Fairness, Access, Inclusion, and Representation Strategist. Bestselling Author of Fixing Fairness, Reconstructing DEI and DEI Deconstructed. They/Them. LinkedIn Top Voice on Racial Equity. Inquiries: lilyzheng.co.
United States
177K followers
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About
You've got thorny, structural people problems in your workplace. Culture. Hiring. Retention. Accountability. Transformation. I help you fix them.
My clients seek me out for expert consulting, comprehensive needfinding and data analysis, and strategy development. I'm the person you bring in to speak the plain truth to your executive team, give them the tools to lead decisively, inclusively, and effectively. and then work with teams across the organization to institutionalize the change and make myself obsolete. To book me for consulting or speaking engagements, please visit my website at https://lilyzheng.co.
As a speaker and leader, you can find me advocating strongly for higher standards and accountability in human-centered work, putting cutting-edge research into practice, and upskilling practitioners and leaders alike to do the work more effectively. My approach is grounded in data, rooted in outcomes and effectiveness, and informed by a systemic approach to organizational problem-solving. I was named a top DEI Leader in 2026, LinkedIn Top Voice on Racial Equity in 2022, HonestCulture Top DEI Influencer in 2021, and Forbes DEI Trailblazer in 2020.
I've also written a bunch of books. I'm the bestselling author of Fixing Fairness (2025), Reconstructing DEI: A Practitioner's Workbook (2023), DEI Deconstructed: Your No-Nonsense Guide to Doing the Work and Doing it Right (2022), The Ethical Sellout (2019), and Gender Ambiguity in the Workplace (2018). DEI Deconstructed won a Foreword Indies Gold Award in 2024! I'm very pleased about it. You can find more of my writing here on LinkedIn, and on my Substack at https://lilyplaysfair.substack.com/. My work and writing have been featured in the Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review, Forbes, and the New York Times. I also teach teams and practitioners how to rebuild and strengthen their critical thinking, copy writing, and storytelling skills, at a time when atrophy as a result of AI overreliance is becoming increasingly common.
Courses by Lily
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177K followers
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Lily Zheng posted thisFrankly, I could care less whether bringing an iced coffee to an interview is "unprofessional." If a hiring manager is making judgment calls using criteria NOT reflected in the hiring rubric, that's itself a bigger problem. So much of the conversation among HR professionals this week has swirled around individuals' hot (or iced) takes on the "appearances" or "impressions" or "distractions" of a candidates' beverage of choice during an interview. The most popular opinion to me appears to be, "don't give hiring managers any additional reasons to not evaluate you fairly, candidates!" As far as pragmatic advice to candidates goes, I think it's reasonable. Practically every single worker I've met, myself included, has encountered bias in hiring and research more than backs up its prevalence. But what annoys me is seeing hiring managers and recruiters THEMSELVES smiling and nodding along, as if their arbitrary preferences were an inevitable part of the process that they hoped candidates would learn to live with. "If you bring an iced coffee to your interview, I'm going to discriminate against you, sweetie :)" is not the flex that people think it is. If anything, we should be looking to build workplaces where our understanding of what makes a candidate successful is so rock solid, and our process so well-designed, that any hiring manager could confidently hire a qualified candidate they privately detest. In such a workplace, the hiring manager would become a steward of a standardized process, rather than an opinionated gatekeeper with a finger on the scale. Their job would be to work closely with internal experts to make sure that the skills and qualifications required to do a given role well are reflected in the job description, the minimum requirements, the hiring process, and the scoring/passthrough requirements for each stage. Their job would be to work in teams to install guardrails within the hiring process to mitigate bias: neutral language in job postings, structured interviewing, well-trained hiring panels, and scoring rubrics, to name a few evidence-based practices. Their job would be to train and communicate expectations to all decision-makers within that process, to make sure that what one panelist considers a 4 out of 5 on "active listening" or "problem-solving" or "critical thinking" is aligned to both other panelists' assessments and a universal rubric. The end result? If a fidgeting, iced coffee drinking, direct eye-contact-avoiding, bright color-wearing, slightly-too-stiff or slightly-too-relaxed candidate, if a HUMAN candidate arrives for the interview and knocks it out of the park with every skill you're looking for? I could care less about whether you personally like them. If you're happy with your hiring process and the candidate scores well based on the rubric that YOU designed, your job is to take a deep breath, look past your biases, and hire the candidate you've worked so hard to evaluate.
