Jess Von Bank is the picture of success in the workplace: A recognized thought leader, Mercer’s global head for its HR transformation and technology advisory, and the president of a Minneapolis nonprofit called Diverse Daisies.
But when Jess talks about today’s workplace and the future of work, she’s not focused on getting ever more productivity or profit out of people. That mode of work is broken. Rather, she’s interested in connecting our life’s passions into work, creating support systems for our youth so they can thrive and rejecting the notion that humans were designed to be task-completing machines.
“We’re still in the early stages of understanding the real value of everything we’re doing right now,” she says. “If I create 30% more capacity from somebody … I’m just creating more capacity for that human to do more additional work instead of doing higher-order work or instead of actually getting some time back as a human being.”
Read on to learn more about how Jess wants to change the world of work, how Diverse Daisies is helping young girls, and much more.
Why Your Passions in Life Matter at Work
One of the reasons work matters is because it’s so intertwined with our lives. Loving your work is exceedingly difficult if it doesn’t align with any of your personal values or passions. Fortunately for Jess, this isn’t an obstacle at Mercer.
“Yes, it’s HR, HR consulting technology, but we’re really talking about work in the workplace,” Jess says of her job. “It’s a big part of our lives in terms of how we fulfill purpose and find meaning and value in our lives, and it has a big part to do with how we thrive as humans and connect to other humans.”
Jess is the mother of three girls, which influenced her other major workplace passion, being president of the nonprofit Diversity Daisies. This Minneapolis-area nonprofit helps young girls gain access to a wide range of resources, opportunities and perspectives, from fun social activities to learning from civic and business leaders.
Jess had a good childhood and embraced the hustle required by the business world. But she also recognizes that not everyone has those opportunities or that mindset — and that workplaces disadvantage those people. That’s where her passions intersect again.
“I think about my passion for girls and bringing girls up into a world that deserves them, and then I look at the workplace and everything we’re trying to do from that perspective … I see that we can do better at work. I see that we can do better for girls and all kinds of other people,” Jess says.
How Scaffolding Creates Space for Youth and Employees
Scaffolding is a support structure for construction and other work crews as they assemble, repair or restore buildings. Crews need scaffolding to access crucial areas, but when the job is done, you can remove the scaffolding without fear.
Now consider the idea of “scaffolding” in youth development, as the chess grandmaster Maurice Ashley did when teaching the game to children. Jess describes scaffolding as “creating a structure of support and a belief system and resources and tools that allowe access to a space they might not otherwise consider for themselves.”
She applies this concept to her work with Diverse Daisies, where scaffolding helps young girls by providing a safe place to develop their confidence and skills, to access experiences and mentorship they might not enjoy otherwise.
In the workplace, we can similarly build scaffolding to help employees feel safe, but that’s not enough. Low-ranking, low-status, low-morale employees, Jess says, “don’t feel a sense of scaffolding. They can’t even see the scaffolding …. And so that’s a huge gap for HR and business leaders to think about, especially with all of the ways work is changing.”
With artificial intelligence and other technologies upending the workplace and the skills needed to thrive, we need scaffolding more than ever — not just to help them thrive, but to prevent them from getting lost and losing hope.
Why Our Purpose Is More Than Work
For all the well-meaning talk of purpose in the workplace, Jess points out how flawed this construct is.
“We made up the fact that work is the way we fulfill our purpose and contribute value to the world and to humanity,” she says. “What if somebody told me that healing work was the new way for me to contribute value, not putting a clock in somebody’s workplace?”
Similarly, the 40-hour workweek is a construct, not a law of human nature. We made up these rules, Jess notes, so we can create new ones that better serve our humanity in this new era.
What Jess has learned through her career and her work at Diversity Daisies is the value of amplifying your voice through connection. How can you scale your impact and your purpose?
“It might be through other people. It might be finding allies and building an army and finding your tribe,” she says. “What that does, it not only amplifies the impact and the effect you can have, it actually gives permission. It extends permission as a really powerful thing.”
