations. I'm excited to do this and record it and see where this goes. [00:00:47] Speaker B: So am I. How are things going with you? What's going on? Give us the tea, the deets. Give us it all. What's going on? [00:00:55] Speaker A: I mean, I'm just like. I'm putting out marketing fires. If those are things. Are those things. I don't think those are things. Right. Depends on who you talk to. Right. So, you know, just. Just trying to every day cross a few things off my list, tell myself that progress is wellness and acknowledge the progress when I make it. That's all I'm up to. That and, you know, the mom life and all that stuff. [00:01:19] Speaker B: Well, for sure. I love that. Progress is wellness. I love that. That is. That is really cool. Thanks. I've never heard that before. That's pretty cool. Progress is wellness. So it's kind of a way to. To look at things, whatever you're doing, which it makes me think of. Everyone has our lists of stuff that we need to do. If you have 10 things on your list to do. To do, and you only get 5, then for. For me, that's telling me that progress is wellness. You know, you didn't get all 10, but you got five done. That's progress. Five less things that you have to get off your plate. That's really good. [00:01:52] Speaker A: And then you reframe it as, wow, I got five things done today. That's huge. If you make it your goal to get one or two things done and you got five, well, that's. That's bonus. [00:02:01] Speaker B: So people have heard me talk about this before, but what I do is I make a list of stuff that I need to do during the day, and if I think of something that's not on that list, I will add it to the list. And then when I've done it, I've crossed it off. So it kind of. It's like a. I don't know if you don't know if it's psychological thing or whatever, but it just makes me wait. Well, I got something accomplished. If I have five things and that was the only thing that got done, well, then, hey, I got something done today that I maybe was putting off for a while, and it just made me think of it, and boom, I got it off the plate. [00:02:34] Speaker A: So well. And if you want a real boost, take something that you were going to do anyway, write it on the list, and then cross it off when it's done, and then you can cry. Then you just feel really good because you're like, I already did that one. Real nice. Real nice thing to do for yourself there. [00:02:49] Speaker B: Yeah, no kidding. No kidding. Well, listen, I appreciate you telling us how things are going. I love that things are going well for those who are listening. Caitlin, when we've spoken this, this person is always in good spirits. She has tremendous energy. So super excited to. To get going on this conversation. But before we do, I. I always have a fun, thought provoking question that I ask my guests to get things going. Are you ready for yours today? [00:03:14] Speaker A: I cannot wait. I'm so excited. [00:03:19] Speaker B: So my question. I've actually been asking this for the last few episodes, and I've been asking because I think it's great and everyone seems to love it. So I thought let's continue to train today. So your question is, if your life had a theme song that played every time you entered a room, what would the vibe be and why? [00:03:36] Speaker A: Oh, my gosh, this is so hard. Because the temptation is to choose a favorite song, right? But if there's a vibe check, I want. I gotta. I gotta be careful about that. There's so many good ones. I feel like it has to either be in the rock genre or like hip hop or like early aughts. Hip hop. I love that. I loved Aaliyah as a kid, so the song dust yourself off and try again is coming to mind because I was pretty. Pretty much obsessed with her. Who wasn't? Right? But if we're talking 90s rock, you know, I really, really get into some Two Princes, right? Like, that's a great song. So. Or. And anything like old Foo Fighters, I'm gonna get into as well. So I. I'm gonna. Let's go with Aaliyah for now. Probably change some point during the episode. [00:04:25] Speaker B: That's okay. [00:04:26] Speaker A: Question. My gosh. [00:04:28] Speaker B: And it was. And you know what? That is a great tune. Great song. And you're absolutely right. She is. Was Fantastic singer, performer. Like, she was really good. So I, I, I'm with you on that one for sure. And everyone's been giving me some really different answers. So I, I, I'm, I'm loving the vibe of that, that question, and I'm loving the vibe that people are loving it. So wait, that's great. [00:04:51] Speaker A: Hold on. Do we have, do you have one? What's yours? [00:04:54] Speaker B: Well, I gotta go with, if I was gonna pick one, it would probably be Just Fine by Mary J. Blige. That would be the one that I would pick that one. When I turn it, like, everything's gonna be good. Everything is gonna be fine. Everything's gonna go the way that we planned. We just have to just keep sticking with our process and go with it. So if I had to, if I, if I had to choose one, that would be it. [00:05:21] Speaker A: That's a great one. Well done. [00:05:23] Speaker B: I approve. [00:05:24] Speaker A: Okay. You needed my approval, apparently. No, no. Okay, great. I mean, good vibes on that one. [00:05:29] Speaker B: So awesome. [00:05:30] Speaker A: I like it. [00:05:31] Speaker B: Thank you so much for having fun with me, first of