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Lily Zheng posted thisI just finished fighting my way through the recent Harvard Business Review article, "What Leaders Need to Know About AI and Psychological Safety," and it's a great (if sad) example of the slop leaders now have to navigate every day. The 2400-word article reads like lightly-edited LLM output, ostensibly inspired by the concept of psychological safety but bearing very little actual connection to it. The gist of the piece: workers are using LLMs for everything, and users have different intentions (whoa...). Some are using it to surface concerns and constructive criticism. Some are using it to launder their uninformed perspectives, circumvent decision-making channels, and otherwise pump out slop. The co-authors (one of which is Amy Edmondson herself) offer the banal advice to try and understand the intentions behind generative AI usage, and then glibly speculate about how leaders will eventually see "AI-amplified voices as intelligence, and AI-assisted preparation as discipline." I read the article in 5 minutes and have spent the next 30 minutes realizing that the caloric value of this nothing burger approaches 0. Hey, did you know that people use AI? And that some do so for different reasons than others? Make sure to be mindful of that, and don't forget to encourage people to use more AI! Here, I've got some better advice. If you're a manager dealing with a team member flooding the zone with low-quality workslop, you need to have a performance conversation with your direct report immediately. Clarify quality expectations, make clear the externalities of their lack of discipline, and in no uncertain terms communicate the consequences for continuing this behavior. And if you have no way of measuring output quality, only quantity, I suggest you rework your job expectations before your organization goes under. If you get anonymous feedback that's so heavily laundered as to look like sloppy-paste, chuck it out. Disregard it immediately. I couldn't care less if the person sharing it "feels to psychologically unsafe to communicate a POV." If we throw all standards and expectations for feedback out the window in our fervor for AI adoption, we willingly enter a race to the bottom. Feedback has to be specific, factual, observable, timely, actionable, and two-way. If it's not that, then get it out of here. I'll stop there. I could blow up each of those paragraphs into 2400-word articles, for your AI agent to then summarize and slightly misrepresent back down into single paragraphs, but I'll spare you all the effort. There is no shortage of actionable, practical ways practitioners and leaders can adapt to this strange new world — but as faux insight has proliferated through once-reputable channels, it's become harder than ever to separate the wheat from the chaff. And yet, each and every one of us committed to building better organizations has the duty to each other and ourselves to do it. If you're still here, I see you. Stay strong.
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Lily Zheng posted thisFolks, y'all need to stop throwing around the word "insight" to describe your on-demand LLM-generated slop leadership. Insight is supposed to be scarce. That's what makes it INSIGHTFUL. If you observe a family member suddenly start offering to take out the trash on Sundays for weeks without understanding why, and then coincidentally learn that your neighbor walks their dog at the exact same time and know that your family member LOVES that breed of dog, your insight is: "ah, they're taking out the trash as a convenient reason to go pet a dog they like. Huh." And then the insight is done. You collected a whole bunch of data from real-world observations, and from them pieced together the unspoken rationale for an observed behavior to better understand a phenomenon or subject. All that, for ONE real insight. Good! That's how it works. Nowadays we have companies and influencers who had few novel ideas pre-AI suddenly claiming to be overflowing with them. Some brag that LLMs allow them to have "never-ending insights" or "insights that don't stop when you sleep" or other inane garbage. What do those "insights" look like? "Your family member is discarding evidence — what looks like a good deed is quietly hiding a deeper subterfuge." 🤯 "This behavior is a perfect, unquestionable excuse to sneak a hit off a vape, meet with a stranger, or smuggle contraband into the household." 🤯 "People often use unexpected good deeds as a way to 'stockpile' goodwill leading up to a major ask. It's not a sudden act of charity, but a calculated strategy to quietly shape your impression." 🤯 Oh my goodness, three new insights, each sounding plausible! Why not generate 10 more and put them all into a LinkedIn post? That'll show everyone — no one with a measly single insight could possibly compete with my sheer quantity of smartness. ...except every single one of these "insights" is at best a scattershot guess dressed up in the smarmy AI-generated tone of absolute certainty. Overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of plausible but wrong ideas, one might even miss the presence of the "correct" answer (they were meeting a 'stranger,' but that stranger was a dog??) in all the noise. The impact on the reader is that increasingly-familiar feeling of brain fry and disappointment, that feeling of "what did I just read?" And the impact on the 'writer?' Overconfidence in their wrong ideas, delusions of competence where none exists, and greater dependence on LLMs, in a vicious cycle, while the ensh*ttification of LinkedIn proceeds apace. The tragedy of it all is that most of us aren't even looking for insight these days. We want to hear how our colleagues are doing. We want to celebrate each others' successes. We want to chew on incomplete thoughts and new ideas. We want to connect with each other. That's what we need more of — not more desperately-generated slop in a race to the bottom. Let go of your need for insight, and you might just start actually finding it.
