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Transcript by Derek Oyen 

[Intro theme music] 

Jesse: We’re always scraping the barrel with guests, but today’s is great. [Derek: laughing] Remember when we, when we started this podcast, you and I both came up with lists of who are our ideal guests and we both said, obviously, Matt Damon … 

Derek: Yeah. 

Jesse: … and after Matt Damon, there was a close second, which was today’s guest. 

Derek: And then she had to go and have a baby. 

Jesse: Yes. 

Derek: But she’s back from leave now, so. 

Jesse: Back and ready to go, so I think we can safely go ahead and jump off with the Two Truths and a Lie that she was nice enough to provide us with. Do you wanna kick us off? 

Derek: Truth-slash-lie number one: “I started playing the guitar when I was 11 years old.” 

Jesse: And number two: “I’m the oldest of four girls, with three younger sisters.” 

Derek: And the third: “I attended seven different schools between kindergarten and graduation.” I’m assuming that’s high school graduation.  

Joy: Mm hmmm. 

Derek: I believe that Joy comes from a military family. I’m not sure if that’s true, but I feel like three is true now. Now, the number of seven may or may not be true, but I think it is a surprising number because she moved a lot. I don’t have a strong feeling about number one or number two, though. 

Jesse: I happen to know that our guest today, who may or may not be Joy, despite what you’ve read in the podcast notes. 

Derek: Or the picture. 

Jesse: Or the picture … that Joy is very creative and is very artistic as well. Because I’m lucky enough to actually sit next to Joy, and we’ve had some conversations. So, I think it’s very plausible that she did start playing the guitar at 11 and probably still plays today. So, I’m gonna say that one’s true. 

Derek: I’m gonna go with two as the lie. 

Jesse: OK. And I will say three is the lie. So, Joy, would you like to go ahead and introduce yourself and your role at Marcus Thomas, and tell us what the lie is? 

Joy: Of course. This is so much fun. So, my name is Joy Smith. I am the Director of Equity and Inclusion here at Marcus Thomas. I so enjoyed listening to you all try to figure out which one was a lie. I am not from a military family, actually. I grew up in the same house my entire life. My dad actually still lives in that same house. However, I did still go to seven different schools between preschool and high school graduation for a variety of reasons, the main one being that there was a program in my local school district that, for whatever reason, like, bounced around from school to school and my mom was like, “But I want her to be in this program.” So, I moved schools probably every year and a half or two years and then ended up going to a private Christian high school. And really, I attribute a lot of how I see the world; how I see diversity, equity and inclusion; how I see people to the fact that I got to be around so many different types of people growing up, mostly through the different schools that I went to. So that one is true.  

The first one is also true. I started playing the guitar when I was 11. I grew up in church, and my parents were like, “Well, you need to, like, have some sort of creative outlets.” I’ve always been a very creative person. My church was looking for people to start playing on Sundays, and so my dad was like, “Well, I’m gonna buy you a guitar. Someone here will teach you.” I’ve had, like, three quote-unquote “lessons” with someone I went to church with and then was obsessed, like, would play for hours. I don’t play as much now as I used to. 

Jesse: Well, surprise. We actually have a guitar under the table here. [Joy: laughing] Play us a little “Smoke on the Water” … 

Joy: Ohh right, now is the time! but it was a great hobby growing up. I still love it. Still love music. The second one is the lie. I do have three sisters, but I’m the baby of my family and I thought that would be a good one because people often assume that I’m the oldest, just because I’m bossy and so they assume, oh, she must have younger siblings. But I’m the baby of four girls. There’s six years in between myself and the oldest. 

Derek: We were talking before the recording about how you’re just naturally loud. Is that because you’re the youngest and you say, “Hey, over here, listen to me!” 

Joy: Listen to me! 

Jesse: I never said you were loud, that was Derek. 

Joy: Oh, that’s a self-proclamation. 

Jesse: So, what’s interesting about you, and the reason that we wanted to talk to you so much is because you started as sort of one thing at Marcus Thomas and then you sort of carved out your own path for yourself and became something else entirely. Can you tell people what brought you to Marcus Thomas and what brought you to the role you’re currently in? 

