Becoming the Changemaker with Danaya Wilson

0:00What was a stark reminder or just a shock that I had this baby and I'm at the top of my company and I'm struggling.

0:12What would happen if we just told the truth? Welcome to TruthWorks, where we dig into the nitty-gritty of leadership and work. And what needs to change? I'm Jessica Neal. And I'm Patti McCord. Our journey together started in HR, but trust us, it's evolved into something wild, honest, and well, a bit rebellious. So throw out the handbook. We're here to redefine rules to work for us, not against us. Let's dive into another episode.

0:48Hi, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Truth Works. I am here with a fantastic guest today, and I'll just say my co-host, Patti, she's out again. I love you, Patti. Miss you. But exciting, I have Danaya here, and Danaya Wilson is the co-founder and CEO of a company that is called Better Certify. But what I'm excited about is just your story. Your story is kind of interesting. Like you graduate in 2007. It's a financial crisis and recession. You can't find work. Your family has a business that's in sort of the hazmat dangerous materials world. So you go and work for them. And then you kind of have this aha, right, about all the training that has to happen.

1:39And I guess you start this company. So tell us about you. Like, I'm sure there's more to that story. Yeah, absolutely. Well, first, thank you for having me on. I definitely appreciate it. I have a, yeah, a very unique career path and is really founded on this basis of being a master of the pivot. You know, if something doesn't work in this area, then figuring out how I could change systems or even just change my preferences to be able to find something that does work. And that was the first lesson I learned when graduating in 2007 with my undergrad. And it was just one of the worst times to graduate.

2:14It really was. It was terrible. And I feel for, you know, college graduates right now because I can imagine they're probably feeling the same thing. Like the economic climate is really scary. And I looked low and high for a new career. And my parents just happened to be in a career change. And we're starting up a hazardous material abatement firm. And one thing that I'm very good at is looking at complex systems and making them easier and digestible. And it seems like hazardous material, you know, as you would expect, has a lot of regulation. So it has a lot of complexity with it. And I found something that I was good at, possibly not passionate about in the sense of like, I'm not really passionate about hazardous material.

3:01Probably not a lot of people are. But I was able to find a place that I could use my strengths, even though it wasn't in something that I thought I was going to do. Right. Right. Which I think is, it's kind of interesting because I think a lot of people kind of get stuck in that, like, well, I'm not that passionate about it, but there's opportunity everywhere, right? And people miss it all the time. And here you are young, right? Just graduating. And maybe, maybe because you were young and had just graduated and have sort of the fear and preconceived notions that a lot of people maybe have as they get further along in their career, You just kind of did it.

3:42Yeah, you looked for, in my case, I definitely looked for where can I create impact? So that is what I found that I am passionate about. Why I may not be passionate about the subject matter. I'm very passionate about impact. And that's expanded throughout my career. And now I'm at the point where the company, instead of working with my parents, I started my own company, Better Certified 10 years ago, that still focuses on the hazardous material in the trades industries, but looking at it from like the education side of it. So what do these individuals need to do? And how do we translate that into a language that they can understand and find relevant in a classroom when they're learning about it outside of where they're actually going to be doing the work?

4:24So when we're talking about plumbers and tradespeople, what does it look like to talk about situations that we can't really emulate, we can't really show in a classroom environment. And that translation takes a little bit of finesse and education. And I found that we are really passionate about that. You know, how do we make this complexity feel approachable? Yeah. And so tell us, like, you started the company, you get it going, it's successful, then you're a mom, and now what? I started the company and then about two years ago, so our company just turned 10, And two years ago, I had a child, I had a baby girl, and I really wanted to start a family.

5:10And I thought that that was the perfect timing. You know that you if you're later in life starting a family, you're like, okay, I can outthink all of these barriers that I know women face when having children. And what was a stark reminder is, or just a shock that I had this baby and I'm at the top of my company and really performing well in my industry. So doing really well in my industry as well. And I'm struggling, you know, I have the controls and the ability to give myself a day off or, you know, maybe start something a little bit later and I'm really struggling. And that it's almost like, you know, like you said, an aha moment where I was like, if this is difficult for me, then this is difficult for and 10 times more difficult for the vast majority of women, for the vast majority of parents.

