Washington Women Leaders Association Chapter Meeting: Handling Difficult Conversations

Welcome back. So our next speaker is Kietta Orina and her speech is handling difficult conversations. She is the managing director of Accenture. She is a compelling and powerful agent of change within the firm for civilian agencies across the federal government that she serves and in community settings. In her 23 years with Accenture, Kietta has ser served federal government agencies with distinction. She consults with clients and provides executive leadership and a range of challenges for the federal government including digital transformation, programmatic, legislative implementation, operational cost efficiency, and effective change management. She's a tireless champion for the development of diversity, equity, inclusion strategies for colleagues at Accenture and in crafting and ex executing DEI policies and programs for clients.
Ketta is a proud graduate of Howard University where she received her BS in chemical engineering. She remains active in the H.B.CU CU community, bringing a message of fairness, inclusion, and opportunity to the campuses of historically black colleges and universities. Additionally, PTO led the establishment of a 10-week tech boot camp internship program introducing H.B.CU students to the world of technology through training, certification, and hands-on application development. And my favorite part, Ki lives at home with her partner Tariq and puppy
Sugar. Okay, good afternoon and thank you Hannah for that introduction. Um, and thank you to the planners for this Washington Women Leaders Summit for having me and coordinating this inspiring event. Um, I am ghetto Orina, daughter to Michelle, sister to two sisters and two brothers. Uh, beloved auntie to one niece and, uh, godmother to three, uh, one 25-year-old and two three-year-old twins. Um, and my sugar, uh, is my puppy. So, I'm a dog mom as well, um, to my 20-month-old uh, lab pit puppy. I am a proud graduate of Howard University uh where I studied chemical engineering uh before pivoting into the business world where I joined Accenture um upon graduation and now have spent 24 years I just celebrated my 24th year uh on October 12th.
Um and so I work with federal government clients um at Accenture improving the way our government delivers its programs and services. Um, it is a pleasure to be here with you today sharing insights on the things that I've learned about having difficult conversations. Difficult conversations can take many forms. Um, those that you may have with your child or spouse, one that you may have with a team member about their performance, or one that you may have with your supervisor about your own performance, or one that you may have with a client or a customer about how your products or delivery or your service just may not have met expectations. Um the story I want to share with you today is actually a little bit more on the personal side.
Um but it does mix and mingle personal and professional. Um and I want to just share some of the lessons that I learned um when having one of the most difficult conversations I've ever had to have in my 24 year career at
Accenture. It was a cold Wednesday morning in January and we were in the midst of CO. So, I was comfortably sitting in my lounge wear on my couch, sipping coffee, laptop in my lap, uh figuring out how to get work done between Zoom and Teams meetings. An onslaught of those. They were happening every 30 minutes. Uh my phone sounded to alert me to a new text. It's coming in from my youngest sister. It's odd because she lives in Houston, Texas. They're an hour behind and she normally doesn't text me during work hours. Are you okay there in DC? Her text read. I was confused, oblivious, um, and texted back, 'Why?' Her response changed my life for the next few days.
It simply said, 'Turn on your TV.' Turning on the TV led to further confusion and and despair. People were climbing what appeared to be a government-looking building. Windows and doors were being rushed and attempting to be broken into. People were angry. I had no idea what was going on and said to myself, you know, what country in the world is this coup happening? It took me a few minutes to realize that was showing my country, the United States Capital building, was being attacked. It was January 6th, 2021. At first, my eyes were glued to the TV in a state of disbelief as this couldn't possibly be unfolding before my eyes. I mean, not here, not in the United States.
These types of events just simply don't happen here in our civilized society. And then in an instant, my feelings went from disconnected disbelief to love and extreme fear. You may remember a video was shown in which a black man in a police uniform was in a hallway being pursued by what appeared to be an angry mob. First down a corridor, then up some stairs. You see the look in his eyes while he is being overtaken and pushed back, but he's also alert and figuring out his next move. He rounds a corner, quickly looks left down a hallway, and continues to engage the mob to follow him in the opposite direction. The video ended with him being chased into what appears to be an open reta where he became visibly relieved to see colleagues, other uniformed women and men.