all. But to get us started, who are you and what really drives you to do the work that you do? [00:05:39] Speaker A: Well, who am I like, first of all, if it's not fun, I don't want it. So there's that. I'm going to put that out there. So hopefully people that are listening, you get a little chuckle out of me, but that's really what I'm about, honestly. But at this point, I mean, it's hard to describe myself. I feel like I was an educator for 13 years. A former middle school teacher, taught math and humanities and SEL for a long time now I still think of myself as an educator, even though I'm not in that space anymore. And now I'm a senior marketing manager for an edtech consulting group and I'm a podcast host for Elder Millennial Moms. My show's called how to be a Grownup, which is ironic because I barely know how to do it myself. So I have to spend time learning about how to do it. And then I share that with other people, I think, because there's that whole once an educator, always an educator thing. What drives me is this, this need to help people understand. Right. Whatever that may be, whatever they're struggling with. So, you know, I spent 13 plus years teaching 12 year olds how to regulate emotions and resolve conflict and advocate for themselves in the context of an academic space. I see in the corporate space now how much adults also need these skills. And so I spend time, yes, I do ed tech marketing now. But a lot of the work on my podcast is translating these SEL skills that I have for real life parenting and for, you know, just applying them to your everyday life, whether you're a parent or not. And I really believe that, you know, modeling SEL social emotional learning skills at home creates the next generation of emotionally intelligent humans. And those skills really translate into leadership in particular. [00:07:37] Speaker B: And I was just going to ask you to describe what sel, but you read my mind, so that's great that you describe that. Social emotional learning. And it's something that I've been looking up and reading up a little bit more lately, I'd say in the last couple of months. And the reason why I'm looking at it more is because we are all learning emotionally. And my mind, when we do that, I think it helps us to grow. And specifically I'm talking about leaders because that's what I talk about when we talk about leaders. We need to grow and we need to continue to grow and we need to our people that are underneath us, we're helping them to grow emotionally with vulnerability. And that's so important because that helps them to become better leaders, better individuals, and it helps them to grow their career. [00:08:25] Speaker A: Absolutely. I would completely agree with that. [00:08:27] Speaker B: So what are we missing when we treat, when we treat SEL as a nice to have instead of a necessity? [00:08:36] Speaker A: I think what's really important is to remember that emotional regulation is not separate from performance. [00:08:44] Speaker B: Right. [00:08:44] Speaker A: Emotional well being, emotional regulation is the foundation for sel, I think has this reputation. Social emotional learning is sort of a buzzword, especially post Covid. But it's, it gets called soft skills. It's not soft skills. These are technically very difficult, hard skills to work on and master. And I don't think there's ever mastery here, you know, unless you're like the Dalai Lama or some guru who makes this, you know, everything you are all the time. But it's, it's conflict resolution and it's boundary setting and it's self awareness, it's repairing damage. And I think that there was this quote that came to me while I was thinking about this topic and I've heard it said many different ways before and by various different people. But like there's that quote that says higher character trained skill, right? It's Peter Schutz from Porsche. He used to, he was a CEO at Porsche. But then it's been kind of translated and said as like people hire for skills, fire for attitude. I always say like you hire for skills and Fire for behavior. It's the same idea. Right. So when you, when you don't think of it as a necessity, you're doing exactly the opposite of what creates a healthy culture. Right. Like in a classroom, kids can't learn when they're dysregulated. In the workplace, adults can't lead or work, accomplish tasks when they're burned out and dysregulated. So when you treat it as optional, you're saying to your employees, your emotional health doesn't matter unless it affects your productivity, which is the exact thing that causes toxic work cultures, high turnover, general leadership failure. It's how you get leaders who yell. It's how you get teams that don't trust each other. It's how you get a culture that burns through and churns incessantly. Right. So you're, you're just, you're damaging everything that you're building to work when you treat it as an option. [00:10:41] Speaker B: Wow. I just love everything that you just said there. Like, it's so. [00:10:44] Speaker A: Thank you. I'm very wise. [00:10:46] Speaker B: Yes, I can see that. That's why I'm like, I can't, I can't wait to, to go further in this conversation. But I love what you're saying because when you're talking about it being a necessity and you're seeing it talking about self being self aware, there's so many different scenarios. There's so many situations that