EPISODE #4.3:

Bartenders Halting Harassment: The Brown-Forman Chambord Bystander Intervention Initiative 

Or listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts.

Why in the world is a liquor business like Brown-Forman spirits company concerned about bad behaviors in bars? Because they want to ensure people have a good experience with alcohol when they drink. The harassment that sometimes occurs when people are drinking is not ok. And Brown-Forman wants to do something about it. 

My guests for this episode teach bartenders and others how to intervene when behaviors are getting out of hand. 

Taylor Amerman, was formerly the global alcohol responsibility manager for spirits company Brown-Forman. She is joined by Emma Briscoe, who is responsible for leading the Chambord and Ford’s Gin trademarks for Brown-Forman, and by Melissa Emmal who is the director of training for Alteristic. Alteristic is a nonprofit organization focused on preventing interpersonal violence. Melissa concentrates on developing and delivering training to prevent and intervene against personal violence.   

Our guests work together to deliver Brown-Forman’s bystander intervention initiative, Green Dot. 

They focus on teaching bartenders three options which they refer to as the “3 Ds”: directly intervene, distract, or delegate.  Which works best? The option that the bartender is comfortable carrying out. 

Some bartenders are comfortable cutting off the drink orders of abusers (direct) while others are more at ease with distracting them through conversations, offering them an alternative activity such as playing pool. And some prefer to solicit someone else’s help in intervening, especially if the demands of the job prevent them from acting directly. 

My guests share how the program works and offer tips about how anyone can learn to intervene. 

Here is a snapshot of a few topics we cover in this podcast…..

• Why Brown-Forman chose this form of activism 
• How the training of bartenders works
• How other companies, professions and groups can access training to learn intervention techniques. 
• Cultural differences in strategies

TimeStamps: 

• 2:22 How Brown-Forman acts on their commitment to sustainability and corporate social responsibility 
• 3:51 How they handle pushback within the company 
• 5:13 The origins of the bystander intervention initiative 
• 7:19 Why brand leaders care about promoting responsible drinking 
• 9:33 Overview of Alteristic’s Green Dot program 
• 11:56 How they developed the bystander intervention training for bartenders 
• 16:22 Cultural differences in acceptance of the program 
• 17:59 Proactive approaches to preventing harassment when people are drinking 
• 20:23 How a partnership between a private for profit company and a nonprofit can work
• 31:59 The relevance of this program to all industries and every kind of establishment 

Links: 

• Alteristic
• Responsibility at Brown-Forman 
• Taylor Amerman  
• Emma Briscoe 
• Melissa Emmal  

Taylor Amerman, Formerly Global Alcohol Responsibility Manager

Taylor is the Senior Manager for Corporate Responsibility for CDW currently. Before assuming this position in 2021, she led Brown-Forman’s alcohol responsibility efforts to create a responsible drinking culture. This includes evidence-based strategies to prevent drunk driving, prevent underage access and consumption, support addiction recovery, support bystander intervention, make moderation aspirational, and respect the choice not to drink. 

Taylor received an MBA from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. Taylor holds a Bachelor of Science degree in accounting from the University of Kentucky and a Master of Science degree in corporate social responsibility from the University of Nottingham in England. She currently serves on the Board of Directors for Volunteers of America Mid-States and the Louisville Metro Parks Advisory Commission. She has been a Big Sister through Big Brothers Big Sisters for 10 years and a Court Appointed Special Advocate. She was named one of Louisville’s 40 Under 40 in 2017 and the 2016 Outstanding Young Professional of the Year through the Young Professionals Association of Louisville. She also carried the Olympic Torch in the 2012 London Olympics!

Emma Briscoe, Senior Brand Manager, Fords Gin & Chambord Liqueur

Emma joined Brown-Forman in 2013 and has since held various positions within US Brand Management, working on brands such as Jack Daniel’s, Chambord Liqueur and Fords Gin. She is currently responsible for leading the Chambord and Fords Gin trademarks to achieve their short- and long-term business goals in the US and Canada.

Prior to joining Brown-Forman, Emma held marketing and public relations positions with Domaine Carneros in Napa, CA; Champagne Taittinger in Reims, France; and Gucci, Inc. in New York. She holds a Master of Business Administration degree from Vanderbilt University and a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science from Middlebury College. She serves on the Board of Directors for Peace Education Program in Louisville, KY.