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Lily Zheng posted this"The HR profession is transforming" no, it's not. Executive teams are opportunistically stripping HR of decision-making power, and too many HR teams are letting it happen. 🏢 Those return to office policies that most of your individual contributors resent? 53% of HR VPs don't support them, and 62% of those same leaders say they're struggling to enforce them. 🤖 How about AI? Only 21% of HR leaders are involved in AI strategy decisions, despite 92% participating in its implementation. Executive teams are all too happy to share the execution — the emails, the compliance conversations — but not the decision-making. 😵 Okay, layoffs? 87% of HR leaders report their organizations are conducting layoffs, with a whopping 73% of those leaders saying the fire/rehire cycle is MORE EXPENSIVE than the layoffs to begin with. Clearly those concerns don't affect the decision. 📂 So what, if not making strategic decisions, is HR up to? 73% of HR leaders are caught up only in short-term planning, compliance, and logistics, with only 9% doing anything strategic. Small wonder that the same report found that only a third believe their function is effective. The big HR organizations recognize the crisis. But their calls to action seem to be further entrenching HR's hated role as damage control and workplace police, pushing for upskilling in all the areas where HR has already lost influence rather than helping professionals contest these power grabs in their own companies. It's as if they're all saying, "we know your CEOs are greedily demanding 'AI transformation,' mass layoffs, employee surveillance, slashes to worker benefits, and draconian in-office mandates despite everything your internal data says. Here's how you can rustle up some numbers to frame as a "business ROI" to support their greed and some tips on absorbing worker resentment with a smile. :) " I'd rather HR leaders and HR teams put their foot down more forcefully. To make the case that protecting the business means protecting the organization from the whims of impulsive executive decisions. To form strong relationships with other functional leaders, built on solving people-related challenges for shared benefits, and then leverage those relationships to reclaim that seat at the table. I want HR leaders to combine powerful storytelling, relationship-building, data analysis, and problem-solving to make themselves irreplacable, and to lean on that power to stop bad decisions in their tracks — to protect the business by protecting its people. I'd rather HR leaders fight, and not let our profession go gentle into the night.
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Lily Zheng shared thisFeels like a lot of leaders are looking at their workplace diversity, equity, and inclusion strategies and trying to find a balance between "change as little as possible" and "roll it back." Both options are bad ones. Well-meaning leaders in the "change as little as possible" camp see themselves as pro-DEI. They idealized the brief period in the early 2020s when the events calendar was bustling, when corporate communicators found themselves using the words "justice" or "equity" in official comms, and when bias training was all the rage. To them, it's a gesture of their commitment to maintain anything from that era. They'll announce that Employee Resource Group budgets are staying the same, and expect praise. Well-meaning leaders in the "roll it back" camp range from apologetic to apathetic about the project of workplace DEI. Some are scared by perceived legal and reputational risk and capitulating out of fear. Some are cynical and just glad that an employer-favorable market means they don't have to pretend to be "values-aligned" just to win talent. To them, cutting these programs means losing nothing and gaining back cash they can invest in the newest trend, generative AI or otherwise. Both of these perspectives are grossly insufficient to solve the challenges our modern organizations face. We find ourselves surrounded by increasing legal, operational, and reputational risks all day, and the best our leaders can muster is "lipstick on a pig" or "run away?" C'mon, folks. We have answers in abundance, if not the political courage to implement them. 🛠️ Sure, update your language. But update your strategy, too. Replace your siloed identity-du-jour events calendar with a problem solving function that finds pain points and fixes them. ⭐ Audit and revamp your people processes. Hiring, firing, promotion, evaluation, feedback. Put in the guardrails you need to reduce unnecessary friction, reward performance, incentivize collaboration, and prevent discrimination. 🌻 Invest in your people. Train your managers to do more than just task delegate. Rethink your hybrid policy to bring people together when it matters, and empower work flexibility when it doesn't. Teach leaders how to model and reward healthy conflict. ❤️🩹 Re-wire people work so it's inseparable from the core work of the business. Bring customers and end users into the design process. Create procedures that allow peoples' feedback to meaningfully affect not just the products or services you offer, but the way your organization functions altogether. Notice harm, exclusion, or unfairness, but don't just admire the problem — use it as a signal of what to fix. At a time when so much of our conversation revolves in shallow circles of "retreat or defend," THIS is what I wish more organizations were doing instead. If your organization wants to make that step, there are a great many practitioners (myself included) who would be all too happy to help. https://www.lilyzheng.co/