go on throughout a day. Before we started taping today, you were telling me about a little bit about your day and I was telling you about my day. It might be different for everybody else. So your day, how someone handled it is going to be totally different than somebody else and the same thing for me. But we can't look at somebody or lead them in the same way. We have to be self aware of who's in the room and who we're talking to. [00:11:34] Speaker A: Yeah. And I think, I mean, you brought up the point that, you know, we are in different, we're in different places. Right. We're not. Our both of our experiences of the day have been different. But what about two people who experience the same thing? Their perspectives are going to be different on that. So it really does come down to a matter of self awareness when you're talking about leading a team. Right. [00:11:54] Speaker B: So I want to ask you, are we asking teachers to teach SEL without actually supporting their own emotional well being? [00:12:02] Speaker A: I'm sorry, I'm already cackling. Because the answer is yes. It's 100% yes. Yes, we are doing that we are absolutely asking teachers to teach social emotional learning skills without supporting them. We're experiencing. Expecting teachers to model emotional regulation while they are being overworked, underpaid, under resourced, undermined politically. And there's this, you know, there's this saying that's particularly popular in education spaces tend to, in general education spaces tend to be toxic positivity strongholds because. Because of that whole idea that teachers do the work for the kids, which is not fair. Teachers do the work, yes, for the kids, but they do it for themselves because they need to work. Right. They just happen to choose a profession that isn't necessarily as respected as others. But one of my least favorite sayings that goes into this toxic positivity culture is that you can't pour from an empty cup. It's not wrong. It's absolutely true. I hate it because it's cliche. I hate it because it's performative. It's in spaces like this, it's all talk and no actions. Teachers cups have been bone dry for years. For years. For example, I'm thinking about when I was teaching. I was told to help kids co regulate, especially the ones who are. Who have severe emotional behavioral issues. Right. In a classroom full of students who are, quote, unquote normal or, you know, neurotypical. And I myself am not neurotypical. And I'm dysregulated from managing 120 kids with no breaks. Right. Or my break is I have to run to the copier because a new student got added to my class and I also have to somehow eat and go to the bathroom in 25 minutes. That's not okay. Or another time I had. We had a pd excuse me, Professional development on trauma Informed Practices. But there was no support for our secondary trauma or our compassion fatigue that teachers so often deal with. So that's not to say that like the people who say you can't pour from an empty cup don't mean it. I think that they. That most of them do mean it. But unless it's coupled with support for that compassion fatigue for those social and emotional dysregulated times, for teachers, it's lip service. You can't, you can't ask someone to teach empathy while their own humanity is being ignored or sidelined. [00:14:28] Speaker B: Right. [00:14:28] Speaker A: Does that make sense? I hope that makes sense. [00:14:30] Speaker B: That makes total sense. And we're going to get into this as we go, but there's a method to my madness here as far as this conversation goes. And I'll just say as far as a leadership Standpoint, when we are taking on a leadership role, we have this struggle or sel I would say where we're trying to learn to do the job. But in reality we're just told that we're getting a promotion, but we're not told what that whole thing entails. It's not communicated right from the get go. So when this person gets in, they're excited, Caitlyn. They're saying, wow, I'm getting a promotion. They go home, they tell their significant other, I just got a promotion today. They asked me to be a leader of this team. I'm getting this, I'm getting that. And then they get into the role and then they're like, wow, I didn't know that this was part of it. And it's not all on the organization. It's part of, it's part of, it's the individual as well that they need to do a little bit of looking up and speaking to people and, and finding stuff out. And asking for help is the other thing too. Because a lot of leaders, they don't want to ask for help because they're afraid that they're not, they're not going to look good if they're asking for help. When in reality you're respected by to ask for help. But a lot of leaders don't, don't think so. So I love what you had said. We're going to dig into this a lot deeper. I'm positive. I, but that was why I wanted to have this conversation. And to the listeners, this is going exactly the way that I thought it would go. [00:16:12] Speaker A: Me just pontificating. [00:16:14] Speaker B: Now that we know what's going on, where do you see the biggest disconnect between what teachers need and what's being offered? [00:16:20] Speaker A: I think there's a big disconnect between performative solutions, lip service and structural support. The structure in education is not there to provide the things that teachers need. So what's offered would