Hi everybody. I'm Monnique Bram Evans and joining us today is Clue founder and CEO Stefan Isaac. Hello Stefan. What's going on Monique? Welcome. Welcome. Thank you. Stefan, we've known each other for years. We worked at the same holding company. We were in the trenches of employee resource group work and we've had so much heart and passion for DEI. But we've never really talked about your journey, which you're going to get into today. And that's why I'm so excited for this conversation. So to begin, looking back, was there a defining moment that you thought would have led to this? No, there wasn't one moment. I think if I look back on my journey, it was a string of moments that really don't make sense until you take them all together. My journey started out like anyone else. I was born to a mother. My mother had me five months after her 18th birthday. And for the first couple of years, it was just me and her. I was born in Grenada and we immigrated to the United States at six. And I sort of point that out because being raised by a young woman who was coming into her own as just a human being in another country and trying to make sense of the cultural landscape, the educational landscape, the employment landscape. It was very new for her and I saw her try to get her footing and we were fortunate enough to sort of find that footing but for a while it really was a bit touchandgo and so I have always been kind of accustomed to an experience where you're figuring it out as you go. So coming to this country as an immigrant and trying to find and to make your way was um a bunch of moments in figuring out my identity. But you know, you play the game of life. And I found that for me, this game was this game of life kind of felt like, you know, the roll of a dice a lot of times where the opportunities that I had, the opportunities that were given was more a function of luck. And there are times when that makes sense. and you're happy when the dice roll sort of is in your favor, but there's a lot of moments where it's just not. And I just said to myself that the experience of existing in a certain space, whether that is professional or social, shouldn't be at the whims of chance and luck. M. And so again, a series of moments where whether or not I was in or out, whether or not I won or lost was dictated by luck was something that I wanted to see if I could address because unfortunately um stigma and bias is more powerful than ability. So you can be incredibly talented, but stereotypes are stronger than that. Yes. First of all, I'm West Indian. Shout out to the West Indian Masa out there. Where are you from? Jamaica. Okay. So, I totally get that that immigrant background and it's it's a new country and it's a whole new landscape to navigate. Um, so shout out to your mom. Yeah. I mean it it is just I look back my mother had four kids and she had four at like 26. Jeez. And as a father I say to myself, how did you do it? How? Four kids, a young woman in this country. The first job that she had was in White Castle and it was a night job and she would leave me at home in our apartment in Brooklyn. Are you the first born? I am the first born. I could tell all the markings of one. Me too. And my mother's favorite. Oh, your siblings better listen to this. Oh my god. They hear it all the time. They hear it all the time. I shouldn't tease them about it, but um you know in those early days the only job that my mother could find was a night job working in White Castle and she would leave me at home by myself at night and come back in the morning, you know, and I loved it because she would come back with a tray of burgers, but you know, she had to make a set of sacrifices that Now, I don't know if I could make those tradeoffs like with my son and keeping him home at night. So, like I just really really admire her resolve and grit and determination. Um, and a lot of that I sort of have adopted and and you know have taken in my own life as well. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Um, you kind of alluded to it but I want to dig a little deeper. your career, I know this personally, your career has taken a lot of unexpected turns. Um, but did you ever see it leading to here? Did I see myself running a company that helped organizations wrestle with unconscious bias and culture? No. M I think at first what I wanted was to be seen and to be heard in an organization and as you know we worked for the same holding company and a lot of our work there was creating community for marginalized and underrepresented individuals so that they can could bring their full selves to bear um in their roles you know and at that time it was just about voice and platform. But I think in doing that work and you remember you were one of the first people that I talked about talked to about this idea of understanding the experiences of individuals who have marginalized identities and how we can use those stories to create buy in and to expand the perspectives of individuals who just don't share those identities. And at first it was just about sharing that and then it led to how could we create interventions to prevent these experiences from happening. And so like I did not see myself in this space. I just had some questions around how could the experience of individuals like me be better and then those questions led to ideas on how to create environments where everyone felt as though that they belong. And so it's just a a series of steps where you don't see the outcome initially. You're just sort of moving forward. Let's talk about that for a minute because we're in such a interesting time and space right now, right? The climate, the environment, there's a lot going on and I feel like uh a lot of people are struggling with non-traditional career paths. Yeah. And you've had that. But how are you able to be so clear on your purpose throughout all of those unexpected turns? Yeah. I think recently I have adopted this mantra and it is that I have turned my story into my song. Ooh, that's beautiful. And it wasn't until I did that that I fully embraced all the dimension the dimensionality of who I am and my experiences. And to your point, yeah, I have a very I look like a hot mess on resume. Like on a resume, let's talk about it. I went to school for computer programming. Okay. I moved on to education reform. I started a nail salon business in Brooklyn. Of course you did. Mhm. I was in advertising and now I sort of um am an entrepreneur in the space. And for a long time I thought that my experience was just a collection of sort of misfit toys that it couldn't be put together in a way that made sense for other people. nail salon, you know, programmer, um, education reform, like advertising. Uh, it it just didn't make sense. But I started to see my narrative as something that was bigger than myself. And I began to see my experience as having a universal message to it. And so I leaned into both my triumphs and my struggles. I leaned into the highs and the lows and began to sort of use all of those experiences as the storytelling for helping people understand their place in the world. Because the truth is, I mean, we're not always just the, you know, these beautiful people having beautiful lives, you know. I I think someone said that um thank God we don't look like what we've been through and we are all these sort of collections of beautiful experiences but have been shaped by experiences that have been you know a lot more challenging. I have another one for you. We're born looking like our mommy and daddy. We die looking like our choices. O isn't that truth? M love it.