People in This Episode
Jess Von Bank: LinkedIn, Diverse Daisies
Transcript
Jess Von Bank:
First, we have to understand that the purpose of creating more human capacity isn’t to do more work. Again, we’re still in the early stages of understanding the real value of everything we’re doing right now. If I create 30% more capacity from somebody who’s — because I’m going to automate all of the menial routine stuff that can be automated. All I’m doing right now, today, in the current year that we’re in and the current conversations we’re having, I’m just creating more capacity for that human to do more additional work instead of doing higher-order work or instead of actually getting some time back as a human being. So I think we sort of need new constructs for the ways and time that we have to contribute value.
Tegan Trovato:
Hey, there. Welcome to the Life and Leadership Podcast. I’m your host, Tegan Trovato, founder and CEO of Bright Arrow Coaching. In this show, we dive deep into how leaders like you can turn business challenges into personal growth opportunities. Whether you’re a seasoned executive or an aspiring leader, this podcast is your go-to resource for unlocking your full potential in both your professional and personal life. Join me as we hear from executives, experts, and innovators about their leadership journeys and learn how to develop better strategies and activate them for success. So if you are ready to fuel your journey to becoming an extraordinary leader who makes a lasting impact, you’re in the right place. Let’s dive in.
In this episode, we’re talking about the future of work and the critical role youth development plays in shaping it. Joining me today is Jess Von Bank, a global thought leader, analyst and advisor on HR transformation, digital experience, and workforce technology at Mercer. Jess also leads Diverse Daisies, a Minneapolis nonprofit that provides enrichment and empowerment activities for young girls, helping them build confidence and life skills. Jess explores how connecting daily work to passion can drive meaningful change and why it’s crucial to prepare our youth for the future of work. She also discusses the concept of scaffolding, which involves creating supportive environments that foster growth and success for young girls and adult employees alike. Our conversation highlights the power of mentorship, support systems, and creating pathways for young women to thrive. Jess’s experiences offer valuable lessons for enhancing workplace culture and employee development. So join us for an inspiring conversation about contributing to a brighter future for both the next generation and today’s workforce.
Jess Von Bank, thank you for joining us on the podcast today.
Jess Von Bank:
Absolutely. Thank you for having me.
Tegan Trovato:
For listeners to know, the way Jess and I came together is we have countless connections in common, but we also had some similar career experiences over the years in talent acquisition. I’ll have Jess talk about her background here in a minute, but Jess is at a point in her own trajectory that she shared with me that I really wanted her to be able to share with our listeners in terms of being able to really connect her daily work to her passion. And we’re going to explore a lot today about why it’s important to develop our youth for the sake of the future of work and how we might go about doing that. And certainly I’ve taken some inspiration from Jess’s story. I know that you all will today as well. So Jess, let’s start by, if you will, just tell listeners what it is you do all day and why you’re doing it at work.
Jess Von Bank:
Oh, that’s an interesting question, what I do versus who I am. I’m lucky that I get to tie the two together, I guess, or I probably wouldn’t do my day job. I’m a consultant at Mercer, and I work primarily with HR technology vendors on how they show up in the market, what their solution set is, the value story they tell about that, how they believe it shapes and changes the world of work and specifically the success that customers can get from their solutions because Mercer also does an incredible amount of transformation consulting around work, skills, the HR function, how it delivers workforce experiences. So for us, we have to connect the dots between the transformation approaches that our enterprise clients are taking and the value they need to derive from technology providers to get transformation to work.
And so that’s what I do at Mercer. It’s been my entire career. I started as a talent acquisition practitioner, then went to the tech side and spent a number of years in the vendor space, a lot with startups actually, but startups who kept getting acquired. So sort of big and small technology providers and that landed me in advisory and consulting work at Leapgen, which became part of Mercer. I love the platform of work, all things work. Yes, it’s HR, HR consulting technology, but we’re really talking about work in the workplace. It’s a big part of our lives in terms of how we fulfill purpose and find meaning and value in our lives, and it has a big part to do with how we thrive as humans and connect to other humans. So it’s a worthy platform.