Melissa Emmal, Director of Training and Technical Assistance at Alteristic.

Ms. Emmal has 18+ years of experience working to prevent and intervene against interpersonal violence and was previously the Deputy Director at Alaska’s largest provider of domestic violence intervention and prevention services, Abused Women’s Aid in Crisis. From 2012 to 2015, she took a leadership role in Alaska’s statewide implementation of the Green Dot initiative which paved the way to her current role. At Alteristic, she oversees a team of prevention experts that provide training and technical assistance nationally and internationally in power-based personal violence and workplace harassment prevention. Ms. Emmal also gives tailored trainings and keynotes on fundamentals of prevention, community mobilization, bystander intervention and response vs. prevention as well as contributes to curriculum and program development. 

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Welcome to the Conscious Culture Café, the podcast that explores how you can lean into your purpose, live your values, and enhance your social impact through your work. I’m your host, Kathy Miller Perkins.

Have you ever been in a situation where people are drinking? Maybe you’re joining them, and all of a sudden you see somebody who’s engaging in a behavior that you consider to be inappropriate, if not dangerous. What do you do? Brown-Forman, one of the largest spirits and wine producers and distributors in the US, takes on that challenge. They believe in creating a responsible drinking culture, and part of that culture is to help people like you and me understand how we can intervene when we’re in a drinking environment where people are not on their best behavior.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

I have three people with me today who are going to talk about their Bystander Intervention Program. First of all, I have Taylor Amerman who formerly was the global alcohol responsibility manager for Brown-Forman. She has led programs such as Addiction Recovery, Showing Respect for the Choice Not to Drink, and Bystander Intervention. She’s joined by her colleague, Emma Briscoe, who is responsible for leading the Chambord and Ford’s Gin trademarks for Brown-Forman. And finally, we’re joined by Melissa Emmal who is the director of training for Alteristic. Alteristic is a nonprofit organization focused on preventing interpersonal violence. Emma concentrates on developing and delivering training to prevent and intervene against personal violence. 

Welcome you three. Let’s talk about creating a responsible drinking culture. Taylor, Brown-Foreman is an alcohol company. That’s what they sell. So why responsible drinking? What is it that led to a program on responsible drinking, and really what does responsible drinking culture look like?

Taylor Amerman:

So first of all, corporate responsibility means a variety of things to Brown-Forman. It means environmental sustainability efforts in our production facilities. It means diversity and inclusion. It means community relations with all of our charitable giving and employee volunteerism. But of course, our most material issues are related to alcohol and preventing any kind of harm from happening. So for us, our goal is to create a responsible drinking culture. And in order to do that, we know that it has to start with our employees before we can help influence that broader culture. We address a variety of issues, so probably not surprising is to prevent drunk driving, to prevent underage access and consumption, and to promote moderation of our products should you choose to drink. But I think a few others that make Brown-Forman a bit different are we have a lot of efforts to respect the choice not to drink. Thirty percent  of Americans every year choose not to drink, so we want to ensure that is a respected choice at Brown-Forman.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

I would think that some of your business people, and that’s going to bring us to Emma here in a second, that some of your business people would think it is bad for business, to encourage  people not to drink. Do you ever get pushback?

Taylor Amerman:

Oh, of course. Yes. We get push back constantly on various issues that we deal with, but at the end of the day, we know it’s good for our business because everyone is welcome. It’s not a prerequisite to work for Brown-Forman is that you have to be a drinker. It’s all about inclusion.

Emma Briscoe:

Yeah. I think another point that we talk about, too, is we never want someone to have a bad experience with our products because we would like for them to be a consumer and a friend of the brands for life. So you have people sometimes who say, “Oh, I can’t even look at tequila, because I had a bad experience with it in college.” That is kind of a silly example, but we don’t want anything like that to ever happen, and that’s why moderation is, to Taylor’s point, a good thing for our business.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

I’d like to get into one particular program. You have lots of programs under this responsible drinking. They’re all interesting. We could do a podcast on each one probably, but the one that I really want to talk about today has to do with intervention, and I’m not sure what you call that program, but the three of you, Melissa, Emma and Taylor, all three of you are involved in this program. And Taylor, do you want to just introduce what the program is and then we can talk from the standpoints of the other two people, as well.

