Last week, the Golden Civilization team had the opportunity to meet with three collaborative individuals, Garry Turner, Miriam Lahage, and Mike Vacanti about their work (individual and collaborative), all of which is strongly aligned with the participative democratic and compassionate values of A Golden Civilization and so we wanted to share their organizations with you all!
Aequip
Aequip was founded to help protect previously unheard voices marginalized by race, gender, or position, especially in deskless jobs, through a communication model: a double-feedback and listening loop that reduces friction and improves performance of manager-employee communications. Aequip strives to facilitate a responsive work culture, one that requires trust between employee and employer in order to build transparency and confidence in decisions, working environment, and interpersonal relationships. Aequip was founded by Michael Hayato Vela, its current CEO. Miriam Lahage is COO and Garry Turner serves on the advisory board.
Aequip is currently beta-testing their Aequip App, which will put Aequip’s staff retention and feedback listening tool technology into the hands of employees, opening communicate lines between teams, managing employee feedback, and track staff inclusion.
HumansFirst Club
HumansFirst Club is a global group of leaders, influencers and collaborators voluntarily sharing a mission to inspire positive change, fueling growth, maturity and sustainability through stories, experiences and open-dialog. Mike Vacanti, a longtime organizational behavior consultant for corporate mergers and changes and speaker, founded this consortium based on his belief in human capacity and potential.
HumansFirst hosts interactive in-person and online events led by members of the HumansFirst Club, inviting participants to exercise their creativity, intuition and innovation as they re-prioritize humans (not human capital or resources) in organizations. They explore ways for organizations to align with life demands, embrace diversity and uniqueness and help their employees grow, function and progress as human beings.
Garry Turner is a member of the HumansFirst Club.
Interpersonal Catalyst
Garry Turner consults and presents for organizations looking to increase employee voice, cross-functional connection and innovation. He helps to create a more people-centric, connected organizations where everybody has the chance to thrive and be seen by facilitating connection-centered team workshops, thinking partnerships for both individuals and teams, and delivering keynote talks and workshops at conferences. He hosts live events both virtually and in-person.
As a part of his work at Interpersonal Catalyst, Garry hosts a podcast, Value Through Vulnerability, with Mike Vacanti.
Value through Vulnerability
Value through Vulnerability is a podcast, boosted by HumansFirst and sponsored by Aequip, dedicated to helping “put the human back into humanity.” The series focuses on inclusion, amplifying marginalized voices, and designing work systems to support employees. The podcast catalyzes ideas, opinions and challenges around courage, self-awareness, vulnerability, inclusion, listening, trust, values, mindset more.
Mike Vacanti and Garry Turner host conversations where leaders share stories and insights around what has worked well and what hasn't.
In a new segment, titled Hue-Man Conversations, the HumansFirst and Value through Vulnerability network will be leveraged in a more intentional way to create dialogues of more diverse representation, where every “hue” can be represented during safe, generative, meaningful exchange of lived experience. These conversations, when recorded, will be made available on Value through Vulnerability, with the intention of being an educational tool in addition to a community-building exercise.