Tegan Trovato:
Absolutely agree. And you did this to yourself, this next question I’m going to ask you then. Who are you? Outside of work, who else are you, Jess?
Jess Von Bank:
Who else am I? I identify as a woman. And I am certainly a mom, and I believe I was put on this planet to raise girls, not just because I had three girls. I’m the mom to three daughters who are ages 15, 13, and 11. I say this all the time, I will form prayer circles to anyone who can relate to the world I’m living in right now, raising three girls. But I think it’s almost coincidental that I had three daughters. I think even if I didn’t have three daughters, I still feel an affinity toward raising girls because I was a girl who came up in the world and I think there’s a lot of work to be done to help women thrive. I think we have to start so, so young. So I had three myself, but I raise a whole bunch of girls because I work with girls through Diverse Daisies and through other vehicles as well. It is definitely my passion. And yes, I find lots of correlations to the work I do talking about work in the workplace as well.
Tegan Trovato:
Tell us about Diverse Daisies.
Jess Von Bank:
So Diverse Daisies is the nonprofit that I lead. We’re local here in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. I’m asked all the time about franchise models because everybody who hears about this is like, “Oh my gosh, I wish I could bring this to my city, to my girls. I wish I had this when I was young.” But it is a local nonprofit. We were founded 10 years ago by my friend Kim Perry, and I’ve been running it for the last four years or so. Kim founded Diverse Daisies because she grew up in the foster system. But she was not a victim of the foster system, as many are. She actually thrived and overcame her circumstances because she had mentors, because she had a system of support and structure that allowed her to be successful in her life. And that’s not always the case for kids in a foster system. It’s not always the case for kids, for girls, for girls, for lots of people. But that’s why she founded Diverse Daisies and why I lead it today.
We provide enrichment, experiences, opportunities, access to mentors, just access to things in people. When I say things, not in a material sort of way. Our programming revolves around giving them experiences and opportunities they might not otherwise have. And that can be things that are just fun and social, like horseback riding or going to a baseball game, but it’s also learning opportunities.
I connect to a lot of community and civic leaders, founders, entrepreneurs, creatives, business owners who are women because I think it’s really powerful to see women doing these things, but anybody who is willing to inspire and guide the experiences and ideas that girls have about what they might do in the future. And so I spend as much time as I possibly can paying it forward. I think it’s incredible being a mom, and that allows me to shape the future of those three girls. But I think as much as I can do, whether that is one-to-many or few-to-many, I’m always building my tribe. I think there’s a lot of impact we can have when we just look for little opportunities to scale. And for me, Diverse Daisies is a little opportunity for me to scale a whole lot of good for girls.
Tegan Trovato:
And what brought you to it? What is it in you or about your own personal experiences that made you say, “This is a thing I need to do that I want to lift?”
Jess Von Bank:
Unlike Kim, who founded Diverse Daisies, I grew up in a great structure and system. I was raised in a traditional family. I had a great upbringing. I grew up in small-town North Dakota. And I wouldn’t change that for anything, by the way. But I will say part of my upbringing was just not having a lot of exposure to the world, to diversity. Just not a whole lot of exposure to what life was like or could be in other walks of life or in other parts of the world. I mean literally, until I traveled abroad as a college student, I really didn’t see or understand a whole lot, but I was very curious. I was sort of one of these self-motivated, high-achieving, over-achieving, probably I was a bookworm. I thought I was Laura Ingalls when I was young, and then I wanted to be Oprah as I grew older.
So I had big aspirations for myself, which meant a lot of hunger and curiosity and drive, and I pursued a lot of that of my own will. I mean, I worked four jobs in college to pay my own way through college and funded study abroad tours. I just hustled and got after it.
