The way we’ve been approaching workplace fairness might be fundamentally broken. After years of performative diversity initiatives and corporate virtue signaling, many organizations are abandoning DEI altogether—but that doesn’t mean the work isn’t still needed. The real challenge isn’t whether fairness matters, it’s how we actually create it.

Lily Zheng joins the Made Leader podcast to discuss their new book, Fixing Fairness: Four Tenets to Transform Diversity Backlash into Progress for All. As a fairness strategist and consultant who’s worked with organizations long before DEI became trendy, Lily has witnessed both the promise and pitfalls of workplace equity initiatives. They’ve seen how the rush for flashy workshops after 2020 undermined the deeper, systemic work that actually creates change.

In this conversation, Lily breaks down why DEI got such a bad reputation and introduces the FAIR framework—Fairness, Access, Inclusion, and Representation—as a more accurate way to describe work that benefits everyone. They explain why “colorblind” approaches actually increase discrimination, debunk the myth that equity means lowering standards, and provide practical strategies for early leaders who want to create change even when they don’t have organizational power.

Most importantly, Lily challenges the “lean in” mentality that tells individuals to just work harder within broken systems. Instead, they advocate for collective action and building coalitions across differences—a proven way to create lasting workplace transformation.

Whether you’re navigating bias in your own career or trying to build a more equitable team, this episode will give you the clarity and tools to move beyond corporate talking points and create workplaces that genuinely work for everyone.

Key Highlights

• The biggest misconception about DEI: It’s not about lowering standards or compromising merit—it’s about creating actual meritocracy where one didn’t exist before
• Why DEI became toxic: Organizations wanted flashy 60-minute workshops to appease employees instead of investing in systemic change that actually works
• The FAIR framework stands for Fairness, Access, Inclusion, and Representation—outcomes that every workplace should strive to provide
• Fairness means everyone deserves the same quality of experience, not the same exact treatment 
• “Colorblind” approaches dramatically increase discrimination because humans see race, gender, and disability whether we admit it or not
• The “lean in” strategy of working harder within broken systems has failed—women in leadership have actually declined despite decades of this advice
• Collective action is the only way to create real change—individual efforts burn people out and hit walls too big to break alone
• Build coalitions across differences, not just with people like you—the most effective movements connect across identity lines
• Ask your team members what barriers they’re experiencing and listen when they tell you
• Early leaders need a crew—find peers inside or outside your company who can help you stay motivated and think constructively about doing better

Links Mentioned

• Fixing Fairness: Four Tenets to Transform Diversity Backlash into Progress for All (book)
• https://www.lilyzheng.co/ 
• LinkedIn: Lily Zheng (https://www.linkedin.com/in/lilyzheng308/)

Guest Bio

Lily Zheng (they/them) is a fairness strategist and consultant who has been working on workplace equity long before it became mainstream. They specialize in helping leaders create workplaces that actually work for everybody through systemic changes rather than performative initiatives. Lily is the author of “Fixing Fairness: Four Tenets to Transform Diversity Backlash into Progress for All”; where they introduce the FAIR framework—Fairness, Access, Inclusion, and Representation—as a new way to talk about equity work in the current backlash climate. As a researcher and practitioner, Lily challenges the surface-level approaches that dominated the DEI space and advocates for deeper, more sustainable strategies that create real change for all employees.