Banafsheh Ghassemi
About My Guest
Banafsheh founded Tangerine Lab in 2014. Tangerine Lab is a human experience design firm that provides advisory services for a wide range of human-centric challenges organizations are facing today. These challenges include customer or constituent experience, employee experience and leadership experience in a human and design-centered organization.
As an early adopter and practitioner and for almost 20 years, Banafsheh has been a leader in operationalizing Human Centered Design in large and small, commercial and social impact organizations.
Banafsheh has advised national and global brands and organizations from across many diverse sectors such as mobile and telecommunications, broadcast media, software and cloud startups, digital media, multinational financial institutions, micro-finance and banking, green technologies, foreign governments, and manufacturing. Prior to Tangerine Lab, Banafsheh held senior executive leadership roles at Nextel, Sprint, Nasdaq and the American Red Cross, leading diverse design initiatives from development of innovative technology products and customer experience strategies to disaster relief service delivery and digital transformation.
Banafsheh was born in Iran to Iranian parents. Her family found itself in political exile in the UK after the Iranian Revolution. She completed her secondary education in Chislehurst, Kent, right outside of London. Her family immigrated to the United States where she and her brother could pursue their higher education. Banafsheh has a Bachelor of Science degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Maryland and an MBA from the George Washington University. Banafsheh lives in Washington DC.
Shervin Talieh:
Hello and welcome, again, to another episode of On Misogyny, I'm really excited about this session. I'm excited about every conversation but this one has been a long time in the making and I take full ownership for scheduling snafus and also the person I'm talking to is exceptionally busy and in demand as well. So to begin with could you please introduce yourself.
Banafsheh Ghassemi:
Hi Shervin, thank you so much for having me on this important conversation. I am Banafsheh Ghassemi, I live in Washington, DC, I'm an entrepreneur, I have a consulting company in Washington, DC. I was, as you can tell from my name, it's not your typical western name. I was born in Iran. I left Iran when I was 11 and went to UK and basically spent most of my formative years, secondary school until college outside of London where I lived in a very small town made of mostly British people and our family was kind of a novelty.
Banafsheh Ghassemi:
We went into exile at that point after the Iranian revolution. And finished my schooling there and came to United States went to college, studied engineering, mechanical engineering, worked in that field for a while and civilian nuclear industry. Went back to school for my graduate school and ended up mostly in the tech world, in the corporate world. As it relates to this conversation a very male-dominated world. It was a happenstance, to be honest, because I actually, right out of grad school I briefly worked in international development. But that money kind of froze up. Because at the time the administration in the United States was not so interested in that kind of investment.
Banafsheh Ghassemi:
So I had to find another way to make a living and just through accident I found myself in the technology world, mobile internet world specifically. Worked in that field for a long time, almost 20 years, I think. And came out of there started to do think about doing what I really always wanted to do. To be the master or the mistress of my own domain and start my own company. And that's when I started my company. But as soon as I started very quickly American Red Cross recruited me to do what I did for the corporate world which was specifically customer experience strategy.
Banafsheh Ghassemi:
And I find it very intriguing to do what I do in the nonprofit sort of do-gooding world. And so I put my entrepreneurship ambitions on hold for about four years. Did what I came there to do. And went back to do what I'm doing now. I live in DC, as I said I've been living in this town since actually we moved to united states with my family at a very young age. And my family's very nearby so we're very small family but close and tight. And we keep an eye on each other
Shervin Talieh:
Thank you. Tell me about... Well how old are you when you moved to England?
Banafsheh Ghassemi:
I was 11.
Shervin Talieh:
11. Did you notice anything as it relates to you being a young girl when you moved from Iran to England?
Banafsheh Ghassemi:
Absolutely that was probably my first brush with this topic. So I have a very, very strong mother in terms of independence, accomplishments, et cetera. And my family, I mean, it's... She was, I mean, just to give a little bit background as to what role she has had in my world. Back in the 60s and 70s, she had a very top position in the Iranian government, she was a deputy minister of small scale industries, which is, by all standards, is a male job, if there is such a thing. But I mean, think back at 60s and 70s.
