An award-winning diversity consultant and international corporate speaker, Risha Grant, has a mission to help us all be better than our BS — that’s our “biasphere”— the powerful and often invisible belief systems that we’ve been steeped in since birth and the judgment and bias we carry with us that impact our lives and the many others we encounter every day.
Analyzing your biasphere and identifying your BS raises your unconscious bias to the conscious level,” says Grant.
“If you don’t like what you discover, don’t blame or judge yourself, not because bias isn’t problematic, but because getting caught up in your feelings is a distraction. What matters is what you’re going to do about it, because once you can see your BS, you’re also quickly going to see that it’s been running your life for a long time and warping your ability to gauge reality.”
5 socializing agents that form the rings of our biasphere:
- Family
- Peers and friends
- Schools or government
- Religion
- Mass media
Using stories from her personal and professional journey as well those of her clients, Grant encourages you to first examine the roots of your own BS through a process of radically accepting yourself and then to build a BS-free culture, which can only happen when you learn to radically accept others. She also shares the exercises, tools, and strategies she has taught thousands of people at all levels to make their workplaces more accepting, inclusive, and productive
About Risha Grant
Risha Grant is diversity personified: CEO. Entrepreneur. Black. Female. Small-town born and raised. Bisexual. Spiritual. Ex-preacher’s wife. Cusser. Left-handed. Former Division 1 athlete. But these traits alone aren’t what make her one of the most powerful and effective diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) experts in the US. Hailed as a “cultural competency genius” and renowned for her storytelling chops, humor, and frank delivery, she has made a career of leading her audiences as well as executives and their teams, politicians, civic leaders, and academic directors around the world to Radical Acceptance (RA) through a unique bias-busting process of self-examination and concrete advice on how to behave, lead, and manage businesses more inclusively.
In her role as a speaker and CEO of a multi-million dollar business, Grant has shifted the hearts and minds of her audiences and clients from around the world, including Google, Levi Strauss, Nestle Purina, Xerox, YouTube, Procter & Gamble, Discover Card Financial Services, Samsung Electronics America, Cox Communications, U.S. Airforce, U.S. Navy, Intuit, NBA’s Oklahoma City Thunder, and Harvard University.
She’s been featured in various national and international media including Forbes, Entrepreneur Magazine, Harvard Business Review, HR News, The Financial Times, Glamour Magazine UK, Bloomberg Media, and Black Enterprise, among others. She is also the author of two books: That’s BS! How Bias Synapse Disrupts Inclusive Cultures and the Power to Attract Diverse Markets and Be Better Than Your BS: How Radical Acceptance Empowers Authenticity and Creates a Culture of Inclusion.
Grant has received numerous honors such as being named one of the Top 10 Most Powerful Women Leaders in HR, one of the 40 Top Women Keynote Speakers, and made the list of Top 100 HR Experts. She was named as 1 in 9 Speakers Turning Crisis into Opportunity by Entrepreneur magazine, and for three consecutive years been an Engagedly Top 100 HR Influencer and Entrepreneur of the Year.
Grant will freely admit that she is a work in progress. She occasionally misuses pronouns. She prejudges others. Sometimes she walks in fear. Yet she has consistently striven to focus on love, and made it her mission to use her passion, persistence, knowledge, and experience to dismantle racism, sexism, classism, and plain old stupidism—including her own. She lives in Tulsa, Okla. with her partner, where when not teaching people how to challenge bias she is busy being the world’s best auntie.