But it also occurred to me, not everybody knows they can hustle and get after it and sort of create something for themselves. And I think once I got into all of this work stuff, like how does work and how do we design workplaces and experiences? And when you start on the talent side of this industry, you talk a lot about culture and employee value proposition and sort of the promise we make — “You give us your time and talent, we give you a paycheck and some benefits” — I started to see as a professional, as an up-and-coming professional, I started to see how broken that was and the fact that we’ve designed work for profit, not for people at all.
Tegan Trovato:
Right.
Jess Von Bank:
Sort of like Kim and the foster care system, people often feel like that, like the shedding of what we intended to do from a workplace perspective, all for the sake of the holy dollar and the bottom line. So especially as a woman or any person who feels disadvantaged at all in any way, we still have a pay gap, for Christ’s sake. So there’s still a lot of work to be done when it comes to designing systems where people can thrive and certainly where women, underrepresented minorities, disadvantaged, neurodiverse — the list goes on and on.
And so I think about my passion for girls and bringing girls up into a world that deserves them, and then I look at the workplace and everything we’re trying to do from that perspective, that’s where the rubber meets the road in my experience. I see that we can do better at work. I see that we can do better for girls and all kinds of other people. And I think you have to start really young so that people grow up knowing what they deserve and knowing that they can play a part in that, but also we have to fix the system.
Tegan Trovato:
I appreciate that you’re working on the bookends of work right now, right? So you’re in the present day, you’re examining our systems, you are in tech and thinking about how humans interact with them, the value we get from it. And then you’re at the earlier bookend of that spectrum with the young girls and doing the work there. What’s your hope of how this eventually connects and intersects?
Jess Von Bank:
So I listened to an audiobook a couple of months ago, Adam Grant’s latest book, “Hidden Potential.” The book itself, but certainly the audiobook, it was so riveting in the very beginning because he tells the story — I’m going to forget this gentleman’s last name, but he tells the story of a school in Harlem and a man named Maurice. And I forget his last name, but you can find the story anywhere, including in the book. This school in Harlem, long story short, coaches its chess club to the national championships, where they were competing against elite prep schools. Chess is a game where if you were to become a successful chess player, certainly a grandmaster in chess, you’ve probably been groomed from a very young age for the game of chess. It’s a high-intellect game. It’s a high-skill game. You sort of have to learn the game over time. So it takes time, but it also takes access to people in chess clubs and the types of schools that would teach this. And that’s not usually the case for a school in Harlem.
And so this grandmaster chess club coach named Maurice coached a group of kids who had never played chess before. So already overcoming all of the odds, never played chess before, certainly not from a young age, certainly not in a highly groomed environment where they had access to all of the best coaches and that kind of thing, and they went on to win the championships against all of these prep schools. And the idea was founded on the idea of scaffolding, and it was sort of creating a safe space and a structure, an environment and a structure where kids felt they even deserved to be there. And so they had to overcome all of these mental conditions or preconceived notions that this was something they could even do and learn and be good at. Most of our barriers are like our own mental barriers.
Tegan Trovato:
Oh, yeah.
Jess Von Bank:
“This isn’t for me. I could never become good at this, certainly not in this short period of time, certainly not up against competition like this.” Overcoming those barriers was a concept Maurice called scaffolding, and it was sort of creating a structure of support and a belief system and resources and tools that even allowed access to a space they might not otherwise consider for themselves. Think how powerful that is, providing access to a space not otherwise considered safe or accessible for them. And the idea of scaffolding is that you can eventually take it away when the structure becomes self-sustaining.
I absolutely love everything to do with that concept. And I think again, earlier I explained the correlation I see so clearly between the work I do with girls and the work we do as workplaces and HR professionals. Think about the concept of scaffolding in every other way. Everything I do for Diverse Daisies is to give them the idea and the belief system that they can access spaces, people, experiences, opportunities, paths forward for themselves that they might not otherwise consider are even options for them. And in the workplace, we call these things employee resource groups and we call them culture aspirations. We give all kinds of other names to this concept in the workplace and we’re as good at it as we possibly can be, but the idea is the same, for people to believe and understand, but also have the support systems and tools to know that they can thrive in a place where they might not otherwise think they can.