Taylor Amerman:

Absolutely. So one of our focus areas is to support bystander intervention. Personally, I’ve been on this journey since college where I was the recipient of this training at the University of Kentucky, which is where Green Dot training was founded and started. So I’ve known about this great work for almost 15 years, which is hard to believe.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

What’s Green Dot training?

Taylor Amerman:

So that is the program of Alteristic, the organization. And so in this role, what we were finding is that we were being brought into several conversations related to the role of alcohol in sexual harassment and sexual assault. We would see these headlines on college campuses, in the military, and unfortunately, alcohol was being blamed for those inappropriate actions. So we wanted to provide a real solution to changing that culture that said these behaviors are acceptable. And again, it ties into our business, because a lot of times leaders were responding to these horrible incidents by saying, “We are going to remove alcohol off base or off the campus.”

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Ah, yeah.

Taylor Amerman:

And so we want to say, “No.” Okay, alcohol is involved and we need to acknowledge that it is involved and around 50% of incidences, but it is not the cause. And so let’s provide a real solution like Green Dot training with Alteristic to change that culture.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

So when you say alcohol was blamed, is that people were saying things like, “Well, they were drunk, and that’s why this happened.” Is that what you mean by blaming alcohol?

Taylor Amerman:

Yeah, it is  an excuse for it, and we’re saying, “No, that’s not okay.”

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Okay. All right. So the program, you partner with two other people. Your business partner is Emma. Emma, how did you get involved in this program?

Emma Briscoe:

So one of the things that I was talking about with Taylor over time is I’ve always been on the brand side, and we’ve always thought about how do we bring our two worlds closer together and make it so that promoting responsibility in whatever form it is, is a part of the brand strategy and not just an add on, or an afterthought, or a tagline at the bottom of a message that says, “Drink responsibly.” How do we do something that’s a little more impactful? And so on Chambord, one thing that we are thinking about is how do we interact with our bartender world in a way that’s a little bit more meaningful. So in the alcohol industry, you have brands that are constantly trying to get bartenders to pour and serve their brands, and for the brand to be top of mind, and it’s a big competition. And a lot of the times, brands will treat bartenders to experiences or do bartender competitions where they win a trip to the distillery or-give them free swag. And all of those things are great, because all of those support the bartender community. 

But one thing we wanted to do is give them tools that make them better at their jobs, because that’s something that can help them succeed in their careers, and be more successful, and isn’t just giving them another Bluetooth speaker or something like that.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Right.

Emma Briscoe:

So we thought about our consumer who is primarily female, and what would be something that would be also meaningful to the consumer. So we talk all the time about, “Oh, this brand wants to empower women and send uplifting messages,” and, “We’re here to support,” but what are we actually doing to support the people who consume our brands? And so given what Taylor said about alcohol being present in 50% of sexual assault incidences and bartenders being on the front lines of that, where a lot of the time they’re standing behind a bar and they might see some behavior that is uncomfortable or something that they think might be problematic or lead to something problematic in the bar, what do they do in that situation?

Emma Briscoe:

And when you hear the word intervention, you immediately think, “Okay, the way to do this as a major confrontation where everyone and it causes a big ordeal.” And so the curriculum, and I’ll let Melissa speak to this, but the curriculum of Alteristic’s program is not at all that. It’s really more about realistic solutions. And so what we have since done is at bartender conventions all across the country is offer this program that Alteristic trainers are incredible. Again, I’ll let Melissa speak to that, but give bartenders the opportunity to experience this training. And even in the past three years or so, this has been a really, really big topic of conversation in the bartender community. Just like it’s been a big topic all over. Our aim is to train every bartender in the United States, and this is a way that we can start to have an impact in our world.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

So the relationship, then, with Alteristic as I understand it, and you’ve both of you have mentioned Alteristic a couple of times, so we need to bring Melissa into this conversation. Your nonprofit, Melissa, actually produces and delivers the curriculum. Is that correct?

Melissa Emmal:

That’s correct. So we’re a national nonprofit that’s focused on reducing what we call power-based personal violence. And so that’s things like sexual assaults, stalking, child abuse, domestic violence, workplace harassment, bullying, all of those things. And one of our main programs is called Green Dot. It’s a program that was developed for college campuses but since has spread to communities, and high schools, and the military and now to businesses like Brown-Forman and Chambord. The program really focuses on training people to recognize potentially harmful situations, and then to have some realistic discussions about what makes it difficult for us as bystanders to step in when we do see those concerning things, and then provides a lot of practical skills for people to find some way to intervene that feels realistic, safe, comfortable for them.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Can you give an example? How would you teach a bartender, for example, to intervene?