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Lily Zheng posted thisThere's a Youtube channel I follow, a father and son duo — in each video, the dad cooks and explains each recipe, while the son produces the videos and voiceovers. I had to stop watching their latest video five minutes in due to the son's sheer overuse of AI. Ironically, not much had changed. The videography was great. The dad's beautiful cooking and passionate explanations were the same as they always were. But the script was off. "The 3 keys to buying..." "The 4 ingredients my dad never skips..." "how to avoid breaking the 2 cardinal sins..." "one core problem..." "here's the tension." "that fight starts long before we turn on the stove..." "two simple ingredients that most recipes skip..." "white pepper works quietly..." "the steam gently brings..." "raw salmon is like a soapy sponge" (???) Sound familiar? To me, the most jarring part was that it DIDN'T sound familiar to the channel I had known and loved for years. Like someone had replaced the son with a cardboard cutout wearing his face, and was hoping I wouldn't notice. I have to assume that he asked his LLM of choice to help him with a script for this video, thought the output sounded good, and copy-pasted it in wholesale with the satisfaction of having saved time. But it didn't sound like him. In fact, it sounded like a clickbait farmer in some parts, completely nonsensical in other parts (would you choose to describe salmon as a "wet sponge" five times in one video? I wouldn't), and like someone who had never cooked before trying to sound like they had. As a longtime follower of the channel, it felt somewhat like a betrayal of the trust they had spent years building — made worse by the possibility that the dad's low English fluency prevented him from reviewing the script. I'm sharing this little story here because it feels close to home. Our employers want us to use more AI without specifying why and to what end. Some of us are embracing AI to "do more" with less effort, without understanding what we're losing. And the people at the end of the line, the customers, clients, audiences, vendors, and partners we're doing this work to nominally benefit — they're becoming inundated with the slop we're producing, and losing their faith in us as a result. Do we know this? Do our bosses know this? And even if they did, do we collectively have it in ourselves to stop?
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Lily Zheng shared thisI have strong opinions about science communication. As a Stanford student, I spent years assisting an on-campus behavioral science outfit focused solely on translating behavioral science research into practices that professionals could deploy in their own organizations. In my work today, I regularly help workplace communicators tell the right stories, not just facts in a row. Maybe that's why, when I read a recent article in the Stanford Report about lower-income worker negotiation practices, I got pretty annoyed. The brief: "Lower-class workers are less likely to negotiate for more pay because they don't want to appear uncooperative. Research finds that this fear is real: lower-class workers are more likely to face backlash for trying to negotiate. A failure to negotiate even small salary increases can have compounding effects on lifetime earnings." Not sure what's wrong with this story? Here's a more pointed illustration: New research has found that Lily Zheng is less likely to leave their house than their neighbors are. They noted to researchers that they didn’t want to leave their house because “the axe murderer outside will attack me as soon as I open my door, oh my god, I’m terrified, please help.” Their neighbors, more able to go outside, enjoyed the many benefits of leaving their home including better social connection and increased health and wellness. Over several months and years, these positive benefits compounded and resulted in a large disparity compared to Lily’s social connection, health, and wellness. Researchers conducted a follow-up study to see if Lily’s fears were grounded in reality. They asked the axe murderer their intentions, and said murderer responded, “Yes, I’m going to axe murder Lily as soon as they open their door.” Researchers said this reflected evidence of a double bind: if Lily doesn’t leave their house, they experience harmful effects on their social connections and wellness. But leaving their house may result in them getting axe murdered. The lead researcher sees these findings as a message to local leaders. “It’s not enough to just ask Lily to leave their home. Societies need more incentives around pro-social behavior, or else the axe murdering may continue.” YIKES, y'all. Passive language that obscures the root cause of harm to focus solely on the behaviors of those harmed is a hallmark of this kind of communication. The impact: readers might reasonably conclude that lower-income workers deserve their lower income because they simply don’t negotiate enough. Unacceptable, to say the least, and undermining the very research it communicates about! Read the full article to learn how we fix these communication practices, to better do justice to the research the public needs to know about. https://lnkd.in/g_rfSnpa
