Full Transcript:

[00:00:00] Emily Race: Welcome to the Founding Mothers Podcast, where we're imagining new ways of living with one another and our planet. I'm your host, Emily Race. Today's conversation is with Mallory Combemale. Mallory is a visionary leader who guides individuals and teams into new ways of relating with themselves and one another.

[00:00:30] As a co-founder of The Inheritance Project, she facilitates groundbreaking inclusion, leadership, and cultural programming through the lens of inheritance. 

[00:00:39] Mallory Combemale: Huge changes can happen really quickly. Technology is changing at a super rapid pace and empowering a lot of individuals to be able to share their perspective and their voice, and access a lot of information that used to only be available to the people in power making decisions.

[00:00:55] So now power is being distributed a lot more widely. 

[00:00:58] Emily Race: Inheritance project's unique approach to diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging invites everyone into a felt experience of inclusion and provides practical leadership tools to improve understanding, trust, and collaboration. Mallory also has deep experience guiding personal healing and transformation.

[00:01:16] She specializes in breathwork meditation and trauma informed approaches to healing. Through breath connection, she empowers individuals with scientifically supported breath practices to improve leadership such as emotional intelligence, creativity, and resilience. 

I am so excited to have Mallory with me today on the Founding Mothers Podcast. Thank you so much for being here. 

[00:01:39] Mallory Combemale: Thank you so much for having me, Emily. I'm so excited for this conversation. 

[00:01:43] Emily Race: I'd love for you to start by sharing a bit about who you are and the work that you're doing, so to speak, is in the world. 

[00:01:49] Mallory Combemale: My name is Mallory. It's lovely to meet all of you who are listening.

[00:01:53] I was born in Singapore. My mother is Chinese Singaporean. My father is French American, and when I was about two years old, we moved to Northwest London. I grew up in a really diverse neighborhood with a lot of immigrants, especially a big Indian immigrant community. And so from a young age, I developed this sense of myself as a global citizen, someone who belonged to the world, who had connection points to a lot of different cultures.

[00:02:26] I was lucky that from a young age, I understood that the world is pretty big. There are a lot of different ways of seeing things and different ways to live, and I took that understanding for granted until I synchronously got a scholarship to go to college at the University of Virginia.

[00:02:46] Being in that really different environment from the very multicultural urban context that I grew up in, really shifted my perspective on a lot of things. That was really the crucible that ignited a lot of my interests that are still the core foundation of the work that I do today.

[00:03:03] If I were to sum up all the different threads, it would be that I help guide people and communities into new ways of relating with themselves and one another. And that requires a lot of deep work in terms of our inner mindset and inner state and inner belief systems, but it also requires support from our outer world, the actual systems and structures and processes we put in place to help reinforce new habits, new behaviors, new ways of relating, and being together. I like to think of those two threads as intimately woven together, the inner world and the outer world, and that if we wanna make change in the world, we want to address it from both aspects. 

[00:03:57] Emily Race: I love your story. Thank you for sharing the threads that make up where you got to in your journey so far.

[00:04:02] is. Where does that sense of purpose that drives you in your day to day, or the larger sense of purpose, come from? Is it what you just shared, or was there something else, a particular moment that you can think of? 

[00:04:14] Mallory Combemale: That's a good question. There are a lot of different things.

[00:04:17] One is I really observe that our human society is at a turning point right now, that we're experiencing a lot of really deep economic, social, political changes, and if humanity is going to continue to thrive on the earth, we're going to collectively need to make some really big changes to the way that we relate to ourselves and one another.

[00:04:46] And I do believe that every individual has a role to play in their community and their family on the earth, and I think that I was really blessed to have been given a really great education. My mother especially, really valued education as someone who could never go to college for herself, and that's a big part of Chinese and Asian culture.