Banafsheh Ghassemi:
And what we see on our television screens about those times. Like Mad Men era, where women were largely relegated to secretarial work and that kind of thing. So she had done a lot in a society that you can't say that it's not the most female friendly society. And so, because of that, she paid a lot of attention, on me, specifically, with... She had two children, obviously, me and my brother who was younger. But she was very much focused on who I was, and how I was going to fit in a society potentially, in Iran at a time because there was no conversations around the revolution, or any indications of it, that we would ever leave. But even anywhere we ended up.
Banafsheh Ghassemi:
So she was very much adamant about coed education. Meaning that we, females and males, they have to work and live together on this planet, and they have to learn how to coexist. And so for her, it was very important that I did go to a school that was made of men and women, girls and boys. We moved to UK. And we had to go, because we were immigrants, we didn't have access to what they called state schools, which is what we call here, public schools, we had to go to private schools, which they called public schools over there. So that's confusing enough. Anyway, so we had to go to private schools.
Banafsheh Ghassemi:
And private schools there are largely affiliated with one of the major universities there, as well as they are largely parochial. So they're attached to some church. So in my case my first school was Anglican, the second one was Methodist. We had to go to schools that were male only or female only. That was basically the structure of these schools. And my mom had... I remember, she had a real issue with this. I remember us going from school to school, catching the train every day, searching for schools that we had to go to, because she was so much... For her, it was so important for us to go to a coed school.
Banafsheh Ghassemi:
And they were like, "No, sorry, that's not what we have around here." And that, of course, has changed because I actually last year, I was in London, and I went to see my... To visit my school, and now it is both sexes. But to me, that was like very... Because she took so much effort in that to make sure that that coexistence in our education was there. Even though she never succeeded, I ended up having to go to a all girls school. And my brother had to go to an all boys school. And it was very interesting for all of us that was how a Western society that we just moved to thought about these things. And so that was my first brush at this topic of sexism, I mean it's not sexism in the sense of prejudices or biases and things like that. But it's just the fact that the society dividing itself up in that kind of a construct.
Shervin Talieh:
I had another guest share with me that she'd gone to an all girls school. And she felt that it was... I'm sorry, she went to an all girls college. And that was refreshing for her coming out of a coed K through 12 experience where there was some sort of almost systemic favoritism, if you will. The boys were being called on more. The boys would tease the girls that were smart or wanted to do well in math or science or things like that. Do you have any thoughts on that?
Banafsheh Ghassemi:
Yeah, I've heard that before. I mean, I can't judge it by personal experience. I've heard that before. And I actually do buy the argument. If you've gone to school system where that was the case, which we all know it is. It's a fact, it is a fact that the boys are probably more dominant in the class, more called on. Even if they're rowdy that teachers probably treats that differently than if a girl was rowdy in the school.
Banafsheh Ghassemi:
So yeah, I can see if that's your history. And then you move into a school where there is no such... You're not sort of swimming against that tide, then it's a much better experience. But keep in mind, when I was 11, I came from an Iranian... I came from a school system in Iran, that was a bilingual system, it was British and Iranian. That kind of dynamic, at least wasn't talked about, or sometimes, you go through these experiences. And it's there's so normal and structural and foundational to what's going on that you don't even think about it. And maybe that was the case, I just don't remember it.
Banafsheh Ghassemi:
I remember actually one of my teachers, from grade school, I have pictures of us. She's always holding me and this other kid, boy, that was my best friend. She was always holding our hands in every picture, even if it was a group picture. So I never really sensed that I was being shut down by my teachers or anything like that. So that when I went to a... Then I would cherish this experience of being in an all girls school. For me was different because when I went to an old girl school in England there was other issues at play.
Banafsheh Ghassemi:
Like, for example... Because this was kind of a religious school as well so there were, a lot of strict rules, I think college might be different from if you're sort of at a school that's attached to a Catholic church or something like that. So we had very minimal engagements with boys. We're teenagers, and you kind of yearn some of those things when you're at that age. And so when it's suppressed, they manifest themselves in ways that are not very healthy.
Banafsheh Ghassemi:
So for example, I would come down from my dorm, and I go to my desk, which was an assigned desk, every day, I opened the desk, there's a love letter in there from one of the other girls. Maybe they were gay, fine. And that's no problem. But I'm sort of, kind of thing like, maybe some of them, were just looking for an outlet. At this point, as well. Later in life, I know, they were not gay. I know, they got married, and they got kids, and they lived happily ever after, they're not pretending not to be gay. I mean we're past those times where people think those things.