be things like mandatory professional development trainings or ever changing curriculum. Right. More data collection, wanting to understand trends of where students are going and what they do know. More responsibilities, wellness apps. All of these jeans days and pizza parties which are like you get to, you have a coupon to wear jeans. I don't know how many, how many people realize that that's a thing, but it's, it's a thing. You, you get a little, you have to wear a professional attire and then you get a little coupon if you get to wear jeans that day or Fridays are jeans days or whatever. But, but that's not what teachers actually need. A jeans day is nice, but what teachers actually need is like manageable workloads. Right? Like a smaller class size or class sizes, which means fewer papers to grade, so that's more manageable. Or fewer preps for those of you not in the education space. And a prep would be like, how many different classes do you have to teach? I don't mean like, if I teach three sections of math six, that's one prep. But if I teach a section of math six, math seven and math eight, well, those are three preps. That's a lot of planning to do that goes behind that. That's not manageable over time either. They need mental health days that don't require coverage plans. So some districts are saying, like, you know, we're going to cancel school for the everyone, which I understand puts a burden on parents because, let's face it, especially in the US Public education does tend to be childcare. That's a different conversation we could have. But, but if, if you have to put in teaching is one of those jobs where you have to do three days worth of work in one day in order to be gone. Right? Lots teachers show up sick or push through mental health days because it's just too much work to do all the planning behind that. And teachers need administration who back them up in conflicts, whether it's with a student or a parent. You know, you hear reports of teachers enduring unbelievable situations with parents or students and an administration who just rolls over and lets that be what it is. And it's not okay. They need protected planning time. I'm just thinking of, like, when certain social emotional learning curriculums are implemented in a school. It'll add 30 minutes to the day, but it doesn't remove anything else. Well, that's not helpful, right? Being told to build relationships with kids, but also being evaluated on test scores that have nothing to do with relationship building or, you know, there's. There's a lot there that I'm seeing as the structure of education that just doesn't lend itself to these, this performative, fill your cup kind of nonsense. In my. It's nonsense because it doesn't, you know, because it's performative in my mind. I mean, the, the message there is that teachers get care more, do more, be more. But we're not changing the system. That's breaking you. Right? That's the problem. [00:19:32] Speaker B: So what I love that you're saying here is, and I mean, you talked about, first of all, you talked about pizza party. I did an episode on this a while back. And what you're seeing makes total sense to me. Caitlin. I see this in many organizations and had many conversations about this. And where I see the issue is, is that a, we're looking at things to solve or to make people happy or to show that we appreciate them, but we're doing it the wrong way. So you mentioned a pizza party. Pizza party is great if it's not pizza. If, if you're, if it's. So I'll give you an example. So on Wednesday, I'll say, Caitlyn, I'm gonna order the team pizza Friday. So tell everybody, don't bring their lunch. Ordering pizza just because. Okay, what a difference that is compared to, well, here's what you guys did. You've been working on a project for like three months. You've been putting in endless hours. Everyone's tired. I'm going to get my administrator to order pizza. We're going to send it to the lunchroom and we're going to or get some bottles of pop and she's going to send an email saying, pizza's lunchroom everyone. But no one's there to say anything about. We're doing this to thank you for the great work that you're doing. So where I'm going in is that let's do stuff just because, to show a little bit appreciation for me. Leadership is a lot about relationships. Bring flowers home to your significant other just because, not on an anniversary date or a birthday just because you appreciate her. That's where I'm going with this leadership trend here is show appreciation for your team in little ways. And I guarantee you if you do that, you're going to see a significant difference. Is it going to solve all the issues? No, but you're going to get them on a trajectory of the positive rather than it's all negative. [00:21:36] Speaker A: And I think I'm going to add a caveat to this too, because what I have come to know and I've started to see this more often, to be loved is to be known, right? So you have this pizza party and you order pizza for everyone. What about someone who's gluten free? Did you include a gluten free option for someone on your team? Did you, you know, what about someone who's a vegetarian? Is there a vegetarian option? Things like that, that really show that you care about the person. Right? Like you, okay, it's secretary day. Your secretary is allergic to one specific type of flour and you