Melissa Emmal:

Well, when we started this partnership, one of the first things that we did was conduct a bunch of focus groups with bartenders to ask them, “What are the kinds of things that you’re seeing as you’re going through your workday that are potentially concerning for you? And then when you see those concerning things, what makes it difficult to intervene?” So for example, a bartender might see someone buying drinks or pushing drinks on someone who they aren’t sure what the relationship is between the two people. Maybe it looks like the person who is sort of on the receiving end of the purchase of the drinks looks uncomfortable or doesn’t look enthusiastic about it. And so in that moment, a bartender is faced with, “Okay, this looks like an uncomfortable situation, and yet my job is to sell drinks. So how do I navigate that difficulty and find some way to intervene?”

Melissa Emmal:

And there’s lots of options. We actually train with three different options. We call them the three Ds to help people remember. But it’s that you could directly intervene, you could delegate to someone else, or you could distract from the situation. So, for example, the bartender could directly say if they felt comfortable, “Hey, that person looks uncomfortable, so I’m not going to provide you with any more drinks.” But that might not work for everybody. That’s socially risky, and they might be worried that it would make the customer upset. And so they could use the distract option, changing the subject, offering the person a free play at the pool table, offering a person money to go to change the music on the jukebox, or they could use the delegate option. So maybe they’re busy. They’re in the middle of making tons of drinks and so they don’t really have time to address it. Maybe they just page a server and say, “Hey, can you help me keep an eye on that?” And maybe when you see the person wander to the bathroom, just check in with them and see if they’re okay. So it’s really lots of options.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Is one of those options more powerful than the other, or are they equally powerful in your opinion?

Melissa Emmal:

I think that they’re equally powerful. The reality is the most powerful intervention is the one that somebody would actually do.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Oh, good point.

Melissa Emmal:

When we narrow the focus and say, “Here’s the right thing,” it makes it inaccessible, because if it’s not realistic or the person’s not comfortable, they probably just simply won’t do anything.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Do you do any follow up with these bartenders? How do you know that they’re using what they’ve learned?

Melissa Emmal:

We do a survey with folks after we’ve trained them to ask them how the training was received, did they enjoy the experience, and how likely is it that they would be able to use the skills that they practiced in the workshop? Those survey results have been really positive. Lots of people feel like the options were really powerful in terms of ways that they could intervene without potentially impacting or harming their livelihood.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

That’s wonderful. Well, let’s go back to Taylor for a minute. Taylor, you mentioned earlier that your employees are a real focus of your responsible drinking efforts. How do your employees fit into this picture in terms of bystander intervention?

Taylor Amerman:

So we’ve explored this in a variety of ways. First thing that we do is when we are in a specific market doing this training with bartenders, we will invite our local employees to also participate.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

With the bartenders?

Taylor Amerman:

Yes.

Exactly. And then here at our headquarters, we have done a couple that are only for Brown-Forman employees as well as our distributor partners, which is that middle layer to the alcohol industry, because again, it takes all layers to be trained. And then we’re currently exploring how to reach every employee, especially globally, because this type of work doesn’t discriminate on location and where you are. And so we want to make sure we’re reaching all of our employees.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Do you see any cultural differences from one country to another?

Taylor Amerman:

I think cultural norms on how to intervene might vary. 

Kathy Miller Perkins:

I wondered about that. That seems to me that that would be likely.

Taylor Amerman:

Yeah. But at the end of the day, we’re all humans, and so there’s also a lot of similarities that we’ve seen.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Emma, Chambord is certainly a global brand. What are your thoughts? Are there any cultural differences that you see?

Emma Briscoe:

So it’s interesting, because when I first shared this program with some of my global colleagues, our core markets outside of the US are the UK and Australia, so not radically different cultures from the United States. But it was interesting to see their response, because they were like, “Huh.” It sounded like at the time, it was much more common for brands in the United States to also take on a cause or to support altruism and their work, so not just marketing. So that was really more of where the difference was rather than the importance of or value in this specific topic and addressing it with our consumers. But at the same time, since then, things have changed overseas, and I think that brands are more interested in doing this type of work. So we have gotten more questions about it lately. So that’s been my experience in terms of dealing with some of our overseas markets, but certainly if we went to some other European markets or some Asian markets, I think the questions would be different, as well.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Okay. And so Melissa, you’re on the delivery end of this, and I’m not just interested in the cultural piece of it, although I am interested in that obviously., But what about the different types of audiences? How do you adjust the program, for example, to different cultures or different audiences like employees versus bartenders? Are the programs the same? Are they different? How do you flex to the audience?

