From selling maxi pads in grocery stores to becoming a global change leader and advocate for men supporting women around the world!
What causes are you passionate about? How did you become interested in them? My guest today, Jeffery Tobias Halter, a renowned gender strategist and President of Y Women, posits that in order to become an advocate for a cause, you have to have a personal connection. Jeffery’s personal connection to gender equality comes from his desire to have his son and daughter be valued & treated equally within the corporate world — something I think we can all be passionate about!
Never expecting to be working as a gender strategist, Jeffery discusses how one of his first jobs selling to an almost exclusively female market opened his eyes to the “relational nature of women.” He shares what he learned about selling to women and the value created from making a single sale. He also shares how a future job in sales lead him to a very humorous, but profound discovery about selling female-centric products as a male salesperson.
Diving deeper into his career journey, Jeffery shares how his role at a major, global organization changed overnight, from sales trainer to leader of diversity education. Inexperienced in the area of diversity education, Jeffery explains how he embraced this new role and how it truly opened his eyes to the amount of racism, sexism, and homophobia in the workplace. Jeffery shares how a single story from one of his respected colleagues shocked and outraged him, and how that story made him realize that he needed to take an active role in the diversity and inclusion space.
Jeffery closes our time together with some very helpful exercises to assess the current status of women within an organization. He discusses the importance of taking an active role in advocacy for gender equality and the important connection that men need to make in order to establish the personal connection to this cause.
I know you’ll enjoy hearing Jeffery Tobias Halter’s brilliance, humor, and passion for gender equality. I look forward to welcoming him back for a future episode to dive deeper into his work!
