Ginny Clarke

Who Is Ginny Clarke?

Taryell Simmons: Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to another episode of Rise Urban Nation. I'm so excited for this conversation. My friend has the sniffles, but we're gonna make this work. Am I saying your name right?

Ginny Clarke: Ginny, like "Jin."

Taryell Simmons: All right, Ginny. Ginny is a leadership strategist, talent consultant, career expert, keynote speaker, author, force of nature. For the people who don't know you, who is Ginny? I know that's a deep question.

Ginny Clarke: That's a real deep question. I'm a mom. I've been trained as an executive recruiter. I'm a businesswoman. And I am what I'm gonna call a light being: I'm trying to bring light into the world through what I say, what I believe and how I touch people.

Taryell Simmons: I love that, because with everything that's happened in the world, we need more light. When did you know you were a light being?

Ginny Clarke: It happened after my father died in the early 90s. I had two amazing parents, and when my dad passed away I was in my 30s and just torn apart, as were my mother and my brother. A friend said, "Ginny, you've had a rough go. Here's a masseuse, go talk to him." It turns out this man was not just a masseuse. He was a healer, a scholar, a shaman. He saw something in me the first time I got on his table and put me on a very spiritual path that has served me well throughout my more traditional business career. So I see myself as integrated. It's not about religion as much as knowing self and bringing light into the world through whatever one does. For me, that's been the business world.

Taryell Simmons: I consider myself spiritual rather than religious, and I think the spiritual side is important in transformational leadership: getting to know all of self, even the energy we carry and how it can transform the people around us.

Ginny Clarke: Exactly. You get it. I call it conscious leadership, and it's a lot of what I speak about to large crowds. As a leader, do you know who you are? Before you can lead well, you need to be in touch with as many aspects of yourself as possible.

Conscious Leadership and Watching Leaders Up Close

Taryell Simmons: Why is that so important in leadership?

Ginny Clarke: I had to live it. I came out of graduate school in the 80s and worked in corporate real estate for Chase, Jones Lang LaSalle and Prudential before I got into executive recruiting. I watched how leaders treated me as an African American woman, how they treated others, and the differences. I watched how many people based their identity on their job and their money rather than on who they were and how they connected with people. I'm sad to say I saw more not-great leaders than good ones. That's why I speak, especially now that the Great Resignation, the war for talent and post-COVID conditions are forcing organizations to look at their talent, in some cases for the first time, because they took people for granted. You need to lead talent consciously and deliberately, not just manage their activities.

Taryell Simmons: Companies in corporate America focus on what systems they can put in place, and I tell them that whatever computers you use, there are people behind those machines. When we first talked, I felt like you were the soul sister I'd been needing. You could have saved me so much heartache, but I needed that pain to get to the next phase.

Ginny Clarke: Absolutely. Our souls brought us to this place. Stuff doesn't happen to us. Our soul, our subconscious, takes us to the lesson we need to learn.

Finding Light in the Darkness

Taryell Simmons: You said your father's death could have been a dark place, but out of darkness you found light. How can people explore the darkness and come out the other end with answers?

Ginny Clarke: Remember, light can penetrate darkness. It doesn't go the other way. Bring light into a room and it illuminates it. Darkness doesn't take the light away. So make conscious choices and have faith in something bigger than you. You're never, ever alone. So many people are struggling with anxiety, depression and mental health, including close friends of mine, and I want them to know they have a choice. When you feel you don't, trust me, you do, and you ask for help. Your angels and guides, friends and loved ones will be there. Stubborn people like me have to get to that dark place first. Somebody told me to go get a massage from this guy, not knowing he would change my life, and he has been in my life for twenty-eight years. So ask, even in the quiet of your own room. You've got to love yourself enough to want more, because every single one of us deserves it.

Taryell Simmons: Ask and you shall receive. We were all born with a unique gift the world needs to see. I think corporate America has suppressed the light in a lot of people. They're walking zombies, and I almost became one. Like you, I started analyzing executives.

Ginny Clarke: I did too.

Taryell Simmons: I saw what the end of the tunnel looked like for them: broken households, money but not real happiness, alcohol. It didn't seem like a fair trade-off. So I went on a soul search. Who am I, what do I want, and how do I get it?

Ginny Clarke: That's so important. Make some decisions. They don't have to be forever, just based on who you are now, knowing you're gonna change many times in beautiful ways. You never stop growing. Want it, decide, affirm it, be deliberate and go get it. And I'll be a little prescriptive: do it from a place of service, not ego. That's something my parents taught me. It's not to puff me up. I derive joy from helping other people feel good about themselves and unlock their potential.

