Jimi Okubanjo is a mighty force

Her film, Arise Firebird, is sparking essential and difficult conversations about the experience of being a woman of color in the workplace

Earlier this year I had the pleasure of meeting Jimi Okubanjo when she screened her documentary film, Arise Firebird, for the Healthcare Businesswomen’s AssociationGender Parity Collaborative (to be renamed in 2024 as the Gender Equity Think Tank, or GETT), a client of mine.

A headshot of Jimi Okubanjo smiling

The film tells intimate stories about three women of color’s workplace experiences; Jimi is one of them. Arise Firebird delves into stories of trauma while ultimately striking a note of hope. Whereas in the beginning of the film, you hear women saying things like,

“They grabbed at me, they made animal noises.”

“It hit me... my face just doesn’t fit. I was too ugly, too fat, my hair wasn’t good enough.”

By the end, they are instead saying things like,

“I’ve learned to love myself.”

“I’m finally doing what I always wanted to do, which is to serve people, with my personality...”

After the screening I attended, Jimi facilitated a very, very powerful and vulnerable conversation among the senior leaders in attendance. If you run a women's employee resource group (ERG) or other women's group I HIGHLY recommend going to arisefirebird.com and booking a screening. The conversations and empathy this film sparks are SO important.

I knew I wanted to connect with Jimi further, and pretty soon we’d scheduled a time for me to interview her. What follows is an edited transcript of our conversation on Zoom.

Amanda: I would love to start at the beginning. Where did you grow up? What was your family unit? 

Jimi: Earth, and humans (laughs). I grew up in a few different places. I went to university and college and kindergarten in Nebraska. I did middle school in Nigeria, and elementary school in the UK.  My family is Nigerian. I was born in England.

Amanda: These days, where feels like home to you?

Jimi: I'm gonna still go with Earth — if there's a bed, and it's cool in the summer, warm in the winter, and I can shut the world out, and it's relatively clean, then I consider that a home.

Amanda: When you were growing up, did you have a sense of what you might want to do as an adult?

Jimi: I really wanted to live in space. I wanted to be in Galaxy High. Probably more Star Trek: The Next Generation, actually. And I still want to do that!

Star Trek: The Next Generation - IGN

Also, I always liked writing. I've always loved to sing. Honestly, I thought I would be a singer.  I thought I'd give it a go...I think I always thought I'd end up in the arts. 

Interestingly, though, I am getting more interested in science. I like the idea of experiential science — I think that trying to make science a lot more experiential and more theatrical could be fun. I think we’d get a lot more people engaged in it... I feel like if I had had a chance to do that first, I probably would have been more interested; it would have given me the patience to do all the boring stuff that you do when you study science growing up.

It's like filmmaking. If anyone had told me about having to, you know, get insurance and filming permits and sending out 200 agreements as the first part of filmmaking, I wouldn't have done it. They get you with that after you're already committed, when the obsession is already in your heart, and you can't live without the film. And then you're like, “Oh my God, now there's all this administrative work.” So I think that approach to science would have been good, like bait and switch, you know — you get them into the fun stuff. 

But I see the value of why I need to be an admin — it isn't pointless. It’s to protect my films.

Amanda: Right, and that reminds me of the importance of a person at an organization understanding how their work serves a larger purpose. You’re not going to get passionate about just filling a form out, but if you understand that filling out that form serves this higher purpose that matters to you, then it's like a completely different task. There's context for it, right?  

Jimi: Yeah — but only to an extent! My next project, I will not do the paperwork. We're going to raise money for that stuff. ‘Cause the admin work I do right now, I know it has real value, but I'm tired. It’s like the ten-page proposal on why you should come and speak at our company. I need to fill out 10 pages of questions. I would say that, you know, unless they were Oprah, or maybe the president of the United States — and that's a hard maybe — I wouldn’t fill out that paperwork. I have to know Oprah would see it — even if we just, you know, put it underneath her side plate of croissants. 

Amanda: I love that. My Oprah is Amy Poehler, by the way. If something was going to even just be on the coffee table while she was in the next room — I'd fill it in. Just in case.

So then I want to go back: When you went off to college, did you think you were going to pursue a career in the arts, still?

