What does it take to ensure every voice, regardless of its accent, is valued and heard?

In this episode of the Greenbook Podcast, we welcome guest Aïcha Ly, Founder of SITB and Head of Consumer Insights at Opensignal, to discuss the impact of accent bias in professional and personal settings. Aïcha, originally from Senegal and now a strategic insights leader in the tech industry, shares her journey from immigrating to the U.S. at the age of nine to becoming a global speaker, business owner, and author. She delves into how accent biases can lead to discrimination and impact career advancement, highlighting the importance of voice coaching and active listening for effective communication. Aïcha also discusses the need for accent diversity training within DEI initiatives to combat these biases. By fostering an inclusive environment and addressing accent bias, researchers can engage with all participants more effectively, enriching research outcomes with diverse perspectives.

You can reach out to Aïcha on LinkedIn.

Many thanks to Aïcha for being our guest. Thanks also to our producer, Natalie Pusch; and our editor, Big Bad Audio.

*Please Note: The viewpoints shared in this episode belong to Aïcha and do not necessarily reflect the stance of Opensignal.

Transcript

Karen: Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Greenbook Podcast. I’m Karen Lynch—excited to be hosting this episode today. And let me tell you. I’m excited to bring our guest to the forefront, once again, actually. Aïcha Ly is the head of consumer insights at Opensignal. And, if you have been in our audience for the greater part of the last year, you may have seen her on our virtual at IIEX AI, our AI event. She was somebody who caught our eye talking about how to adopt AI at that time, so it was a wonderful presentation. We’re excited to have you on the podcast for the first time. Welcome to the show.

Aïcha: Thank you so, so very much. It’s a pleasure to be here. Thank you for the honor of just giving me the time—the opportunity to share a little bit more about my story and this really important topic that we’re going to delve into today.

Karen: Yeah. I’m really glad you’re here—and, yes, incredibly excited for this topic. So let me just tell you that [laugh] when you think of Aïcha as, you know, an insights expert, as she is, I also want you to layer in the fact that she spoke as an expert in our AI even because she leaned in fully and brought her expertise up to speed as just the intelligent woman that she is. But she’s also an activist and a coach and a supporter of others who are learning to develop their thought leadership. She has her own endeavor, if you will, called Start in the Beginning, where she is helping others achieve their best outcomes on stage and in exchanging ideas out there for the world. So you’re bringing a lot to the stage, and I figured just let me open it up to you, Aïcha, to tell everybody a bit more about you and your background.

Aïcha: Yeah. Fantastic. Sure thing. So I am a strategic insights leader in the tech industry—and we’ll talk a little bit more about that—a global speaker; as you just mentioned, a business owner. Personally, I’m originally from the gorgeous, vibrant country of Senegal, West Africa. I immigrated to the US with my family, my mother, and my siblings, when I was nine. And I am—I have to mention this. The incredible Anna Sidibé—I am her daughter, and she sacrificed for our family so much so that that continues to be my inspiration to this day. And I am sister to five fabulous siblings, without whom my wildest dreams could not have been realized. But, from a professional perspective, you are so right. I wear [laugh] several different hats. By day, I love, love, love doing consumer insights, so I am Head of Consumer Insights and Opensignal, which is the leading global provider of network experience and market performance insights. And, essentially, our insights enable the communications industry to optimize network experience. And we really believe in our mission to advance connectivity for all. So there I lead all the consumer insights initiatives, including a survey that reaches over 25,000 respondents a quarter providing insights on subscriber behavior. As you mentioned, I’m also the Founder and Chief Communications Consultant at Start in the Beginning, or SITB for short, where we help leaders and entrepreneurs not only find their authentic voice but articulate their ideas with spark. And, lastly, I am finally an author. I’ve been working on this for some time on a book called Accent Unity—a book about which today’s topic is obviously closely aligned—that will be coming out later in May of this year—so busy bee but loving it all [laugh].

