Welcome, everyone, to another episode of
The Sync Podcast, where we explore the
value of an
inclusive approach in the way we think,
work, and engage with our communities and
workplaces.
Inclusion is about ensuring no one is left
behind.
Each episode features candid conversations
with thought leaders and change makers who
are driving inclusive initiatives across
various
sectors.
Our goal is to build a community of
individuals and organizations committed to
collective and sustainable impact.
I'm your host, Nicole Piggott, and today's
episode is extra special
because my guest is not only a dedicated
advocate for inclusion and equity, she's
also my sister,
Adrienne Piggott.
Currently, Adrienne is the Associate
Director of Faculty Procurement at
McGill University, where she applies her
diverse expertise in technology, business
analysis, and
translation.
She serves on the university's Board of
Governors and chairs the Joint Board
Senate
Subcommittee for Racialized and Ethnic
Persons.
Through this work, she advocates for
policies
that increase representation, visibility,
and equity for racialized and ethnic
communities
within higher education.
She is also the President of the Board of
Directors at Teesri Duniya Theatre,
a Montreal-based company dedicated to
amplifying stories that are often unheard.
Teesri Duniya's mission,
changing the world one play at a time,
deeply resonates with Adrienne, who
believes that when we see the
humanity and others, we begin to
understand how interconnected we truly
are.
We have so much
to discuss today.
Let's dive in.
Welcome, Adrienne Piggott.
Well, welcome, Agee, Adrienne Piggott, who
is our guest today on The Sync Podcast.
It's great to have you
join us on our inaugural year of The Sync
Podcast.
It would not be launched without having a
great member
of my family.
For those of you who know me, I come from
a family of advocates and supporters of
more
inclusive workplace multi-generationally,
and my sister and I were raised in a
household that was
atypical in terms of the progressiveness
that we were raised with, supporting
communities, advocating
for communities.
And so I am so thrilled to have my sister,
Adrienne Piggott, join us on The Sync
Podcast.
So welcome, Agee
Thank you, Nikki.
Nicole, it's going to be odd me getting
used to saying that.
Yes, it's going to be all formal.
Yeah, I'll try.
I make no promises.
Exactly.
But thank you so much for inviting me.
I'm really thrilled to be here and so
proud of the work you
are doing with Synclusiv.
So I'm glad you invited me to be part of
this inaugural year.
But as you said, we come from a family of
changemakers and people who advocate for
people
who are voiceless or whose voices are not
being heard.
And I love that every generation of our
family has been doing this work.
So glad to be here.
Well, actually, it's a great segue into my
first question, which is really, I know
your fantastic
background.
But, you know, share with my audience,
your journey to becoming an inclusive
person or
embracing that part of the way we were
raised.
I think it's, you know, one of those
things where you don't even realize you're
doing it until someone
mentions that that's what you're doing in
that you're raised in a family where
that's just normal.
That's what your life looks like.
And I think from even early childhood, you
recognize
the areas in which
you are privileged.
I think, you know, we often talk about
other people's privilege, but I recognize
that in our family
we were privileged.
We had two brilliant parents
who were incredibly supportive, who gave
us
love and education and access to
experiences
that many other people didn't have.
And that gave me an opportunity to
recognize that there were people around me
who did not have
those same opportunities.
So, I mean, from a young age, it was even
things like tutoring
young people from, you know,
economically depressed backgrounds.
So I did some of that with friends when I
was younger.
And then volunteering for the BASF, for
which you are continuing Mother, Mom's
legacy.
That was
one of the organizations that I
volunteered with early on.
I'm helping dad with the QBMA,
the Quebec Black Medical Association.
And then, you know, moving forward from
there into some of my own endeavors where
I
am now working as, you know, President of
the Board for Teesri Duniya Theatre, which is a
social justice
theatre company that tries to bring
marginalized voices and stories to the
Montreal theatre scene.
And then, of course, the work I do at
McGill as chair of the racialized and
ethnic persons
subcommittee, which I've been sharing,
chairing since 2011.