Jimi: No, I put away childish things. There was no way I could have figured it out. There was one professor — I don't remember his name, but he was the theater teacher, and I had auditioned for a play every year. I never got a part... never. But my senior year, there was a play for Black History Month, and he wanted Black people. And there weren't very many people of color or Black people in my university, so by default, I got the singing lead. 

That's when he realized I could sing and I could act. And then he guaranteed me a part in the next play. But I was graduating. What was I supposed to do? So I graduated, but he — I still remember this. I feel sad. I feel like this is the one time where I felt someone saw something in me; someone saw the real me. 

He came up to me my senior year and he gave me this magazine that had all these film jobs. I had a business degree and he said, “You know, there are business jobs in the film industry,”  and that I should consider applying for those. Had I believed him, or had I even asked the question, “Considering my constraints, how do I even make this happen?” — I could have asked him that question and I never did. 

I just remember he was the first person I felt saw that I should be in the arts. I'm not even sure if he's alive. I should find out. Because I have that film job now. Right? It took a little longer than you might have thought, but I have that film job now. 

Amanda: I empathize. I very much grew up wanting to be an artist; I loved acting and creative writing. But I grew up in an environment that didn’t normalize that version of life  — you know, to pursue your art full time. I got good grades. And so it was like, “Well, if you get good grades and you have these analytical skills, you're not going to go be an actress,” you know? So I internalized that. Similar to you, even though my whole life, I had grown up wanting to be an actress, when I went to college, it was like, “put away childish things,” right? Get serious.

And then it's ironic because I spent so much of my twenties saying, “I don't know what I want to do.” The more honest thing to say would have been, “I know what I want to do, but I'm not giving myself permission to do it. And that leaves me unsure of what else I want to do.” 

Jimi: I feel like I would have always been a performer and a producer. As a producer, I’m able to raise the funding for projects that matter to me and I’m able to provide that creative oversight: “This is my vision, this is the cinematic universe in which my films exist.”

...I think about, “How do I tell a story that, yeah, connects with people, but — who is it for? How do I ensure it gets to where it needs to get to?” The last mile of my movie matters to me as much as the idea.  So it's not enough to think, “We'll get a distributor and just distribute it and that's the end of it.” That's not the end of it. How does it get to the people who are really gonna love this film? And they're going to come find me on LinkedIn: “I love your film. How do I watch it again?” Those are the people I want to get a hold of, because they're the people I'm making movies for. 

Amanda: That’s beautiful. I’m finding myself thinking of a creative writing teacher I had in college. When I told her about this corporate job I was taking after graduation that didn't mean anything to me, she said, “Well, that's good, though — you have to go and have experiences that you can then make the art about.” That's coming up for me, listening to you— thinking of everything you bring to making film today. If you had  gone into the business side of film in your 20s...maybe that wasn't the time. 

Jimi: I mean, I do believe in God's timing. I don't believe anything's lost or wasted. I just, when I think about that guy, I just feel like — I just feel he saw me, and that's such a gift. I can't say he saw all of me, but he saw a part of me that I couldn't even see in myself. But I don't think anything's lost.

I can't say he saw all of me, but he saw a part of me

that I couldn't even see in myself.

I'm trying to come up with a story about engineering — a very complicated story, but I want it to be entertaining, about engineering project management. And so I'm just sitting on this; it's going to come to me. It's going to come to me, how it's going to come together. But I do want to tell a very,  somewhat funny story, in a way that honors project engineer, project engineering, project managers. 

Amanda: I love that. I love that. It reminds me of everything you were saying about science earlier — finding the entertainment in it. So, I know you were in management consulting for a stretch. Is that what you found your way into pretty quickly after college? Or did you have a different career chapter first? 

Jimi: I found my way into operations management pretty quickly after university. But then, a few years after that, I got into internal management consulting, and then I got into third party... I still do management consulting, Amanda. Even with the movie. You can’t take the girl from the PowerPoint spreadsheets...! 

So what we've been doing, and this goes back to Arise Firebird, we’ve been running workshops with leadership teams, using the film to help with leadership problems. I'm very, very, very passionate about using the film to sort out business issues...