come with that flower in that bouquet. Well, now, but I just I brought them flowers. Well, that's a gesture. Okay, sure. [00:22:22] Speaker B: Yes, Right. [00:22:24] Speaker A: But. But it also now feels like I would rather you not get anything. You know what I'm saying? There. There's something there about. There's a humanity there. There's a relationship piece there that is missing from appreciation. It has to go hand in hand. That, I think, is what you're. You're getting at here. [00:22:42] Speaker B: One of my core values is rapport building. And I think to answer what you were gonna say before, you said before was that you were. If we don't know if someone is. Doesn't like flowers or is allergic to flowers or can eat pizza or is allergic to whatever, that's all part of the rapport building. So if I'm part of the team, I'm gonna ask. I'm gonna ask questions, not to get into anything personal. If it's a Friday night, you. What are you guys doing tonight? My husband and I are gonna order pizza. What kind of pizza are you gonna order? Well, I can't eat regular pizza. I have to get vegetarian pizza. So, you know, so. So I write automatically. I'm gonna put that as a mental note so when the time comes, I'm gonna remember. And I would say to my administrator, okay, we're ordering pizza today. Just remember, get, like, some different ones. Get, like, all dressed, maybe get just with cheese. And then, you know, and let's. Let's get some other type so everybody can enjoy it right now. And is it going to work all the time? No, no, no. [00:23:44] Speaker A: And you don't have to do it like that. You can even put it out as, like, a welcome to our team survey. You can say, like, what are. What's your favorite snack? What's your. And a lot of, like, elementary schools will do this too, where they do this. Like, what are the teachers favorite things? And they'll have a list of all these questions the teachers have to answer, and it'll be, what's your favorite food? Where do you love to get coffee from? What's your favorite color? Things like that seem kind of silly and, like, literally elementary on the surface, but they actually can be very informative. Or if you're going to send out the email that says, hey, we're going to have pizza on Friday, and it's Wednesday, please respond to me and let me know if I've forgotten any dietary restrictions. Just something like that that honors the humanity of the person, you know? [00:24:26] Speaker B: Yeah, it shows. It shows care for. Sure. [00:24:28] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. [00:24:29] Speaker B: Okay. Caitlin, I need you to bring it on this one here. What responsibility do leaders have in creating an inclusive environment beyond policies? [00:24:39] Speaker A: Okay, I'm thinking policies are great, but they are the minimum, they are the floor. They are not the ceiling. How about that? And you have to model it, right? Like real support is treating people like humans, seeing their humanity. Leaders especially have to live the values and not just like post them on a website or sit in the back during an HR training and twiddle their thumbs, right? Like, there are things that have to be done. I, I'm just like. One of the things I've talked about in some of my recent episodes that have to do with this is how, as a parent, how we model, right? One of the things we do is we acknowledge harm and we repair it, right? And in an office setting, in a, in a workspace, you need to repair it publicly, right? You can't just issue a statement. You actually have to change something. You need to make space for those difficult conversations, you know, without tone policing and without asking. This is one of my biggest pet peeves. Without asking a marginalized person to educate everyone else on them. That's not fair. It's not their job to do that. I also think it's really important to check who's in the room and represented and who is not in the room and not represented. Whose voices are you centering as a leader? Right? And are you including everyone? And that also means knowing how to include those voices. Some people just don't feel like talking out loud in a meeting setting. So having a way for them to share their voice, either pre meeting or post, probably both, ideally would be good because then you're going to get more voices that way. I think just your job as a leader is to model emotional intelligence as much as possible, right? Admit your mistakes, ask for feedback, ask for help. Show your vulnerability without weaponizing it. I don't know, just name the harm, commit to a change, follow through. It's just, I think what's important is that something. It's not just a policy. It's not a diversity training. It's a, it's a way of life. It's a daily practice of making people feel like they belong on your team, making people feel like they're a human being who you care about. And it sounds so simple, but in practice it's probably not. I think it's easier for some people than others, but it's just, it's just a daily practice. It's a, it's a commitment that, you know, today I will acknowledge one person's humanity in this way, today I will find out one fact about one person on my team that I did not know before. Right. Even if it's just me observing that everything in their office space happens to be purple, I don't know, I will learn one thing new about someone, right? So just. Yeah, I