Melissa Emmal:

So there are some core things that stay the same regardless of the setting and regardless of the audience. Those core things are teaching people to recognize concerning behaviors when they see them. 

Then second, teaching people to acknowledge the barriers to intervention. So what are the things that, when they see those concerning things, stop them from doing something.

And then the last two things that stay the same are teaching people the skills for reactive responses. So how do I react when I see that concerning thing in a way that makes sense? And then the last is how do we actually begin to get ahead of this and begin to shape our environments proactively in ways that make the environment inhospitable to these types of behaviors? So those core things stay the same. Now what changes is maybe the delivery method, certainly the examples that we use to illustrate the problem, maybe the language that’s used, et cetera. But those core things we think are the really important tenants of preventing these forms of harm.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

So say more about this proactive piece. That seems very interesting in terms of the environment, creating an environment that discourages these sorts of behaviors. What’s that look like?

Melissa Emmal:

What it looks like practically in the workshop is getting individual bystanders to think about what are they contributing to their environment with their words, with their actions that let the people around them know that these forms of harm are not okay with them, and that there’s an expectation that the people around them also help to solve this problem.

So in real life for a bartender, they are given some swag that has something to do with bystander intervention at the workshop, and they choose to actually wear it or display it. It might be that if they manage other folks at the bar, that when they’re having their staff meeting, they carve out five minutes to say, “Okay, let’s remember what we learned in that workshop. Let’s all stay safe on shift tonight. If there’s things that come up, let’s remember those three Ds, the direct, delegate, distract options that we learned about.” So it’s proactively setting the norm that we’re not okay with these forms of harm, and together, we’re going to do something about it. And that begins to inoculate environments so that it makes it less likely that these forms of harm will continue to spread.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Very interesting. Let’s switch a little bit direction here. Again, I think this is a program that we could probably talk about forever. It’s so interesting, but I’d like to hear a little bit about the collaboration among the three groups here, because each of you really represents a different group.

So Taylor, the way I understand it from our conversations is you initiated this. Can you say a little bit more about how this came together, how the three of you work together?

Taylor Amerman:

Absolutely. So my role is very much under the Brown-Forman umbrella. I support all of our brands, all of our employees, but I’m very corporate, as well. My job is to be the connector to figure out what issues are appropriate for us to address and authentic for us to address and then pulling together the right partner to deliver those services and the right brand to get behind it. 

And then I’ve also been a champion in getting the training available for our own employees. But then to implement it after we did the initial learning, and how does this work, how can we figure this out together, the implementation of it has been driven by Emma and her team on the Chambord brand team.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Okay. So how did you and Emma get together on this? Did you seek out Emma, or did Emma seek you out? How did that partnership come together?

Taylor Amerman:

Well, like a lot of Brown-Forman employees, we are very close personal friends. 

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Okay, good. I thought that’s probably the case.

Taylor Amerman:

Yes, we were interns together several years ago. I’ve had numerous conversations about our passion for this type of work. And so an initial just, “What do you think? Would Brown-Forman ever go for this? Could we take a stance? Can we do something?” And then her own personal passion really helped drive it forward.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

So, Emma, what are your thoughts about this? When Taylor came to you, you were excited from the beginning?

Emma Briscoe:

Yeah, absolutely. So like I said, we’d been talking, really, for years about what is the right platform for the brands that I work on. Previously, I’d been working on the Jack Daniel’s brands, and so we’d always talk about the importance of doing something that is really specific to and authentic to the brand that it’s tied to. So what’s right for Jack Daniel’s is different than what’s right for Chambord. 

And so I think it’s just an example of why it’s important for a global responsibility to be really tied into the brands and know what our current programs are and platforms, and what does the brand care about right now, because then Taylor was able to identify this as a program that would make a lot of sense for our consumer and for some of the activities that we’re doing. So it just came out of an organic conversation, but part of that was constantly being in communication and not just, again, an afterthought or once a year getting a download on what the brands are doing.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

For those in our audience who work in corporate social responsibility, and we usually have quite a few in our audience, the lesson here, it seems to me, is that you have to be out there forming relationships with the business in order to make things like this work. Would that be your take Taylor?

