Websites I built and currently maintain:

• The Talbot-Heindl Experience
• Rocky Mountain Wild
• Friends of Wolf Creek
• Wild I-70 Audio Tour
• Southern Rockies Conservation Alliance
• Oil and Gas Accountability in Colorado

Websites I built that are maintained by others (I can’t guarantee they have been properly maintained):

• Colorado Bat Watch
• Pika Partners

The online hate group, Libs of TikTok, put my statement piece that used to live on this page on blast because they misread my rate chart (no worries; reading comprehension is a skill that can be honed). But it made me deeply think about whether it should remain a statement piece or if I should operationalize it. And I’ve decided to operationalize it and contract with organizations that are values-aligned!

What does values alignment look like? Well, one thing is that I wouldn’t contract with an organization with a C-Suite (this term refers to the executive-level managers within an organization; think CEO, CFO, COO, CIO, ED, etc.) or Board of Directors that is more than 50% white-, cisgender-, and abled-led.

41% of the current U.S. adult population is BIPOC (Gen Z — aka: the next generation of workers — is the most racially diverse, 48% are BIPOC). 27% percent of adults in the U.S. have a disability. 1.6% of U.S. adults are transgender or nonbinary (5% of young adults identify as transgender and nonbinary). If your C-Suite or Board of Directors remains white, cisgender, and abled, that’s data for marginalized workers for how you conduct your business and how much you value diversity.

Wealth Inequity

A lot of wealth has to do with access, privilege, and power. Most generational wealth was accumulated through either extractive or exploitive practices, which have disproportionately impacted marginalized people. It’s historically only been accessible to white folks through purposeful policies, like Jim Crow laws, internment, the reservation system, redlining, restricted covenants, mob violence that destroyed the businesses and towns of Black entrepreneurs, racial pay disparity, etc. All of these practices served to prevent BIPOC families from accumulating wealth and increasing the opportunity for white folks to excel at the expense of others.

The end result of all of this (and, I’m focusing on mostly Black vs. white since the discrepancy for these two demographics has been highly studied; most of the time, Indigenous peoples are not studied at all — or are lumped in with “other,” which is how we got labeled “Something Else” at CNN during the 2020 election) was the creation of these conditions:

• The average Black family would need 228 years to build the wealth of the average white family today;
• Black wealth is still not growing at the same rate as white wealth (although the gap is starting to shrink), so that disparity continues to grow (and even if the growth rate was the same, white wealth has such a huge head start, it would never close on its own);
• Black workers earn less than their white counterparts for the same work when they have the same qualifications;
• Black women are the most educated demographic currently in the U.S. but their wages haven’t reflected this.

What about transgender and nonbinary folks? I’m glad you asked! While a study showed that weekly median earnings for all workers in the U.S. in Q3 2021 was $1,001, it showed that trans men, nonbinary, gender-nonconforming, and Two Spirit folks made 70% of that, and trans women made 60% of that.

What about disabled folks? In the U.S., 20.4% of disabled folks lived under the poverty line in 2022. On average, they make $0.66 for every $1 earned by workers without disabilities.

Now, is charging different rates for BIPOC-, gender variant-, or disabled-led organizations going to make a difference in this intentional wealth disparity? Not at all. Only wealth redistribution can do that. But, I can give a discount to organizations that I believe are doing a better job of individually fighting economic disparities by hiring marginalized folks in their C-Suite.