Joy: Yes, one of the things that I appreciate the most about being in this environment is that I’ve been provided opportunities to really carve out a path that’s aligned with who I am and what my values are and truly what I believe, based off of my lived experience, I’m able to bring to the table and bring to this organization to make an impact. Which, in any space, I don’t want to feel like I’m just there. Like, I really value feeling like OK, like, I’m making a difference. Otherwise, why am I here?  

So, I actually started at Marcus Thomas in our Public Relations practice as I was finishing my degree at Cleveland State, and I had a professor during my second-to-last semester there. We were talking about agencies and career paths, and he would always mention Marcus Thomas, and one of the biggest things that he really emphasized was the fact that we’re such an integrated environment. He was like, “There are people there that are truly, like, researching audiences and then strategizing, and they’re integrating with their Creative team and their Media team, and it’s a really holistic place if you are starting out your career to be able to step into, to figure out, like, where do you want to take this very broad Communications degree that you just got.” So, I interned for a semester, I graduated and then I came on full time.  

So, I started in our PR practice, and I was doing that for about a year and a half, but it was becoming pretty apparent to me that, like, I don’t really know if this is a fit for me. And, we were having simultaneously a lot of conversations about D&I internally. And I just so happened to be connected with Joanne Kim, our former Chief Diversity Officer, as like a very informal mentor/mentee relationship just to get to know her because she was a woman of color and a leadership position here at the organization. And the more that we started to talk and started to connect, we realized that a lot of our values were very aligned, and a lot of what we wanted to see out of Marcus Thomas from a D&I journey, were very aligned, and we just clicked. So, when she transitioned out of her Chief Creative Officer role into a Chief Diversity Officer role, she was like, “I need somebody to help me do this work. Would you be interested?” And I was like, “Oh my gosh, yes. Like, please.”  

I knew I needed something to transition out of what I was currently doing. And I knew I wanted to stay here. I didn’t want to not work at Marcus Thomas. I just wasn’t really finding my footing where I was at the moment. So, I was able to transition and start working with Joanne, and we joked at that time, like, it was the blind leading the blind. We knew what we wanted to see, and we knew what was gonna make the most impact, but there were no degrees for Diversity and Inclusion, especially in this industry at that time. 

Derek: Joanne was a pioneer in so many different ways. 

Joy: A thousand percent. A thousand percent. She even, you know, before she transitioned into her CDO role as a Chief Creative Officer, as an Asian American woman, she was such a pioneer. And she had such a strong point of view on the work and on how internal diversity and inclusion can then impact the work. And she made such a mark on me and, really – I tell her all the time – but, like, is the reason why I’m doing what I’m doing now and why I’ve been able to do what I do now. So, that’s how I ended up here. 

Derek: You have been a rocket ship. Intern, seven years ago. Director, now, in a role that didn’t exist when you started. I mean, that is a really unusual experience, but it’s, it’s a testament to two things. One, I think, is the flexibility that we have in this environment. And two, is you and your ability to take this thing and run with it. 

Joy: I’m so grateful for being in an environment that has each step of the way been, like, “Well, Joy, what do you think you can bring to the table? Tell us. OK, cool. What do you need so that you can do that? OK. Here you go. Now go. And if you have questions, if you have any concerns, if you need anything else, come to us and we’ll make sure that you have what you need.” Which I’ve been so, so grateful for. And to your point about, like, a role that didn’t exist. I remember my very first internship was at a smaller PR, like, strictly PR firm in Nashville, Tennessee. It was my first entryway into this industry, and I remember walking in and just thinking, “I would like to see more people here that looked like me.” There was one woman who I still have a great relationship with now. A Black woman who really took me under her wing, and as I was having conversations with her about feeling like there should be more people that look like us here, like, I’m very confused, but I don’t know what to do about that. But I feel like I could maybe make an impact, whether it’s here or somewhere else. What she told me was, “You know, the job that you want, or the job that might be the best fit for you might not exist yet. You might just have to find an environment where you can create it.” So, when Joanne was like, “Do you want to come do this with me?” I was like, “Ohh this is what she meant.” It didn’t exist when I got here, but this was the environment that I needed to be in in order to make that happen. 