Taylor Amerman:

Yeah, a hundred percent. It’s all about relationships, being authentic and being attuned to what’s happening both in the world and within the company and being that connector for both.

Emma Briscoe:

And I will say that from the brand side, Taylor does an incredible job of doing her due diligence on understanding the business and what the business challenges are so that her recommendations are really not only realistic but compelling to the brands. And that’s something she’s always built into the way that she goes about her job.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

That’s great. And I think that’s so important. Our audience, their companies are in various stages of how they go about CSR work. And what I’ve experienced with our clients is that they’re becoming more strategic all the time, and this is a very strategic approach.

It sounds to me like the CSR person’s awfully close to the business. You’re targeting the brands. It’s not that you’re all about just corporate spin, but the corporations getting something out of it as they do something good for society, and I think that’s really important to a lot of our listeners to understand how that works. So tell me how you brought Melissa in to all of this. Who did that, and how did you decide that… I guess, Taylor, you said that you were familiar with her organization from college, but how did that happen? What happened, Melissa? How did they contact you, and how did you get involved?

Taylor Amerman:

Again, we’re being pulled into these larger challenges related to colleges and the military, I had experienced that Green Dot training from the University of Kentucky along with the founder, Dorothy Edwards. She was the one who trained me, again, 15 years ago. And so I researched where is Alteristic now, where’s Green Dot, and then made that initial connection. But I knew all along that we were not just looking to make a charitable donation. We really wanted to be a catalyst for getting the training to more and more people. And so that’s the view that we had from the very beginning, not just, “Okay, we care about this, and here’s some dollars behind it,” but what solution we truly provide to it.

Melissa Emmal:

So what I will say is that our experience with working with the alcohol industry or bartenders had been somewhat limited prior to this. We had done some things related to our community level work, but on a very small scale. So the opportunity to work with a company that was so dedicated to the training aspect, and again, not just about a charitable donation and supporting our work, but about really giving us access to their employees to learn about what the dynamics look like in the industry so that we could best craft and shape the training, and then piloting it, and getting feedback, and using data from surveys to continue to make the best possible training for folks so that the time spent is the most impactful. That’s been such a gift, because that translates to in real life people that go through our training directly working their next shift and being able to create a safer environment right from the get go.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Right. Are people really involved? For the most part, do you find your audiences are really receptive, or how does that work generally?

Melissa Emmal:

Yes. We find that the audiences receive the training well and tend to participate fully and really step into it. Our trainers, not to toot my own horn too much, but our trainers are excellent. They’re engaging, they’re funny, they have great personalities and they bring them a personal lens and perspective. These issues are real human issues that affect us on deeply personal levels. And so starting with that human connection is important, and it’s where we start with our workshops. And so I think that allows the audience to feel like it’s okay to lean in and to share.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

That’s wonderful.

Melissa Emmal:

So we do provide a survey link to all participants that go through our workshops so that they can let us know their takeaways and then give us any feedback about things that we could do to improve or to make it more relevant. It’s really, really important to us that we are always taking those lessons learned to continue to get better and better. We want people to have a good experience. People often think, “Oh, I got invited to a workshop around these difficult issues. It’s probably going to be depressing, or it’s probably not going to be very hopeful or inspirational.” In fact, what we want our session to feel like is very hopeful and inspirational and action focused. And in order to accomplish that, we need to make sure that the examples are really relevant to the audience. So that feedback loop and being able to have such great partnerships with people who can be honest and say, “Hey, tweak this thing,” has been really, really great. I think it’s unique.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Do people in your audience ever give you examples that you then incorporate?

Melissa Emmal:

Absolutely. In fact, part of the workshop pulls for those examples and pulls for people sharing both things that they’ve seen that have been concerning, but also sharing the reasons why it’s been difficult, maybe, in the past to step into certain situations. And so we’re constantly taking notes as we’re facilitating so that we can incorporate those real world perspectives just right into the next workshop that we do.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

That’s wonderful. So it always stays relevant. Yeah, I admire those people who can, and it sounds like you have some really good people doing it at Alteristic. So it sounds like this has been a good collaboration from the beginning. What makes it work? What are the things that you’ve learned through this collaboration? And I’m just going to open this up to anybody who has a thought about that. What’s worked really well in this collaboration for the three of you?

