= Too Blog Series Week 1: Before There Was DEI, There Was Us”
- Fatima Nash
- Aug 28
- 2 min read
by Coach Fatima
Let’s get one thing straight women didn’t wait for Diversity, Equity & Inclusion to show up before we started leading.
We’ve been doing this. In heels, headwraps, and hush tones. In the break rooms, boardrooms, and back offices. In jobs they wouldn’t give us titles for, but we held it down anyway.
Before companies created Chief Diversity Officer roles, we were the unspoken glue of every operation. We’ve been teaching folks how to lead, how to show up, and how to hold a team together with 75% of the resources and 200% of the pressure. And we made it look damn good.
But here’s the problem: no one ever wrote us into the script.
A Little History for the People in the Back
Let’s rewind. we have always worked. During slavery, Reconstruction, the Great Migration we carried our families, and this country, on our backs. Domestic work, factory jobs, nursing, teaching, we were the labor and the leaders.
We raised other people’s children while our own were denied basic rights. We were the blueprint long before corporate America started using words like “intersectionality” and “inclusion.”
Claudia Jones, Anna Arnold Hedgeman, Dorothy Height, name a movement in this country that changed the game, and I’ll show you the woman who was doing the real work behind the curtain.
Fast forward to the ‘90s and early 2000s we got degrees, certifications, elbowed our way into spaces we were never supposed to enter. And even when we were the most qualified in the room, we were still asked to prove ourselves. Twice. Daily.
Enter: DEI.
Then 2020 happened. George Floyd. Breonna Taylor. The world couldn’t look away.
Suddenly, everyone wanted to “do the work.” The WOKE work. Companies posted black squares, hired a few of us, launched DEI task forces... and then quietly started ghosting when the accountability got uncomfortable.
And now in 2025, DEI budgets are slashed. Entire departments evaporated. The party’s over, and they’re acting like the check never came. And Target, lets not talk about TARGET!
But guess what?
We’re still here. So Why Does This Matter?
Because this isn’t new. They can cancel the program, but they can’t cancel your power. You come from a legacy of resistance, excellence, and reinvention. You are not the result of DEI. DEI is the result of us.
You were born for this moment not to beg for belonging, but to reclaim your authorship. To stop auditioning. To build what you deserve. To walk in a room and know I am not less than. I am = Too.
This Week’s Power Move 💼Write your professional lineage.
Not your resume your legacy. Who taught you how to lead? Who’s in your work DNA? Write their names down. Speak them aloud. Carry them with you this week.
Coach Fatima’s Final Word:
You ain’t just the first Brown, Yellow, Puerto Rican or Haitian woman in that office. You’re every Brown, Yellow, Puerto Rican or Haitian that came before you. And they didn’t survive for you to shrink.
You’re not new here. You’re next up.
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