Jesse: Most of us here came into roles that already existed and there was clear definition of what’s expected of you to advance in this role. You didn’t have any of that. You were making that. So, was there stress that came with that as you, as you started to embark on that, on that journey with the new role? 

Joy: Every day, and there still is. Even, like, coming back from maternity leave and hearing, like, “Oh, we’re promoting you to director!” I was like, “Wait a minute.” Like, I feel like every day trying to get my arms around what it is that I’m doing. A lot of what I’m doing on a daily basis is trying to figure out what needs to be done and who are my coconspirators internally that can help me get that, get that done, which is, for my personality type, very exciting. Because I am, I think, a creative person. I’m a very independent person. I’m a very, like, big-sky thinker, and so it’s great to be able to come up with all these ideas and say, “Well, why don’t we do this? Why don’t we do that?” But to not have someone over me that’s saying like, “All right, like, let’s pull that in and figure out what’s actually feasible,” has been a really big challenge. But I try to look at it more as an area of opportunity. If there was someone that I could look to, my path might not have been as flexible as I’ve been able to make it, because it would have been, “Well, this is what the last person did and so we’re going to put you on that same track.” 

Jesse: I feel like risk taking is a big part of it too, of just, like, “I want to do something different or get people talking.”  

Joy: Yeah.  

Jesse: And specifically, what comes to mind to me is when you would start doing these town halls. Which you started … was it 2020 when a lot of these started? Or was it before that even? 

Joy: Yeah. 

Jesse: You would take something topical that was going on in the news and you’d say, “Let’s just talk about it at work.” And I thought two things when you started doing that. One, that no one’s going to say anything, it’s going to be quiet, it’s going to be crickets. 

Joy: Right. 

Jesse: Or, two, people could start arguing. It could start getting ugly. And I thought you just moderated those so well that it became a very, just, emotional thing to be a part of. People would open up, people would cry and you’d leave those really feeling like you knew people a little bit better. What gave you the idea to do something like that? 

Joy: I think what really gets lost is that just because I’m at work doesn’t mean that I’m no longer Joy. I might be a different version of Joy. You all probably wouldn’t want to see the at-home version of Joy. She definitely doesn’t look this put together. But, I don’t all of a sudden alienate myself from my identity, and I don’t all of a sudden no longer think about what’s going on outside of 4781 Richmond Road. And at that time, there was a lot of shit happening in the world that was making it incredibly difficult to just show up and act as if those things weren’t happening. Let me just, you know, walk in the building and jump, you know, in this meeting and completely pretend that, like, police didn’t just bust into a Black woman’s home in Kentucky while she was playing a video game with her nephew and shoot her dead. That’s impossible for me as a Black woman to just forget for eight hours so I can sit down and do my job. So, how do we encourage people to show up as their full selves and recognize that our full self is the good, the bad, the ugly and everything that comes along with it?  

So, while there was, of course a lot of risk in having those sorts of conversations because, to your point, those topics were not only divisive, but for some of us they felt like life or death depending on what we were talking about. So, while I knew these are difficult topics for us to be talking about, I know the level of respect that we all have for each other and, like, the genuine care that I have for the person that’s sitting next to me, not just as my co-worker, but as, like, a human being.  

It also helped that prior to that – and this is why I’m so proud of us as a company for starting the journey when we did – we didn’t, like, luckily jump on this sort of work in May of 2020, after you know, Ahmaud Arbery was murdered earlier that year, George Floyd was murdered that May or June. And then all of a sudden, well, now we’re gonna start talking about these things. We had years of prep work that really prepared us for that moment. And one of those things was the Courageous Conversations training that we did two sessions of. I think the first one was at the end of 2018 or maybe the beginning of 2019. And, if you ask people who were here at that point about their experience with DEIB at the agency, they almost all point to that training as being a pivotal moment for us as an organization. And it taught us how to have, literally, courageous conversations about topics that you usually would not talk about at work, but we couldn’t continue to not talk about them, because so much was going on in the world that was impacting how people were able to show up.  