Arise Firebird, ShowPlace ICON Theatre & Kitchen at the West End, St. Louis Park, October 26 2023 | AllEvents.in

But yeah, I've been in operations management consulting, really 25 years and counting. And I really like the work. I'm quite good at going into companies — I can go into an organization, especially technical organizations, and after a few conversations, have a really good idea about the kind of dysfunction they have, and play that back in a way that has them saying, “Oh, you know our organization. You’re a witch!” (laughs) 

Most of it comes down to the executives, and that's the hard part. That makes the work the hardest, because, “Wait, it's not my 7,000 project managers who aren't doing a good job?” And it’s not that you're a bad person either...I could talk about this for ages. We can just have a whole session about engineering projects.

So the question becomes, “How do I help leaders who are already terribly busy,  terribly tired, terribly burnt out, have these kinds of conversations, and begin to unpack what they don't understand?” 

Amanda: Can you share an example?

Jimi: If I was in a meeting one day — if we were having a 5,000 person all-hands meeting, and someone said, “I don't understand what this issue about equal pay for women is”...

If that was said by someone who was an apprentice, 18 years old, just out of school, people would say, “Man, his parents, her parents, their parents...” We may pass some judgment. If a middle manager says it, it's like, “Well, that’s Gordon, we know Gordon would say that because that's who he is and why they even let Gordon stick around is a problem.”

But if the CFO says it, it's going to be on the news. But if the CFO sincerely doesn't understand why there's an issue, how do we help them have the space to ask those questions? 

And if we’re having an all-hands meeting on inclusion, it’s not the space for the executive team to ask those questions. So what is the space for them to ask those questions? If they're having me in those spaces to discuss this issue, then they recognize they need to make the investment. And if they’re asking me, then they’re not asking, you know, Susan on the lunch line. 

And then for us, from the consulting standpoint, it's also about, “How do we make this about their work, so that this is not about another layer on top — how do we actually integrate this into the challenges they're facing every day, with their day-to-day work?” That's really important...how can we make a transformation be more like mayonnaise for a sandwich, rather than another sandwich? 

Amanda: I think you might be the first person who's compared DE&I to mayonnaise! 

Jimi: But I'm not in the DE&I space — for me, it's more culture, business transformation. For many of the leaders I work with, this is about making more money and delivering their objectives more effectively and efficiently. If I can help them do that and, on the side, be able to help  people who look like me have better experiences, as a collateral benefit for that, then I'd rather do it that way, because I feel like for leaders, then we've got their attention. It's not just another initiative. 

The DEI work is largely bottom-up, and that needs to continue happening. DEI isn't really something that is a day-to-day concern for a leader. Because they're not hiring people every day —an exec team isn't going to be hiring every day. What I recognize is that leaders do struggle with having difficult conversations. 

Amanda: When did it start to occur to you that film  in particular could be a really powerful tool for helping to ignite some of these difficult conversations?

Jimi: There was a Lucille Ball clip years ago, where she was trying, with the chocolate 

Amanda laughs in recognition.

For those who can’t immediately recall the clip in question…

Jimi: That’s it. And so I was having lunch with a friend of mine, with one of my clients, and we showed him the clip, and it was like: They’re the engineers, having all the work they had to do coming faster, faster, faster, faster. And at the end of the clip, when Lucy and Ethel hide everything, the lady says, “Okay, make it faster.”  The plant manager said, “That's me.”  He could see that was him. 

Pictures are worth a thousand words, and a movie is worth a million. People are able to see, and just let it sink in for themselves. This is what we're doing in a non-judgmental, non-threatening way.

I remember years ago, I watched an episode of Sesame Street...Do you remember Mr. Hooper? 

Amanda: Yes, of course. 

Jimi: May he rest in peace. And there was an episode about littering. People would drop bags — drop, drop, drop, drop — and ask, “Who made this mess?” And everyone's like, “I didn't make the mess.” But they all — bit by bit by bit by bit by bit, they had made this mess.

And that's a great example of how as a leadership team, we are creating an issue. It's not one person's problem. So film helps to illustrate a point.  

It's also — I think as I got further into making the movie, I realized how many of my friends and colleagues didn't realize how bad it was for me, until this was a film, even though they were in my life when it was happening. 

I think there's just something around seeing it in film: “Okay. Oh, that's really how bad it was.” And that's a big reason why I want to have these screening events with leaders, because they can then turn around and ask that question:, “So what do we do about it?” And everybody in that room can contribute to that answer.

Amanda: Tell me about when the first spark of the idea to make Arise Firebird showed up.  