Karen: Well, that’s so exciting. And, yeah, if you, you know, share with us any kind of early, early links, a pre-sale, any of that information, we can include them in the [show notes 00:03:57] too. So that’s exciting news about your book, and I can’t wait to dig into that topic. But going back just the tiniest bit, you know, I had read—there’s an employee spotlight, for instance, that’s out there on you at Opensignal, and one of the things that it asked you was what do you love most about your role. And you had said, “the illuminating insights.” And thought, first of all, eloquently said ‘the illuminating insights’. So just talk to me a little bit more about what you love about that and that aspect of your role.

Aïcha: Yeah. For sure. So Opensignal is known for, you know, really in-depth data on network experience. We have tons of subscriber analytics, so we have a lot of this really rich, deterministic data around what customers actually do in the market. And this is, like, a cross-telecommunications products, from mobile to broadband, you know, streaming services, all of that. And I love being in the seat of being able to explain the ‘why’ behind a lot of that. It’s one dimension to know what is happening in the market, and it is illuminating to understand why it’s happening in the market. And that way we can sort of provide our clients with more sort of a robust, holistic view of what’s going on. And so that’s what I meant by that. You know, there’s a lot of questions around, like, ‘why is switching happening in this particular market?’ And I’m like, “Truly, here’s what consumers are saying [laugh].” So being able to be the voice of the customer—I know I’m no, you know, exception in our field. That is so empowering being able to be an advocate for the voice of the customer and really push for what consumers want and need and expect for companies, I think, is really crucial, particularly in our line of work.

Karen: I agree. It really is at the heart of everything is—what unites us in our industry is we do like to shine that light on the voice of the customer and bring it to life and help businesses do the work that they do with the customer in mind. So thank you for sharing that. Let’s just now, like, kind of go to the next level, right, and talk about Start in the Beginning. Because I find that fascinating when somebody who is gainfully employed and has a role in our industry saying, “But you know what? I’m also going to do this other thing.” So let’s go there. What brought you to starting that business?

Aïcha: Yeah. It’s interesting because the topic we’re going to delve into later plays into this as well.

Karen: Yeah.

Aïcha: But, essentially, I’m not going to be eloquent about this. I just got really sick and tired of seeing women, black, and brown people, get passed over for promotions and career advancement because it was perceived that their style of communication was not on par either with the culture or wasn’t, in quotation marks, “professional enough,” and so I embarked on this mission to help people articulate their value, and the value of their ideas would spark. It’s a skill that I’ve gotten a chance to hone over many, many, many years. And, obviously, being able to be on global stages has helped with that, but I think there is such tremendous power in our stories, personally. And, if we’re able to be really authentic about where we’re from and what we’re bringing to the table but also be able to communicate that with power and succinctly and clearly, right, keeping in mind the needs of the audience, I think that we can really create magic with our words. So I love this—like, how weighty the power of words can be, and so that’s why I embarked to start Start in the Beginning because I really believe that, for most people, we have to start somewhere. And that’s why I named the business that.

Karen: Yeah. And what better place to start than with who you are and where you’re from? And some of the, again, reading that I’ve done here about this kind of initiative—which leads us into the next part of this—is the misunderstanding that a lot of people have based on biases that somebody who may look different from them or speak with a different accident are not equally intelligent or that they don’t have as much to offer. And I think it’s a really impowering message that you have, in this platform, that people have—absolutely have intelligence and intellect and wisdom to share, and they need to gather up the strength to set public biases and perceptions aside and carry on. So kudos to you for embarking on that work. And let’s talk about that [laugh]. I just unpacked a lot. Where would you like to start in this particular aspect of the story?

Aïcha: I think I—I love the way that you characterized it, and I always say that the loudest minds often have the quietest voices. Right? It’s always those people are not saying much that have, usually, a ton of layer and a ton to say. And so, when we think about communication skills and we think about accent within that realm, often people who have accent insecurities are usually the quietest people in the room, and yet they have the loudest minds. And we’re losing a lot of perspective, a lot of benefit by not checking our accent biases because that’s usually the reason why they have accent insecurity. So I think that would be a great place to start.