Servant Leadership and Lessons From Google

Taryell Simmons: That's one of my favorite topics, servant leadership. I read about the CEO of a major airline, maybe Alaska, who flipped the pyramid diagram upside down and told his leaders to listen to the frontline workers, because they know best. It should come from the bottom up. If more corporations took that model, I think they'd grow tremendously and draw in talent. What are your thoughts?

Ginny Clarke: It's so true. I worked for Google, and everybody wants to work for Google. It's a young company with a trillion-dollar market capitalization and, I'm guessing, close to 200,000 employees. Remarkable. But like a lot of companies, it has people in leadership roles who haven't always shown leadership competencies. Something like 65% are engineers, with patents and PhDs. That domain expertise doesn't always translate into great leadership. This is when you need a system: accountability to make sure leaders treat people well and are incentivized to motivate them, help them grow and optimize their capabilities, not just get the project done. Google was the first time I was in-house as an executive recruiter, after 25 years of work experience. I looked at one of the most impressive companies in the world and thought, they don't have it right. And if they don't, most others don't either when it comes to servant leadership, optimizing talent and building the most diverse workforce possible.

Taryell Simmons: What do you say to the manager who says, "Ginny, I just need the project done. I don't care how"?

Ginny Clarke: How are you getting it done? Are you feeding stuff into a computer? No. People are getting it done, and people have feelings, families and goals. They have bad days and great days and new ideas. They want to be heard and valued, and so do you. If you give your people those things, the project will be ten times easier. Leadership competencies are behaviors. Are you making sound decisions? Are you communicating effectively? Are you asking your team for ideas? Managing is just getting the work done. Leading is inspiring and influencing.

Taryell Simmons: Managing versus leading. Even if you only care about the bottom line, think about turnover. That manager gets the job done but loses his staff, and the turnover costs more than having a leader who helps people thrive. You might find the next hidden gem, and you keep the institutional knowledge in the house instead of starting over.

Ginny Clarke: Exactly.

Speaking Your Truth: Peace Versus Trust

Taryell Simmons: I work with a nonprofit called Village Up that supports underrepresented founders in tech and entrepreneurship, and I'm learning how women there are overlooked and undervalued, especially in leadership. You said to lead from service, not ego. But corporate America will test the Black woman especially, and sometimes you need your ego to remind these fools who they're talking to. How do you balance that with humility and serenity?

Ginny Clarke: You can be humble and still speak your truth. I think one of the gifts Black people have is that we're more inclined to say how we feel, and I've noticed a real conflict aversion in corporate America among white men, who are still the majority in leadership. White women may suffer from it too. Years ago I did a session with a diversity consulting organization called Peace Versus Trust. The majority tend to want to keep the peace. People of color tend to want to trust, and I can only trust you if I feel you're telling me the truth. So I speak my truth so we can find real peace, because to them peace is smoothing it over and not dealing with it. That doesn't mean I'm always confrontational. I know when to let something slide. But sometimes I've said, "No, that's not how this is gonna go. You need to hear me." Sometimes it works. Sometimes I'm shut down, and then I have a call to make, and sometimes I leave. We have free will and so much more power than we know.

Ginny Clarke: That's for everybody. Be the change, like Gandhi and Obama said. I'm not saying take up arms. Just sit someone down and help them understand where you're coming from and what you need to be successful. You don't have to be angry. From four hundred years ago to George Floyd, we have every reason to be angry, and we've suppressed it over and over. But I'm willing to let go of my anger in the interest of finding peace. And I have no fear. The reason you don't have diversity is that they're afraid to have us close, afraid of losing what they perceive as dominance, afraid of retribution. Well, "allowing in" is a false concept. You might have created the system, but I'm in it now and I'm taking ownership of it. I'm not pushing you out, as long as we're on a level playing field. So yes, I will speak my truth.

Taryell Simmons: I've spoken my truth plenty of times. Sometimes it went well, sometimes it didn't, but it got me to the next place.

Ginny Clarke: That's the consciousness I'm talking about. You become sensitive. You look in people's eyes and watch their body language. As a recruiter, I engage people and then decide whether to recommend them. I do the same in personal life. I'm an empath. I sense how to choose my words, and I come from a place of love. I recently had a tough conversation with a good friend, and he was like, "Ouch." I told him, "I softened my words and waited months to say this, because I love you and want to see you succeed." More leaders need to do that. You have to tell people the good and the not-so-great if you're gonna help them grow.

Taryell Simmons: I want my circle to always be honest with me, because if your circle can't, imagine the people who don't love you.

Power, Emergence and Raising Your Vibration

Taryell Simmons: I want to go back to the word power. As I've moved into leadership roles with more decision making, I've been wrestling with it. Why do so many people give away their power? And what could shared or collective power look like, so I can use my influence for people who want systemic change but haven't yet taken their seat at the table?