Banafsheh Ghassemi:
But I think there was a pressure cooker in that environment as well at that age group, where then it forced girls to sort of manifest their needs and yearnings and desires in different ways. That wasn't really them, which was also not their authentic self. If they were truly gay, and they were truly authentically expressing themselves in that manner, that's healthy. But if you're doing it, because in the absence of boys, you're just trying to sort of compensate for that in other ways, then it's not so healthy. I know, I had friends that were in our dorms that were suicidal kind of thoughts, because of some of the restrictions that were going on in that kind of an environment. But again, I might have to do... I haven't gone to every girls' school in the world. So I don't know whether that was just that school or what, but I don't feel that we weren't necessarily in the healthiest environment to be our authentic selves, because so much of it was suppressed.
Shervin Talieh:
Before we move on from this topic, in listening to you, it struck me that the school system that you were a part of and that you experienced tied to a church as it were. This structure is designed and controlled by men.
Banafsheh Ghassemi:
Yes.
Shervin Talieh:
I think that we can say that without any debate.
Banafsheh Ghassemi:
Absolutely.
Shervin Talieh:
And it seems like... I've heard about men sort of fetishizing about women in all sorts of different ways. And in one case, or one well known sort of school of that is this idea that all women are secretly gay or all women are sexually into other women or something to that effect. And I'm wondering, and I'm not an expert, obviously, I'm wondering if what you experienced and what those other girls were experiencing is almost by design, to some extent. This suppression of women and for them not to be able to do what they need to do and want to do freely, but for men to confine and restrict them in a way that conforms to their own sensibilities.
Banafsheh Ghassemi:
Maybe. I don't have evidence of that, for this particular school. I think we had a chaplain that was the only male in the entire school, to be honest. All our teachers were women. There is a structural... But I would say that those in that kind of a construct, that kind of a structure, men set the rules to begin with no matter who is the guardian of carrying out the rules. All these women could have been just participant in that process, or just here. Here are the keys, we set the rules, the Methodist Church has set the rules, or the Anglican Church has set the rules. Bunch of men, and here, ladies, you got the keys now go at it, make sure that everybody plays it in those roles, and everybody being in this case, women.
Banafsheh Ghassemi:
So yeah, I would say it was probably in that sense, it wasn't that we had a bunch of men in the school that they set the rules, it's just but, the church was designed that way. There were like other kinds of... But within those rules, outside of even... There's other things, subtle things that I feel probably apply to women more than men, for example.
Banafsheh Ghassemi:
I mean, my brother's school had its own different kinds of weird rules, but they were much more geared towards creating the alpha males than anything else. But with the women, like for example, we had uniforms. And our uniforms were made of a shirt, a kilt, like a Scottish looking kilt, and [boaters 00:17:27] and things like that. We had church every morning, you had to go to church, sing our hymns, which in the back Me and my friends just [inaudible 00:17:35] songs. Mumbled them instead of the hymns, but we had to like come pass by our Headmistress every day, kneel down on the floor, so that our skirts would touch the ground.
Banafsheh Ghassemi:
And if they didn't, we had to go back home and sew them in. Or bring the handout. So those kinds of things, do make a guy do that, kneel down, make sure their shorts or their pants have a certain length? It's a thing you do to women. You don't do that kind of things to men, that properness of your skirt length and things like that. So there was those kinds of rules that were at that time, probably subtle. But now it's like, when you think back, you're like, "Holy cow. This is what they made us do." Yeah, so the rules, the grander rules of church came from men. But these minor, these accessories to the rules were created by the society as a whole, I think. And yeah, I think some of it does go back to religion. You and I coming from that history, and anywhere you go, it's like, religion does this does drive a lot of these kinds of rules in our societies.
Shervin Talieh:
What are your earliest memories of sexism?
Banafsheh Ghassemi:
So, as I talk through this, this is obviously one. If you want to talk about those bigger themes that are not as subtle. Let me just talk a little bit about my background. And then I tell you how I was exposed to sexism. So as I said I have a very strong mother. She's my role model. Probably my second role model, because I think my first one would have been my grandmother, her mother. Again, both of them Iranian women.
