Real conversations with diversity professionals about the ups and downs of the DEI industry

My name is Sacha Thompson, and I am the founder of The Equity Equation, LLC, a diversity coaching and consulting firm based in the Washington, DC area. With my 20+ years of experience within the education, non-profit, and tech industries, my work is about removing barriers or providing support to get to a place of equality. I help executives and leaders have that critical dialogue, and coach them on the necessary, long-term changes that develop institutional cultures of DEI.

I am a Certified Professional Diversity Coach and 4 Stages of Psychological Safety Certified Coach. I received her bachelor’s degree in Sociology concentrating on Cultural Diversity & Ethnicity and a Masters in Educational Policy, Planning, and Leadership from The College of William and Mary. Also, I have a Masters of Business Administration from Johns Hopkins University, where I focused on management and marketing.

With DEI After 5, I have authentic conversations with diversity professionals about the ups and downs of the DEI industry and topics related to diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace. My listeners are primarily DEI professionals and include others interested in the industry.
 

DEI After 5 started (and continues to be) as a YouTube web series that we launched in January 2022. My first plan was to release pre-recorded episodes every two weeks as videos. After the first video, we received feedback that our audience needed the content more frequently than every two weeks, especially for an engaged audience. A graduate student that works with me suggested that many people may not have the time to sit and watch a show and may be more inclined to listen as they are doing something else. After doing some research on creating MP3 files from the videos, the decision to develop the show as a podcast was a no-brainer. I launched the first podcast episode on February 8th, one month after the web series began. With that launch, we could upload audio from the three shows in January.
 

Now we release episodes every Tuesday evening. I was blessed to find a fairly inexpensive production team for the web series that does all of my edits, adds sound, voiceover work, etc. So they usually provide me with the session within 48 hours of recording.

Juggling the podcast/web series in addition to my coaching and consulting business has been a challenge. Luckily with the help of my production team and my executive assistant, we are able to block out times within the week that minimizes the amount of work I need to do on the show itself. We record on Mondays and I usually work on all of the marketing for upcoming episodes on Fridays. My EA handles reaching out to guests and making sure they have all of the information they need for the recording session.
 

I currently do not have sponsors for the podcast but am looking into a few for 2023. The podcast has been great for boosting me as a thought leader in the industry and has started to lead to a few engagements with coaching and consulting clients.
 

We use Streamyard for the web series. I like that because the sound quality is sharp and makes for great audio for the podcast. 95% of my guests are people I know in the DEI industry, so the format is less formal. I do not send them interview questions ahead of time but may have a topic that I know they are an expert in that will be the show's theme.
 

Most people find out about the show via social media. I post quite a bit on LinkedIn because that is where my target audience is. Since the show, my following has increased from ~7000 followers to over 12k followers on LinkedIn. I also post the show and clips from the shows on Twitter, Facebook, and IG. I've recently started to go back to older episodes and write a blog post as my show notes with the show transcript. I also use Canva to design and Hootsuite to manage all of the posts.
 

Understanding all of the moving parts of maintaining and marketing a podcast is essential. I thought I could just record the show and be done. That is about 10% of the work. The rest is in creating the marketing, staying on top of hot topics in the industry, and staying connected to other practitioners to invite them to the show.
 

You can always
- follow me on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/sachathompson/
- follow my blog - www.sachathompson.com/deiafter5
- check out my company website - www.theequityequationllc.com
- or donate via PayPal - https://paypal.me/theequityequation?country.x=US&locale.x=en_US