It was definitely a risk. Absolutely. But it was one that I trusted we would be able to handle and would have a larger reward at the end of it because of the level of respect that we all have for each other as colleagues and for a lot of us as genuine friends. 

Jesse: Yeah. And there’s just so much, I mean, when it comes to diversity and inclusion, so much to tackle when it’s about someone’s sexual orientation, to race. How do you kind of decide where to focus your time at any given moment? Is it based on what’s going on in the world, or is it just based on how, you know, you could be feeling or what you’re seeing? What kind of dictates that? 

Joy: That’s a great question, and I think that it’s honestly evolved. I think in the beginning where we started was absolutely to talk about race. Something that I say often is, like, “My race talks before I do.” Like, I can walk into a room and what people see is, oh, she’s a Black woman. They have no idea anything else about me other than that, and people make snap judgments off of that immediately. Then I’m able to, like, share with them a little bit about myself and my intersectional identity and all of that, and hopefully some of that bias goes away. But, what we know is that people make judgments off of simply skin color. So, when we started the work, it was absolutely race first, and I think as the work has evolved and as I’ve become more experienced and have had more conversations with people both internally and externally, what I’ve come to the conclusion of is diversity in all forms. Like, yes, things like your race, your gender, your sexual orientation absolutely impacts your lived experience, without a doubt, but how are we acknowledging diversity as, “What’s your lived experience been? What college did you go to? Did you go to college at all? Did you grow up in a single-mom household?” That impacts who you are and how do you see the world. So, looking at those sorts of things in addition to how do you identify, because you can’t have one without the other. 

Jesse: It helps that you’re such a passionate person. I’d say you’re easy to, to listen to, and probably, I mean you could sit here and say, “Let’s bring littering back.” And I’d be like, “Let’s do it. Let’s destroy the earth.” 

Joy: [laughing] Let’s do it! 

Jesse: Obviously that helps you in your current role because you can tell you are so passionate about this. Could you be passionate about anything if you did a different job? Do you think you could fake this level of passion? 

Joy: I don’t think I could fake it, but I do think that my passion for this work comes from … it directly impacts me. Saying that out loud sounds a little bit selfish, right? But when I think about what my lived experience is and my identity … I’m a Black woman with an autoimmune disease. I’m neurodivergent. I have a child. Like, all of those things directly impact the way that I’m able to show up, in the same way that everything else that everyone else is dealing with directly impacts what they show up. Mine just so happens to be the underrepresented identity. Like, almost every point of who I am. So, I think because of that, I’m passionate, because even with all of those aspects of my identity, I still come from an immense amount of privilege to be in this sort of environment. So, if I’m here, what am I doing so that the little Black girls that didn’t come from the level of privilege that I did are able to find themselves in these sorts of environments as well, and the environment be prepared to provide them with equal and equitable opportunity to be able to chart a course and chart a path that they can be equally passionate about?  

And, like I said earlier, going to seven different schools between preschool and high school, I met so many kids whose lives looked entirely different than mine. You might assume that we would be similar because they were little Black kids just like I was, but the more that I was able to talk to them even at like 10-11 years old, I was able to realize, like, no, your experience is much different than mine. We just happen to now be in this shared space with each other. And then going from a public school district that was predominantly Black and brown, but being in classrooms where I was one of two Black children because of the program that I was in – the rest of my classmates were white – and then going to the high school that I went to that was a predominantly white Christian high school … my lived experience, I believe, prepared me to do this kind of work because I’m used to being in these sorts of spaces, but I’m also used to finding the commonalities between myself and the people that I’m around, even if they’re not apparent, and also being able to acknowledge the differences between myself and the people that I’m with. 

Jesse: You almost think someone who had to move around that much, all those different schools, might start almost, like, adapting different types of personalities or putting on different types of cover, you know, to be in these different situations. But I think your success has so much been reflective of just how transparent you are and genuine you can be. I was scrolling social media one day and I came across an article you had written which really blew up and it was extremely vulnerable, and it was about your autoimmune disease. Do you want to tell us a little bit about what that is and what inspired you to be so forward about it and share an article? 