Karen: Yeah. So tell me more about that. I have not thought about that before kind of reading up for this interview. And so I’ve been doing a lot of reflection about how I perceive people who speak with a different accent, and also, interestingly, reflecting on how my accent, which is—not only is it American English, but it’s from the northeast in America and in the US—and how I have been judged if I travel to the south, for instance, for speaking too quickly and, you know, not clearly enough, not enunciating enough. As I’ve explained the background of my—my family is Italian, and we speak a mile a minute. When I’m home, I tend to get more exaggerated about that. So I’ve done a lot of reflection on this. But I imagine, with your background coming—first of all, you’re trilingual, so, you know, you speak three languages, and you’ve come from another country, and you immigrated here as a young girl. You must have had experiences that shaped your take on all of this. Otherwise, that seed wouldn’t have been planted for you to study this and write a book about it [laugh].

Aïcha: Yeah. Yeah. For sure. So, you know, if we start way back when—and I’m not going to say the year and date myself.

Karen: [laugh]

Aïcha: When I came to the US [laugh], and I was nine. And so, one thing that our lovely audience will notice is, like, some people will pick up a hint of an accident, but I think most people will say, “What accent? What is she talking about,” right? And so special kudos and points to the people who can pick it up once in a while. When I become very impassioned; it’ll become more clear. So I had an accent, a very thick accent, West African. There’s some—think a little bit like, you know, if you were to combine perhaps like—I’m trying to think of an ethic group that’s really prevalent in the United States—now maybe, like, Nigerian mixed with French. Like, that’s how I would characterize the French West African accent, so very, very, very thick when I first came for the first couple years of my life. And then I lost that accent by the time I was probably around 12. I lost the bulk of it. And that wasn’t by way of wanting to lose my accent. It just happened. And I always point folks to the fact that your accent is typically dictated by who you learn English from. So, interestingly enough, my nieces and nephews were born in the United States, have a stronger accent than I do because they learned English from my siblings, who learned English here, obviously, right? So they learned English from people who speak English with a West African inflection.

Karen: That’s so interesting.

Aïcha: I learned English from primarily white educators, and so I sort of inherited that manner of speaking.

Karen: That is so interesting to think about. Of course that’s how it works, right? Yeah. I really love that. I love this conversation. I’m very excited about it. I actually have a trilingual daughter-in-law right now. You know, she is from Brazil. She is now in the US. And her accent is thick. She learned English through, you know, her upbringing. She’s also fluent in Spanish. And, you know, I sometimes think her Portuguese and her Spanish are both influencing her English, and sometimes it amazes me to think about her journey to becoming fluent in three languages. That is not a skill I have [laugh]. I admire everybody who can do that because I think language is a skill—whoever you’ve learned it from [laugh].

Aïcha: Yeah. Yeah. It’s not a skill you have yet [laugh].

Karen: Yeah.

Aïcha: Don’t short-change yourself.

Karen: Yes. Exactly. Exactly. So, yeah, so what are some of the things that you’ve learned about, you know, biases when it comes to accents and the impact of those biases on perceptions? And then we’ll talk about what you know in general and then also how it plays out in the workplace. I think it’s an important conversation.

Aïcha: Yeah. When I think about the first sort of formations of my thought, it takes me back to being about 9, 10, 11, and it takes me to—when I started sort of losing my accent is when I became really aware of how people reacted to people with accents. By that I mean, while I had an accent, I didn’t really—I mean, I was, like, just struggling to learn English. So that was the predominant thought in my mind. And then, when I started losing it, I started seeing different reactions to how I spoke versus to how my mother spoke, for example. So, if you are an immigrant, you’re probably no stranger to being the primary translator for your parents when you go to the grocery store or when you go to, you know, the bank at the checkout line, or if you’re, you know, out shopping. And I started realizing how people were responding to my mom, who is literally the smartest person that I know, right. I mean, trilingual—I mean, she speaks, like, four languages, extremely intelligent. And yet, because she came here when she was older, English sort of alluded her a little bit more than it did me. And so I would just see what was blatant disregard, disrespect, very quick dismissal because people did not want to deal with having to figure out what she was saying. And, of course, this hurt at a couple of different levels. You know, number one, you’re realizing that like, “Oh, my God. Society sucks,” you know [laugh]?