Wow.
And as member of the board for the
university, which I've been doing for I
can't remember how many years
now, but also ensuring that the
underrepresented voices of the university
are heard at the big table
where the decisions are made.
So, yeah, years and years of just trying
to be seen.
And I love how what you're demonstrating
is that it's not sort of a linear path.
It's not necessarily focusing in just one
area of advocacy.
You've shown a breadth of areas where
you've shown that you can manifest that
inclusive voice,
that voice of supporting and bringing
people in.
McGill is an old academic institution.
It has a very, you know, a laudable
reputation in the academic community.
It's well known.
It's been immortalized on television.
And so I can imagine that change is
something that is not necessarily easy to
implement in an institution
that's actually been rewarded for the
structures and systems that it currently
has in place.
So talk to me about how you take on that
role of bringing and progressing
diversity, equity,
and inclusion in an institution that is a
longstanding institution, celebrated
institution like McGill University.
Well, as you know, we grew up at the
dinner table with dad, who also a
McGillian, our first McGillian,
you know, telling us the stories of what
he lived as a McGillian joining in 1973.
And I can tell you that what we live at
McGill is not unlike what happens at most
universities,
any university that's not essentially an
HBCU or founded for a specific community.
And in fact, academia is fundamentally a
colonial institution.
It's designed for a specific demographic,
and it's constructed to support that
demographic.
So there's very much a specific gaze to
the way the curriculum is built, to the
way the structures are
implemented, to the way we support the
communities that we support.
And it's slow to change because there's
been so much praise for what universities
bring to the
world in their current structure.
And so trying to explain to them why that
structure is in fact flawed and in many
ways just fundamentally
and foundationally broken is not easy.
I'm not going to pretend that this is an
easy road.
I know that there are people who, you
know, turn around and head straight for
their offices when
they see me coming down the hall because
they know I'm coming to tell them that
what they're doing is
not okay.
And that's, it's always hard when you're
asking the people who have benefited from
the system
to change the system that allowed them to
get to where they are.
Yes.
And that's what we're asking universities
to do.
And this is not just McGill.
This is a lot of the universities are
going through this reckoning
and trying to get them to recognize how
deeply ingrained the issues lie.
I think I told you once the story that I
try to present to them to give them an
understanding
of how deeply entrenched this white
Western gaze is in the, in the curriculum.
And I use the story of the history of
opera as my sort of jumping off point to
tell them that
McGill has a celebrated music school and
an absolutely brilliant opera program.
And I love the opera program.
I've been to the lectures.
I go to the performances.
We have brilliant students who do
extremely well.
When they teach the history of opera, they
teach it as though it began
in Italy in the 1700s.
When in fact, opera began in China a
thousand years earlier.
Yeah.
But they consider that to be Chinese
opera, which is somehow different from
European opera.
But if you look at it, it's exactly the
same structurally.
The same tropes, the same delivery, the
same duration, the same libretto concept.
All of it is the same.
But of course, Chinese music sounds
different from European music and Chinese
stories are different
from European stories.
And so that's sort of an ethnic thing that
they do over there.
Opera is European opera, Italian and
German.
And they don't recognize that that's a
huge part of how academia cements and
solidifies.
And perpetuates and perpetuates this
non-inclusive one group made everything.
The rest of you benefit from our
brilliance narrative.
And sort of trying to show this to them,
holding the mirror up, never particularly
well received.
And a lot of pushback, a lot of
justification for why I'm seeing it the
wrong way or I shouldn't
interpret it that way.
I understand because it's scary.
It's scary to be told that maybe you
didn't earn your spot.
It's scary to be told that maybe the
things you thought you could claim as your
contribution
to the world maybe weren't yours.
I get it.
But what I think they don't recognize is
all of the opportunities as a collective
that we
would have if we recognized the brilliance
that comes from all the pockets of the
world.
Exactly.
You know, I think that story is so telling
because we see that even, you know, it
just
triggered in my head was pasta.
