The Intersection of Talent Development and DEI with Dr. Lisa Toppin

In this episode of The Talent Development Hot Seat, Andy welcomes Dr. Lisa Toppin to the show. Lisa is the Chief Diversity Officer for Illumina, a biotechnology research firm with more than 10,000 employees. She’s held leadership positions in HR with firms nationwide, including LPL where she served as Chief Diversity Officer, and Charles Schwab, where she led their diversity and inclusion and learning and development programming in addition to the executive recruiting function.

Dr. Lisa Toppin has also served in HR business partner roles with Phillips Petroleum, Sherwin Williams, and Montell USA. She’s a member of the Forbes HR Council and is a world-renowned leader when it comes to engaging D&I change in a manner that makes it both meaningful and sustainable. She has a B.S. in Speech Pathology from Howard University, an M.S. in Human Resources from Rutgers University, and obtained her Ed.D. in Human Resources from The George Washington University.

In this episode, you’ll hear:

1. How Dr. Lisa Toppin landed in the world of human resources, what brought her to diversity and inclusion in 2005 and what it looked like, and how it’s changed over the years.
2. The disadvantages of not including DEI in a human resources department and the challenges that appear when a diversity officer reports directly to a CEO.
3. The changes she’s seen in DEI since George Floyd’s death in 2020, why it was such a pivotal moment for DEI, and why it allowed us to begin to acknowledge social oppression.
4. Where talent development intersects with diversity, equity, and inclusion, how it relates to talent development, and what your organization can do to get to the whole story.
5. Dr. Lisa Toppin’s suggestions for looking at inclusion and belonging and ensuring your team is making people feel as though they belong.
6. How people in L&D can incorporate DEI into everything they do to make sure that it’s part of their work, the importance of employee resource groups in that process, and leveraging the performance process and technology to make sure it’s woven in.

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