An Interview with Ify Walker, CEO/Founder of Offor

Ify Walker, CEO of Offor, the talent broker company, explains how she helps people see their personal narratives. We are so often taught to give the most significant thing we have done, but it’s not necessarily the most meaningful thing that we have experienced. There is a difference between meaningful and significant. Listen in to learn more. Tune in as Ify reveals the importance of culture, how leaders respond to grief, and the systems we can implement to ensure equity in the workplace.

In This Episode 

• [01:10] Meet Ify Walker. She comes from an education and legal background – they influence the work that she does today.
• [05:25] How Ify helps people see their personal narratives.
• [08:40] The ways conscious leadership affects how Ify shows up in the world.
• [18:30] How an organization can get to the hidden aspects of workplace culture.
• [24:25] Understanding that your employees need to hear you confront the brutal facts.
• [40:10] The systems that Ify will incorporate to ensure equity in the workplace.
  

Key Takeaways 

• Conscious leadership means you have the power to choose to respond instead of reacting.
• Look for the things in your organization that you reward and the things you punish – commit to changing them.
• Leaders are responsible for the culture of their organization. If your culture isn’t supporting the organization, then you’re failing.
• If you have a system designed for inequity, it can be redesigned for equity.
• Switching leaders doesn’t change a system.
  

Meet Ify Walker 

Ify Walker is the CEO of Offor, the talent broker company. Clients come to Offor for Offor’s trademark no-nonsense results-oriented approach to challenging who decides and how we decide to hire, promote, and pay executive women in our country. Offor’s portfolio of clients includes organizations like Beyond 12, Citizens of the World Charter Schools, /dev/color, and OneGoal. Over the past several years, more than 90% of new hires — joining historically white institutions — identified as executives of color from Asian, Black, and Latinx backgrounds. Her work has been featured in The Stanford Social Innovation Review, Fast Company, and PBS NewsHour.

Ify is an attorney by training and a proud product of Nigerian parents, the original dairy state, and Head Start. She is a mother of two, a sister to five, and wife to the best decision she’s ever made. When she’s not running a growing national firm and challenging the meritocracy myth, you can find her running Mom’s School of Excellence.

Resources 
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ifywalker/
Offor: www.offor.co
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ifywalker