Meet the St. Paul woman coaching companies to address racism and bias

Seena Hodges came to Minnesota to work in theater. But a desire for entrepreneurship, and a yearning to help workplaces foster empathy, drove her to develop the Woke Coach — a company that works to help its clients be better individuals "with a deeper understanding of how the legacy of racism and injustice affect us all," according to her website.

Eye On St. Paul met with Hodges recently to talk about what "woke" means to her and what her work seeks to do in workplaces large and small. This interview was edited for length.

Q: I'm a 59-year-old white male, and other 50-something white males look at the term woke as something negative. Tell me your definition of woke.

A: The interesting part about the term woke and the name of the company is that it actually came to me in a dream. It wasn't something that I decided to do to be controversial, or to get under people's skin. Quite honestly, when I started back in 2018, woke was a word that people aspired to.

You know, language is imperfect, and it shifts over time. So, things change their meaning. I have friends who are members of what we now call the queer community and for some folks of a generation, the word queer was not a word that they ever used. It was a slur.

The thing that people should recognize about woke is that it's not a new word. Essentially, when I talk about what it means to be woke, it's an understanding that each of us just has a lived experience. And no matter what that lived experience is, it's not the quintessential lived experience. Because of that, we have to awaken to the experiences of other people.

Q: How so?

A: Oftentimes, when we try to help people, what happens when you're not woke, you think you should help these people in a way that you would want to be helped. Essentially what happens is you go there, and you cause harm, instead of actually doing good.

Q: You're coaching people to be open to what people are saying and the sensitivities that people are having?

A: The work is really the work of awakening. But at the end of the day, if you want to talk about it in terms of business, it's helping people create more inclusive organizational and corporate cultures.

There are a lot of unwritten rules. When you think about white supremacy, it's the law of the land. Essentially, what we're trying to do right now just say, "Hey, we're here. I've always been here. See me." And this is for anyone who has an aspect of difference. Because generally what we have done to people who are different is push them to the margins. And when we push people to the margins, then you don't ever set them up for success.

Q: Why is this hard?

A: I think people have challenges for a couple of reasons. First, fear. Any time we don't know something, we're inherently afraid of it. I think that what is also happening is there is this rapid clip of progress. For some folks, it feels like progress. But for other folks, it feels like we're uprooting everything they've ever known about the world.

Those things that we're asking people to consider are not just for the workplace. They're for the world that we live in. There's a level of responsibility that's more than just being good colleagues, but there's also being good neighbors. It's not just that you're learning how to use a new timecard system at your job. It's that you're learning to be a better citizen of the world.

Q: Who are your clients?

A: My clients run the gamut. There are small nonprofit companies that we work with. We also work with global corporations. The best way that I can describe our clients is not about their size. It's about their level of commitment to the work.

Q: What is a realistic expectation for change after I work with you?

A: The number one word that our clients use to describe us is transformational. And this work starts with that "you" work. The individual. That's the self-awareness piece that's critical.

I think that this is a long-term investment that people need to make in their companies in the same way they would invest in marketing. Or the same way they would invest in an audit firm. This is work that has to be ongoing.

And the reason that it needs such care, and such continuance, is we've never done it.