Today, we’re joined by Nikki Thibodeau, Senior Community Operations Manager and Chair of the Women’s Employee Resource Group at Shopify, the powerful eCommerce platform.

Addressing gender-diverse or racially-diverse groups is tough because it requires having some difficult and, sometimes, awkward workplace conversations. You want the right people to be there, but that also means you sometimes have to exclude the wrong people. It's really important for the success of our communities that we keep those who are not going to be helpful to those conversations out of those conversations. By having that space created at the very beginning - as Shopify does with “Empower Hour”, enables a real conversation to happen in a caring way. If you're not the right person to have the conversation with, step away and find the right person. Create your conversation safeguards and processes that you can refer to when stuck in difficult conversations.