Karen: [laugh] Yes.

Aïcha: And then, number two, you’re like, “But that’s my mom.” You know?

Karen: That’s my mom. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Aïcha: So it stung on a couple of different levels at that age. But then, as I started just exploring the topic a little bit more, and as I started formulating ideas around it and my book around it, you know, accent bias is clearly not just a personal challenge for the person who is experiencing it. Right? It’s a societal issue that, like, affects countless people, like me and my family, who arrived on these shores with dreams in their hearts and accent in their voices. But I also began noticing that accent bias pervasiveness even touched those born in the US, like you just mentioned, you know, mostly living in areas, maybe, where thicker accents are common. But those who live in the deep south, like New Orleans, or maybe urban centers or those from Caribbean or other African diaspora, black Americans—I see this sort of constant discrimination and dismissal based on accent. And then, for that matter, even economic status seems to come with inflections and accents that are assumed to be less acceptable. But, if you were to ask a linguist, they’d tell you that the absence of an accent is impossible. To your point, everyone has one. So whether it’s, you know, noticeable is highly dependent on your location. However, no matter where you go, accents are present. And we can dig deep into some of the kind of key factors around accent biases and why I think that they are prevalent and exist.

Karen: Yeah. And this isn’t necessarily where we were going to go with this. But the whole idea that an accent—just like the color of somebody’s skin, an accent is sending a signal to somebody that they are ‘other,’ and that is a very dangerous place for us to go, right, in this whole idea of ‘that person is not like me because they don’t sound like me,’ which is a new nuance for me having, you know, studied racism for the last several years thinking about people saying “that person doesn’t look like me therefore is not like me.” And that’s a problem. And now I’m unpacking a whole new area thanks to this conversation. So, again, with gratitude that we’re having it. So how do you coach people? How do you help people have that feeling of pride and kind of overcome some of the fears that they have to be their own—to sound like their authentic selves?

Aïcha: Yeah. That’s an excellent question. And, as with everything, it starts with education of understanding. I think, once you start understanding why people have accent biases, it becomes a lot easier to cope with it. You know, 12-year-old me just thought society sucks, right? Well ‘la’-year-old me knows a little bit better. It’s a little [laugh] bit more involved than that, right? So when you start thinking about, like, the foundations of biases—and I want to just touch on this really quickly. You mentioned a really important one, right, which is—you know, I like to think about it as ‘ethnocentrism,’ right, where you judge other cultures, other people, you know, based on your own cultural standards. And that inherent bias is usually, you know, from a lack of exposure to diverse cultures, languages, people, which leads to a natural sort of predisposition and preference for the familiar and an inclination to perceive your own way of communicating as superior. So we know, you know, ethnocentrism is not limited to accent bias. Of course, it’s sort of like a broader cognitive bias, but there’s also this notion of, like, cognitive load and cognitive ease, yet another thing that led me to go, “Okay. Maybe society doesn’t just suck.”

Karen: [laugh].

Aïcha: Right? There is this like—

Karen: Society is complicated [laugh].

Aïcha: Yeah. It’s complicated, yes [laugh]. But I tell people that, for the person who is exhibiting a bias, understanding an accent different from their own requires, like, an additional cognitive effort. When the brain is facing increased cognitive load, it’ll inadvertently result in mistrust as it struggles to process the information effectively. So this can lead to misinterpretations, misunderstanding, and then, in a lot of cases, negative assumptions about the speaker’s perceived level of intelligence. But it’s just because people essentially don’t want that cognitive load and often defer to whatever is cognitively easier for them.