And not everybody considers their workplace safe. Not everybody has a high level of trust in their workplace, with their teams, with their managers. Even if those two things were true, not everybody is thriving as much as they can in the environment where they’re expected to operate. So again, back to the concept of scaffolding, we actually try to do this work everywhere. We just don’t call it that, but maybe that’s a great framework for us to use.
Tegan Trovato:
It’s extremely attainable and relatable, and it’s empowering because of that concept of “We can remove it once the structure is strong enough.” I really appreciated that point in the definition.
All right, so we’re going to rebrand what we’re doing at work as scaffolding.
Jess Von Bank:
Yes.
Tegan Trovato:
Human growth scaffolding, that’s what it’s going to be. I mean, what’s coming up for me as you talk about the concept of scaffolding and bringing generations up in readiness for leading organizations and just being at work, period, I didn’t hear you say it was about leading organizations. I heard you say it was about stepping into work — we focus so much in the C-suite, on the nine box. Who’s going to be a CEO eventually? Who’s going to step in and lead the executive functions?
And then we’ve got the children at the other end of that road, and we know there’s not a ton of development dollars being invested in the middle. It’s really an interesting phenomenon. Like, managers get the least investment for training, senior leaders get a lot of investment for executive development. I’m curious, what do you think we could be doing more as leaders of any level in an organization to help build some of that scaffolding and to be thinking about the youth before they’re entering our system at work?
Jess Von Bank:
Oh, I wish I had this research right at my fingertips. I just previewed some pretty incredible research from Mercer. The specific study is around the impact of HR technology on the workforce, but I think we could just say forget the technology piece, it’s sort of impact on the workforce. And it’s what you just said, it’s very clear that executives and people in positions of power or authority feel a stronger sense of their own opportunities, learning paths, career development opportunities. They feel the path is clearer. They feel more confident about their own path. And I know that sounds obvious, but think about the opposite statement. If I’m not currently in a position of influence, power, authority, if my position and title don’t have some rank to it, I feel less certain, less confident. I feel like there are fewer options for me, or at least those options aren’t as clear.
Now this study talks about the impact of technology, whether or not you’re putting learning systems or tools in front of me, what my skills development tooling might look like. I mean it’s specific to that, but think about that statement more broadly. People who don’t currently have influence, position, title, probably comp to match, don’t feel a sense of scaffolding. They can’t even see the scaffolding whether or not you’re trying to put it around them. And so that’s a huge gap for HR and business leaders to think about, especially with all of the ways work is changing.
Most organizations that are pushing the envelope in terms of how they think about, which was already happening fast and furious, and I’m not even talking about AI — two different things, automation and then the impact of AI. Organizations are changing the shape of work as we speak and will continue to. Meaning human machine teaming, what we can automate versus leave to humans to do, how humans will be assisted by AI in the way they perform their everyday jobs, this is massive. I mean, talk about flipping the table. We’re about to flip the table on people in terms of the skills they’ll need to be successful moving forward.
And so, now, never a better time, honestly, to have conversations about how we can better empower and enable people to be good at what they’re expected to do moving forward, which will change, which is changing. It’s a great time to think about how we enable managers to have these conversations, how we enable sort of the people in charge who are talking about all of this reshaping and redesign of work. You have to have this other conversation. People are not going to sort it out for themselves.
This is a moment where we can build trust, but also where we can provide tools and systems and scaffolding to show people a clear path forward. If you don’t, you just leave it all on the table. You leave all this human potential on the table. And you, trust me, you need humans. You still need humans. You especially need humans to drive these strategies forward. AI is not going to do everything for us. Humans need to determine their own future and need to self-actualize in this new —
Tegan Trovato:
Absolutely, yeah.
Jess Von Bank:
— technology future. And so I hope we don’t forget to do that work while we’re getting all excited about all of the technology and innovation side.