We, you know, people attribute pasta as
sort of an Italian creation when again,
it's Asian, it's Asian and, you know,
people don't really make those connections
and those
not making those connections dismisses the
history and the contributions of others.
And in my, in the work that we do, what we
see is that it has, you know, multitude of
damaging
impacts, but one of those damaging impacts
is people internalize that history and
they accept
that history and are denied even
acknowledgement of their own cultural
history to greatness.
And it's hard to see yourself as part of
greatness when your cultural history has
been denied in
that narrative.
So I think that's a great example because
I think you just learned something new
audience.
I think a lot of you probably didn't know
about the origins of, of opera.
So one of the things that we talk about a
lot is contrasts in the workplace of the
demographic
of people who are in the, let's say the
worker roles, and then the demographics of
the leadership.
And we see that stark contrast in the
academic world, just like the,
the, um, you know, the workplace, um, and,
or the corporate world.
And so talk to me a little bit, because to
me, what's the disconnect for me in
academia
is literally you are developing
intellectually and professionally people
who should be able to
to take on the successor role of
leadership in your organization.
And that pool is getting more and more and
has been quite for quite some time, quite
diverse.
And then yet we see not as much change in
the representation of leadership
in, um, academic institutions with the
exception, I would say with, we're
starting to see more
white women moving into senior leadership
roles in academic institutions, but beyond
that, not much
else.
So talk to me a little bit about what you
think, why that is and what needs to
change.
Well, it's a bit of the, I'll use the
local expression.
So we do, we develop the research, we
engage in the research, we produce the
research that
demonstrates the value of diverse lived
experience, diverse thinking, diverse, you
know, all of the
ways in which diversity can benefit
institutions and organizations.
We publish that research,
but we don't implement it for ourselves.
And that's true.
I would say almost across the board,
I've worked in various areas, as you know,
I was in it in my earlier part of my
career,
and we did not implement the findings of
it in our own internal it systems either.
We don't learn
from the research we do ourselves.
Yes.
I mean, it's kind of, you know, funny if,
well,
it would be funny if it wasn't so damaging
at times.
But I think what happens as well is in a
lot of
academic circles, there's a sense of, yes,
that's what's happening out there.
There.
These are the problems of the out there
that we study.
These aren't the problems of the in here,
because we're academics and we clearly
must know better.
So we aren't doing those things.
There's a
real reticence to turn that gaze inward to
see, wait, am I also doing the things that
society is doing?
Yes,
you are part of society.
And so you are experiencing all of the
same, you know, patterns and, and you also
live in the same soup that we all the rest
of the world you're in lives in.
So you're educating the
people who are going out and modeling
those behaviors in society.
Why do you think that
somehow they walk outside the door and
become someone else?
And there's someone else within your
institution.
You're part of the fabric of those systems
and processes that sustain the status quo.
So yeah.
So then really go ahead.
There's also a really narrow view of
excellence.
And that's part of
the problem.
Yeah.
So I think there's this sense of when
you're reviewing someone's application or
someone's path to leadership in the
university setting, what internships have
you had?
Who have
you worked under?
Who was your supervisor?
Well, if you come from, you know, South,
Sub-Saharan Africa,
what access did you have to being mentored
by a Henry Mintzberg at the School of
Management at McGill?
What access did you have to the big names
that people have seen to study under?
It's far more
limited than the person who was raised in
affluence in, you know, the global West or
the global North.
Obviously those students have greater
access to the things that academia already
recognizes
as excellent.
And so changing that mindset that there
are other ways to view excellence,
that the knowledge keeper from the
indigenous community that kept the
language alive against all odds
is a demonstration of excellence.
That the person in sub-Saharan Africa
who's managed to find creative
ways to create an economy to keep their
community afloat is excellence.
All of these things that aren't looked
that on paper as being demonstrations of
excellence, there's a template that they
use.