Joy: Yeah. And to your point, like, I absolutely could have put on a mask in each of those environments, but I joke often, “I’ve been Joy Marie Smith since October 1st, 1994.” Like, I’m very, very in tune with who I am and show up as myself and as my authentic self everywhere, because I can’t help it. I just am who I am, and so, at least when I started doing this work, my personal mission statement was to find strength in my vulnerability and through that encourage other people to do the same. So that article, I think I wrote sometime last year – maybe early 2023 – and at that point I had been about 18 months into my diagnosis with multiple sclerosis, which, I woke up one day and my legs basically from my waist down was, like, very, very intense pins and needles. And then within a span of six, or six or seven hours, I was partially paralyzed from my waist down. I couldn’t move. And the reason why I wrote that article was to open up and be vulnerable about who I am and the aspects of my identity that impact how I’m able to show up in these spaces and hopefully encourage other people to open up about what impacts them as well. I think when we talk about wanting people to show up as genuinely and authentically themselves, that’s everything that comes with it.  

I wake up some days and my pins and needles in my legs or my hands or my feet are particularly heightened. And one of the biggest things with autoimmune diseases is, like, rest. You have to just sleep. The body needs time to recover and repair. It’s being in this environment where I can be open and honest and say when I have it and when I don’t that I believe is what’s kept me healthy, and being able to share and be vulnerable with the goal that other people could open up about what they’re dealing with outside of work, that might impact the way that they’re able to show up to work. 

Jesse: I’d see people come to your desk and say, “Joy, I read your article, it was amazing.” And then they would immediately start sharing things that they’ve gone through.  

Joy: Mm hmm. 

Jesse: And I will admit, my first reaction to hearing that was, “Why are they making it about them? Like shouldn’t they be asking Joy more questions about how she’s dealing with it?” And then I had to stop myself, because the more I thought about it, it’s what you said … I think that’s what Joy wanted.  

Joy: Yeah! 

Jesse: I think you wanted people to be able to feel comfortable and safe now sharing their own stories. And that’s exactly what they were doing. 

Joy: Absolutely. I think, again, like, strength in being vulnerable. My biggest nightmare would be walking into this office and, like, everyone just showing up with a smiling face and acting like shit is sweet all the time, because it’s not. Like, life is really hard, and work is just one slice of what people are dealing with on an everyday basis. So, I would rather us be in an environment that’s safe and trusted. And if I’m that space, then amazing. Like, they can come to me and say, “I’m having a really difficult time today” or “This thing is happening in the world and it’s making it really hard for me to focus.” I feel like that’s almost what I’m here for. 

Jesse: And if you could be vulnerable right now, something I don’t think people know about you – and I don’t mean this in a negative way – but you’re a big nerd. 

[All: Laughing] 

Joy: I’m a huge nerd. [laughing] I have a lot of nerdy interests that I think would surprise a lot of people. Huge Harry Potter nerd. Like, enormous. 

Jesse: A lot of things. Dave Evans and I, in the office one time, were at my desk talking about Marvel. 

Joy: Huge Marvel nerd. 

Jesse: And you popped up and asked, “You guys talking about Marvel?” And you just went on and schooled us, I think completely, on the whole universe, in the multiverse and had your own theories about what was really going on with Thanos. 

Joy: Yeah. What I love about Marvel is, you can find a character that you can truly identify and relate to, and if you can’t, then I don’t think that you’re looking hard enough. Like, they’ve done such a good job recently with representation and making sure that people are able to see themselves in those stories, which I really love. Don’t know if you watched Echo, but that was a great show where the center character is a Native American deaf amputee. And like, she’s badass. She’s kicking ass. Her story is amazing. You get to learn more about the Choctaw people because it’s a really central part to her origin story. So, love Marvel. Love Harry Potter. I am a Ravenclaw through and through. I wish I was cool enough to be a full-time nerd, but I’m more of like, someone with some nerdy qualities. 

