Welcome to Rise Up, AllBright’s celebration of diverse careers, diverse experiences and diverse women in the workplace. Curated by our community, for our community, this is a space to champion the incredible work achieved by all women. This week, we hear from one woman on how workplaces need to step up to be more inclusive, and how we can champion our sisterhood at work.

You will know Tanya Joseph’s work even if you’ve never heard her name before: she is the woman behind This Girl Can, the inspiring campaign to promote sport among women.

Tanya began her career as a journalist, before becoming press secretary for a cabinet minister and then taking on a similar role as part of the press team in Tony Blair’s Downing Street.

Since her Downing Street days, Joseph has gone on to work in agencies and in-house at various companies, all at jobs with communications at the heart of them. She is currently Managing Director, Specialist Services at Hill+Knowlton Strategies. “I was acutely aware in almost all the workplaces and in professional environments I was in, that not many people look like me. In fact, most of the time I was the only person that looked like me,” she says. “The other thing that's important about me is I'm South African and my parents were very heavily involved in the liberation struggle there. So I've always been very acutely aware of inequality, inequity and what you need to do to change it, whether that's in terms of gender or ethnicity, or class, or disability; you can't just complain about it, you have to do something about it.”

Here, we speak to Tanya about how workplaces can become more inclusive, and hear her advice for women looking to progress their careers.

Have you experienced sexism and racism in the workplace?

When I was younger, it used to happen all the time. People would say things, or make comments. 

I was in a workplace more recently where people were pitching to us for business, and looking to us to give them a huge amount of money. One of the older men used the N word, and I was so shocked and so upset. They'd brought with them a young, talented athlete who was Black, I think deliberately, and he didn't know what to do but just [had] his head dropped. Thankfully, one of my colleagues just said, ‘I'm really sorry. I think we need to stop because I think you really need to reflect on the language you just used and how offensive it is’. We went outside and he [my colleague] was like, ‘how are you doing?’ And I was like, I'm just speechless. And he said, ‘OK, we're not even going to carry this on’.

The other things that happen are that people mistake me for the cleaner [or staff]. Once I went to an event where I was hosting a table. I'd gone into the dining room during the drinks reception to check that they'd laid the table plan right. As I was coming out, another guest was coming in, and he handed me his coat. I was wearing a dress that was so expensive, I’d had a blow dry, I was looking good. And I was just like, ‘I don't work here’. But again, that's because they see people like me and they don't see what we're wearing, they don't see that we look nice. They see a brown face and they think, ‘Oh, she must be the cleaner. She must be the help.’

What should workplaces be doing to become more inclusive?

I think this is about being honest and having conversations, because so much of this is because people don't know and they don't know how to ask the question. So language has become this massive barrier. I know lots of people don't know how to describe someone when it comes to ethnicity, so I say, ‘if you're not sure, ask’. I'm not going to be embarrassed about it, but you skirting around and avoiding it, that becomes a problem. 

At Hill+Knowlton, I've really tried to foster this culture where we talk, we're really open and have conversations all the time. And sometimes they’re hard conversations. 

[Questions to ask are] what can we all learn from each other? What are the things that you really need to know? What are the reasonable endeavours you need to take to make me feel more comfortable, what are the adjustments that everyone needs to make? Because I make adjustments every single day for the white men who have gone to public school – I'm constantly thinking, ‘you know what? I'll give him a break because that's his experience’. I would like, occasionally, for someone to give me a break and think, ‘oh, well that might be her experience’. 

What advice do you have for women trying to progress in their career?

I think it's about having some confidence and recognising your own strengths and your own abilities. 

One of the things I notice a lot, and I think I do it as well, is that when women start to speak, especially in a meeting with men present, they will start the sentence or stop what they're saying by giving people an excuse to ignore them. So they will say, ‘um, so I'm not really sure about this’, or ‘I don't really know’, or ‘I'm not an expert’. And what they're really saying is ‘pay no attention to me because I don’t know what I’m talking about’.  

I don't think a woman should behave like a man, but channeling some of that confidence and just making a point firmly is really important.

Where other women are in the room, I think it's really important that we do that thing where we reinforce [what they're saying], assuming they're saying something that you agree with... I think we think somehow it's a sign of weakness and it's not, it's a sign of strength. We've talked to each other, we’ve already agreed, we're a little team.