[00:05:12] And so I was definitely raised with the value of education and I was very lucky to get this scholarship to go study in Virginia. While I was there, my degree was in global development studies, so I studied a lot about how the world developed to be the way that it is now. The history of our current economic system, colonialism, a lot of the different political and economic structures, like the United Nations and that kind of thing that make up the world as we know it now on a macroscale and from that time in high school college days, I really had a sense that I was privileged because of the education that I was receiving, and therefore I had responsibility to contribute positively to the world in some way. 

That sense of purpose has driven me a lot, however, I did have kind of crisis of understanding when I was in college, because I really felt overwhelmed by the problems of the world, and I looked at institutional racism and inequality and the environmental crisis, and I felt so hopeless and almost depressed by truly observing objectively what was happening in the world and that these patterns have been going on in human society for a very long time. It was actually through discovering, during that time in my life, yoga, meditation, that really shifted my understanding of purpose. Through those practices, I was able to shift myself out of a depressed, anxious state, And  I started understanding that all my work and aspirations and social justice and social activism wouldn't be effective unless I myself was centered and healthy and was able to give from a place of stability, which wasn't the case. So I really spent a lot of years focusing on cultivating that part of myself and studying with a lot of different teachers.

[00:07:21] A couple years ago, I took a sabbatical from my career and spent six months in India studying with different teachers, and that has been a really big part of my life. It has also really contributed to my philosophy and understanding that if we wanna make social change, if we wanna make change in our systems and processes of our society, in our communities, we also need to be focused on how do we change ourselves to be in alignment with the values that we really want to hold.

[00:07:55] And the other big shift that happened for me at this time in my life is I felt that  so much of the social activism that I was seeing was all about dismantling and being against the systems that are there, and that did not appeal to me at all. Even as a child, I loved Lego, loved mechanics, and I loved building things and making things.

[00:08:21] I was, in hindsight, a bit of a gender nonconforming child. 

[00:08:25] Emily Race: Yeah. 

[00:08:26] Mallory Combemale: I loved all the boys' toys, way better than the girls' toys. And I was really at that time in my life, lost for anyone that was actually presenting a vision of what the world could be that wasn't just “against” or “tearing down” the systems that we have now, but was actually about building something different and better.

[00:08:47] It took me a while to find the thinkers and ideas that have shaped me and brought together that sense of purpose that, “Oh, I don't have to just fight against something. I can actually create something different” and that is ultimately so much more powerful. 

[00:09:04] Emily Race: That's why we're here and I'm so excited to get into the vision aspect of things with you.

[00:09:08] I also was a Lego builder myself, and I think that's probably why this podcast got created because I agree, having tools, even just the imagination to be able to envision a world that works, that’s the first step towards actually having that become reality.

[00:09:23] I also wanna clarify; you talk about the inner world and the outer world– you're looking at these two systems or facets, so to speak– how does your work touch each of those? 

[00:09:35] Mallory Combemale: Yes. There are two main threads of my work.

[00:09:38] First, I am the co-founder of a company called Inheritance Project, and we look at social change through the lens of inheritance. When we say inheritance, we don't just mean money or property. Although of course the way that wealth is passed down through generations does really affect our society and our experience.

[00:10:03] But we define it as everything that we inherit that makes us who we are. So that includes, the values we inherit, the culture we inherit, the beliefs we inherit, the stories we were told by our caretakers and our upbringing. A lot of our patterns of behavior, whether or not we realize it, we inherit from those who raised us or our early childhood experiences.

[00:10:31] And that's on an individual level and on a collective level. We've all inherited these systems, these structures, our government, our economic system, these values and philosophies that we take as a given, but our society hasn't always been this way. They've evolved over time and we've inherited the world as it is now in this specific context.

[00:10:56] And what our work focuses on is empowering leaders and teams to unpack their own inheritance on an individual level so that you can be governed not by unconscious behaviors that you've inherited, but actually make conscious choices about the way that you want to lead and collaborate in this very different world than the 20th century.

[00:11:24] Right now our work focuses a lot on inclusion and creating inclusive environments and workplaces where everyone, no matter what their background or inheritance, can really come to the table and collaborate and contribute their best. And in our work we always integrate the inner and outer world.

