Fairness Under Threat: A Call to Upend Project 2025 (ft. Bestselling Authors, Jess Pettitt and Joel A. Davis Brown)

Imagine a future you long for and want to win—a future where all living beings, including the Earth, belong without exception.

This kind of visioning work was why I created the Imagine Belonging Podcast. I wanted to create a welcoming space, inviting guests to dream with me, without limitation.

This kind of imagination allows new futures to emerge. Igniting the power to imagine increases our ability to upend today’s current conditions & competing future visions.

Today’s sobering conditions, along with one particular competing vision, obstruct our ability to activate a vision of a shared belonging society.

What is the Belonging Society Vision’s main competitor? Project 2025.

While I’m sure you have heard of it by now, are you fully aware of how it may impact your life? In this podcast episode, you’ll learn more about what it says and what to do.

Briefly, Project 2025 details a cruel and unconstitutional vision designed to challenge, erode, and eradicate hard-won human and civil rights protections in the United States.

The agenda was authored by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank opposed to racial, immigrant, LGBTQ+, gender, reproductive, and disability justice.

The Project’s proposals have shaped the flurry of executive orders released over the first few months of the Trump Administration’s second term.

Project 2025 embodies a radical, wasteful, and anti-human agenda that has already impacted the workforce. When it comes to workplace DEI commitments, this radical agenda calls for:

• Eradicating Federal Programs. Eliminating all federal diversity, equity, and inclusion programming.
• Eliminating Chief Diversity Officers. Indefinitely placing essential chief diversity officers (and related positions) on administrative leave.
• Establish Anti-DEI Task Forces. Creating task forces to determine the scope, breadth, and depth of diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.
• Shift Federal Funding Priorities. Divert federal funding for the diversity, equity, and inclusion programming of nonprofits and higher education institutions.
• Prohibit EEO-1 Data Collection. Make it impossible to prove discrimination by prohibiting data collection; evidence used in disparate impact analysis.

If you are concerned about Project 2025 and want to gain insights on how to defeat it, while still fortifying and advancing the heart of your DEI commitments, then you’re in the right place.

The purpose of this podcast episode is to grapple with some of the most challenging questions by promoting a dialogue that will provoke new thoughts, ideas, and approaches.

And it’s for this reason that I invited Dr. Joel A. Davis Brown, and Jess Pettitt, MBA, to join the show. Here’s some background about each guest:

• Joel A. Davis Brown is the Chief Visionary Officer of Pneumos LLC (“Pneumos”). Joel works strategically with a variety of organizations, including non-profit organizations, Fortune 500 companies, churches, and institutions of higher learning to build consciousness, capacity, community, and collective esteem. His work spans 5 continents and his mission is to facilitate liberation for every global citizen. Joel is viewed as a master communicator and is best known for his critical analysis, creativity, humor, and his ability to build consensus.

• Jess Pettitt is a bestselling author and sought after keynoter. She quit her day job after a decade, and almost 20 years later still uses humor to deliver actionable content related to everything you ever wanted to know about where leadership and diversity collide but are afraid to ask. Though often referred to as a thought leader, Jess responds that she just makes leaders think. 

Together, Joel and Jess will help me unpack what it will take to upend Project 2025 & replace it with a shared belonging society vision. During our conversation we:

• Examine Real-world Impacts. Moving beyond the rhetoric, we delve into the real-world impacts on businesses and their DEI commitments, examining litigation & reputational risks, potential funding cuts, shifting compliance requirements, and the chilling effect these early executive actions informed by Project 2025 are having on our work cultures.  

• Explore the Impacts of Fear & Silence. We address one of Project 2025’s main objectives, which is to create a climate of fear and silence around DEI. To counter this climate, we encourage discussion about legal protections, the role of leadership in fostering open dialogue, and ways to safeguard employees who advocate for inclusion.

• Learn the Value of DEI Data Collection. We highlight the importance of data collection and key metrics in DEI work as we explore the challenges of operating without these measures. We then explore alternative data collection methods, qualitative assessments, and the potential impacts on leadership accountability and transparency.

• Envision a New Business Outcome Narrative. Then we pivot to explore the role of new narratives, one of which amplifies the value of DEI on employee well-being and business outcomes. We explore how to frame the narrative around business outcomes, resisting the tendency to focus on social justice arguments, to resonate with a broader audience.

• Consider How to Proactively Plan. This question emphasizes proactive planning. It prompts discussion about auditing current DEI policies to reduce litigation risk while balancing the threat of reputational risk, scenario planning for different political outcomes, and building resilience into DEI programs to withstand potential challenges.

Similar to all of our Imagine Belonging podcast episodes and programming, our guests had the opportunity to share their vision for what a belonging society looks like, painting a vivid picture of a future many of us long for, and want to win during our 1:1 laser coaching sessions with our guests right after our live recording. If you’d like to participate in those engagements, please be sure to join the Belonging Membership Community by visiting www.rhodesperry.com/subscribe.

Please remember that this podcast episode offers a timely and crucial conversation about a vision for a belonging society and the role we and our workplaces play in activating it. Savor this insightful talk, and if you’d like to learn more about Project 2025 and its threat to building a belonging society, please be sure to watch Jess Pettit’s Project 2025 video series here: https://tinyurl.com/jesspettitt. 

Thanks for growing the Belonging Movement!