Tegan Trovato:
Mm-hmm. That whole segment was so rich for me in terms of the room we have to anchor into greater purpose at work. So I appreciate that technology is inviting us to that thinking. Why are we here as leaders? If AI can now do more for us, and less is going to be required of me on things — we’re going to call them menial things because what we’re assuming AI is only going to do the lighter stuff for us — how do we human better? Why are we leaders? Why are we here and what is the legacy we’re here to achieve?
And Jess, that’s part of why I wanted to have our listeners get a hold of you on our forum today because you’re doing such a gorgeous job of saying, “Here is what I’ve been doing for decades.” And you have stepped into yet another evolution of your purpose by connecting your work with Diverse Daisies to the future of work and to the now of work so leaders can really kind of sit back in their own seats and go, “OK, why am I here? What is it that I’m really trying to leave a mark about or a legacy for and how is it going to make the workplace better when I’m gone?” Because we are the ones, senior leaders especially, who have that authority, to your point.
And the research also validates your point that these senior leaders have more of a concept and a comfort about where they’re headed and what their vision is for their future, and it goes back to your point about exposure. They’ve had exposure, they’ve had time. So how do we give more of that exposure to young folks early on? And we can create that at work, right?
Jess Von Bank:
We can. As you were talking, I was hearing the Billie Eilish song from the “Barbie” movie, what am I good for? I mean, it’s so ironic, right? Where we’re at. Think about this moment in history. We’re all going to look back at this year and time. We’re going to be telling our great-grandkids this story one day because we’re all going to live to 120 now.
Tegan Trovato:
Uh-huh.
Jess Von Bank:
I mean, we’re literally in the weirdest time. Sometimes I step back, I’m like, “What is happening?” We are teaching technology to be human-like and humans are becoming robot-like. It’s crazy. We’re literally… How about we let humans be human and we let technology be technology and make both of them better at what they’re supposed to be? But somehow we’re like reversing. It’s so weird. But I think the dust will settle, I hope, and we’ll remember what we’re all here for. Humans are here to have relationships and conversations and to make art and music and plant gardens. Please tell me that’s true, otherwise I’ll just move to an island and make that true for [inaudible 00:25:18].
Tegan Trovato:
I was going to say I’m opting out, yes. In the thinking about that deeper purpose for folks, one of the things I’ve observed over the years coaching senior leaders is that something happens for most of us in our 40s where we just sort of, it’s almost an overnight moment, I’ve watched a lot of execs have where they’re like, “Okay, I’ve spent decades developing via contribution that is somewhat tactical, like functional expertise.” And then they grow into more of an enterprise contribution where they’re looking across functions and thinking more deeply about the business. And as we rise in our careers, our value is actually what we think about, what we talk about and what we influence. It’s no longer about transactions or achieving a particular project. It’s definitely not where the emphasis is anymore.
And to your point that we’re going to live a lot longer, what are we going to do with all of that wisdom if we’re going to work another potentially 15 to 20 years, number one, out of necessity, and two, out of interest in doing so? I’m really curious about that future that you’re talking about when we even back out and we remember that we’re here to human, and tech’s going to tech for us and make all the things more interesting for us. What are we going to do with that later chapter? And how can we use those years, potentially, Jess, to then help raise the youth and bring them along? I wonder if we won’t enter a chapter of wisdom and a contribution and application of our wisdom having more value than it ever has.
Jess Von Bank:
I mean, first we have to understand that the purpose of creating more human capacity isn’t to do more work. Again, we’re still in the early stages of understanding the real value of everything we’re doing right now. If I create 30% more capacity from somebody who’s — because I’m going to automate all of the menial routine stuff that can be automated. All I’m doing right now, today, in the current year that we’re in and the current conversations we’re having, I’m just creating more capacity for that human to do more additional work instead of doing higher-order work or instead of actually getting some time back as a human being.