[00:11:48] So a big part of our methodology is actually including the body in our trainings and doing somatic practices and meditations, which is still not that common in the mainstream workplace to actually look at the way, if we wanna change behavior, we have to actually change how our nervous system and our brain is wired.

[00:12:10] And so we support companies with leadership training and inclusive leadership training to change the way that people behave. Our method really touches both, how do you change that on the internal level, but then also as a leader in an organization, what are the systems and processes that you need to have in place so that people can actually be supported in changing their behavior in that way.

[00:12:33] Another passion of mine that I still work on is helping people integrate breathwork and meditation into their lives as a daily practice. And this is very much in the inner world, but when I do these coaching programs with people, I also help them support themselves with their environment because I think that it's really hard to change a habit or to start a new habit.

[00:13:04] Often what we're taught is you just need to muscle through it. Just be committed. Just be dedicated. By the force of your own willpower, change yourself. And that's actually making it really hard for yourself. There's a lot of science now about what kind of nudges you can put in your environment, different systems that you can set up in your own life to support you to integrate new habits.

[00:13:30] Integrating behavior change is something that I'm really fascinated by and overall, maybe some of the things they do are more explicitly inner or outer, it always ends up touching both because to me they're so interconnected. You can't really have one without the other.

[00:13:48] They each create a positive feedback loop so that the more you work on the inner mindset and beliefs, the easier it is to set up better systems and processes that support that in your world. And also the more you have those systems and processes, the easier it is for you to integrate that behavior.

[00:14:06] So I see it as an interconnected cycle. 

[00:14:10] Emily Race: Yeah. That brings up a few things for me. One, your own personal journey and how, when you were talking about this chapter, with the  anxiety and the depression that was coming up as you were looking at some of the broken systems in our world, meditation and going within and yoga, those internal practices really gave you the foundation you needed to be resourced to actually make shifts and make change in the outer world.

[00:14:31] I love acknowledging that and I also love acknowledging that we are not just this one dimensional person that has a role that we project at work or whatever. Often people ask, “What do you do for work?” So I love that these are parts of your own vocation, but you're acknowledging how everything is linked.Everything is connected. Even in the workplace, our bodies are connected to our minds and how we're showing up. Is there anything else you wanted to touch on upon that? 

[00:14:58] Mallory Combemale: What you just expressed is really interesting because that's definitely true in this modern Western belief system.

[00:15:10] That is definitely the world I inherited growing up in London and then being educated in the US and now living in New York. But that prioritization of the individual and the individual experience is not how all societies operate. There are many cultures still to this day where interdependence is understood as a fundamental mechanism of how the world is organized.

[00:15:37] So this is why I find it really interesting to examine our inherited beliefs because when we see, “Oh, actually this isn't objective, ultimate truth. It's just a belief or a story that I inherited” and that actually frees me to choose a different story, different narrative, different belief if I want to. 

It was really interesting for me growing up in a [00:16:00] household of a mother from the east and a father from the west. I saw in my own home a lot of these fundamental philosophical clashes, especially around prioritizing the individual versus prioritizing the family or the community or the collective. And that's something that was often a source of tension in my parents' relationship.

[00:16:23] And it's just because they have different inherited world views; and the more that we can examine our own and learn to make space to understand others, I think that's where really powerful collaboration can happen, because instead of saying one side is right, one side is wrong, instead you say, “Okay, both of these inherited value systems, have value in their own context.”

[00:16:48] Now the context of our world is changing. What from each of these can we borrow that will be most useful, most of service to where we wanna go now? 

[00:16:58] Emily Race: I am sograteful that you just double tapped on that because one thing that came to mind for me as you're sharing about inherited beliefs is also the assumptions that we're making.

[00:17:08] Even the way we speak about these things, and the way that I just did, I didn't qualify “oh, in this particular culture within the United States”, which was an important distinction to have made. I think that's such an empowering context to create around the inherited piece, and to unpack that.