Banafsheh Ghassemi:
My grandmother, was married twice, the first husband an abusive man. She had one child with him, and one day she woke up and decided she was going to divorce him, which in that society, for a woman to wake up in that era and say I'm divorcing my husband and I'm going to send him the papers. That's unheard of. Because one would... Divorce, there's a stigma, no matter who pursues it. And then for the woman to do it, she took a chance with that. She did it, she married a second time, fell in love with my grandfather, until he died young.
Banafsheh Ghassemi:
But until she died, she would talk to him as a... She was always talking about how, what a wonderful, beautiful man he was, and how much she was in love with him and et cetera. So that was like, one exhibition for me of what a strong woman is. Second exhibition was my own mother, which I gave you the history of her career path, and even... She held this pretty manly, masculine job in the 60s and 70s, in the Middle East.
Banafsheh Ghassemi:
And she would take me to her office, very often whatever I had any time off from school I was sitting across from her in her office. And I would see, I mean, even at a very young age. I was not even 10 or 11, I could see that the dynamic between her and her male colleagues were great respect for her. The deference so that was in the room even for a child, my age was very palpable. And then they would turn around to me, and tell me about how amazing my mom was, et cetera, etc. So they would even speak to me about that. My father is the kind of a man that's... He's intellectual, he is a writer. And so he was always buried in his books and writing and things like that.
Banafsheh Ghassemi:
And she basically left all control of the House in terms of financial decisions, things that you typically, for a couple of that era, would say, a man takes over and the women have other different kinds of roles. He basically left it all in my mom's hands and we always, as we got older, we would joke with him and say, "Hey dad, if she ever left you, and cleaned out the bank account, you wouldn't even know what hit you. You don't even know what you have." Because he had no idea.
Banafsheh Ghassemi:
I mean, he was like, basically [Puran 00:22:37] makes all the decisions in this house, no matter what. And then, as I grew up, the dynamic between my parents, me and my brother. They always looked at me as the one that's independent, can take care of herself no matter what. And so they looked at me as that child. And so all that to say, I was surrounded by an anti-sexist sort of bubble, by a lot of people that put into a lot of effort to make sure that I'm not looked at as a girl, per se, or a female. But I have all these strengths.
Banafsheh Ghassemi:
However, it wasn't lost on me that as I sit in this bubble, and I looked out, I knew my grandmother lost many years of her first child's, first son, who she loved dearly, to her husband in the custody. Because that's how the laws were written. The guy would get the child in a divorce. There was no other alternative to that. Regardless of if they were abusive, not abusive, they could provide or could not, none of those things were factored into this. They just took it.
Banafsheh Ghassemi:
So she lost him for a good number of years until I think... I'm not sure when he returned to her. I think he was a teenager then. But yeah, so I mean, a mother lost her child for a long time. As strong as she was still the laws of the country, played against her. So I could see that through my glass, my anti-sexist bubble. I could see that my mother's best friend went to Imperial College of London, was the first female ever to get a nuclear engineering PhD, returned to Iran. She lost her daughter in a divorce to her abusive husband, because again, the laws. This is a generation after my grandmother.
Banafsheh Ghassemi:
So I could see that no matter how accomplished and strong and independent and in charge of your own destiny you try to be as a woman there is still some foundation and structures out there that want to fight you. And in many cases you lose in that fight no matter what. So it makes you think, when you're talking about sexes, and genders, women, at least my observation again, I'm one data point, and I only have my tiny little world. I can't say this is the case everywhere. Women are forced to live in both worlds.
Banafsheh Ghassemi:
They can be protected in an anti-sexist bubble. But they were never shielded from sexism completely, they can still see it, feel it, feel the injustices have it, be pained by it, suffer from that pain, all of those things. I'm not 100% sure that men, you tell me, I don't know. I'm not sure the men live in those two worlds. That their world is their world. It doesn't have... It's not a bipolar world. Ours is, I feel.
Banafsheh Ghassemi:
And I think that's what I would call some of my most sort of things that are seared in my brain in terms of sexism. And I know a lot of these things haven't changed, even for your daughter's generation. So even in the US, here, we talk about which states are female friendly, and which states are not in the cases of divorce, custody, abortion. You name it, it's just they too, you can take your daughters to a place where they're shielded. And they you think of yourself as a progressive state, where they're going to take care of women as much as they can. But then they can see through the bubble, they can see through that shields that the next state over, it's a different world for women. So they are even forced to live in that bipolar world.