But the mob follows him and then the video ends. But wait, what happened next? My mind began to race. I visibly began to shake and I screamed out my partner's name, Tyreek, because that black man is his cousin, Jean Goodman. And now it just got real. What started off as just an unbelievable event in our society quickly became very personal, very raw, and very emotional for me. The next few hours unfolded in a whirlwind as family members were trying to figure out what is going on. Is Gan safe? And where is he physically? As you can imagine, the morning came by way of a sleepless, worry-filled night. I started my day, coffee in hand, trying to get focused for that day.
If you work in a company like mine, at this point in our society, corporate executives had started to send emails commenting on major social issues, particularly after the murder of George Floyd. As anticipated, the flurry of emails began. First from our global CEO and then next from our CEO of the federal business. These emails were polite, expressed dismay, and usually ended with some form of commitment to do better. I read the email, shrugged my shoulders, shook my head ambivalently, and moved on to the next email. Still reeling from the day in a very personal, emotional way, my mind state was not ready to receive the platitudes of social corporate responsibility. By the afternoon, most employees had read the emails and I was suddenly curiously getting pinged by HR.
Within our business, I'm part of the leadership team of Accentur's management consulting practice and we had recently stood up an ethnically and gender diverse DEI team engagement team of about a handful of people from new analysts to senior managers to serve in the capacity of interacting more broadly with employees on diversity, equity, and inclusion topics. This DEI engagement team was a group of passionate and very talented professionals and they had crafted their own version of an email that told their perspective on the events that happened on January 6th and they wanted to send this message out broadly to all professionals in the management consulting practice about 500 people. As I was the management consulting practice representative on our IND council, the ping that I received from our HR business partner was meant to confirm that I had read this email and approved of it being sent.
Automatically, I'm feeling a sense of dread. Not only had I not read the email, I had no clue a response email was being crafted. And let's be honest, HR just does not contact you for no reason about an email. With dreary eyes from no sleep and a heavy heart, as I still as we still had not yet heard from Jean, I opened and read the email. It was well written. It was honest. It expressed the truth that many felt in the black and brown community about seeing an institution of our freedom being attacked by mostly white faces and the police response be so timid and submissive. Yet assaults on black and brown bodies with hands raised or handcuffed behind their back ended in death.
It was wrong. The language was incendiary. It was going to catch eyes. My gut immediately said that it could not be distributed, at least not in that form. Over the next couple of hours, myself, HR, and our IND lead worked together to provide feedback on the email's tone and language. After some rounds of back and forth editing with the team, we simply could not reach consensus. To put it plainly, the DEI team members thought we were whitewashing their letter, silencing their voice, and in the end, suddenly they withdrew the email. As the workday closed, the rumblings of discontent started to come forward. Members of the DEI engagement team had spoken to other managing directors and now the management consulting practice leader was getting pulled in.
A meeting was now scheduled for 8 a.m. on Friday between our practice leader, the DEI engagement team, the HR business partner, and myself. Later that evening around midnight, the phone finally rang and we finally heard from Jean. You know, sometimes you can be so wound up that you just don't even realize just how much stress you're carrying um until you're able to put it down. And just hearing Jean's voice, it felt like 15 bricks came off my shoulders just knowing he was safe. The tenseness in my jawline eased and for the first time in days, I like slightly smiled. I woke the next morning both relieved to know that Gene was safe but also anxious for this meeting.
I joined the meeting with audio on video off. Slowly the DEI engagement team started to join one by one and when the practice leader joined, he turned his camera on. The others started to turn their camera on too. Black and brown faces stared back at me. Some faces were tight with pounce ready postures. Some faces were indignant with bodies set with a dismissive posture. Other faces appeared curious, still waiting to see where this conversation was headed. Me, I was completely disheveled. No makeup, hair messy, face weary with a broken down posture. It had been a long week and my spirit was tired. The call kicked off. the leader of our practice calling with heard and asking the team to share their thoughts and perspectives.
One person from the DEI team kicked off. He was visibly irritated, if not resentful. His tone was nearing accusation as he expressed how this company could claim to be anti-racist, yet it silenced the voices of people of color. Another added how hypocritical it was that only the white voices of our leaders could be heard. on this topic when many people of color felt that there would have been violence and death in the streets of DC if that had been black and brown faces scaling the Capitol building walls. Drawing justosition between the events of January 6th and the violence that was shown towards Black Lives Matter protesters that previous summer. Emotions were on deep display as one team member teared up and her voice choked.