It's funny you should, you should give
those examples because one of the things
that I often prompt people to
think about is
is what it takes for someone who a doesn't
see themselves in the examples of
excellence in the models
of excellence that are presented to them.
B is essentially navigating systems that
were not designed for
them to be able to be successful and to
excel.
And yet they do.
The muscles, the skills, the competencies
that
those people need to have built and
demonstrate is excellence in of itself.
And so what you're already getting
from that person is something you're not
getting from which would be complementary
to someone who hasn't had to do all those
things.
So imagine the power of having those two
profiles together doing work versus
someone who just has one of those profiles
doing that work.
And that's really what I want people to
think about.
The multiplier effect of the two different
experiences and profiles to excellence
versus the same old, same old.
It to me, it's so patently obvious, but
you know, this is the dialogue that we
need to be having with folks to help them
to understand.
So I'm going to go ahead.
I just wanted to add on that something
briefly, a little sort of story of how I'm
trying to
push that a little bit within the student
group at McGill because I've had the
opportunity to host a
number of what we call community
citizenship sessions on campus.
And one of the things that I did with
those was.
So what are community citizenship
sessions?
So community citizenship sessions are
where we bring in people who are about to
become Canadian citizens who
come through what I would call the more
difficult paths, whether it's refugee
claimants or people who've come
through the longer process of, of, you
know, family sponsorships of, of, um,
people from,
I would say the global South or people who
come from difficult circumstances or
fleeing conflict.
And they come together and we host
citizenship ceremonies for them where the
community welcomes them in.
And the way we do that is they come in.
We have a big discussion about their
journey with people facilitating
conversation at the table.
We usually have an indigenous elder do an
actual welcome to the land so that they
actually meet an
indigenous person who will speak to them
and welcome them to Canadian soil.
And then we have their ceremony and then
we celebrate their becoming a Canadian
citizen.
But what I like to do is also invite a
student who is most likely born in Canada
or born, you know,
into the global north to come and
facilitate those sessions, but also to
hear those stories.
I did the first time I was invited to do
this.
It resonated with me because as you know,
I'm the only
member of our immediate family who was
born in Canada.
So you mom and dad were born in the
Caribbean
and I was born here.
So I had not had the immigrant experience.
I arrived in Canada as a Canadian.
But I thought it was important for our
students to hear what it takes for someone
who potentially has
left their family behind for sometimes a
decade as they attempt to make their way
in Canada, build a,
you know, build roots, find a job, get a
home, find community.
For many of them, they hadn't even seen
their family in all that time because
until they became citizens, they didn't
have a passport.
If they were
a refugee, they didn't have access to
going back and their family couldn't come
see them because it wasn't
safe.
And they made all of those sacrifices to
build that opportunity for themselves.
And the day of
becoming a citizen was the day that all of
these doors were opening for them.
Obviously, it's an
extremely joyous and moving experience,
but I also think it's important for the
younger people that I
would invite to see the immense amount of
resourcefulness and tenacity and effort
and creativity it takes
to start your life over to start your life
over in a new country when many of them
arrived knowing no one.
And sometimes and not even knowing the
language, any of the languages of Canada.
So, you know, or sorry,
the English or French, the strength of
character, the courage that it takes to
leave all what you know behind
for the unknown, it takes a huge amount of
courage and I think people don't take the
time to really
reflect on that.
So I think that's a great way of helping
people without ramming it down their
throats,
without talking to them about it.
Let them experience and hear it firsthand
out of the mouth
of someone who's lived it, what that
journey feels like.
Yeah.
So just so that for my audience,
my parents, my father got a scholarship at
University of Toronto comes from a very,
very
A family that a family that struggled
economically all of their lives.
Like my grandfather was a migrant
worker in the southern United States
during the forties and the fifties and
sixties and frankly,
seventies.
And so you can well imagine what that was
like for him.
And he developed a perspective
on white people on a North American
society and the power structure and he
raised, he and his wife, my,
my grandmother raised nine children who
have all economically moved up at least
into the middle and upper middle
class.