Karen: Right, to avoid that. I think there is tremendous application in that. I’m putting my former-qualitive-researcher hat back on and thinking of all of the focus group settings or in-depth interviews that I’ve had, or in-home interviews where there was an accent that was less familiar to me. And it did feel like effort. So it’s an interesting thing to bring up. It felt like hard work to be present and be listening on some level because I just took it seriously and wanted to honor the speaker, which I think every researcher who is in this field and recognizes our global community—that is the job. That is what you must do, right? You must put the mental effort into it.

Aïcha: That’s right. You’re a great researcher. And I have witnessed stakeholders want to dismiss certain focus group participants because they were difficult to understand. And I said, “You know, you don’t understand them, but I think I can understand them. Let me give this person a try, right? Just because they’re not saying it in the way you understand it doesn’t mean what they’re saying is not worth understanding.”

Karen: Yeah.

Aïcha: Big difference.

Karen: Yeah. And in the workplace as well. So I imagine there’s leadership lessons in this as well. So there’s the lesson for us as researchers, and the lesson in leadership because—and I don’t remember if we’ve already touched on it in our pre-call or earlier in this call, but people are passed up for promotions based on the accent that they have. So talk to me a little bit about that and what’s your kind of knowledge base there.

Aïcha: Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So, I mean, I think, you know, when we think about workplace inclusivity, obviously, there’s sort of these, like, subtle dynamics in the workplace. And I thought about this within the lens of DEI a lot, and, you know, while DEI has made sort of a lot of progress in addressing discrimination based on race and religion, gender or sexual orientation, the list goes on, there is sort of these more nuanced forms of bias, like accent bias, that exist, right? So, you know, consider a black woman who speaks without an accent. She is protected under race and gender. But, if she does speak with an accent, she may still face discrimination, you know, based on her speech. So these unconscious biases and negative perceptions of those who speak differently obviously are going to be present in the workplace. So I think it’s sort of a hidden and often underestimated barrier to inclusion. And because it can transcend racial and gender lines, affecting individuals from diverse backgrounds, I think it’s really, really important for us as we—whether you’re a non-native speaker of the language or a native speaker of the language, insure that we are surfacing that—that we are surfacing accent-based biases in the conversations because we are working with global populations. You know, we work with people from all over the world, and it’s important for us to be sort of allies and advocates for those people, especially when we’re actually witnessing that dismissal in real time.

Karen: A hundred percent. I think that—you know, I keep going to, you know, where my brain often goes to with issues like this is “Okay. What can we do? What can we do?” So it’s two-fold. So what can those of us in industry do, those of us who are in either leadership positions or have some influence over practices? What can be done by people who want to make sure that we do not fall victim to biases around accent?

Aïcha: Yeah. So I’ll address this from sort of two ways because part of that leadership could be individuals who are struggling with accents or accent insecurity. And so, for those and kind of tying it to the question a little bit earlier around, like, what do you advise people to do—aside from, you know, understand the dynamics that are at play when someone is exhibiting bias, there are some things that you could do as a leader, as a people leader yourself. So I would say not accent training but voice coaching, you know, having the guidance of a professional voice or communications coach who could help you with articulation and intonation while retaining your accent’s charm. I think active listening is another one that’s really, really important that can be done by both the person experiencing accent insecurity and the leader who is interested in sort of closing the gap on that bias. You know, really listening to enhance your ability to comprehend others and respond effectively. Think about this as, you know, everyone’s—this may be a bad example, but it’s the one that I can think of at the moment. Everyone understands their own toddler. Anyone who has kids [laugh] understands their own toddler, and it’s by way of what—just exposure. You’ve heard the cadence of speech enough times that you exactly what they’re saying and what they need. And it’s in that same sense that we must be bold enough to expose ourselves and take the time and patience to listen to folks who might have accents that are different form ours to really understand the cadence of their speech, the tonality, and sort of fight against our urges to get cognitive ease, essentially. And so I think active listening is really, really important. And I think for allies of this, I think education is the first one. Many people may not even realize the prevalence of accent bias—championing exclusivity if you’re a native speaker. You can ensure that everyone has an opportunity to speak and his actively listened to. We do this for introverts, right, but we often don’t think about our extroverted colleagues who may have accent insecurity. And then I would say advocate for training. Lobby for accent training as part of the DEI curriculum because I’ve never seen it as part of any DEI curriculum at any company big or small.

