The Humanity Practice Weekly: Human Hibernation (The Finale) - Three things are changing. All three part of the same work.
Published about 1 month ago • 8 min read
Standing in the moment. Rocki Howard and Esther Maria Swaty at Talint and Tiaras
What's Changing, What I'm Building, and Why Now
The final edition of a 4-part series.
I told you last time something was changing.
Here it is.
Before I tell you what changed, let me tell you what this was
If you've walked with me through this series, you know it didn't start as an announcement.
It started in hibernation.
In Part 1, I named the thing I'd been avoiding — that I was exhausted in a way no vacation could fix, and that my operating system had stopped working. Not dramatically. Just quietly. The way things break when you've been holding them together for too long.
In Part 2, I told you what hibernation actually looked like — not rest, but excavation. Tearing the frame apart to see what was load-bearing and what I'd just been carrying out of habit. The decision filters. The boundaries that weren't really boundaries. The Due North document that forced me to write down what my work actually responds to.
In Part 3, I landed somewhere I didn't expect. The personal practice and the professional mission were never separate. What I was trying to rebuild for myself was the same thing I'd been trying to build for organizations all along. The rebuild wasn't two projects. It was one.
Part 4 is where I tell you what that one project actually became.
Three decisions. Three threads. One story.
All three underway for months. All three part of the same rebuild. All three landing at once — because that's what it looks like when the work is coherent, not because of coincidence.
Here's what I want you to understand about that: a short project becomes a long relationship only when the work keeps mattering. Textio mattered. The product mattered. The people mattered.
I want to name the people specifically, because this is not an abstract thank-you.
Kieran Snyder was CEO when I started. Thank you for bringing me in, for trusting me with work that was bigger than the original scope, and for building a company where excellence and humanity weren't trade-offs.
Jensen Harris is the CEO who truly saw me and valued me. Jensen, thank you for the way you lead, for the depth of your belief in the work, and for making space for me to contribute fully. You changed how I understood what was possible in that role.
Colleen Gallagher (the CEO for Textio's next big build), Bobby Kolba, Josh Potter, Mykel Rangeland Rachel Fukaya and so many more. Working alongside each of you made me better. The problems we solved together, the late threads, the moments where the work required something more than what we'd planned — those moments are built into everything I'm doing now.
Textio is entering a new chapter. They're building Lavalier. A new product. A new phase.
My role transitions from Chief People & Equity Officer to Senior HR Advisor — because the work isn't done, it's evolving. Textio keeps building. I keep contributing. The chapter closes the way chapters should close. With gratitude. With respect. With clear eyes about what comes next.What's Returning: YUPRO Placement
What's Returning: YUPRO Placement
Me and the YUPRO Crew!!!
Here's the part that's new to every one of you reading this.
Today I'm sharing publicly for the first time:
I've accepted the role of Chief Operating Officer at YUPRO Placement.
Some of you who've known me longest will recognize this as a return.
Before I was known for workplace culture work, I spent thirty years in staffing. That's where I learned how hiring actually happens. How companies grow. How people get access to opportunity — or don't. The staffing industry is where I became a practitioner long before I had the language for it.
YUPRO Placement is a mission-driven, skills-first staffing company connecting employers with talented candidates from community colleges, workforce development programs, and career training initiatives. It's work I believe in at the cellular level — economic mobility, real opportunity, the systems that actually move people forward.
Michelle is one of the most bold, brilliant and badass leaders I've ever known. The chance to walk alongside her, to help this company grow and scale, to be inside a mission I respect — that is the kind of opportunity you don't resist.
Now here's what I want you to hear, because it connects directly to what I wrote in Part 3:
I'm not taking this role in spite of The Humanity Practice.
I'm taking it because of what the rebuild made possible.
When I rewrote my Due North, I got clear on what my work actually responds to. That clarity didn't pull me away from organizational leadership — it pulled me toward a very specific kind of it. Mission-driven. People-centered. Scaling. Where I get to practice what I teach every day, inside a company that's growing.