[00:17:26] You have me curious to pull the thread now around that vision for what this world is calling for now, and the vision that you personally see that is needed to move us forward. What does that look like?

[00:17:36] Mallory Combemale: Thank you for asking.

[00:17:37] I am so excited that you've created this podcast because I really believe that one of the things the world needs is more spaces  where people can imagine and connect what their own vision for the future looks like, rather than just assuming that whatever world we inherited, that's just the way it's gonna be.

[00:17:58] So I wanna first commend you for creating this podcast and this space for so many different people to share their visions, because I think that is one of the elements that I'm excited to see more open in the world now compared to even when I was in college. 

Before I share about my vision for the world, I actually wanna look backwards at our inheritance since that is always a lens that I use.

[00:18:21] If you look at the global economy, it's gone through some really big shifts in the last couple hundred years. A lot of the mechanisms of the current economic system, like the way multinational corporations are organized, can trace its roots back to the way colonial governments were organized and the way colonial military systems were organized.

[00:18:48] So if you look at even a lot of the language that we use in companies nowadays, it's “divide and conquer.” “We're gonna launch a campaign” – this is really explicitly military language. And so a lot of the systems that are in place, that follow this “top down, rigid one leader makes all the decisions”,

[00:19:09] It's a very military system, and especially the European colonial military system of organizing people and resources in order to achieve specific objectives. And that may have worked in a time where we felt like resources were unlimited, where there was more land to conquer and you just had to go out there with a goal and put enough resources behind it and get it.

[00:19:36] And now, we live in a very different context. We live with so much more uncertainty, and I think the Covid pandemic has shown that huge changes can happen really quickly. Technology is changing at a super rapid pace and empowering a lot of individuals, like you and I, to be able to share their perspective and their voice and [access a lot of information that used to only be available to the people in power making decisions.

[00:20:04] So now power is being distributed a lot more widely. So all of our systems and structures of organization that worked in the 20th century, now in the 21st century. with new technology, new empowerment of individuals to both make different choices about what they buy and also to have access to information and share their voice. And also, much more global interconnectedness and much more diversity in most of our day to day. Those old colonial militaristic ways of organizing aren't gonna work anymore, because the context has changed so much. 

So the vision for the world that I see is that everyone realizes this, and all leaders of all corporations and companies realize that in order for their core mission to keep creating value for humanity, in order for them to keep creating valuable products for their customer base, we actually need to radically rethink the way that we lead and the way that we organize resources.

[00:21:14] My vision is that we stop trying to save the earth and instead remember that we are the earth, that we are nature, and take inspiration from natural ecosystems in the way that we organize and the way that we organize our resources and our people. 

If you look at a forest, this is an example I always love to give, if you look at a forest in most cases,over time it gets richer and more and more abundant. The natural balance of different plants, and a fruit tree over time, will bear more and more fruit if it has the right conditions. So instead of looking at things as a zero sum game where we have to compete for resources, how can we create thriving ecosystems where each individual’s or each organization's contribution actually enriches the whole, and we remember the interdependence that you were talking about before, that we remember that everything is interdependent and that my thriving relies on the thriving of others. And when we really integrate that into our inner world, into our body knowing, we behave in different ways and make different choices about how we use our resources.

[00:22:37] For me, this is not just about creating a world that sounds nicer, where the earth is healed and everyone's holding hands and feeling good. This is really about being practical. The world has just changed and if you really wanna survive andthrive, we have to change with it.

[00:23:02] And what has survived over millions of years with so many ecological environmental changes? It is nature itself. And we can learn a lot from the way other species and plants adapt to ecological crises, to environmental disruptions, and look at the way ecosystems are balanced and think of ourselves as, “Oh, how do we contribute to this thriving ecosystem? How do we play our role in it?” And to me that's just a matter of practicality. 