6:01And how do we ensure that this is not the burden that we're passing on to our children? Yeah, no, it's something that I think about a ton. So I have a five-year-old. And when I had him, I was the CHRO of Netflix. Very big job. 10 ,000 people all over the world, plus all over our productions, which is a lot more people. And so I had this really big job and had this baby who was early. So we were in the NICU. And I'm on the phone with work in the NICU. I had maternity leave, but I was out, but still involved some. And then I came back. I was out for three months and I came back. And then two weeks later, we went into lockdown because it was the pandemic.

6:50And it was terrible. It was terrible. I can't have a nanny because nobody could, whatever. So I had no help. I had this big, huge job trying to get everybody to work from home and try to get our productions back up and running. Right. Right. And not sleeping. And it was it was terrible. And I had a very similar thought of like this. This I don't know. Nobody. This is so hard. Like, how do women do this? Right. And I had tons of resources just like you did. I could take days off. I could hire help. But it was still a huge burden. Right. Right. And then you look at women who have families, right, and children, and they have very high level jobs.

7:39Right. Or not. And then they leave the workforce, you know, all together. And, you know, I didn't leave the work. I'm still working. But I but I, you know, there was sort of a period of time when my kid was about two and I was starting to leave Netflix. I was like, I don't want to travel around the world and be gone three weeks out of the month. and not see my kid. Like, you know, I want a job where I can see him walk and do the things that he's doing, right? And I had gotten that opportunity because of COVID, right? Had it not been for COVID, I would have been on the road and I would have missed a lot of those things.

8:18So I think the perspective that you get after you have a child, because I thought it would be easy too. Similar to you, like, I got this figured out, it's fine. Yeah, I have the finances, right? So I can hire help or I can lean into the systems around us that provide for that. But then what we don't acknowledge is the highly emotional side of things. Even if you have the system, you have the guilt that's on the other side of it that prevents you from using the system. There's even research showing that in states that do have maternity leave, women are leaving these hours on the table. And a lot of that, I'm like, I know 100 % why that's the case.

8:59It's because the workforce expects you to come back to work the way you were after having a kid, but you're not the same. You're completely different. And what you really need is flexibility and understanding and autonomy to be able to work in a manner that is still productive. Because at the end of the day, we both understand dollars matter, right? But also with the flexibility that respects your new found position as a mother, as a parent. And I think that that's really where I started to, you know, why I wrote this book, Changemakers Wanted, and why I started doing the research for it, because I didn't want to just accept the answer that there's not more women in leadership positions.

9:47So I'm in a male-dominated industry construction right now. You know, actually, just earlier this year, I was saying about 18%. We passed a 20 % mile marker. So we're now at 20 % where there's women in the industry, but still unbelievably low, right? And that's 18 % to 20 % took 10 years. So, you know, certainly nothing to write home about. But anyway, I'm in a male-dominated industry and I'm looking around me and there's not a lot of women sitting at the table. So I really wanted to say, okay, what would it look like if I could change anything? What would it look like to get more women into these positions, not just sitting at the table, but actually in leadership positions?

10:34And that's what the premise of the book was and really diving into that. And ultimately what it came down to, which you need more flexibility. If we're not going to give women flexibility, then we're not going to have women come back from giving birth. Yeah, I know. And it was something that I thought a lot about when I was in that seat at Netflix, like, how can I make this better? And there's no obvious answer. Like, we've thought about bringing childcare in, but that's complicated and doesn't always help. You give more money to families and women. Here's some extra money to hire the nanny or pay for child care.

11:16And then child care costs have just been going up and up and up. But there's also this thing that you said is like you don't come back the same, but the workplace expects you to. Right. And I wonder if I don't know how you feel about this, but I wonder if that's almost a place to start. 100%. So when you're standing at the foot of this mountain that needs to be scaled to a certain extent, what we really need, and that's essentially what I found through the book, is more individuals that are going through the same problem, maybe not problem, but experience, to be able to communicate and weigh into this.