And so this is really a testament to that
commitment and frankly sacrifice that a
lot of immigrant
parents make in order to, you know,
provide opportunity for the next
generations of their, of their family.
And this is something that those of us who
live in a privileged life don't really
appreciate the
privilege that we have and that the
journeys that others people undertake.
So let's shift gears here.
And I'm, I'm going to go there.
We universities have historically been the
place of curiosity,
challenging the, the power structures,
questioning, um, you know, the, the powers
that be
often much like journalism, shedding light
on, on injustice and bringing truth to
light.
And in the last
while we've seen an odd dynamic evolving
in university campuses, frankly, across
the Western world where
there's been a shift sort of questioning
the behaviour, the notion of challenging
power structures,
manifesting your right to, uh, protest.
And so what are you seeing evolving and
why are,
why do you think this value, this paradigm
shift is, has occurred and, you know,
where is that disconnect
coming from money?
It's where all the shifts come from.
I mean, to be perfectly honest, what we're
experiencing now is in part a, the
backlash against intellectualism, which
we're seeing,
you know, widespread.
And yes, the internet has some part to
play in that, but I also think it does
come
back to the democratization of education
is beneficial for those of us further down
on the food chain, but
it's not beneficial to the people at the
top of the food chain.
There's a definite problem if we all know
things.
So there's, to my mind, clearly a money
motivation behind why dissent is being
pushed down
on now.
But I also think that what's happening is
toppling longstanding institutions, being
willing to
stand up and say, wait, that's not okay.
In the ways in which we are doing it now
is a little bit different
from the way it happened in the past.
And the, what, what I mean by that is,
again, in part because of
the internet, we see each other now.
So I may not have seen what was happening
in Palestine or in Ukraine
50 years ago, but tribalism has shifted
now.
We're no longer just concerned about the
person who lives next
or the person who is from the same
ancestral lineage that we are from.
For many people, our community is
the people who are aligned with us
morally, ethically, culturally, from a,
from sort of a geopolitical sense.
So all of a sudden, the people who are
rising up to say that's not okay, aren't
just the people who have
ties directly to Palestine.
It's people like me, people like my Jewish
partner, people like all kinds of
people, because we can see now in a way
that we couldn't before.
And so not only are the numbers of
people who are saying, who are standing up
growing, but it's also much harder to dupe
them, to tell them
what's happening versus them knowing
what's happening, seeing what's happening.
And so the need to control it
has grown.
The need to stamp it down has grown
because we can actually find out for
ourselves.
We can rally much more easily.
I can reach out to someone who's not in
the same classroom as I am,
who's in another school, who's in another
town, who's in another country, and tell
them this is happening
here and I need help.
And I think, again, it's another one of
those moments where we are definitely
upsetting
the structures that have allowed the
people who've maintained power to maintain
it.
And that is a big part of why I think
there's this need to quell the dissent.
You'll notice that when
they did pass the legislation to protect
academic freedom, the things it protected
was the right of
people in power to say terrible things
about people who've always been
marginalized.
But in this moment of
huge support for ending the genocide in
Gaza, for ending, you know, the land grab
in Ukraine,
what you're hearing is that sounds a lot
like you're against this group of people.
None of what I said had anything to do
with the group of people.
It had to do with you need to stop
slaughtering the folks that you've kept in
an open air prison for 70 years.
But again, because this is
the way of trying to maintain the status
quo that keeps those people who have
benefited from the system
able to benefit from the system.
Yeah.
I think what I'm hearing from you is much
what we hear when we hear the backlash
just generally against equity, diversity
and inclusion.
This notion, I think it's fear.
Fear of the disruption,
fear of the change, fear of, to your
point, what does that mean for me, myself
and I?
:
This world I know, this is the world I've
benefited from, and therefore do not touch
this world,
please.
And what you're raising, the injustices,
the frankly, the violence, the inequities,
is shaking and shattering my perception of
myself and where I fit in this world.