Jimi: So, I'd initially decided to make a movie about politics, because I thought it'd be funny.  And I still think it'd be funny and interesting, but I was reading a grant application for it, and it was, I kid you not, 25 pages of questions, and they were giving out $200 or something like that.  

Amanda: And you were like, “I could go earn $200 in the time it takes me to fill out this application.”

Jimi: And it’s a competitive grant — this is just the first stage. And I was answering these questions, and it made me really dig deep to come up with answers, and I just felt like I wanted to really be able to answer with my whole heart. And that's why I stepped away from politics and said, “Okay, I want to talk about women of color who are leading in the corporate world.” Well, initially, women leaving the corporate world. That's where that came from. And my film coach was like, “No, don’t you want men?” They may not remember they said that, but I decided anyway to change it...

Amanda: Wait, so, you're working with a film coach — what did that help you with?  

Jimi: I had never been in film before. They definitely got me going...from the crowdfunding and helping me kind of work out how to structure my documentary, and getting an idea of how I could do it in the budget I had. They got me going in the right direction. 

Amanda: I was just interested to hear you say that, and I think that's an important detail to share, because a lot of people who are going to read this conversation probably have a thing that they've always been kind of interested in, or are secretly passionate about. And it's so easy to tell ourselves the story that it's too late, or the ship has sailed... and what you shared is just such a lovely reminder that there are people out there who can help you learn what you don't already know, and can help you do something you haven't done before.

Jimi: I would say this with coaching though — my own experience is that it also means having some bad experiences with coaches. It may be that they were not a great coach, or maybe we weren't able to do what they said. And so I definitely feel like if one is going to invest in that, you know, don't invest more than you're able to lose.

Amanda: Sure. And, I mean, it's funny — I happen to know a lot of coaches, including my husband, and depending on who comes to me, I have a pretty strong feeling of which of those people I would refer them to. I would not refer all of them to one person because there's a chemistry element involved — who's the coach that's right for you. But anyway, I digress. So, what was the most surprising thing that happened to you, or the thing that most surprised you during the making of this film? 

Jimi: What surprised me the most was, I think, was being asked to do a TED talk. That was probably the big one. Also, I think the extent to which women resonate with the story, it really does surprise me. Because when I started, part of me thought, “How big an issue is this, really?” I mean, I knew it was a big issue, but — how big? And now, every woman, every Black woman, is like, “Yep.” ... Except for three women I’ve met who are like, “I’ve never had this issue, I don’t even know what you’re talking about.” But everyone else is like, “This is really bad.” I was surprised at just how bad it was.

I also realized how unaware other people are that this is this bad. In some ways, that gives me hope, because if a lot of people are really just not aware, this can help. There's a part of me that's cynical...just to speak up for the cynics. I've done some very cynical things in the past. So having gone on this journey — in this moment right now, I just choose to accept that a lot of people just don't know.

And if we can expose more people to these stories and build empathy, it makes it easier for them to interrupt what they thought before... A lot of women think that they’re the only one who’s going through it, like a slightly dirty little secret.

I had a chance to meet with a senior leader at a major auditing company, the head of DEI. And they were so proud of the work they were doing. It was amazing stuff: They were using virtual reality. Other leaders were telling me, “You should look at what they're doing.” But I've met seven senior Black women in the last six months who were brutalized in that company.  

Amanda: That’s awful. And it reminds me, I have a client and a friend whose work uses storytelling to bridge the gap between the stories that the senior leadership tells about a company, and the stories that all the other people in the company tell about the company.

Jimi: Right. And it's so easy, I think, at a management level, to just really drink the Kool Aid, and get caught up in a narrative about who the company is, and what we're all about, and not actually fact check it against, like, Susie in accounting and Erin in sales — how would they talk about the company? Is it the same way you're talking about the company?

There are different layers. There’s the executive layer, and then you've got your management tier in the middle. And when I speak to senior executives, there is an ongoing discussion about, “How do we transition what we want through the middle management tier?” Messaging often morphs at that point....And so that's why for us, the idea came up of using this film to help leaders have that conversation with their middle management. We just assume managers get it because they've been promoted now. We want to help senior leaders get into that space where they can really unpack these discussions, these issues with their senior managers, so senior managers in turn can have these conversations with their managers...

Amanda: Well, and it occurs to me, too — and thinking of this client of mine that I mentioned, who focuses on this — it's also about communication the other way: listening to what the people on the front lines are saying.