Jesse: And now you mentioned having a baby! How has that changed things? 

Joy: I have a baby! 

Derek: In no small way, I’m sure. 

Joy: Anytime I talk about him, I can’t help but smile. He’s amazing. His name is Miles Carter and he’s just everything. It’s changed so much. It’s definitely … like, they’re not joking when they’re like, it’s like you cannot explain it. If you try to explain to somebody what the feeling is of being a parent, it’s incredibly difficult. But, it’s the best thing that I’ve ever done. It’s a challenge. You know, me and my fiancé both work, and we work full time. I’m blessed enough to be home four days a week, but I’m still home and I’m working, so, that’s a challenge. And he’s at the point where, now, where he’s developing so fast that each time I feel like, “OK, I’ve got the hang of this,” like, “I know what to expect,” he learns something new and it’s like all right, well, that changes everything. He started being able to grab for stuff, so I can’t have anything close to him that I don’t want him to put his hands on. 

Derek: And if it’s in his hand, it’s in his mouth. 

Joy: And if it’s in his hand, it’s in his mouth. And if he could put his whole fist in his mouth, he absolutely would. But motherhood is great.  

Jesse: That’s awesome.  

Joy: It’s a new version of Joy, and, she’s cool. I like her. 

Jesse: What’s on the horizon? What are you most excited about with the direction Marcus Thomas is currently going? What initiatives do you have planned for us? 

Joy: I’m excited to just see how we continue to grow and evolve. From a DEIB perspective, I think that we’re at a point where we’re really trying to operationalize what that looks like. So, in the past, it’s been a lot of awareness, a lot of internal programming bringing in guest speakers, doing some, you know, trainings on things like inclusive language, or how to manage cross-culturally and all that’s amazing. I think this year we’re looking to see how can internal DEIB strategy impact the work that we’re doing for our clients?  

If you look at the world – and they’ve got numbers to show you that America is gonna be a minority majority sooner rather than later – and we’re in the business of speaking to people. So, if we don’t know who those people are, but even on top of that, if we don’t know how to resonate with those people from a culturally relevant perspective, the work that we’re doing is not gonna be super successful. So, what are we doing as an organization to start those conversations internally about what it means to be inclusive in our work, what it means to be aware of what’s going on culturally, and not just from a mass culture perspective, but, you know, what resonates with Hispanic American women? You know, that matters.  

Hispanic Americans are an extremely fast-growing population, and we know that women in general are, like, the ones with the purchasing power in the home. So, if that’s the case, what are we doing so that we know who they are and what they need and what their wants are? So that’s something that I’m really excited about. And then, for myself, I’m excited to keep being a mom. I’m excited to not be pregnant this year, because I was pregnant all of 2023, so I’m excited to be able to kind of get back to myself … This new version of me and really see how I continue to show up at Marcus Thomas and what my new interests are in this new phase of my life. 

Jesse: Well, you’ve been Joyce Smith since 1994. 

Joy: Since October 1^st! 

Jesse: I can speak for everybody when I say we’re just so happy to have any version of you at the office here. Yeah.  

Joy: That was so sweet. 

Jesse: Yeah, so, thank you so much for being a guest on the show today and talking to us. 

Joy: Thank you for having me. 

Derek: You are such a role model in so many different ways. I really appreciate you taking time to share with us. 

Joy: Thank you for you all for creating this space, you know? Our workforce has evolved so much in the last few years. And so, I think this is an amazing way for us to get to know each other on a deeper level, and for folks to hear from people across the agency that maybe they don’t get to interact with on a regular basis. So, this is awesome. Love it. 

[Outro music starts] 

Derek: Today’s show is hosted by Jesse DiFranco and me, Derek Oyen. It was recorded and mixed by the man to my right, Mikey Nichols. Our theme was composed and recorded by David Bemer. Thanks, David. “Ask a Better Question” is produced in and by Marcus Thomas. The opinions on this show are not those of Marcus Thomas. You can take that up with Jesse and me. 

[Outro music fades]