And because it evokes fear in me, my first
reaction is to fight back against that
fear or what we think
is the cause of that fear.
And I think the whole reaction of the
power structure of these institutions,
Or the donors of these institutions
against students who are protesting and
doing what students do, folks.
Just so that you know, when I was on
campus, there was, I don't think any one
of us who's been on a campus in the last
60 years,
I don't think any one of us who's been on
campus, but I don't think any one of us
who has been on campus.
I don't think any one of us, but I don't
think any one of us has been on campus.
I don't think any one of us has been on
campus.
Way back to, you know, the early, the
suffragette movement, you know, way, way,
way back.
That has been a part of these sorts of
institutions, but there was always a sense
before that the power
structure was not going to be shaken by
the things that you were fighting against
because it would
still keep a small pocket in that space
and not necessarily a large group of
people.
And to your point with the, with social
media bringing the world closer, all of a
sudden the sheer numbers is intimidating.
The sheer support is intimidating and
destabilizing.
And we haven't really given the tools to
the power structure.
And the power structure
hasn't developed the tools to navigate the
new, the new world that we are, we're
occupying.
You know, we've adapted or we've like
capitalized on this, but you know, some of
these folks, because the status quo is
very comforting and it served them well,
are a little slower to say, how do I adapt
to this new world?
So let's talk a little bit about, you
know, you it being in a part of an
institution that really
is the last stepping stone for a lot of
people into their future adult lives,
their careers,
their professional, their professional
lives.
And in some cases, like in my case, even
your personal life.
I met my husband at McGill.
Um, actually I didn't meet him at McGill,
but we were both McGill students.
Um, but she met him on the bus.
I did, I did meet him on the bus, but 30,
30 plus years later, two kids later.
Clearly that bus was a
monumental point in my life.
So what advice would you have?
Because I know you do a lot of mentoring
of students.
You do a lot of support for students.
So what are the, like, what is the advice
that you have for students
who are leaving the academic world and
moving into the workplace on two fronts,
on how do you navigate that shift?
It's a very different world from the
academic, the student life to the
professional life.
But also how do we make sure that some of
this empathy, this, this awareness of
these imbalances
is actually something that they carry
through in their careers and become like
us advocates, allies, and change makers.
Well, it's interesting to say that, um,
last week I was at the thesis defence of
one of the students
who'd been in my subcommittee, who has
secured her spot in a tenure track
position at the University at Manitoba,
who's absolutely brilliant.
I'm so proud.
Um, but what I have always told them is
know your worth.
:
Imposter syndrome is a problem.
I think that some, you know, women suffer
from people of colour can suffer from.
But part of that is that is to, you know,
just come full circle, internalizing some
of the experiences
that you've had and some of the lessons
you've been taught and learning to shake
that off and and to recognize your
worth.
You are smart.
You're capable.
You're deserving.
You're worthy.
And take that with you out into the world
because it's true.
If you made it through, McGill, believe
me, you are worthy.
Whatever you you get out in the world,
you've earned and own that because it's
true.
The other thing I tell them is community.
It's really important
to have people that you don't have to
explain the details of your lived
experience to.
I still meet
regularly with a group of people who I
don't have to tell them when someone has
said something that I know exactly what
the subtext of that sentiment was.
They know.
And I don't have to
justify or explain why it's upsetting and
why I'm hurt by it.
They understand.
And having that community of people
who will validate your experience, will
help you to navigate it, will give you new
tools that maybe you didn't have.
Incredibly important.
Incredibly
centering because there's a lot of - I
always call it the sanity check.
There's a lot of questioning.
Maybe it is me.
Maybe I am being the one who's too
sensitive.
Maybe I'm overreacting.
And it's good to have community who will
tell you, no,
no, no, that thing that you experienced is
real.
It happened, and it's not okay.
It makes a huge difference in how you
approach your next step because then you
feel strong and firm when you confront the
situation.
When you go back and say, that thing you
did, I - it's not acceptable and you
shouldn't do it again.