[00:23:35] Emily Race: Thank you for that. It strikes me how, pretty much every episode comes back to nature. Obviously there's some truth there, right? That we are nature and to operate as such and to have that mindset can open up a whole new world of possibilities.

[00:23:48] I also really appreciate that you underline, it's not really this “airy fairy, how beautiful that would be”. but really it's out of necessity and survival. It's like our future requires this. 

If  you were to drill down into that a little bit more, what would that tangibly look like? Because I hear you, it's a mindset shift that would shift behavior. But what have you seen, either in yourself or in working with others, or even a dream that you have of what that could tangibly look like in a day to day society? 

[00:24:21] Mallory Combemale: What that would look like to me is that every single individual has an opportunity to contribute their unique gifts to their community and to their workplace.

[00:24:33] If we're just talking about workplaces, what that actually looks like is having project rotations where people can actually contribute to different parts of the ecosystem, rather than being stuck in one fixed role where the only option is to go “up or out”. What that looks like is shifting the way we think about decision rights so that we're not only empowering the top level leaders with authority to make decisions, but empowering a lot more people around the organization with that ability, who are likely much closer to the actual sources of information to make those decisions. So shifting decision rights and distributing them is another example.

[00:25:16] I also think every single individual having a personal practice of investigating and unpacking their own inheritance, their inherited beliefs, their inherited behaviors, and being in a continual process of investigating that and choosing how they wanna behave instead. I think that it's really easy to say, “I wanna behave in this way”, or “I wanna lead in this way”, but it's really easy for old subconscious behaviors that are so deeply ingrained in our brain and our nervous system to come back and hijack us. There are so many examples of great leaders or companies who have great values and great aspirations, but then end up with some kind of scandal or something that goes against what they say they stand for. And I think that a lot of that comes down to just how ingrained these old patterns are. So this is our big mission at Inheritance Project, to give everyone out there that toolkit to investigate and unpack your inheritance. 

And our dream is to get our work and our process into high schools and colleges and workplaces. Every single individual has access to these tools and this way of thinking and investigating themselves. I think would change everything, if we could spread that kind of awareness. 

[00:26:41] Emily Race: What do you think is actually possible for ourselves, how we relate to our community?

[00:26:48] Mallory Combemale: If I'm being really aspirational, this would be the end of wars. We would find completely different ways to resolve conflict where both parties' needs are met without violence. A huge reduction in violence is something that I think that this would really help.

[00:27:07] I think we would have a lot more regenerative systems in terms of the way that we use resources. Agriculture and food are great examples. Instead of looking at short term yields, we would be investing for the long term and regenerating soil quality and creating food that by feeding ourselves now, we're not reducing our capacity to feed ourselves in the future. 

And then I feel like it would touch so many different layers of society on an interpersonal level. Everyone's relationships would be better if we're constantly unpacking our inherited beliefs and thinking about what we don't wanna pass on.

[00:27:51] I know in my own journey, I realized that so many ways I was behaving that were unconscious from what I observed growing up, and that's not the way that I wanna treat my partner. And I really feel like the quality of our relationships and our families will exponentially improve. 

We'll have workplaces where everyone gets to contribute, where people are really empowered and feel fulfilled by what they do.

[00:28:18] And ultimately by giving people the tools to think differently, to resolve conflicts in different ways, to relate to each other differently– everything is possible. We could really learn to collaborate and solve a lot of the challenges that we're collectively facing. I'm not an expert in all agriculture or the different realms of society, but I do believe that by giving everyone who does have those different areas of expertise, the tools to relate to themselves in one another in a different way, you create more powerful spaces for collaboration, innovation, and creativity. [00:29:00] And that connection and way of being is going to create so many shifts that I can't even envision right now. 

[00:29:08] Emily Race: I think it's so interesting t what you just described in the world of what's possible, there's almost a dotted line I see  connected back to where you are right now working within companies. I wanna look at that for a moment, as someone who's worked in corporate spaces also, I don't know if you've felt this before, but I've felt pessimistic at times, like, “why work with these companies? Is it really the right place to focus my energy?” And then at the same time, you can feel super inspired by the potential to transform this facet of society, which is a company, this microcosm of society, and have that have a ripple effect. 