Taylor Amerman:

So I think the first thing that we understood is that this work is not easy. It is hard. It’s a hard subject to talk about, and it’s hard for a beverage alcohol company to get their head around what this means. So we took a lot of time to talk about this, to influence, even within Brown-Forman, about why we should address this and how we can provide a real solution to it. But I think taking that time to get buy in has made it the most powerful partnership, because everyone understands the language that we’re using and why.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

To get buy in from home.

Taylor Amerman:

Mostly senior leaders.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Great. Other thoughts about the collaboration and what’s made that collaboration powerful? It sounds like it really is a powerful partnership among all three of you.

Emma Briscoe:

Well and one thing I want to point out with just the comment about senior leadership is since we brought this up, no one has had a question about whether this is needed. It’s more question of are we the right people to be promoting this? Is this the right thing for our business? Is this opening us up to criticism? So I think that it’s more out of caution, that if there is any hesitance on the part of our internal stakeholders, but this is something that from the get go people realized is really necessary.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Good. So you’ve gotten a lot of support from the organization. That’s great.

Melissa Emmal:

I just wanted to echo the piece about taking time around these issues to build the relationships and to build the proper understanding. That really goes back to how are we shaping our community or the setting that we’re working in. That piece about leadership buy in is so important. Something like this can’t take off without the right people endorsing it visibly. And I’m speaking about it in a positive way and truly understanding it. And Taylor and her team did such a great job of pulling the right people in, of letting us have face time with people to explain all of the ins and outs of the program, and that was really invaluable.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

That’s great. Wonderful. So what kind of tips would you like to leave for our listeners? Are there some, “You must do this,” types of tips or, “Please never do that,” types of tips that you want our listeners to take away from this podcast? Taylor, you want to start? Do you have any?

Taylor Amerman:

So I would just say, unfortunately, where we are in the world, the need is so great. It’s huge within bars and restaurants, it’s huge within workplaces, no matter what industry you are in. So I’ll just encourage you to get involved, because it takes all of us to learn these skills of how to recognize the signs and then ways to intervene that are best for you.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Right, so how would a listener get involved? What would be an option? And maybe that’s a question for Melissa.

Melissa Emmal:

We have a website where people can hop on to read more about the different kinds of programs that we offer, and to get in touch with us. It’s just alteristic.org that’s probably the best way for someone to reach out if they’re interested in starting a conversation either about how this might look within their company or ways that as an individual they might be able to connect in their local community with work that’s already happening. That’s probably the first best way. In terms of tips or takeaways, I would just say that the need is great, and it’s good for business to make sure that your employees and your constituents are safe. And so I think the hesitancy for a lot of businesses can be aligning with an issue related to violence might have a negative impact. 

And I think in this day and age, and especially if you work with an experienced nonprofit or a program developer like us, we can craft messages in a way that is really, really good for business.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Yes, that is very important. That’s a great takeaway. Emma, do you have any thoughts about what you would like the listeners to take away from your end of things here?

Emma Briscoe:

Yeah, I think just understanding that there are brands out there that are trying to be thoughtful about what’s the best ways that they can deliver value to their consumers, and we’re marketing for them and not to them. And I think that that’s something that more and more brands are doing, which is really wonderful. And that’s being led, really, I think by the consumer, because we know that that’s what our consumers care about.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Yeah, definitely. So Taylor, if one of our listeners wanted to be involved with Brown-Forman around these issues, is there any opportunity for that? What might that look like if there’s an opportunity at all?

Taylor Amerman:

Absolutely. So we are always here to help and to be that connector to resources and share about our journey on this. So we’ll provide my email, feel free to reach out, and I’m happy to discuss.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Okay. All right, well listeners, you can get more about these three people, these three guests on the show notes on our website. And we will provide you with a link to Alteristic. So if you want to reach out, you can. And thank you so much to all three of you. This has been very, very interesting, and I just think this is a fascinating program and so needed right now. So I appreciate your being willing to come and share your thoughts and share some examples with us today.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Thanks for listening to the Conscious Culture Café. If you liked what you heard, connect with us at millerconsultants.com. You can access the show notes and receive our free materials. See you next episode.