And I
I won't - I won't accept it if you try to
do it again.
Be a little bit fearless.
It can feel hard, but it's worth it in the
end because you want to walk away from
every situation with your
self-esteem and your dignity intact.
It - it's easy to lose that if you let
people wear you down.
So sometimes you just have to speak up and
there might be a consequence to it, but
it's usually worth it.
I've had my heart racing in meetings where
I knew I was about to say something that I
recognized would have consequences,
but I had to say it.
So I did.
And I just decided that if it led to a
difficult moment for me in the future, I
was willing to take that - those lumps,
because I couldn't let what had just
transpired sit there unaddressed.
And so I did those things.
And then sometimes you have to take your
own - you have to
take it upon yourself to do something that
in other circumstances you recognize other
people wouldn't have to do.
Because you have an opportunity to make
space for yourself, for your community,
for others
who maybe are more marginalized than you
are, who don't have the access and the
privilege that you have.
I - you know, I think you've just shared
such powerful tools for - I think,
frankly, for people who are starting out
their careers,
but equally for people who are already in
their careers.
I can tell you, as someone who's on the -
the other side of the mountain in terms of
my career,
I'm nearing the end of what I would say,
you know, a long - a long career.
And I realized, looking back in that rear
view window, the number of times that I've
catastrophized
a situation where I thought, if I do this,
like, the absolute worst thing is going to
happen to me.
And one of the advantages, frankly, of
doing that is seldom did I ever experience
anything that was even close to the - the
absolute catastrophe
that I had envisioned - envisaged as a
result of the decision I was going to make
to speak up or to push back or to reframe
something.
And so one of the things that I found has
been very helpful - and this is to build
on Adrienne's concept of
community - is I often - and Adrienne
knows this because she's a very close and
intimate part of my sounding board - I go
back to that community
and I will play out a scenario and say,
okay, this is what I want to do, and how
does this sound - you know, is this too
abrasive?
Is this triggering?
Like, is there - is there a way that I can
say this that is better - will be better
received?
And you can use that community to help you
to play this out in a way to achieve the
goal that you are looking for.
And sometimes that means also taking a
step back to say the goal is not to be
self-righteous.
The goal is to effect change and to bring
about the objective that you are seeking.
And sometimes it means not getting the
validation or the - getting that righteous
anger
validated by the exchange that you are
going to undertake.
So that's where your community can serve
to vent, get it off your chest, and then
say, what's my game plan?
So excellent, excellent suggestions and
recommendations.
The last thing I would add to what
Adrienne is saying is, as you move up the
echelons,
don't forget where you came from, don't
forget the experiences that you had.
That you have the power when you reach
those senior echelons, as Adrienne has -
as I've been fortunate to do as well - to
look around you and say, whose path am I
going to ease the way for?
Because I now have the power to be able to
be able to do that.
Your struggle does not have to be the
struggle of everyone who follows you.
In fact, your obligation and
responsibility as someone who has overcome
those struggles
is to look around you and figure out who
you're going to help ease their struggle
to get to move forward.
And that's from my mother, Adrienne and
like our mother drilled this into our
heads.
She is someone who was an advocate for
women and other underrepresented groups,
paving their way.
She was often the one who would go and
take the brunt of the the knocks on the
chin,
because she'd speak up on the other
person's behalf to help to pave the way
for them.
So do that if you have the power to do
that.
So we're reaching the end of our our
segment on The Sync Podcast, and we always
end our segments
with a last question that we call The Sync
Spotlight.
And it's really how the question is really
around how do you ensure that you are
living those values
in everything that you do as you are
navigating the academic world, which is
not easy.
The context that you're in it, sometimes
I'm sure you feel it'd be easier to just
say,
"Oh, I need a break." So how do you
continue to keep those values alive and
manifesting them
in the way that you live your life?
I would tell you that the biggest part for
me is that none of this is about me or for
me at this
stage.
It's about the community.