Shervin Talieh:
Was this an observation that came too early on? Or was it only sort of after you entered it adulthood that you could sort of, to use your words, these two different worlds, they were sort of at odds with one another?
Banafsheh Ghassemi:
No, I think it was very early on because the story of my grandmother, and the story of my mom's best friend who was like... Her daughter, we were born seven days apart. And we saw each other every week until we left Iran. So those stories were like the pains that my mom's friends went through that divorce. All of that were like topics of our conversation very often. And so did I sit there and analyze it at that age? I didn't think I had the capacity to do that. But did I see that was like my world was different from my best friend's world? Yes, sure.
Banafsheh Ghassemi:
Did I see that my grandmother was, through her stories, she would tell us. Yeah, I saw there was something very painful there. I didn't realize it to be that we women live in a bipolar world, no matter how we try to be independent, and empowered, and in charge of our destiny and all that stuff. We constantly see it. And I think it's not that different. I mean we talked about Black Lives Matter, you and I talked about that, too. It's not that much different from that, either. It's like you could be a black individual in United States. That's succeeded, accomplished, empowered, all those things. But you always, always, always see that other side, or experience that other side of blackness in this society as well. You're never completely shielded from it.
Shervin Talieh:
Yeah, as one data point because you asked the question, I would answer no. I don't think I suffer from having to live in sort of this bipolar state as you framed it. My characterization of what you've shared, since I'm interpreting it is almost privileged. In that almost survivor's guilt, maybe to some extent. I don't know if you feel that resonates or not. But maybe sort of springboarding off of that topic, I'd like to understand you moved into tech, very obviously deeply technical studies and then you've moved into technology and you've been in that field. And you as part of your consulting work you've done a lot of work overseas and you've done a lot of work in developing nations and nonprofit work, et cetera. Could you sort of compare and contrast your experiences with misogyny as they relate to certain industries and also as they relate between culture and culture?
Banafsheh Ghassemi:
Sure so in the tech world, my experiences were mixed there. So I have the typical experiences that most women have in that world which is you're find yourself in every meeting to be one or two of you sitting at the table. Everybody else looks different from you. You do become, once you reach management, you do become... You have much more exposure to salaries and pay grades and things like that and you definitely see that on the spreadsheet. It's evident.
Banafsheh Ghassemi:
So your job becomes sort of how do you within that system change. At least within your microcosm which I tried. For example I had, right now we talk a lot about remote work and things like that by virtue of thanks to COVID. But even way back when my staff I would have... I didn't necessarily feel like people had to be in the office, so a new mother that we... The company and our laws only allow for so much time with maternity leave. So there was kind of limited in those, but we could still work around those things, independently by letting people work from home.
Banafsheh Ghassemi:
As long as they're producing and they're meeting the quality that you were requiring what do you care where they are? So those kinds of things I tried to be helpful with. I tried to sort of, when bringing in new staff or had staff on my team that I felt like they somehow... They started from different group they ended up my team, but I looked at their salaries, I would make adjustments right away to make sure that there's parity there. All of those things.
Banafsheh Ghassemi:
However I also had... One thing that stands out, and one of the things I'd like to talk about, probably we'll get into it, is I had like this very good fortune of having some male bosses that by no stretch of the imagination that were perfect, in this sense. They had their own typical things going on. But my experience with them was like they actually modeled a lot of the behaviors that, when guys in executive ranks ask, "Well what am I supposed to do? Well how can I make this right?"
Banafsheh Ghassemi:
I'm like "Well go find the guys that are modeling good behavior and follow their model." So for example I had one boss who was in a c-suite. This is in tech now c-suite of Fortune 100 company. And I was... There number two females on his team. There were seven or eight I forget how many others, male, on his team. All senior executives, executive vice president, senior vice president. He himself was a CXO reporting directly to the CEO. So the optics obviously wasn't good if you took a picture from our meetings and you saw two women and everybody else men. However he took it upon himself to be my mentor. And I was the most junior person on this team. So I was like where everybody else is at that senior executive, executive vice president ranks et cetera, I was a mere director. So every time we had a strategy meeting, any kind of meeting, staff meeting, when the meeting was over he would ask me to stay behind and say...