We created our own construct of this five-day, 40-hour workweek that is a human-made construct. We made that up, and we all agreed, and we kept doing it. So we can make a new construc.t, and it might not be this sort of assembly-line current construct of, “We must clock in and clock out and get two days a week.” Even the concept of a seven-day week, we made it up. Humans made this stuff up. So I think we sort of need new constructs for the ways and time that we have to contribute value. We made up the fact that work is the way we fulfill our purpose and contribute value to the world and to humanity. What if somebody told me that healing work was the new way for me to contribute value, not putting a clock in somebody’s workplace. That would be a whole new construct, a whole new mindset. But to answer your question, what are we going to do —
Tegan Trovato:
Do you love that I just put that question on you?
Jess Von Bank:
Oh my gosh.
Tegan Trovato:
You can answer this existential crisis for us all, right, Jess?
Jess Von Bank:
It is an existential crisis. And again, I’m just reminding us, we made up a bunch of rules that may not serve us any longer or may not serve us as things evolve, and they are evolving. So what do we do with more of our time in this life on this planet? Let’s make up new rules, please.
Tegan Trovato:
Yes, yes. And those listening, I would encourage you to imagine what influence you might have on that now. Is there anything today, Jess, as we’re getting close to the end of our time together, that you would like to be able to share or emphasize that we haven’t given you any time for yet or gone deeper on?
Jess Von Bank:
I guess I would probably kind of close on the note or the beliefs that I have that when I first started sort of embracing these topics and passions that I have, it felt very individual. And it actually felt, I don’t know, almost like exciting and revolutionary to be Joan of Arc on her horse and to go out and champion, like a single champion of these causes that I cared about and developed my own voice and whatever. It didn’t take me long at all to realize that being sort of a solo operator, we love the idea of being an agent of change and transformation and be like this revolutionary and the rebel yell from one voice. That’s exciting and that’s amazing for anybody who’s out there doing that because I think you do have to develop your own voice first. But if you can find ways to multiply, and it doesn’t take much.
For me, Diverse Daisies is like one single little multiplier, but platforms of scale, small little ways that you can multiply so it’s not a single rebel yell into a vacuum potentially. But find multipliers, find little moments to scale. And it might be through other people. It might be finding allies and kind of building an army and finding your tribe. It’s so powerful because what that does, it not only amplifies the impact and the effect you can have, it actually gives permission. It sort of extends permission as a really powerful thing. It’s one of my favorite words. If you can ripple permission out into the world that, “This is important, this can change, we can have impact, there are ways to sort of change the system for everybody’s good,” that just extending permission to others to have similar voices, similar impact to know that they can also have an effect, that’s the message I would share.
Tegan Trovato:
Beautiful. Thank you. Jess, thank you so much for joining us today and thanks for all of the good work you’re putting out in the world for work today and into the future for all of our generations.
Jess Von Bank:
Absolutely. Thank you for having me.
Tegan Trovato:
Youth development and workplace transformation are deeply connected, and today’s chat with Jess really brought that to life. Jess showed us how critical it is to support both young girls and adults in their growth journeys. The idea of scaffolding, which Jess explained so well, is all about creating environments where everyone can thrive, whether they’re just starting out or well into their careers.
One big takeaway is the power of mentorship and support systems. By investing in these areas through organizations like Diverse Daisies or right within our workplaces, we can help people reach their full potential. It’s about creating paths for growth and ensuring everyone has the resources they need to succeed. For leaders, this means finding ways to support both personal and professional development. Creating a supportive and inclusive environment can lead to happier, more engaged teams. On a personal level, we can all make a difference by mentoring, listening, and advocating for systems that help people grow.
As you think about today’s episode, consider how you can bring these ideas into your own life and work. Maybe it’s mentoring a young person, pushing for better support at work, or just being mindful of the environments we create. Every little bit helps make a brighter future for everyone.
Thanks for tuning in to the Life and Leadership Podcast. Make sure to subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube Music. If you enjoyed today’s episode, share it with friends and colleagues. See you next time.