Is there anything you wanna speak to around the types of companies you choose to work with or why there is such a focus in the corporate or organizational space?

[00:29:51] Mallory Combemale: Yeah. People, especially in America, spend an incredible amount of time at work, so if we wanna change people's experiences then we gotta change our workplaces. And we've shifted to a model, ever since industrialization, where the workplace is more the source of community and the source of nourishment than our families.

[00:30:14] In the early agricultural times of human society, we'd be working alongside our spouse and our brothers and our aunts to bring in the harvest and our immediate family network would be where we would be receiving nourishment from and sustenance. That's really shifted with industrialization and now, we might work in completely different fields from our partner, and that's very normal.

[00:30:42] So the workplace has become this incredibly important community. I feel really optimistic that if we support these shifts within companies that they'll ripple down because everyone who works in a company is also part of a family, part of other communities. Right now, because of the way our economy is organized, companies do control a lot of the resources and they are the source of sustenance for most people. That to me is like going to the root of where you can actually affect change and the leaders of really big companies can influence the lives of thousands of employees; that is a level of scale of potential change. That's huge. 

Same thing with, not just behavior change, but any other thing. If you get Coca-Cola to change their packaging to be more sustainable, that creates such a huge impact because of how big their footprint is. So I do believe that in order to create large-scale change, that's a huge area in our society that needs to be part of it. And I love working with leaders who see what I see, who see that if they really want their organization to keep thriving and be resilient, that there needs to be a shift in the way that we see leadership and the way that we see organizational structure and the way that we see topics like diversity, equity, inclusion, that's not just a nice to have side thing, that it's core to making your organization successful and getting the best out of the best perspectives, the best ideas, the best out of your people, which is what's needed in a future where, in America at least, white Americans are gonna be the minority if they aren't already soon.

[00:32:36] Emily Race: Yeah. 

[00:32:36] Mallory Combemale: So these things are all, to me, essential for organizational resilience and I'm really lucky that I work with some amazing leaders in a lot of big companies and small companies, and I think what most of the people who I work with have in common is they're all change makers. They're all people who really have their heart in their work and genuinely desire to make an impact, make a difference in the world, make a difference in the lives of the people who work in their workplaces. And there are so many of those people out there, and I want to empower all of them with the tools they need to really make the change that they wanna see. 

[00:33:20] Emily Race: Thank you for painting the picture that way, in this, not only optimistic frame, but again, acknowledging the context shift that's happened  Revolution. It's very real how much of ourselves we give to work, that we spend in the workplace. 

[00:33:36] There has been this tension that I've noticed for a while where we're struggling to understand “how much of myself should I bring to that space?” And what's the gift of doing that and what's the danger of doing that? I think it's amazing that you are a part of guiding the way for how we can re-relate in the workspace and how the workspace can re-relate to the larger global community as well, and see that opportunity for themselves.

[00:34:00] On that note, for listeners who are considering, “Oh, I  would love to work with you in some way,” whether it's individually or within their workspace,. what are some of those ways that people can work with you? 

[00:34:11] Mallory Combemale: Thanks for asking. For Inheritance Project, the first thing I would do is go check out our website, inheritanceproject.org. We have a free online workbook, which is something that anyone can do. It's a series of self-reflection exercises to reflect on your own inheritance, your own identity, and some of the beliefs that you are carrying. This is something that I invite anyone to do.

[00:34:38] It's an amazing free resource that can start you on this journey of thinking about what you inherited and where some of your patterns come from and what you really wanna carry forward. So do our free online workbook. 

We also have free public workshops once per quarter, if you're curious to actually experience our method,because all the trainings that we lead are very experiential.We have a really different way of engaging a group and teaching than what I think is common; it's the opposite of listening to a PowerPoint presentation. I always love inviting people so that you can actually come experience what we do yourself. 

