By Williamena Kwapo | OBSERVER Staff Writer

Once a Diversity Equity and Inclusion professional at Meta, Regina Lawless boldly left the tech giant, steering towards a path that resonated more deeply with her sense of empowerment.

As a young mother and wife, Lawless dedicated years of her life to climbing the corporate ladder and shattering glass ceilings. She began her career in human resources at a popular retail company after earning her undergraduate degree from Sacramento State. She swiftly transitioned into spearheading diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives across various technology firms.

The racial reckoning triggered by the killing of George Floyd in 2020 sparked extensive conversations about racism across institutions, workplaces, and daily interactions. Countless individuals and entities pledged to scrutinize their biases, endorse policy reforms, and back initiatives targeting systemic injustices. To address these issues, numerous corporations sought diversity, equity, and inclusion leaders to integrate such strategies into their operations.

Instagram was among those corporations, and the popular social media platform hired Lawless.

When the racial reckoning in the summer of 2020 unfolded and numerous companies sought out DEI experts, she felt as though her dreams had materialized. This wasn’t just because of the newfound societal importance placed on the work she had tirelessly cultivated for years, but also because she secured a position with a huge tech company: Instagram.

“I felt like I was in the big leagues,” Lawless says as she reminisces on her recruitment by Instagram. “I landed at one of the biggest companies in the world and this [DEI] was the issue of the day.

Still, Lawless had her doubts.

“When I landed, I still had this sense of questioning if I belonged there,” she says. 

“It’s the classic imposter syndrome that I think a lot of us have, especially women in our careers.”

Setting those emotions aside, she began her position at Instagram in November 2020. With a sense of high accomplishment and the heightened global awareness of DEI issues, Lawless felt driven and enthusiastic about guiding the company in its diversity strategies and initiatives. Though she says she was initially embraced by the company, she soon encountered the challenge of being the sole advocate for DEI. Despite the company’s desire to advance diversity efforts, she found herself alone in her endeavors, facing difficulties in rallying other managers and partners to support her plans.

“The organization wanted someone like me to come in and help guide them,” she says. “The challenge was that the job is bigger than one person. The job is really helping each manager do a better job at recognizing their own biases and making decisions that are fair and equitable. And that’s where it got overwhelming.”

The isolation she felt was just the beginning of discovering a new path for herself.

Family Tragedy

Amid the already mounting pressures of her job, Lawless suffered the devastating loss of her husband six months into her role at Instagram. Her husband had been a steady source of motivation throughout her career. He was the one who encouraged her to pursue the position at Instagram after she expressed doubt to him. His tragic passing left her a widow at just 40 years old and forced her to reassess her personal and professional life.

When Lawless returned to work after a three-month bereavement leave, she concluded that if she wanted to sustain the career for which she had sacrificed so much, she could no longer run a one-woman show at a large company.

“My nervous system was out of whack both through the grief and knowing that I was on the verge of burnout before he even passed away,” she explains.

So for the next 18 months, she did all she could to create a better, more positive work experience for herself and seek out the help she desperately needed.

She firmly requested assistance necessary to effectively fulfill her role. She needed a team as committed to DEI initiatives as she was. Despite repeated appeals, it wasn’t until her promotion as lead of DEI within the suite of apps of Instagram’s parent company, Meta, that she finally acquired the support she needed. This, however, followed more than a year’s worth of requests. With this promotion came a broader scope of responsibilities. Now tasked with overseeing DEI efforts not only for Instagram but also for apps such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, her team slightly expanded, and so did her obligations.

By this time into her career with Meta, she began to see a shift in the appetite for DEI both within the company and globally.

“As we started to come more and more out of the pandemic and weren’t a captive audience any longer when people got back outside, we weren’t all focused on this racial equity issue,” she says. “I think as a country, we started to move on and so the workforce was a microcosm of that.”

Fighting Stereotypes

With this shift in mind, Lawless found herself recognizing a shift in her career aspirations and ideals.

“I had been in this hustle mindset like so many of us, and so I had to reframe for myself what success was and what I needed to do to be successful,” she reflects.

Having dedicated much of her life as a Black woman to navigating the corporate landscape, Lawless had often found herself making sacrifices to advance up the corporate ladder. Starting her career as a young mother, she had to allocate time to her work that she would have preferred to spend with her son. Recalling her pursuit of excellence in previous roles, she constantly found herself fighting for promotions by doing a little bit more than her peers.

She also recalls experiencing the perpetual need to prove herself throughout her career at multiple companies. There were instances where she felt compelled to suppress aspects of her identity to conform to corporate norms, from the way she styled her hair to the manner in which she communicated. Like many Black professionals in corporate America, she frequently engaged in code-switching to navigate various professional environments.

All of this was mirrored by the work she attempted to do as a DEI professional.

“I found I was always trying to fight against all the stereotypes you can think of for Black women so that I could be seen as a leader and move up.”

‘Do You, Babe’

“After months of trial and error, it became really apparent to me that I didn’t want to do this corporate rat race anymore, that there was more to life and there was more for me,” she says.

Transitioning away from the corporate world, she embraced a new mantra inspired by her late husband’s final text: “Do you, babe. Don’t worry about anything else.”

This philosophy became the cornerstone of her debut book, “Do You: A Journey of Success, Loss, and Learning to Live a More Meaningful Life.” Through this work, she aims to inspire Black women to look beyond corporate confines and discover what truly ignites their passion, leading them to a more fulfilling and purposeful existence.

Additionally, Lawless established an organization called Bossy and Blissful, a supportive community for Black women executives and entrepreneurs. The platform assists them in navigating the balance between the pressures of hustle culture and prioritizing self-care and personal healing.

“I think we put the tech industry in these big companies on a pedestal,” she says. “My advice would be to always try your best to stick with the vision that you have for yourself and make it happen, as opposed to chipping away at it just to make a paycheck.”