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Lily Zheng shared thisAbout a week ago, a new UC Berkeley study found that S&P 500 companies that resisted pressure to dismantle DEI performed just as well as companies that complied. Heartening or sobering? Both. Researchers Folsz and Grumbach classified firms as DEI-reaffirming using a combination of measures: the presence of public statements affirming commitment, third-party evaluation of “committed” vs. “dismantled,” mention of DEI discussion in annual 10-K SEC filings, and rejection of anti-DEI shareholder resolutions. They found that reaffirming vs. non-reaffirming firms performed...about the same, as far as their stock is concerned. Most media coverage puts a positive spin on the finding, contrasting the lack of financial underperformance as a rebuke to the “DEI is a legal risk that results in financial exposure” narrative. Some, evidently dissatisfied with the lack of clickbait, grossly misinterpreted the findings — such as an article in Inc., which confidently declared that firms that stayed committed to DEI performed *better* than those that dismantled it, despite researchers explicitly noting the lack of evidence for this narrative. As much as we want to hear “DEI good” and “dismantling bad,” the research findings aren’t this clickbait-y. But to those of us paying attention, they illuminate exactly the mess this sector finds ourselves in. If DEI, measured through public-facing comms, doesn’t affect firms’ success or failure, then DEI, measured through public-facing comms, doesn’t matter. Resisting executive orders doesn’t hurt or help. Complying with executive orders doesn’t hurt or help, either. If this is the case, then the most popular markers of “commitment” are just noise. Those of us who have been in this work a while recognize that “DEI” was much deeper than these shallow markers of commitment. We reshaped decision-making processes to mitigate bias, ensured workers were supported through work design, inclusive benefits policies, and professional development, created guardrails to address discrimination, harassment, and workplace harm, and built healthy leadership and management practices. It’s obvious to us the link between “more guardrails” or “healthier practices” and lower turnover, higher retention, higher performance. But not to the general public. Not to news media. Not even to the pro-DEI social media advocates. The performance of public commitments and public statements are all they can see, so they rally behind these effigies without understanding the substance of the issue: that it matters more for a workplace to actually become fair, non-discriminatory, respectful, and high-performance than it does for that workplace to say it’s “committed to DEI.” That’s the story we need to be repeating until it sticks: that how we do this work matters infinitely more than what we call it, and that accountability is about the impact, not the performance. https://lnkd.in/g9KvERcv
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Lily Zheng liked thisLily Zheng liked thisYesterday, I had my 2nd interview for an executive position wearing sweatpants, Adidas slides, a blazer, a nice shirt, and a little makeup. 😂 From the waist up? Ready to run the meeting. From the waist down? Quick trip to Target. I answered the questions, cracked a professional joke or two, and got invited to a THIRD interview. So clearly, the sweatpants did not block my blessing. 🤣 When the conversation gets good, I sometimes sit half cross-legged in my chair. That’s when I know I’ve relaxed, stopped trying to sound “interview ready,” and started talking like myself. When you interview from home, what’s below the camera: the rest of the suit, sweatpants, shorts, or house shoes? * uncrosses my leg and celebrates making it to round three *
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Lily Zheng liked thisLily Zheng liked thisOne of the themes that resonated most with me from Talent Connect was that we need to stop slapping AI on bad processes. In recruiting, this is exactly what's happening. We've taken all of the tasks recruiters do and added AI tooling that helps them do more of it faster. So now a recruiter can source 100 candidates a week instead of 30, they can review 200 resumes a day instead of 50, they can screen 30 candidates a week instead of 15. But does all that activity actually lead to more hires or better hires or a better candidate experience or happier hiring managers? If the answer is no, then what are we even doing here? A lot of this also turns us as humans into the bottleneck in processes in ways that don't happen when volume isn't the goal. - If I email 100 candidates in a week and half reply, I now have 50 separate email threads I'm managing instead of the 15 I would have had pre-AI and I'm gonna drop balls. - If I can get 15 candidates interview ready in a week instead of 8, that's awesome, but if that hiring manager only has the capacity to interview 8 people a week, it actually just drags out the process and moves the bottle neck further down the funnel. Which begs the question - if we were coming in fresh with clear goals with no preconceived notions around how to achieve those goals, how might we design our processes? I suspect they'd be at least a bit different than the processes that are largely unchanged from how hiring happened 30+ years ago. That's probably the actual challenge talent teams should be tackling right now rather than figuring out more points at which they can simply infuse another AI tool.