11:54because if we're just maybe taking a top-down approach and we're looking at key decision makers at the company, a lot of times individuals that are in the C-suite have been removed from having children for five to 10 plus years. And so - Or they're men. Or they're men, exactly. And not able to make that decision of what it looks like to still be breastfeeding and pumping and what that feels like to be in a meeting and being distracted about what's going on physiologically in your body. Am I leaking? And having to show up 100%. You know, and like those are very real conversations and it almost seems like people don't want to talk about it because essentially like you had your kit, you had your time.

12:37Your time was off, you know, when you were outside on maternity leave or even if you got maternity leave, now come back to the work and perform and be present the way that we need you to be. And the truth is, it's just not the case. And the thing is, is like, yes, you're not the same and maybe you're not present the same way you were. That doesn't mean that you're not doing a great job. You need to get a job done. Yeah. Moms. Right. Let's talk about the book because I don't think we've mentioned the title. It's called Changemakers, right? Yeah. Changemakers Wanted. Yeah. And I will take us through the like, hey, I'm going to write a book process.

13:13I mean, like what what happened? Yeah, it was, especially having a two-year-old, right? Like, so I started that, she was just over a one when I started the process. And I do think a few people were looking at me like, Are you crazy? Exactly. And I very much, you know, me and my husband, we talked about it and he was like, would you regret it if you pass this opportunity up? And I was like, you know what, I would. I would regret it. And I think that sometimes when you're at the wire, you know, down to the wire and you're like, it would be so much easier not to do this, that pushing through what's difficult, what's hard, what's gritty tends to produce the best for, especially for me.

13:56And so I was, once I signed on to do that, I was very motivated to get it done. And then spending the time every weekend, I was writing close to 5 ,000 words to be able to get it done as quickly as I wanted to do it. And I knew that at the time I started writing it, I didn't know what the political landscape was going to be. That was before we knew that there was maybe even going to be like Kamala running against Trump. We were still well into the last year of Biden's presidency. But I knew that this was a difficult election year. And I knew that women would be feeling the brunt of what decision would be made just because of how things have been going in the last few years.

14:45And I wanted to inject some hope in a really confusing and convoluted world. And so I wanted to publish the book as close as I could to election day. And that required that weekends, you know, I wasn't hanging out with my family. And so that was definitely the hardest thing I've ever done because it's hard to explain like mommy has to work mommy needs to do this mommy gets to write a book I will say there's a really exciting moment when the book came out and she sees my picture on the inside cover and she's like this is mommy's book that is that feels really good and when she opens other books and she's like this is not mommy yeah don't read that one it's not mommy's book yeah yeah I have the same challenges where you know I'm working my kid said to me, because I missed something, he's like, well, you shouldn't have had that meeting.

15:35And I was like, well, yes, I guess. But at the same time, I, you know, I have to, right? And I do. I think the challenge is like, I love, I love what I do. And, you know, now I'm an investor in companies and getting to meet all these entrepreneurs and talk about disruption and things that can like impact the world. But I also love him. And I love being a mom. And it's Probably being a mom is like the best job I've ever had, I'd say. But at the same time, if I only was that, I would be missing out on all this other stuff that also gives me joy. So how did you how did you like navigate that? Isn't that just interesting to sit with for a little bit that that women can be multidimensional, right?

16:23Like we don't have to just enjoy one side of it. And I think with some of the stuff that has been coming out, it's almost like, well, we need more women to have babies and we need more women to, if childcare is so expensive, then how do we get more women to stay home as opposed to being in the workforce? And I struggle with that because I'm very much like that. I want to be bull. I want to be a mother and I want to be a contributor outside of the home. And I think that that's the important part that we don't progress is that ability to be able to choose and stand right in that. And I think we really want to focus on that.