30 minutes in to the DEI team's impassionate rant about the unfairness of it all. One of the leaders of the team finally came on camera. Prior to joining Accenture, she was an educator and a school principal in Southeast DC for 10 years. Her language was piercing and sophisticated. She seemed to be looking directly at me. Her eyes tore into my soul and questioned, 'And you too, black woman? Have you betrayed us? Have you turned on the voices of people of color and deemed us not worthy of being equally heard in our fight for social justice? She lit into us for another 10 minutes. And after 40 minutes, the team finally paused, all appearing exhausted and emotionally spent.
My practice leader came off mute. He stumbled over a few empathetic sentences and then had a visible loss for words. The HR business partner, the only white person on the call, didn't dare come off mute. This was the hardest conversation that I had had to navigate in my 22-year career. My identity, my integrity, my beliefs were all being openly questioned. me, the only black female managing director in our federal business at the time, someone who had to navigate this white corporate space for two decades while also proudly serving as a v visible leader in DEI initiatives. I took a deep breath because their anger, resentment, and incredulous tone and speech was actually mine to own. I had ultimately made the call when the my gut told me not to send the original email.
My head raced with thoughts of what to say and I found it hard to ground myself. And then the words of Bnee Brown seeped into my thoughts and I heard her say, 'Lan in with vulnerability.' So, I'm going to share with you what I learned that day about handling deeply challenging conflict. I've coined it as the three C's. Um, handling difficult conversations with care, confidence, and commitment. First, with care. I let the team know that I was listening and heard them. That I too was sick in my stomach with the events of January 6th. I too would have not been surprised to have seen violence erupt if that had been mostly black and brown faces. I also provided them with context and shared that I was compromised these last two days.
I told them about Jean Goodman being my cousin, which I had not shared yet with work colleagues, and how that made me feel the events of that day differently. The worry, fear, and anger that I felt knowing that someone I loved and cared for was in the midst of that chaotic mob trying his best to protect lives, property, and the very foundational principles of our Constitution. A black man. I
wanted to know, you see, the team had needed me to be at my best and I had been able to show and I had not been able to show up with the full mental faculties needed to help them navigate this
situation. I had failed them. Which led me to the second C, which was confidence. Now, while I had apologized for not being in a full state of 100% mental well-being, I also let them know that I was confident in the ultimate decision that I made and I had not taken that decision lightly. I shared with them that as a leader, I strongly believe that one of my critical roles is being able to provide air cover for anyone on my team. I had been at Accenture for 22 years. I knew how this place worked. When I made the decision to not distribute the original email, it was largely due to me not being able to see around the corner.
There were and still are many vastly different feelings about the events of January 6th and Accenture is simply a microcosm of our society. I was not about to put the careers of six black, Latino, and Indian young professionals on the front line without being able to know confidently what would happen next. And for that, I told them I was not sorry. I would never facilitate someone from my team possibly walking into the lion's den. I ended my comments with the final C, which was my commitment. I studied each of their names and committed to listening to them, openly collaborating with them, and mutually discussing topics together as we forged our way in this new territory in space of authentically addressing equity, divers, diversity, and social justice issues within our corporate walls.
We've never done it this way in the last two years. It's been completely new to us to really focus on these issues and talk about them in this space. The call was quiet when I finished. An awkward silence permeated and hung in the air. Then finally, the one who had previously been an educator came off mute and simply said, 'Thank you.' To this day, we have worked together addressing many more concerns over the last 18 months. I count her as one of my good friends. She often tells me that what she learned from that conversation is how authentic leaders lead with this delicate balance of humility, thoughtfulness, and confidence. We made all we may not always get it right, but when well threaded, that combination can hit the most incredible tapestry as we forge a path forward.
I've so enjoyed my time here at the summit just meeting all of you wonderful ladies at the different tables and I hope that my story has inspired you to act with care, confidence, and commitment to doing better the next time you're faced with a challenging conversation. Thank you for listening to my