think that's the responsibility. Just living it, like showing everyone, not just saying, but showing, demonstrating that you actually understand that people are humans. [00:27:37] Speaker B: When you said repair it, everything you said, first of all, I love. But when you said repair it caught my attention because we see a lot of stuff in a, in an organization to say that, okay, this needs to be fixed, but when it's left a long time, it's not going to be fixed. Like, I had a guest on a while back and she does investigations within the organization. So when something happens, she does a full investigation of it and then she comes to a solution. And I asked her, I said, what does, what's the timeline? And she said to me, andrew, I don't like to let things fester longer than two to four weeks. And she said, in that time, I'm doing all the things that I need to do, having all the conversations that I need to have. And by that time, I try to get it sooner, but by that time I come to a conclusion and a decision that I bring to a manager or what have you, what needs to be done. And for me, that, that is huge because I don't know about you, but I've been in a lot of organizations or situations where things festered for a long period of time and they never got fixed. And then the next thing you know, it blew up. And I think, I believe it blew up because it wasn't taken care of right away. If it was taken care of right away. A lot of that stuff, it may have happened, but there's a good probability that a lot of it would not have happened. [00:29:12] Speaker A: I would definitely agree. I think as soon as you know that there's harm and that might take time, right? That's the other piece is, you know, I don't want someone to come back and say, well, what if I don't know? Well, if you don't know one, you can find out, right? Google is free and so are resources on your team that are there. You, they're there to support you so you can ask. But also, sometimes people genuinely don't know because it hasn't come to light yet. Right? So as soon as you do know, that's when you acknowledge the harm that was done and you repair it as soon as possible. And you do so in a public manner. So everyone understands that there is accountability happening here, and that includes with leadership. [00:29:48] Speaker B: Yeah, but. [00:29:50] Speaker A: Yes, absolutely. I've been in that similar situation, and it sucked. Just put it like that. It sucked. [00:29:55] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. Kaylin, before we wrap up here, I'm so sad that we were wrapping up here, but we got an adult here. What is one key takeaway that you would like our listeners to remember from this episode? [00:30:09] Speaker A: I think probably that social and emotional skills are not things you necessarily learn in a workshop. Workshop, Right. It's kind of what I was saying before. It's a daily practice, and it starts at home. You model it for your kids, you model it for your family, your loved ones, your friends, your chosen family, however, that looks for you. The best leaders that I know are ones who didn't just, like, sit through a corporate training and then, like, go about their day. Right. They're the ones who. You would see them actually living these values every day. Right. And that. I think that that means that if you want an emotionally intelligent team, you have to model it yourself. Right. Again. Repair when you mess up, Set boundaries that stick. Encourage your team to do the same. Listen before you react, because your humanity is how people will remember you as a leader. Right. You don't want to rely on a PD session to do that. So, yeah, I. I think just making sure you practice emotional intelligence and health and humanity every day is probably your. My takeaway from all of this, my call to action. [00:31:15] Speaker B: To anybody that's listening to, like, share and follow this episode. Caitlin, I want to take the time to thank you for coming on today. What I admire about you is your diligence, your energy, your compassion, your values, your strength and your grit. You are a sensational human. And sometimes we say we are lucky to or fortunate to meet somebody or be in contact with someone, to connect with someone. And I count myself super lucky to connect with a sensational human like yourself. And I look forward to many other conversations and work and collaborating with you in the future. So thank you again. [00:31:54] Speaker A: I have no words. That was one of the most heartfelt and beautiful compliments I've ever received. I'm so thankful to have been here today and to have met you and I cannot wait to see what is next for you. So excited. [00:32:07] Speaker B: Well, I. I'm. That's very kind of you to say, and I really appreciate that. And that's why I. I think so highly of you because of the things that you say and how you treat people and whatever you do continue to do that because people recognize that for sure. [00:32:23] Speaker A: Thank you. [00:32:24] Speaker B: I'm. You're very welcome. On behalf of myself and my guest today, Caitlyn, I'd like to thank you all for joining us today. And until next time, be safe. And remember, everyone, that if we all work together, we can accomplish anything. [00:32:39] Speaker A: You have been listening to let's be Diverse with Andrew Stout. To stay up to date with future content, hit Subscribe.