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For years, organizations have poured millions into DEI training.

And yet most employees still report discrimination. Promotion gaps persist. Trust remains uneven.

So what’s going on?

In this episode of FUTUREPROOF., I sit down with Lily Zheng — strategist and author of Fixing Fairness — to interrogate a hard truth: much of what we call DEI doesn’t work. Not because fairness is unpopular. Not because inclusion is misguided. But because we keep trying to fix people instead of fixing systems.

Lily introduces the FAIR framework — Fairness, Access, Inclusion, and Representation — and argues that the real leverage isn’t in workshops. It’s in incentives, evaluation criteria, hiring processes, and executive accountability.

We explore:

• Why standalone DEI training can backfire
• The “missing stair” metaphor — and how organizations normalize dysfunction
• The Cobra Effect of poorly designed diversity incentives
• Why representation is ultimately about trust, not optics
• What meritocracy gets wrong about itself
• And why rebranding DEI won’t solve structural problems

At a moment when DEI faces political backlash and corporate retrenchment, Lily makes a counterintuitive claim: the future of workplace inclusion will be more rigorous, more measured, and more accountable — not less.

This is a systems conversation.

Not about slogans.
Not about performative commitments.
About incentives, power, and what actually moves outcomes.

If you care about leadership, governance, and the second-order effects of institutional design, this episode will challenge you.

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For years, we treated emotional intelligence like a cultural add-on.

Nice to have.
Important, maybe.
But not central to performance.

That framing doesn’t survive the AI era.

In this episode of FUTUREPROOF., I sit down with Dr. Bushra Khan, founder of Leading with BK, to examine what actually differentiates leaders as automation compresses the knowledge gap. When AI can draft, analyze, summarize, and even simulate difficult conversations, the advantage shifts. It moves from what you know to how you show up.

Bushra has spent over 15 years helping leaders translate emotional intelligence from buzzword into operating system. We talk about why “soft skills” should be understood as strategic skills, how negativity bias quietly distorts leadership judgment, and why loneliness inside high-performing teams is less about remote work and more about emotional avoidance.

We also explore some uncomfortable tensions:

• If AI amplifies leaders, what exactly is it amplifying?
• When does candor become bluntness — and erode trust instead of building it?
• Why do leaders underestimate the emotional consequences of automation?
• What does bravery look like when decisions are both rational and painful?

Bushra argues that most organizations are still trying to fix people instead of fixing environments. They invest in workshops while ignoring incentives. They push productivity while neglecting psychological safety. They assume proximity equals connection.

But as AI takes over more technical tasks, influence becomes the real differentiator. And influence is emotional before it is analytical.

This conversation isn’t about positivity or platitudes. It’s about leadership under pressure — layoffs, automation, rapid skills shifts — and what it takes to signal trust and authority through noise.

Because the future of work won’t just test our systems.

It will test our emotional maturity.

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This episode of FUTUREPROOF. is different.

My guest is Trevor Reed, a former U.S. Marine who was wrongfully detained and abused in a Russian gulag for nearly three years, freed in a high-profile prisoner exchange in 2022—and then made a decision few could comprehend: he voluntarily went to Ukraine to fight against the same system that imprisoned him.

In this conversation, Trevor reflects on what captivity does to the human mind, how survival reshapes your definition of justice, and why freedom—real freedom—can’t be taken for granted once you’ve lost it.

We talk about:

• What daily life inside a Russian penal colony is actually like—and how close he came to dying there
• The mental discipline required to survive prolonged isolation, hunger, and uncertainty
• The emotional toll of being turned into a geopolitical bargaining chip
• Why revenge eventually gave way to a deeper definition of justice
• The surreal contrast between everyday life and active war zones in Ukraine
• Being critically wounded by a landmine—and what it means to survive twice
• How his understanding of freedom, responsibility, and humanity has fundamentally changed

This is not a conversation about politics.
It’s a conversation about power, resilience, moral injury, and what it means to remain human when systems fail you.

Trevor’s memoir, Retribution: A Former US Marine's Harrowing Journey from Wrongful Imprisonment in Russia to the Front Lines of the Ukrainian War, is not an easy read—but it is an important one. And this conversation is not comfortable—but it is necessary.