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Lily Zheng liked thisLily Zheng liked thisHow can we show our gratitude to DataColada for uncovering fraudulent behavioral science research? For those of us trying to make use of research in the real world, it sure would be nice if all the researchers held themselves to the highest of academic standards. Welp, that's not the world we live. And that's why we really appreciate the efforts of Data Colada to, in many ways, help police the behavioral science community in creating high-quality research. Here is Data Colada's fantastic write up uncovering fraud in a highly-cited paper led by Dan Ariely. This is what fake research looks like: https://datacolada.org/138 On behalf of Applied Scholar, thank you Data Colada for your efforts![138] Artificial Deadlines (Part 1): Evidence of Fraud in an Influential Study About Procrastination[138] Artificial Deadlines (Part 1): Evidence of Fraud in an Influential Study About Procrastination
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Lily Zheng liked thisLily Zheng liked thisI just finished a panel on gender and bargaining. At one point, I was asked how my own field experiments have lent insights into the area. My argument centered on what is believed to be a key stylized fact: women shy away from bargaining compared to their male counterparts. I wanted to not get into a debate about the premise, but ask why. In the end, I think that will be the deepest contribution of field experiments anyway. I started with my older study on discrimination. In that product market, I found sellers targeted women with worse initial offers, anticipating little push back. But, I also found something interesting about the returns to bargaining: even if a woman gets a good deal, she must bargain three times longer than a man to get it. So, that paper ends with insights on the opportunity cost of time and returns to bargaining (see here: https://lnkd.in/egMtPca). My response on the panel then turned to the rules of the game in an exploration of wage negotiations. Some years ago, Andreas Leibbrandt and I found that when bargaining rules are ambiguous, men negotiated more than women. But, when we added the simple line, Wages are negotiable, guess what happened? The gender negotiation gap completely vanished, and indeed women were slightly more likely to negotiate (see here: https://lnkd.in/eReHXt9). My takeaway: women are not necessarily averse to bargaining compared to men in general. The “why” behind the key stylized fact is that women shy away from unwritten, ambiguous rules. I suspect that arises in this setting because such rules often penalize them socially. The ambiguity is then leveraged by others in the marketplace to take advantage. An implication is that if you want equity in your particular setting, be it in the workplace or marketplace, the cheapest and most scalable fix is not asking women or men to change their behaviors. We should add clarity to the system. University of Wyoming University of Chicago Universidad del CEMA The Australian National University Walmart Lyft Uber Anthropic
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Lily Zheng liked thisLily Zheng liked thisFor the final print issue of MIT Sloan Management Review I was eager to review the latest book (out today!) by an MIT luminary. Sherry Turkle’s Artificial Intimacy explores our “relationships” with AI chatbots (quotation marks mine). TLDR; loved it, important, you should read it too. Reddit was where I first saw posts of women, alone, showing off the jeweled evidence of their “engagement” to an AI fiance. Was it satire? I hoped so, but no. My first reaction was sorrow for all these people with phantom fantasies. The profound isolation. A pool of a relationship, Narcissus, withering alone. But also, what! Get yourself a partner who can withstand a power outage. A chatbot can’t wait with you in the emergency room, coat around your shoulders because you’re cold, bringing you vending machine snacks, asking staff how long you’ll need to wait (which no one will answer). Can’t pick you up at the airport or make you tea or walk the dog, ever. Never a single kiss. Not because of distance or timing but because they have no human form. Not even a proper ghost! We live in the strangest of times, in a hubbub of ever-noisier noise and unearned fanfare. I am grateful for Dr. Turkle’s empathy and thoughtfulness, anchors of the more humane and connected before times to hold onto. Your humanity is an asset. Just a reminder, LinkedIn friend.