I recognize that still in this world,
having the right degree from the right
university
makes a difference.
It opens doors for people.
There's no question.
Saying you graduated from McGill in the
world today is still a passport
that will take you further than saying you
graduated from a community college in some
random town in the US.
Yes, it's just that's just facts.
And for me, what bolsters me and keeps me
going and ensures that I
remember that that's the mission is that I
check in with the students that I mentor
regularly and see how they're doing.
When I get invited to a thesis defence
from a student that was in one of my
committees and invites me to see their,
you know, their moment in the sun of
getting their doctorate, all of these
moments.
I go to every convocation, every
convocation.
Dad thinks I'm crazy.
But that to me is the moment where I see
that, you know, the culmination of all
that effort.
None of what I do is about me.
I don't care if no one ever says,
Adrienne made this happen.
I don't care.
It makes no difference to me.
What I love to see
is more students making it through the
McGill process successfully and then
telling their younger
sibling, you can come to McGill.
You'll be okay.
You can do it.
And then you can go out into the world and
effect change.
Every time I hear a story of success,
every time someone says to me, you know
what?
It was easier or better than I thought it
would be.
To me, that's all.
That's all that matters,
that the road was made easier for someone.
And it's easy to live those values because
those values are about
seeing the potential in someone grow and
come to fruition and then grow further,
watching the world become a better.
I get to watch the world become a better
place in real time.
It's an incredible, incredible privilege.
It's not hard to keep that momentum going.
And you don't need to work in a university
to do it.
Just find your space where you know you
can be effective and you'll see it for
yourself.
I know you do.
I know your daughters do.
Dad always said his legacy was his
students, and he still says that now.
And that's definitely something that I
feel.
Every time, I mean, we didn't touch on it
this time,
but even when I work with the theatre
company, when young playwrights play gets
performed, I'm like,
what else do I need?
Like this is, I mean, this is all joy.
So.
You know, I love that because that's, you
know, folks, this is another value that
was instilled in us.
It's never been about us.
You know, what we achieve, we get enough
validation.
We have a fantastic family,
and I get all the validation I need, and
the accolades I need from the family that
I have
and the people I love and care about who
think that I'm pretty terrific.
And so I don't need that.
What I do want to see is a better world.
I want to see a world where we are able as
a society to achieve our full potential,
and that people are able to be their best
selves in the world and take their place
in the world.
That's the world that I try to build.
And to your point, Agee, it's not about
us.
:
It's about what we can do and what we can
affect.
So, you know, this has been wonderful.
You know, we seldom get a chance to sort
of deep dive into some of these topics,
despite the fact that Sunday dinner at the
Piggott House and that's the extended
family all comes together for Sunday
dinner.
We talk about some of these issues that
are going on in the world,
but we never really spend time talking
about our journey and the things that
we've done.
So it's been a real opportunity for me to
get a real window on your journey.
So, um, for the audience, I want you to
know that we will provide all the contact
information for
Teesri so that you can go and check out
these fantastic plays.
Um, and also, uh, Adrienne's contact
information so that if you want to connect
with her, uh, you can.
:
But I just want to thank you, Adrienne,
for being part of this, uh, podcast
series.
I, I knew you were fantastic and
brilliant, but now the world gets to see
that I'm surrounded by
fantastic, brilliant people and we all can
play a role in the worlds that we occupy
to make more
inclusive workplaces and spaces.
And so please like and subscribe to our
podcast series and come see us again.
We will continue to have more brilliant
people like Adrienne Piggott on our
podcast.
Take care.
Thanks, Nicki.
Have a great one.
Thanks for inviting me.
Couldn't do it without you.
Thanks for tuning in to the Sync Podcast.
If you enjoyed today's conversation, be
sure to follow and leave a review.
The Sync Podcast is brought to you by
Synclusiv,
where we're building inclusive workplaces
that work for everyone.
To learn more about how Synclusiv can
help your organization create real,
measurable change, visit Synclusiv.com.
Until next time, stay in Sync.