Otherwise, you can also get in touch with us through our website and I'd be happy to chat with you if you're excited to work with us.

[00:35:25] Right now we are doing inclusive leadership training and team building programs, and we have a whole variety of different offerings from things that are quite introductory all the way to doing a “Train the Trainer” program where leaders in your organization get trained in our method and are certified to facilitate our sessions internally and really can lead that culture change from within. So, we can support you on a wide variety of different levels. 

And then if you are curious about incorporating breathwork and meditation into your life as well,you can find me at breathconnection.co and that has information about how you can reach out to me.

[00:36:13] I really love that process of working with people one-on-one because when I made the commitment to myself to meditate every day and make that part of me, that's when some really big shifts started happening in my life. And it's always such a joy to get to support people through that process. So if you're feeling called by that at all, you can also get in touch. On Instagram as well. Maybe you can put all this information in the show notes. 

[00:36:46] Emily Race: I will. Back on the corporate piece, because I myself have worked with many change agents who aren't necessarily the decision maker in terms of what programming can be brought in, but they have a huge  voice of influence or theyhave the ability to be a gatekeeper in bringing in someone like yourself, like Inheritance Projects; is there any one liner or something that you would tell them that they could use to build the case for why this is important work to bring into their company?

[00:37:13] Mallory Combemale: Great question. I think this depends on the unique challenges that your company is facing. My suggestion would be to look at what are the biggest concerns of your leadership and see if our programming would actually address some of those concerns. 

Some of the reasons why people hire us right now is one, the great resignation. Companies are losing great talent and that's a huge financial loss, right? Losing people needing to rehire, to retrain. So there's a huge focus on building a really great company culture that empowers people so you can improve retention. So that's one big reason we're seeing.

 [00:38:00] Another reason we're seeing is we do work with a lot of fast growing startups who have just received a lot of VC funding and one of their biggest challenges is helping maintain their amazing, unique culture as they grow and scale. Because your company gets very different when it's 20 people and you all know each other and then suddenly you're 500 people.  How do you maintain that same level of connectivity and empowerment and make sure that as you create different levels in the organization, everyone who's managing others has the right skills to do that in a conscious way. So if you're in a fast growing startup, that is something that we can help you with.

[00:38:41] Another reason why companies come to us is if they have launched a new project or initiative or program, or hired a lot of new people for a specific branch or investment and they wanna set up the right context or environment for collaboration among that new group or those new people. If your company is hiring a lot of new people or investing in new areas but is lacking some of those organizational structures or culture to really make that successful, that's another great opportunity to bring us in and help us lay the foundation for really effective collaboration in that team. One other thing I would add, and this tends to be on the minds of most leaders right now, is if you're looking to make your organization more innovative or creative or resilient, it's really important to invest in programming that gives your people the skills to do that.

[00:39:41] That's another reason why people come to us, because they want to create a context for collaboration that really invites every single person to the table and empowers diverse voices. and if you're trying to adapt to this changing world and come up with new ideas and new products, then it's really important to invest in how your people collaborate.

[00:40:03] So those are just a few of the business cases, but I think it really depends on the specifics of what your company is dealing with, what your priorities are.If you get in touch with us through the website, I'd be more than happy to chat with you about it and we can together craft a business case that makes sense for your company if working with us is the right fit.

[00:40:28] Emily Race: That's amazing to see the range of business cases, but also on investment piece, what comes to mind for me is having seen organizations invest in different types of programming, you can never really place a value on how far that investment goes in terms of the people, the collective that make up that organization, feeling invested in, and really feeling “Oh, this is something that matters to our company.” I've always watched it reinvigorate, reinspire, re-engage folks. [00:40:58] Mallory Combemale: Yes, and we do really believe in measuring impact, we do evaluation surveys and we are diligent about collecting data in that way.

[00:41:08] And you're right, that a lot of the time the value is so much more than what you can collect on a survey and so much more long lasting. 