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Lily Zheng liked thisGreat chart! and no surprises here :-)Lily Zheng liked this“People Quit Managers Not Jobs.” But Do They? 🤔 It’s a common careers trope (especially on LinkedIn), but is it true… Recent research, looking at the issue from an avoidance-approach perspective, suggests blaming the manager is an over-simplification of the causes of turnover. Employees tend to report three to four turnover reasons in combination: work overload, better opportunities elsewhere, fleeing the boss etc - but shaped by an avoidance or approach mindset. 👉 Hommelhoff et al (2025): https://lnkd.in/eXKur8xD ♻️ Repost if you think this would interest your network and colleagues. #psychologytheinterestingbits
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Lily Zheng liked thisLily Zheng liked thisToxic workers impose a huge cost on organizations. Avoiding a toxic worker (or converting them to an average worker) provides far more benefits than retaining a superstar. Assuming that it is no more costly to avoid a toxic worker (or replace them with an average worker) than it is to find, hire, and retain a superstar, it is also more profitable to do the former over the latter. https://lnkd.in/g4shy7cg
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Named in 10 Diversity And Inclusion Trailblazers You Need To Get Familiar With
Forbes
Named in Forbes 10 Diversity And Inclusion Trailblazers You Need To Get Familiar With, by Janice Gassam, Senior Contributor, D&I.
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2018 President’s Award for Excellence Through Diversity
Stanford University
Zheng was honored “for raising the visibility of issues critical to LGBTQ+, transgender and gender-diverse communities at Stanford through her activism and advocacy.” She was commended “for creating impactful understanding and cultural change among students, faculty and staff through her work as a prominent columnist for The Stanford Daily.” The citation honored Zheng “for developing informational resources to support the trans community at Stanford, including the creation of the 2017…
Zheng was honored “for raising the visibility of issues critical to LGBTQ+, transgender and gender-diverse communities at Stanford through her activism and advocacy.” She was commended “for creating impactful understanding and cultural change among students, faculty and staff through her work as a prominent columnist for The Stanford Daily.” The citation honored Zheng “for developing informational resources to support the trans community at Stanford, including the creation of the 2017 Unofficial Guide to Trans Resources at Stanford.” She was also commended “for inspiring collaboration between student communities and university leaders in addressing issues of social justice and institutional change.”
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#1 Most Influential Undergraduate in Campus Politics
Stanford Politico Journal
"Lily describes her activism as having shifted from only making noise to making institutional change. In an interview with Stanford Politics, she laments that much of the work of her fellow activists so often “makes a bang and then fizzles out,” referencing, as an example, the Stanford 68 bridge protest on Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2015. She says her own burnout helped her realize that activist efforts on campus can’t be completely student-run and driven. Whereas previously, Lily seemed to…
"Lily describes her activism as having shifted from only making noise to making institutional change. In an interview with Stanford Politics, she laments that much of the work of her fellow activists so often “makes a bang and then fizzles out,” referencing, as an example, the Stanford 68 bridge protest on Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2015. She says her own burnout helped her realize that activist efforts on campus can’t be completely student-run and driven. Whereas previously, Lily seemed to serve as a “bridge” between student activists and the greater Stanford community, this year she sought to become a “bridge” between student activists and the university administration, and, in many ways, she succeeded. The efforts she’s made, which she describes as “translation work,” have mostly involved engaging and communicating with administrators, faculty and staff. After reading a campus climate report Lily wrote in December 2016 for the incoming university provost, Persis Drell reached out to Lily, and they have since developed a working relationship that seemingly culminated in a day-long workshop event that brought together students, alumni, staff and administrators to shed light on university organization and governance, as well as to promote collaboration. Also this year, in keeping with her focus on leaving a mark, as a student staff member for the Weiland Health Initiative, a joint project to support the health of all Stanford students of all gender and sexual identities, Lily took the initiative to create four informational brochures (“Coming Out,” “Best Practices for Trans-Inclusivity for Staff and Faculty,” “Intimate Partner Violence & Sexual Assault” and “The 2017 Unofficial Guide to Trans Resources at Stanford”) that have become mandatory reading for all 8,000+ staff and faculty members as part of their bi-annual training."
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2017 Award of Excellence
Stanford University
Presented to graduating seniors nominated by Stanford staff, faculty, coaches, advisors, resident fellows and senior administrators in recognition of their dedication to Stanford University and contributions to the Stanford community.
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2017 James W. Lyons Award for Service
Stanford University
In recognition of exceptional service and contributions above the normal level of dedication, in areas or situations of extraordinary need, that result in substantial positive change both on and off campus.