Karen: I love all of advice, and I can see applications for it across many, many paths that I certainly cross. And, you know, it’s interesting because one of our events is in Europe, is in Amsterdam, and we attract people from all over Europe who are speaking English with a variety of accents. It’s so interesting to me because, in that culture, there is acceptance for, you know, somebody who speaks English with a French accent, and somebody who speaks English with German accent, and somebody who speaks it with an Italian accent because of that exposure, right? So I think that is—probably the number one thing is—you know, certainly here in the US, our exposure here is limited because we don’t have all of that. So how might we get that exposure and put ourselves into those situation where we’re listening—choosing to listen outside of what is easily, easily in front of us? So...

Aïcha: That’s right. That’s right. Especially in an industry like ours where knowledge and intelligence is the currency. Like, that is the caché, and if we are unconsciously looking at entire group of people or peoples based on either race or income or, you know, background, and we’re listening to their accents and we’re dismissing that currency, that knowledge, we are affecting a slew of decisions that are being made, including the ability for that person to get a promotion, ability for that person to be seeing as a thought leader. All of these things have grave implications, and not just the sort of, like, individual level, but then you expine—expand that—excuse me—to the societal level. And you’re leaving a lot of people behind.

Karen: Yeah. for sure. And that’s to your detriment, most likely. Not just to theirs, but to yours as well because we certainly know that diversity is what’s going to contribute to a thriving organization. So, yeah, let’s just talk a little bit—I just—this concept that I’m still wrangling is accent insecurity and somebody who, you know, does have these. It reminds me of imposter syndrome at a very different level, right? So I’m now thinking empathically for people that do have that accent insecurity. And you had mentioned, you know, talking to a voice coach. But what are some things that somebody may truly be insecure about how they sound—maybe they are in a tough situation. Maybe they have just experienced so much kind of discrimination around it already. Like, what are some easy steps for them to take perhaps?

Aïcha: Yeah. I think, number one, is—it has a lot to do with confidence building, right? Because, when you know that what you have to say is worthy to say, additive, and is either going to drive organizations or other people forward, you have to have the boldness and the full confidence. And I know that that’s easier said than done, but that takes a lot of exploration. And one of the things that Ido with the folks that I’m fortunate enough to work with at SITB is—and I realized this very quickly as I started doing communication coaching—was when people don’t come to conversations from a position of internal strength, it’s really difficult to get them to communicate with spark. It all starts with how you perceive your own value. And so I would advise to do some deep work on self, and I offer my own sort of, like, know your value framework, where you really delve deep into what you value as an individual, what your abilities are as an individual. It’s an acronym—what your abilities are as an individual, your life experiences, and what sort of culminated into making you who you are as a professional, you know, what the evolved you looks like. And so, when you do some of that deeper exploration, I think you can get to the place where you’ve built up your confidence and you know that what you’re saying is worthy of saying. So, if it rubbed someone the wrong way, if you’re getting ‘that’ look, you’re able to push past it a lot more effectively when you know that you are approaching it from a standpoint of internal strength. So I’d say that’s sort of the most fundamental and hardest work, but it’s imperative because there is no amount of voice coaching or proactive communication that’s going to save you if you shrink every single time you see somebody react because you think they are, you know, biased because of your accent.

Karen: Yeah. It’s—you know, the phase “you have to do the work” keeps coming to mind, and I wish it weren’t so, but individuals aren’t in control of other people’s reactions to them. All that they can do is try to do the internal work so they can get that confidence. So I love that advice. Thank you for sharing it.