You just reminded me of another big reason why people hire us, which I forgot about before for some reason, which is since Covid being on all virtual teams and really lacking that human connection and really noticing that's really impacted culture and people's engagement has been going down and no one wants to join another Zoom meeting that's really boring or awkward, small talk. how do you create really intentional programs where people can connect with each other, but also learn practical leadership tools that they can take away as well. That's another big reason. A lot of companies have struggled with culture and engagement since the pandemic and going virtual. 

[00:42:04] Emily Race: Such a good point to add. On that note, the last thing I wanted to touch on is leaving our listeners with some sort of inquiry or an action they could take, something to digest or chew on that would make a difference in their own lives. 

[00:42:17] What inquiry do you have for those who are listening? 

[00:42:21] Mallory Combemale: My invitation is to first look within. If you are frustrated by a particular problem in your company or in society, I’d love for you to ask yourself, “how does this pattern of behavior, How does this system of organizing actually live within me too?”   “How is my behavior, how is my value system also perpetuating this?” And if you want to go into this deeper, I also recommend our online workbook, which is a great start to unpacking your inheritance. But this would be my biggest invitation, because I see a lot of people who are social change makers wanting to always point the finger outside of ourselves, like it's the government's fault, or it's this company's fault. And actually, in order to really change the world, we need to take accountability for how we contribute to the world as it is now. That comes from understanding what we've inherited, what we're carrying, because we've all inherited the way the world is. If we wanna start transforming that, we need to look at how we can transform those beliefs and values and behavior within ourselves first.

[00:43:44] Emily Race: Thank you for creating and offering that free resource because the thing that came to mind for me is that can be some challenging work, especially to navigate on oneself. To have some sort of support, whether it is a set of questions, a guide, or someone to listen to them, can be massively helpful.

[00:44:04] Mallory Combemale: Yes. One of the reasons why we created this company is so that we don't have to do this investigation alone, but we can do it in community. In the future, we will have programs where anyone, no matter where you work, can come and enroll and do this kind of investigation together and  get sponsorship from your company's professional development budget to take an inclusive leadership program, if you have access to that. More on that to be announced in the future. 

[00:44:40] Emily Race: Lastly, what does support look like for you? How can we, as a listening body, support you? 

[00:44:47] Mallory Combemale: Thank you so much for asking.

[00:44:49] Definitely spread the word. Follow Inheritance Project and Breath Connection on Instagram and Inheritance Project also on LinkedIn, that's where we're actually pretty active as well. Read what we're talking about, get engaged in the conversation, share these resources with your community, and if you do work somewhere that you think could benefit from this or leaders at organizations–  doesn't have to be a company, it could also be a university or the government; we work with a lot of different institutions from different fields– hen connect us, share our website and spread the word about what we do because like I said, right now we're going through a big shift and it's the age of information and getting this information out there is a huge service to us, so thank you for doing that. 

[00:45:42] Emily Race: Thank you Mallory, for your time and for your leadership and your vision. I myself am left inspired,.andI hope that those listening will feel empowered by this conversation andare being left with some tools that they can take moving forward. Anything else before we close out? 

[00:45:58] Mallory Combemale: No, that's it. Thank you so much for inviting me here and creating spaces for more of these conversations and exchanges.

[00:46:05] I am really inspired by the work that you are doing. So thank you for everything you are doing to give voice to what's possible in our world. 

[00:46:16] Emily Race: It is my pleasure. Thank you. 

[00:46:19] Mallory Combemale: Thank you. 

[00:46:22] Emily Race: Thank you for listening to this episode of the Founding Mothers podcast. This podcast is produced and hosted by me, Emily Race, and edited by Eric Weisberg.

[00:46:31] If you wanna support the show, please leave us a rating or share this episode with the important people in your life. We'd also love to hear from you If you or someone you know would be a great guest to share about their vision for the world. You can email emily@foundingmothers.com or visit www founding mothers.com.