“Let’s not focus on just the number of representations, let’s focus on creating an environment where everyone has an equal chance to succeed, the numbers will then work themselves out. We would truly have the best people in the best positions instead of advantaged privileged white men who might have advanced in their career because of privilege they didn’t even see, and that leads to the disparities that we see.”  In Episode 29, I am joined by Paolo Gaudiano, Co-Founder and President at Aleria Research Corporation, and Chief Scientist at Aleria, to debunk the myths commonly associated with DEI. He is on a mission to help organisations become more inclusive, diverse, equitable, and successful. Notwithstanding, he is Chair and co-organizer of the annual Diversity and Inclusion Research Conference, and also writes about DEI on Forbes. Paolo shares the sophisticated simulation he has designed to capture the complex scenarios of organisational life and how bias leads to some inevitable outcomes. We explore the common DEI myths and backlash from majority groups and he explains why the support and investment of leadership is so critical to DEI success.  Paolo’s interest in DEI is evident in his career journey, which has spanned over three decades in interdisciplinary research, teaching, entrepreneurship, consulting, public speaking, and writing. Through his work, he noticed that there was a huge gap between the experiences that people described based on their diverse identities and the solutions. Paolo’s passion for DEI is based on his desire to change the way people think of DEI, quantifying the links between individual behaviour and organisational outcomes. Through his research on measuring inclusion, Paolo identified two universal themes:  • Respect or the lack thereof is by far the most common issue that causes people to feel uncomfortable and excluded at work.  • Women, in all the different types of organisations (global, domestic, small or large) feel more exclusion than men. And this leads to a greater turnover of women and a tendency to ‘truncate their career’.  Later in our discussion, he explains, the ‘zero-sum’ mindset gives rise to sentiments whereby the white majority feel that they are being pushed out. Particularly, he advises organisations to steer clear of the obsessive focus on increasing numerical representation of diverse individuals as those individuals will end up leaving when they feel excluded. Instead, there should be a focus on creating an inclusive environment where everyone has an equal chance to succeed.  On this basis, he offers advice on why leaders should treat DEI as their number one priority. As he rightly explains, leaders should focus on understanding the impact of diversifying their human assets, they should know how to optimise it to get more efficiency out of it, as they do other assets in their company, such as financial and marketing assets. Lastly, Paolo speaks on the unique discomfort he faces when trying to balance the viewpoints of those who share similar diversity characteristics to him but have different views on DEI, to those who aren’t but are being faced with injustice. He explains trying to ensure that he addresses the issue in a way that will acknowledge the difficulties of each side, but also making them aware of the other perspective in a way that is not shaming or challenging their beliefs.  Links: Paolo can be found on LinkedIn at Paolo Gaudiano. For more from Aleria, visit their website at: https://www.aleria.tech  For more from Aleria Research Corporation, visit their website at: https://www.aleriaresearch.org  To hear Why Care? episodes first, sign up to our newsletter here, and you can find more from us at Avenir via our LinkTree here.