Ginny Clarke: Great question. I urge you to read Power versus Force by Dr. David Hawkins. It's a metaphysical book with some science to it, and it breaks down what power is and isn't. Real power is never over anyone. No one has power over me except me. People are often socialized to be selfless and give their power away unwittingly. They think they're being nice, rolling over and being submissive. As Black people, we had to do that for a long time, and now we don't, but I don't know that we're fully aware of the power we have as individuals and as a collective, locking arms with people who aren't Black to create a collective that is conscious and has benevolent intent. It starts with each of us knowing who we are. I know who I am as Ginny Clarke, this incarnation of my soul, and I'm constantly opening up to new aspects of that. I'm not fixed, I'm energy, and that opens me up to connect with a lot of other people.

Ginny Clarke: In one of my talks I use the word emergence, which describes how schools of fish and flocks of birds move in unison. Is somebody leading them? No. They're all leaders, sharing a common frequency, a certain vibration, that keeps them in touch with the collective movement. That's how we need to be: emergent systems coming together as a force of good.

Taryell Simmons: Beautifully described. So many people aren't tuned in enough to notice the energy they take in and give off. On our first video call, I could feel your energy, like you were on the same journey I'm on.

Ginny Clarke: That's right. We all vibrate at different frequencies, and Power versus Force talks about that too. As a civilization, we're still pulling ourselves down, and I think COVID has called us to rise up and raise our vibration. Lenny Kravitz has a song called "Raise Vibration."

Taryell Simmons: Lenny Kravitz is on that frequency too. What was it specifically about COVID that brought people to this reckoning?

Ginny Clarke: No one on the planet was spared. Everyone was vulnerable, and everyone knew someone who had it or passed away from it. We were forced to see our frailty as a collective, though for many it came from a place of fear. The reckoning was about how to rebuild work, commerce and our livelihoods when we couldn't share space, and about how people needed to be treated differently. The Great Resignation showed people saying, "I never liked the way you treated me, and I'm not taking it anymore." Some took their power back, sometimes for short-term reasons. But large employers were forced to say, "We have to be different as leaders if we want people working for us." Will they revert? I don't know. This could be a sea change in our evolution. Beyond the strategic and tactical, there's the emotional, metaphysical and spiritual, a ripple effect most leaders haven't figured out yet. That's why I come back to conscious leadership. I tell leaders: check yourself. Check your beliefs, your biases, your fears and your mental health. Before you can do anything for anybody else, you've got to be okay.

Taryell Simmons: Like my grandparents said, check yourself before you wreck yourself, and other people too. Leaders have to model those behaviors. If you're performative, people won't trust you, you won't get buy-in, and you get revolving doors.

From Bag Girl to Executive Recruiter

Taryell Simmons: I started this podcast because when I built HR and career programs for young folks, nothing mattered if their mindset couldn't see the benefit. You can't be what you can't see. If they've never seen a Black person in leadership making good money, they don't believe it exists. So let's walk through your journey. What was your first job?

Ginny Clarke: I was a bag girl at Market Basket, a Kroger supermarket in Riverside, California. I could fill up my Volkswagen with five dollars of gas, which tells you how old I am.

Taryell Simmons: I would never have guessed that. What did you learn from that first job?

Ginny Clarke: The next level up was cashier. I stood next to cashiers who had been doing it for a really long time, and I asked myself, could I do that for years? It was clear that wasn't my journey. Not just because my parents had gone to college, but because I came here to do more. It also taught me humility and to be kind to everybody, because you don't know their situation.

Taryell Simmons: Kindness, with love and empathy, can make real change. Did you go straight from Google into consulting?

Ginny Clarke: Google was my last gig. Let me take you through it quickly. I wanted to be a veterinarian, so I went to the University of California at Davis and started as an animal science major. After two quarters I switched to French and linguistics, because sheep and cows weren't what I'd hoped for. I wanted a liberal arts education, I loved French, and language is a system, so it taught me how to think. After graduating, I spent two years as a recruiter for the University of California. Then I moved to Chicago for the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, my turning point into business. I worked at First National Bank of Chicago, now Chase, then in commercial real estate at what's now Jones Lang LaSalle and at Prudential Real Estate Investors, doing property, asset and investment management. When my dad died, I realized I didn't love that work anymore. I'd always volunteered to recruit on campus for my employers, so I networked my way into Spencer Stuart, one of the world's largest executive search firms. I was there twelve years and became a partner. I left to write my book, did more consulting, joined another search firm, went to Google in 2016 and left at the end of 2020. I've been on my own and speaking ever since.

