We are working to help leaders include people and make people feel included to change lives, work, and the world for the better.
About Us
BSD is an inclusive leadership company built on the belief that the world, in every aspect—from the largest boardroom, to courtrooms, to classrooms, to dining rooms—can be changed for the better if we can learn how to include each other across differences.
We want to help organizations build and sustain inclusive workplace cultures. And we have learned from our professional and personal experiences, and our extensive research on inclusion, that at the heart of building and sustaining an inclusive culture is helping people get better at how they include each other across differences. From how people learn and solve problems together, to how people build workplace practices and grow together.
This requires leaders skilled at interacting and leading inclusively across differences.
So, we help leaders in all types of organizations, from law firms and corporations to non-profits and faith-based organizations, get better at interacting and leading inclusively across differences.
Inclusive leaders increase collective well-being, insight, and potential. They reduce fear, isolation, and disparities. They change lives, work, and the world for the better.
What’s in a name?
We started BSD (Brown Sons & Daughters) as a brother and sister team. Our parents were an interracial couple married in the US at a time when interracial marriage was outlawed in most states. They serve as our example of how people can bridge divides across differences, even against the odds, when we recognize our shared humanity, beginning with the recognition that each of us is someone’s child.
Gratitude
We started BSD because we wanted to discover and understand the most effective research-guided approaches for increasing inclusion in workplaces, and transform that insight into tools and pathways for helping law firms and other organizations build and maintain inclusive workplace cultures. The work we discovered on the power of perspective-taking, supporting learning across differences, intergroup contact, and intergroup leadership by scholars such as Thomas Pettigrew, Linda Tropp, David Thomas, Robin Ely, Todd Pittinsky, Adam Galinsky, the late Katherine Phillips, the late Cedric Herring, and the late Gordon Allport inspires us and helps guide us.
The participatory conversation and collaboration methods we have learned through organizations such as the Center for Council, North Star Facilitators, Eileen Pippins Consulting, The Institute of Cultural Affairs, and the Los Angeles County Bar Association’s mediation training program have had a profound impact on our lives and work by enabling us to transform academic research insight into tools and pathways for helping people interact more inclusively across different perspectives and different life experiences.
To all our clients and everyone else who has collaborated with us, whether you have attended a program, participated in an inclusive leadership practice cohort, or were part of a consensus-building or action-planning workshop—from small-scale experimental pilots to large-scale projects—we thank you for trusting us as a collaboration partner. You all inspire us and bring life to our work.