Joe Gerstandt
Most inclusion programmes have stalled. The language is contested, the budgets are scrutinised, and the workforce has lost faith that any of it changes how decisions get made. Leaders need a way to rebuild inclusion as a designed operating practice, not a values declaration, and to do so without retreating into compliance theatre.
Joe Gerstandt helps organisations rebuild inclusion as a designed operating practice, treating it as a leadership capability and a culture-design problem rather than a compliance exercise or a values statement.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Joe Gerstandt
- He reframes inclusion as organisational design work, with named practices leaders can actually run, rather than a values campaign that depends on goodwill.
- His “From Anti to Ally” narrative gives sceptical audiences a credible personal entry point, useful in rooms where DEI language has lost its purchase.
- Co-author of Social Gravity, a published thesis on how relationship dynamics shape collective performance, which gives the work an intellectual spine beyond bureau talking points.
- Sits on Twitter’s Intersectional Culture and Diversity Advisory Council and the ISO US Technical Advisory Group on Diversity and Inclusion, meaning his frameworks have been tested inside platform governance and global standards.
- Marine Corps veteran turned culture practitioner, with a delivery register that lands credibly in industrial, defence, and engineering-led organisations where conventional DEI speakers often do not.
Biography highlights
- Co-author, Social Gravity: Harnessing the Natural Laws of Relationships.
- Intersectional Culture and Diversity Advisory Council, Twitter.
- US Technical Advisory Group’s Diversity and Inclusion Working Group, International Organization for Standardization.
- Board director, Tri-Faith Initiative, Nebraska.
- Featured contributor, Workforce Diversity Network Expert Forum.
- Clients include Boeing, Toyota, Nestle, Target, Eli Lilly, Marathon Oil, Cornell University, University of Michigan, the CIA and the FAA.
Biography
Inclusion work has hit a credibility ceiling inside many large organisations. Twenty years of programmes, statements and training have not translated into the operating changes leaders were promised, and the political pressure on DEI has stripped away the cover that older approaches relied on. The result is a leadership population that knows the work matters but no longer trusts the standard playbook.
Joe Gerstandt has spent the past two decades rebuilding the work on different ground. His starting point is that inclusion is a design problem, not a sentiment problem. Behaviour, norms, decision rights, conflict practices and conversational habits are the actual machinery. His sessions teach leaders to operate that machinery, with concrete practices around brave conversations, authenticity, and team design.
Two strands give the work its weight. Social Gravity, which he co-authored, sets out the relational dynamics that determine whether collective performance compounds or decays. His “From Anti to Ally” narrative draws on his own move from rural Iowa and the Marine Corps into culture work, giving sceptical audiences a credible bridge into the material without asking them to start from agreement.
The institutional record matters. He sits on Twitter’s Intersectional Culture and Diversity Advisory Council and on the ISO US Technical Advisory Group’s Diversity and Inclusion Working Group, advises Fortune 100 employers and federal agencies including the CIA and FAA, and has published in Diversity Best Practices, Diversity Executive and HR Executive. That positions him as a practitioner whose frameworks have been pressure-tested against platform governance, global standards and operating reality.
Key speaking topics
- Inclusion as organisational design
- Inclusive leadership practice
- Authenticity and psychological safety at work
- Team performance and relational dynamics
- Behaviour change and culture change
- Allyship and personal transformation
- Bias, identity and decision-making
Ideal for
- CHROs, Chief Diversity Officers and culture leads rebuilding inclusion programmes that have lost internal credibility.
- Executive teams running culture change inside engineering, defence, industrial and regulated environments where conventional DEI delivery falls flat.
- Boards and leadership cohorts treating inclusion as a leadership capability rather than a compliance line.
- Employee resource group leaders and allies seeking practical practice, not slogans.
Audience outcomes
- A working definition of inclusion as a designed practice, separable from political language.
- Named behaviours and conversational practices leaders can use the next working day.
- A clearer read on where their organisation’s inclusion work has stalled and why.
- Language for engaging sceptics and ambivalent middle managers without forcing ideological agreement.
- A frame for treating relational dynamics as a performance variable, drawn from Social Gravity.
Talks
A personal narrative built to move sceptical audiences from defensiveness to engagement on inclusion work.
Key takeaways:
- A credible entry point into inclusion for audiences that distrust standard DEI framing.
- A model for the cognitive and identity shifts that move someone from opposition to active ally.
- Language for engaging colleagues who are not yet on board, without alienating them.
A working session that treats inclusion as an organisational design problem solved through named practices and structures, not values statements.
Key takeaways:
- A design lens for inclusion: norms, decision rights, conflict practices, conversational habits.
- Specific practices leaders can install at team and unit level.
- A diagnostic for where current inclusion efforts are stalling and what to change.
A keynote on what inclusion looks like as a leadership capability, not a values claim or compliance task.
Key takeaways:
- The leader behaviours that compound inclusion, and those that quietly erode it.
- A practical account of psychological safety inside operating teams.
- The difference between performative allyship and operating allyship.
A session on authenticity as a performance variable in teams and leadership.
Key takeaways:
- Why authenticity is an organisational asset, not a personal style preference.
- The conditions that make authenticity safe or unsafe inside teams.
- How leaders set those conditions deliberately.
A workshop on building rooms where hard conversations can happen without breaking trust.
Key takeaways:
- The difference between safe spaces and brave spaces, and when each is needed.
- Facilitation moves for handling disagreement without retreat or escalation.
- Practical norms leaders can put in place to make brave conversation routine.