Taryell Simmons: What were the key steps that let you step out on your own successfully?

Ginny Clarke: Always looking for the through line in every job. I learned these skills, so how can I parlay them? At Spencer Stuart I interviewed people, but I also built the diversity practice for the entire firm, and Google hired me for that diversity expertise in executive recruiting. People think, "You're Black, you must know a lot of Black people, so you're a diversity expert." No. It's being a systems thinker: understanding process change, behavior, how to talk to people and how the system really works. It's not a band-aid. It's transforming the elements that encourage behaviors that, over time, shift the organization.

Taryell Simmons: What's one good lesson life has taught you?

Ginny Clarke: Two sides of the same coin. Be curious, and question things through your own lens, because other people aren't you. And take the risk. Often it only sounds risky because you've never done it. When you learned to walk, you hadn't walked before. You fall down, get back up and keep moving.

Taryell Simmons: Sometimes you just jump, and you'll fly or you'll learn. You'll get some wings.

Going Out on Your Own and Fifth Dimensional Leadership

Taryell Simmons: What advice would you give someone who wants to become a consultant or coach, maybe someone like me who hasn't gone full consultant yet?

Ginny Clarke: Do your homework. Set a strategy and write it down. Do you want a five-hundred-person company, fifteen people, or just you putting out a shingle? Seek other people's money, even friends and family, so you don't drain your own resources. I've done that, and it's not a good idea. Fail fast. When it's not going well, pivot instead of saying, "It's coming." Try something else and ask for help. People get their egos wrapped up in it and don't want to look bad. It won't always go well. You don't always have to walk away. There's almost always another way.

Taryell Simmons: And you need a support system that's brutally honest with you, even when it hurts.

Ginny Clarke: Even when it hurts, they're coming from a place of love. That's the understanding I have with my closest friends.

Taryell Simmons: How did you know it was time to leap? Do you need savings in the bank, or clients lined up?

Ginny Clarke: Everybody's different. For me it started with: am I running to something or from something? I was running to something I'd wanted to do. I'd been on my own once before, and I wanted to do it again with a different perspective, because I had grown, and I saw people who could really use my services. Other companies asked me to join them, and I said no. I'd done that for almost 30 years. If I have to get a regular gig again, I know I can. I've done a ton of speaking through a speakers bureau, which I love, plus consulting, and I'm building out other parts of my business to serve more people.

Taryell Simmons: And you get to do it on your own terms, not in someone else's box. What does the future hold for leadership strategists and talent consultants?

Ginny Clarke: I don't offer one-on-one coaching, but I want to offer insights to individuals, because they're the ones inside organizations making decisions. We talk about organizations as disembodied entities, but they're made up of people. If we get people thinking about who they want to be and how they want to show up, lead and achieve their goals, that creates stronger organizations. So I'm offering both organizational consulting and ways to reach large groups of individuals.

Taryell Simmons: You and I could talk for hours, but I try to keep this to what used to be drive time.

Ginny Clarke: Maybe now it's the morning podcast walk before people sit down at their desks.

Taryell Simmons: The podcast walk. Let's wrap up: what are you working on, and where can people find you?

Ginny Clarke: My podcast, Fifth Dimensional Leadership, which I've had for two years. It's all about conscious leadership, and I'm loving it. I speak a lot through my speakers bureau on conscious leadership, and I'm working on training, consulting and webinars on these same issues. I want to broaden my platform, raise the vibration and build that emergence where the collective is aligned and advancing our civilization. No small thing.

Taryell Simmons: How did you come up with the name Fifth Dimensional Leadership?

Ginny Clarke: In some spiritual and metaphysical circles, to the extent there are discrete dimensions, maybe nine or ten, the fifth is where the love frequency is honored and fear tends to go away. That's where I want to create leaders who operate from love, fearlessness and hope.

Taryell Simmons: Y'all, go check out Fifth Dimensional Leadership wherever you listen to podcasts and support my dear sister Ginny. Ginny Clarke, we see you, we love you, we celebrate you. Any last words of wisdom?

Ginny Clarke: I have to tell you how proud I am of you, Taryell. You're bringing the light in your own way. If you or I can inspire one person who's listening, that's what we both want. We can all be better if we love one another and know that our power is unlimited. I see it in you, you see it in me, and because of that we can be more. It's exponential. I'm sending out rays of love, hope and goodness to all of us. We deserve it.

Taryell Simmons: I receive that, and thank you. When I read about you, I thought, this is everything I dreamed of doing and being. This won't be the last time we talk. Stay tuned, y'all. This has been another episode of Rise Urban Nation. Click the like button, follow us, leave a comment, and we'll see you next time.

Ginny Clarke: Thank you. We'll figure it out.