Hi, everybody. Welcome. This is coming out with Lauren and Nicole. We are a weekly podcast where we have on queer folks from all walks of life. They tell us the tales of how they came out to friends, family, and the world at large. You may be at home

or in your car or wherever you are. I don't know your life. You may be thinking, wow,

Nicole is doing a phenomenal Lauren impression this morning. Fooled you. That was me doing

the intro solo. Nicole sends her regrets to all of you out there

listening. Laif is, he's not, nobody worry, he's not seriously sick, but he is the kind of sick

where you have to stay home from daycare. I'm not saying he has diarrhea, but I'm not saying that he has diarrhea if you get my drift.

But the point is, I am solo today, and Nicole sends her love and is doing a copious amount

of wiping and cleaning at the moment.

But anyway, if you haven't turned this off already because of how graphic that was,

I am here today with Lily Zhang.

Hello, Lily.

Hey, it's great to be here.

Thanks for having me.

Thank you so much for being here.

So, Lily is an author and

DEI consultant. If you've listened to the podcast for a while, you have heard us throw

around the term DEI. DEI stands for diversity, equity, and inclusion. And it is what I would

call like, it's very much like a buzzy term that came

into the lexicon a number of years ago. And now you see it, you see it in a lot of articles, you hear

people talking about it. But we're really going to dive into what it actually means today, what it's

actually trying to accomplish.

Is it accomplishing what it's trying to accomplish? All this good stuff. Because Lily had a book

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