17:04If we support individuals and we give them the tools that they need to be able to have happy and healthy families, as well as to preserve their personal and mental well-being, then we don't have to focus so heavily on the incentives to get them to do these things. And so I'm very blessed in the sense that I have the autonomy, right? And I've been able to make those decisions to pivot in situations where I don't feel that it's helping me live the life that I want to live. The other side of it is, and I get asked this question a lot about like, what does women's empowerment look like to you? And I think there's a lot of focus on women.

17:50A lot of it has come internally in the sense of, I am so willing to work unbelievably hard to be able to shape the life that I want, to shape the world that I want to be present in. And I'm willing to take on maybe a little bit more personal societal responsibility than maybe might be healthy. I don't know. But what I do is I definitely take up that charge. And I find that women are like that. We're these almost mavericks in the case that we're shifting things around. I mean, the amount of stuff that I see my colleagues and my other parents doing when it comes to just navigating a weekend schedule with sports.

18:36Right. And like this is a master class in Tetris and logistics. And you're just sitting there watching that and you know who's doing that. It's moms and they're so unbelievably amazing. And so how do we look at how do we change our organizational systems to where we're benefiting this amazing amount of talent that parents are bringing to the table in the first place? There's one other thing that I wanted to touch base on because you were talking about, you know, your son being like, well, you shouldn't have that meeting. And what we teach our children was gut rich. And I was like, oh, right. And you're like almost to a sense you're like to a sense you're like fair, right?

19:17Like, I would love not to do this, you know, like, it'd be great to hang out with you. But we're teaching our children that like work is where mommy and daddy go to be away from our children. And then at one day, they too can get this lovely gift of having to work and they have to be away from what they want to do. And one of the companies that I profiled in the book was Patagonia. And Patagonia has had on-site child care since 1984. And what, you know, if you really look into that, what they found that works is that the parents and the children go to work together. They go to this structure together and the children go do their work, their contribution, and the parents go do their work.

20:04And they're able to communicate and engage with each other throughout the day. And I almost think of if we're able to teach our children that work and school are not just the separation of being, but instead this community, what we each do. I tell my daughter, like, you going to school allows me to be able to do X, Y, and Z. And we continue to have this conversation because it's this community that we're investing in and this future of, you know, collaboration. That's not just because we separate and we have to go, you know, do things we don't want to do. This is very much what we want to do. But how do we make that to where there's engagement as opposed to disassociation?

20:51No, I love that. And I don't know how you feel about this, but I am guilty of this. And I don't know whether it's because I am a woman, but I also don't ask for help. Yeah. And I think, you know, a lot of women don't. There's conflicting reasons why, right? Like you have the guilt side of things. So there's that. And that's predicated by all these should statements. Well, I should be able to do this. Why am I having trouble doing this? And then that's supported by all this, the graphics and the other sides of the memes where it's like, well, I have no trouble doing this. You know, you have the trad wife movement kind of going through and it's like, well, there's examples of women that can do it all.

21:33So why can't you? Then there's the other side of it where, I mean, I don't know about you, but I'm pretty sure you feel the same. We genuinely enjoy what we're doing, right? I very much enjoy taking care of my daughter. I love packing her clothes. I love getting stuff ready for her. And so I don't want help with the stuff that I love. What I want are all those little things that we women do. One tiny example was we got new vitamins. We have like a vitamin subscription and the new ones came in. And I was thinking like, gosh, it would really be nice for that box to be opened. the new vitamin boxes to be put into their place.

22:19And then the old ones, you know, pull out what's left, throw the box away. I was like, that would be really nice to have done. And I was like, wait a second, I do that. I do that. Right. And so we want to come back as the male counterpart because, whoa, how nice would that be? Or just to have a nice, clean, fluffy towel. Right. And those are the things we want help with. But who's going to ask for that? Right. Like it just seems so minuscule. And not to throw my husband under the bus, but anywho, I will. But, you know, he's like, you just have to ask me. Yeah. And it's like, but you see me. Yes.