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2017 Outstanding Achievement Award
Stanford Alumni Association
In recognition of exemplary undergraduate leadership and volunteer activities that have made a significant or unique impact on the Stanford community, awarded to up to three members of the graduating class.
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2017 Woman of Impact
Stanford Women in Business
In recognition of undergraduate women who impact Stanford University and represent outstanding women in their field.
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President's Award for Excellence through Diversity
Marc Tessier-Lavigne, President of Stanford University
Awarded to the Diversity and First-Generation Office In recognition of our work to create a diverse and inclusive campus, foster excellence through strong leadership and push Stanford as a community to continuously improve and better itself.
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Feature in New York Times
The New York Times
An editorial I submitted to the New York Times' "Transgender Today" collection was featured, alongside the stories and experiences of dozens of other transgender and gender-nonconforming people.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/storywall/transgender-today/stories/lily-zheng -
2015 Top 10 Politico
Stanford Political Journal
Ranked as one of Stanford's top ten most influential undergraduate political figures by the Stanford Political Journal, in recognition of my op-ed writing in the Stanford Daily, sexual education and advocacy with student group Kardinal Kink, and social justice advocacy for transgender inclusivity on campus.
http://stanfordpolitics.com/2015/05/2015politicos/ -
2015 Chappell Lougee Scholarship
Undergraduate Advising and Research, Stanford University
Awarded a stipend to pursue an immersive, summer-long project in Creative Writing, to begin work on a novel on my experiences growing up as an LGBT Asian-American youth.
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Dr C.
Social Support Impact on Survivors' Disclosure of and Meaning-making Associated with Their Experience(s) - I think this some evidence to support the critical importance of the "other" in relationship with some survivors. 🎯 Other Response Matters. All Relationships are Bidirectional in Impact. 🎯 Excerpt from the VA's National Center for PTSD ( 🔗 to full text & relevant references in comment section) "Relationships affect PTSD symptoms Research has found that positive social support is an important buffer against the development or severity of PTSD (8). This may be because loved ones can help process or make meaning of traumatic experiences, or simply provide ongoing support and reassurance of safety, care and concern for the trauma survivor. And there is some evidence that having supportive family or friends can make for a more successful course of trauma treatment (9). There is also evidence that negative responses to disclosure of trauma (especially sexual assault) can harm a trauma survivor—and that such unsupportive experiences have a far stronger effect than any positive responses to disclosure (10). Likewise, one nationally representative sample of African American adults found that higher levels of negative family interaction were associated with higher likelihood of PTSD, except when there was also very close friendship to offset that negative interaction (11). It should also be noted that patterns of disclosure (both trauma-related or more general) may differ based on sex, trauma type and racial background (12). ….. Bidirectional links between relationships and PTSD Several authors have proposed more comprehensive models that incorporate multiple causal influences and levels of analysis, including the Couple Adaptation to Traumatic Stress Model, the Cognitive Behavioral Interpersonal Theory of PTSD, and the Dyadic Responses to Trauma models (see Campbell & Renshaw, 2018 (3), for a review). Each of these emphasize the fact that ultimately PTSD is not only an individual issue, but also a response to an event that both affects and is affected by one's own and one's partner's thoughts, emotions, behaviors, and prior experiences. Beyond this, it is likely that the responses of other friends, loved ones, other more casual relations and even society more broadly impact PTSD, as shown by the significant impact that responses to trauma disclosure can have (10) in the context of ongoing stigma about the experience of trauma and PTSD.”
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John MacPhee
The American Psychological Association released an important new advisory on the use of generative AI chatbots and wellness apps for mental health. It’s a timely reminder that while AI can be helpful in certain contexts, it cannot replace real care, human connection, or professional support, especially for young people. More teens and young adults are turning to AI tools to talk about anxiety, depression, and loneliness. But as the APA highlights, these tools were not designed or evaluated as mental health interventions, and independent testing shows they can miss risk, reinforce harmful thinking, or create unhealthy attachment. At JED, we see two realities at once: young people’s increasing reliance on AI for emotional support and the urgent need for strong safeguards, transparency, and industry development practices that protect them. AI must strengthen, not substitute for, the relationships and systems that support youth mental health. Read more (https://lnkd.in/ee_t4K6X) about what this means for young people, families, and the tech and policy leaders shaping these tools.
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