Aïcha: Yeah. Absolutely. It does make me realize—I don’t it to be misconstrued that on the other end either native speakers or those who perceive they don’t have an accent don’t have a tremendous amount of work to do, including, you know, attending training programs and workshops that are around accent diversity training. I really believe that that should be a thing for any global organization or any organization where you’re just sort of working with people from all around the world. Like, accent diversity training absolutely needs to be a thing as part of either DEI curriculum or as a standalone.

Karen: Yeah. no, I love that. Thank you. It’s great advice. And, you know [laugh], I myself am heading to Bangkok in just a few short weeks. Actually, by the time this airs, I’ll be on my way home. And I will be largely chairing our APAC event, our IIEX APAC event, overseas. And I imagine I will be facing a lot of accents that are unfamiliar to me. So I’m grateful for this conversation in advance because I’m sure personally I will be checking some biases at the door and learning so much from this and really pondering it over the next few weeks. One last topic before we wrap that I really want to explore with you, which is in our brief, but it’s this idea of paying it forward when it comes to accent diversity. And, you know, the question we have here is do you have any examples of how that can be implemented in a professional setting. So can you talk a little bit to that?

Aïcha: Yeah. Absolutely. I think we have all experienced a moment in our careers where perhaps we didn’t necessarily have either the courage or the backing to speak up for ourselves, and we really wished somebody did. And so that’s one of the things I mean by paying it forward. We all know intimately what it’s like to be misunderstood. We all know intimately what it’s like for the words in your brain to not be the same things that come out of your mouth [laugh]. And so we all know, in some manner or another, what it’s like to deal with accent insecurity. And so, you know, my call to action is whenever you are witnessing that, please speak up. Please allow people the room and the time to be able to explain their thoughts fully and, you know, within the realm of what they define to be their authentic selves. Because you mentioned this earlier. There are some folks and cultures in which to get to the point they will tell you an entire story [laugh]. Because they really want to illuminate the importance of that point. What I’ve learned about working in sort of more Western American, specifically, cultures is that—get to the point right away. And, in my culture, that is seen as really rude, actually. And that’s seen as really overly transactional and disrespectful almost to somebody’s intellect to not give them the sort of full breadth of context and the flower—you know, flowery language and all of these things, right? You’re actually seen as less refined in my culture and less intelligent. And so I just say to number one, check the biases at the door if you can. And number two, make sure that we are standing up for one another, just like when we see raced-based biases or when we see gender-based biases, we’re often—at least in 2024—a little bit quicker to flag and say that that’s not right. Let’s do the same with accent-based biases as well.

Karen: I love it. Thank you so much. Yeah. So much to take away from that on a personal level and a professional level I hope, for everyone listening today. Aïcha, is there anything that I didn’t get to in our talk that you wish I had brought up?

Aïcha: Oh, I don’t think so. We talked about everything under the sun as it relates to this topic. I think we touched a little bit on everything. And, of course, there’s so much more depth that we could explore. We’d have to do seven more sessions. But I certainly appreciate the opportunity to shed light on this really important topic that continues to affect me, people who look like me, people who don’t’ look like me. As I mentioned, it’s truly a universal issue, and so it really surprises me that it doesn’t get talked about more often. But I certainly appreciate this platform to have this conversation with you.

Karen: Well, I appreciate you and your presence here talking about it today. So I love having an authentic conversation like this, and, again, I just am grateful for it all. So thank you for being here. So that’s our show today, everybody. What a pleasure. I hope you—I hope you unpack it over the next few weeks as you think about your own biases and what we can do to help those who might be insecure about their own accents and broaden our take on the world as well—and so many intelligent individuals who deserve to be heard. That’s it for today. Thank you, everybody. We’ll see you soon on the Greenbook Podcast. Many, many thanks to you, Natalie Pusch, our producer. And, of course, our listeners—we are grateful. Without you, this show would cease to exist. So thanks for being here, everybody. Bye-bye.