22:55It's a different way of thinking. You see me doing all of it. Why don't you help me? You know, he's like, well, you didn't ask me. Yes. Yes. And that's the thing. So we need to delegate at home, which at home should be our safe space, our space of being, you know, our comfort. and our space to relax. We're already into uncharted territories at work and being pulled in different directions, especially if we're in a male-dominated industry where just the gender dynamics are completely different. So we're kind of fighting a balance of showing up in this place. And then at home, we have to do the same thing.

23:35And what we really want is we want there to be a sense of that, you know, caretaking to be something that has a little bit more equality. But I almost believe that it starts from birth to a certain extent, is that my husband, his mom was a primary caretaker. My mom was a primary caretaker. Both did not work. Same with us. Exactly. And so until we have, you know, children that have been raised, men that have been raised to look at a space from a view that you and I would look at. So we look at a room and we see things that need to get done. The general housekeeping tasks, until we raise a generation of men that are able to look at the systems around us, it's not going to change because it's so difficult to mandate, to ask all the time for it to change, for their mindset to change.

24:36I know. And, you know, my kid, he's five and I'm really trying hard to not have him, you know, look at the world that way, you know, and whatever happens in his life, I want him to be a contributing person to all these things. Right. Right. You know, so you're writing the book. you're doing all this research, what'd you find? Like, did you get any answers? The two things, essentially, you know, we talked a lot about flexibility. The other side of it is that if we don't, if the employer does not do something to address equality as far as benefits are concerned, and really looking at childcare as being one of those things, then ultimately, there's still going to be this exodus of women because it is so unbelievably hard.

25:27And whether that be from the beginning or later in life when we're going through menopause or we're caring for aging adults, we need help with this caretaking responsibility that falls on us. And so what I proposed in the book as a solution to this was just this rehaul of benefits as a whole, looking at how do we make our benefits be a little bit more flexible in the hopes too that it benefits individuals that aren't going through that same path. You know, like I have a friend that doesn't have children and she is super frustrated because she's like, well, when there is a maternity program, I pay for it, but I don't get to take a part of that.

26:07And so really looking at how do we, if we're going to have workers have whole lives, then we need to also have whole benefit plans that support every decision that's under that, that can be reasonably supported. it. Yeah. I mean, it's fascinating. And we used to, I mean, I used to think about this all the time, you know, at Netflix and designing and crafting our plans. There's people who want families. There's people who don't want families. And if you look at what's hard sometimes about benefits and everybody's choice is different, right? So it's not apples to apples. But then if you look at the bottom line, what I pay someone with a family is way more than what I pay a single person.

26:48Absolutely. Right. You know, when you when you add everything up like benefits and then is that fair? Yeah. You know, like I it's just really complicated. So when we talk about compensation, we're typically looking at what that base compensation is, you know, so I'm going to offer you one hundred thousand for your job and that's your base compensation. And then all of these other things get added on to it or subtracted depending on what you're involved with. And the way that I talk about in the book, it's called these individualized benefits. And what this does is like, it looks at total compensation first.

27:25So ultimately, if I as an employer expect to pay $125 ,000, then we work off of that. This is your base compensation. And then this is your the additional stuff that go into it. Some of that stuff is possibly mandated, less flexible, like a non-elective, like maybe a health plan or a 401k contribution. And then there's other things that could fall in the flexibility. And that could be maybe a flexible work environment, like you're not showing up to the office five days a week. Maybe you have a commuter plan. And I think systems are kind of looking at this, but it's more along the lines of changing the conversation from the beginning, as opposed to later down the road when you're like, you don't even know how much you, what do I cost?

28:13What does my employment cost the employer? Yeah, most people don't know. And we always thought about it at Netflix from a total comp perspective. And then, and that's how we looked at paying people. We never really looked at it as like, here's your base. We always looked at it as here's your total, right? And then one of the things that I think a lot of companies could think about, or maybe should think about, is letting employees choose. What I learned through compensation is that everybody's situation was different. Like maybe you did have parents who are aging. Maybe you did have young kids, maybe had kids that were going to college.