Banafsheh Ghassemi:
His question to me at that point was "If you were..." Let's say it was a meeting about some decision. "If you were me and making that decision, how would you have made it?" So he would put me in his own... He would say, "You're sitting in my seat, I want you to make that decision, what would it be?" So on a couple of fronts, one, he was teaching me like this thought process of making important decisions to his most junior person on his team.
Banafsheh Ghassemi:
But he was also giving signals to the guys on his team, that this is how you should treat your females on your team. Again, I say he wasn't perfect, because the ratio of the team was off. But he was somewhat trying to compensate for that by giving a signal to the much more senior staff that this person, despite her gender, despite her junior status, compared to you guys, she is somebody significant in this team. And I really respect her opinion. And I even demand from her to put herself in my shoes and make decisions as if she was me. So in other words, sort of grooming need to be sort of in his place at some point in life. So that kind of modeling, I think, it's small. It's a piece of what he does right. But it's still important.
Banafsheh Ghassemi:
It still gives signals to a lot of people that don't ordinarily think about these things. So that was an admin... But I also had bosses, like female bosses, that, I hate to say it, some of the sexism is so structural, that it's just... They don't just come from just men. I had people complimenting me on something, and immediately for a week, I would get a silent treatment from my boss. Because, I don't know, for whatever reason, she didn't like people complimenting me or not taking credit for it. So you have it.
Banafsheh Ghassemi:
But I mean, I guess what I'm trying to say there was modeling, but there's also structural issues that need to be handled. And they are kind of bipartisan, between men and women, and I think we all have to spend some time pausing about and thinking about where are we contributing to this problem? So then the second part of your question about how is it different than the other kinds of countries? Well, I mean, on the surface it's not the same. We all look different, and dress different. The modernization manifests itself in some ways that are... There are visual cues of what is modern and what is not.
Banafsheh Ghassemi:
But in terms of in different societies, I think there's still... It's uniform that across the world, men make most of the decisions and make most of the decisions at the household level, up to the country level. A lot of the people I worked with when I worked on poverty, childcare... I'm sorry, child health care, and nutrition and things like that. A good part of the organization that make those decisions were men. And when we did our research at the household level, a lot of the decisions that were impacting the nutrition of children, even though the men would deny that they had any role in it was made by men. Here men still make some... My mom always talks about how some of the women they meet they have to take their husbands to the clothing store to pick an outfit for them. That kind of stuff. So I think some behaviors are kind of universal, it's just probably the icing that people put on it is different in different countries.
Shervin Talieh:
Given your background and expertise in Human Centered Design, I'd like you to spend sort of the final time that we have, just as a thought experiment. I've shared with you that I'm a Iranian man living in the United States who was recently made aware of the fact that I'm not as progressive as I thought I was. I'm still deeply flawed. So I'd like... There's this question that I asked which is like, what can I do differently? What should I be doing? What do I not know that I need to know from your perspective? But the twist that I'd like to apply here is if you could somehow incorporate your professional training into helping address that question.
Banafsheh Ghassemi:
Yeah, sure. Yeah. So you're asking about empathy, really? How can I emphasize more? Because that's the first step to solving the problem is to deeply understand it. And in my trade empathy is the beginning of all things. And it's probably the hardest part, for a grown educated, accomplished, somebody that considers themselves to be woke, in general sense, to actually go through what it takes to empathize.
Banafsheh Ghassemi:
I mean, sometimes you're born that way, you feel other people's pain, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But what is the true meaning of empathy, empathy is not that you walk in my shoes, me, Banafsheh, a female. Empathy is that you'll be able to first take off your own shoes, before you can put on mine. And when you're educated, as I said, all those things, educated, accomplished you think that you've gone through life and gotten good lessons, et cetera. It's really, really hard to take those shoes off, because you are burdened by your own assumptions, by your own context, by your own history.