You're smiling. What's the smile?  

Jimi: So let's give a quick example. A company has 2000 employees and we want the C-suite execs to listen to all the negative feedback that comes in exit interviews. Let's say they have 200 people leave in a year. That's 10 percent turnover. Let's even say 500 people leave — 25 percent turnover, which is high. And let's say 100 of those 500 people give scathing — honest, but scathing — feedback. 

So what do we want to do with that, in a perfect world? We'd want a leader to sit down and read all of those. So that would work, except for: What would it do to a human being? Imagine that the executive was your partner, and they had to sit down and read a hundred horrible things about the work they've done, back to back. Who would want to do it?  Would you want someone you love to go through that? 

So the challenge is that the people who are going to consume this are humans. And the human brain does not like to subject itself to pain, if it has the option not to do it... So the easier thing would be, “We'll just do a diversity day program!” You know, we’ll do something rather than having to sit in that, or we’ll buy more lanyards, or we'll do more courses. Because a person,  assuming they're not a sociopath, who sits through that, it will be incredibly painful.  

Amanda: Just to clarify, though, my vision — what I was talking about wasn't necessarily just hearing negative feedback. I feel like there's a difference, a lot of times, between the story, even think of it as the brand story, that people at different levels tell. “We're a company about X,” and it's very aspirational, and then there's people like the coders, or other people on front lines, who are like, “I'm doing this coding every day, or I'm interacting with customers every day. And it feels to me like we're really a company about Y. I mean, you could talk about it in that fancy way, but that's not really my lived experience of working at this company.”

Jimi: But even hearing that is painful. It's painful. I guess the point to make is that they're incredibly sensitive. I mean, these people have their own trauma, right? Their own childhood issues, their own work issues.

There’s a lot of stuff going on with these groups of human beings who we're now going to ask to receive this. Is the answer then not to show it to them? That is not the answer, but it's not enough just to say, “Consume this feedback,” because if they’re someone who’s goodhearted, they may decide, “I'm such a bad person. I should step down and let someone else take on my job.” And that's the kind of person we actually want to stay! They may think, “I’m going to harm myself.” That may sound extreme, but it’s not that unusual. “I'm going to drink, I'm going to take drugs, I will continue to do that to numb out the pain.” And some leaders just go and find people who validate that they’re right and everybody else is wrong, so they become more radicalized in their own ideas...or there are others who will just say, “We'll just buy 10,000 manuals, and hire a DEI manager, so I don’t have to deal with it.” 

So the piece for me is around: What is a safe way to provide that feedback that is likely going to make a senior leader uncomfortable? And from that discomfort, how do we come up with — so now, what are we going to do about this, that doesn’t leave them feeling like a bad person, or like they’re going to hell?

Amanda: Interesting. Ok. Two more questions: How can people watch Arise Firebird? And what are you excited about that's coming up?  

Jimi: Film festivals — we're currently doing a festival run. We won our first film award — well, the short version of the film won an award.

In terms of how people will watch it: Right now we're doing community screening events until the end of the year. So if you are part of a professional association that would like to have us screen the film, we charge $3,500 for the screening events. And then you get the film for a week. And if you want me to come and do a Q& A, I will come and speak about it. 

The other way we're doing it is executive events. So we're putting together workshops with leaders to take them through — again, creating safe spaces for them. So if you’re a leader, or have a leadership team, and you want to help them hold  space for a difficult conversation — especially if they're having difficulty having conversations generally — we can definitely make the film available for leaders to really unpack it, not just for themselves, but what it means for their teams...we want to try and help really senior leaders talk to senior managers and help them  cascade down difficult, but powerful, conversations, to boost their company performance.

Amanda: Awesome. Jimi, I could talk to you for another hour. I just want to thank you so much for your time and for sharing and for being you. 

Jimi: Thank you, Amanda. I really appreciate — it was nice to just even have you hold the space for me, and feeling that my story was worth capturing. It means a lot. It really does. 

Connect with Jimi on LinkedIn, and arrange for a virtual screening of Arise Firebird at your organization, today! You can also sign up for the Arise Firebird newsletter to get free resources.

Who is a woman you’d like me to interview, and why is she a mighty force? Just hit reply and let me know. I’m always happy to hear your recommendations.