Banafsheh Ghassemi:
So you always go through life, we all do, even me who is trained in this. When I take my... When I'm just tired, and I'm not really thinking perfection, that moment in the day. I do use the world, if it was me, I would do this. Well, you're not me. And I'm not you. And so the first step of empathy is figuring out how to shed all your assumptions about what misogyny is, and instead take on a beginner's mind, which means go through your day... This is a thought exercise, you said. Go through one day, and examine every single one of your steps to see if you're in any way participating in misogyny, without awareness. Because like I said, it's so structural, it's so buried in the DNA of how we behave we don't see it anymore. We don't see it that way.
Banafsheh Ghassemi:
But if you just pause at every step and see what did I say, what did I do, what action, what decision did that I make, that might make me a participant, you will come to a lot of empathy. So one of the methods we actually use in my trade is immersion. So I mean, we do interviews, which is what you're doing right now, this is one of the processes. Tell me your story, I can understand where you're coming from other methods is observation, just watching, just watching. Saying nothing, just watching, the watching your wife, your girlfriend, your sister, your mother, all of go through life, and see what they go through. And then the third method of empathy is immersion. Become us. Try to do something what we typically do.
Banafsheh Ghassemi:
And I know you as a friend, you do that. You're very much involved in childcare, for example, you do take off work because a babysitter isn't there. I mean, those are like really valuable experiences that contributes to your understanding of what is happening here. And so, to use my trade, those are the things that I would say. And empathy takes a long time, it takes a lot of patience. But if you can spend 60%, 70%, 80% of your time in developing that empathy, the solutions come much easier. And the solution part is actually the easy part of the process. The hard part of this process is that deep understanding of what is going on.
Banafsheh Ghassemi:
So again I am a woman. But there are so much other kinds of in justices that are going on in our world. They're top of mind now in our society, me too of course is what is this conversation. BLM is another one. Asian hate that's going on that we have become so much more tuned in the last several weeks, all of these things. So I've been trying to... I'm not black. I'm Asian but not the Asian that people are talking about.
Banafsheh Ghassemi:
I tried to develop my own stories... Not develop my... I tried this Seek out the stories of my own life, that give me some empathy towards what's happening in those injustices. For example, just to give you a sort of something out of the misogyny box to demonstrate what I mean, my personal story of BLM, that gives me empathy towards that movement is our justice system. I, as a resident of Washington, DC, that is called in to go to jury duty every two years on the dot, on the clock. I cringe at that experience.
Banafsheh Ghassemi:
And my American born friends and other friends that do not live in Washington, DC, when I say that to them, they get offended, because they're like, "Well, being part of the jury duty is part of the democracy, part of our system, it's a privilege, et cetera." And I'm like, have you ever been a member of a jury in an urban setting? You do not look anything like the person sitting on that seat. You are not the peer of that person. And that's by design.
Banafsheh Ghassemi:
Because the reason that we don't look like him is because so many people like him or her are forbidden to sit in our seats, they have a record, all sorts of laws have been created so that they do not qualify to sit in our seats. That's why I cringe. I am not their peer... The system does not by design doesn't allow that. And so, to me, the injustice, that Black Lives movement talk about starts with our jurisprudence. And so much of it is by design, but then we're going into it saying it's a privilege to be a part of it.
Banafsheh Ghassemi:
But when you examine it, it's not. It's not a privilege. And so I build my empathy by looking at, "Hey, I participate in this process that everybody thinks is a privilege, but is it?" And I removed that context of privilege from my brain and look at it with a fresh set of eyes. When then I see what's really wrong with it. And so that's how I would say is the best way to learn.
Shervin Talieh:
I knew I was going to get a thought provoking and yet practical methodology, if you will, to apply and I'm so... I've done a handful of these conversations. You're the person that I've known the longest, and also the person who sort of resisted my invites the strongest because of-
Banafsheh Ghassemi:
Because I ramble on!
Shervin Talieh:
No, no, no. I think your nature, and this is another interesting thing. I think men by nature, inflate their level of expertise, or understanding. I know I do all the time. And women, at least my experience has been women tend to be very reserved with even their own praise of their own expertise. But in any event, Banafsheh, [foreign language 00:48:31], as we say in Farsi, and just thank you for teaching me, for sharing your experiences and for connecting a lot of different dots across diaspora and profession and perspectives and all that. So I'm really grateful for you. Thank you so much.
Banafsheh Ghassemi:
Thank you. My pleasure Shervin. Thanks for the opportunity.