The operating framework. The decision filters. The discernment that replaced the boundaries.
This is the rebuild working.
Both things. At once. By design.
What's Becoming: Diversiology
Diversiology was recognized by Tranform as Inspiring Resoure of the Year in 2025
More than five hundred members. A community of practitioners, by practitioners, for practitioners. Content that traveled further than I ever imagined — into rooms I'll never see, into conversations I'll never know about, carried by people who are doing the real work of building better workplaces, often without recognition, often without resources, often as the only one in the room fighting for the thing that mattered.
We did good work together.
Without Diversiology, there is no Humanity Practice. None of it. Not the frameworks. Not the behaviors. Not the belief that the field needed something built by practitioners, for practitioners. That foundation is everything I'm standing on now.
I'm deeply grateful. To every member. To every practitioner who contributed. To every person who read, shared, pushed back, and made the work sharper.
I also want to be honest about what happened to the field.
DEI became something it was never meant to be. Weaponized in one direction. Abandoned in another. Practitioners — many of whom I've walked alongside for years — got caught in the middle, carrying a backlash they didn't cause and a retreat they didn't ask for.
I watched a lot of good people pay a high cost for doing good work.
I was one of them.
For thirty years, I've been the practitioner in the room carrying frameworks that didn't exist yet — translating them on the fly, watching them work, but never having the language or the system to name what I was building. I've done this work inside companies that saw me. And inside companies that didn't. I've earned recognition, and I've had recognition withheld.
This company is what it looks like when the practitioner finally builds the system she needed — and claims the seat that was always hers.
That's part of why Diversiology, as a brand, can no longer do what I need this work to do.
Not because the principles are wrong. The principles are right.
Because the work I'm called to build now needs a different container — one that carries the full picture of what makes workplaces human, durable, and high-performing, in language the next decade of leaders can actually receive.
The lessons come with me. The practice comes with me. You come with me.
Diversiology sunsets. The work evolves.
The Humanity Practice OS - Build, Assess, Accelerate, Practice
Please go check it out. Tell me what lands and what doesn't. Tell me what's clear and what isn't. This work gets better when practitioners put eyes on it.
If you've been reading this series, you already know what The Humanity Practice is. You just haven't seen it assembled.
The Humanity Practice is a behavior-based workplace culture system, built around a simple conviction:
Workplace culture is not defined by intentions or values statements. It is defined by everyday workplace practices.
For years, organizations have been told culture matters. What they haven't been given is the system to actually build it.
That's what The Humanity Practice is.
Not a framework. Not a consulting engagement. A system — designed to be learned, repeated, and sustained inside the organizations that need it.
The Humanity Practice OS™ — Build. Assess. Accelerate. Practice.
→ Skill Builder™ — facilitation-ready kits your teams run internally → Index™ — the diagnostic that reveals where the behavior gaps are → Accelerator™ — capability building across every level of your org → Platform™ — the infrastructure that sustains the practice over time
It's the system I wish I'd had as a practitioner.
It's the system I built because I finally had the clarity — and the Due North — to build it.
And I want to say this clearly, because it matters:
None of this happens without Leanna Diaz.
Congratulations to Leanna Diaz on stepping into the role of Practice Director at The Humanity Practice. Leanna is what makes this work possible. The kits, the customer conversations, the sessions, the rigor of every deliverable — Leanna holds the standard, and she holds the practice. A founder can build a vision. A Practice Director is what turns a vision into something real.
I'm so grateful you're here, Leanna. This is only possible because of you.
What Comes Next
Here's what I can tell you about the next twelve months, because I want you to know what you're staying for.
The first Skill Builder kits drop in the coming weeks. The first wave covers the moments that matter most — the hard conversations, the conflict navigation, the trust repair, the inclusion practices that organizations keep trying to train their way into and failing. You'll be the first to see them.
The Index moves from design into the field. I'll be bringing you the data as it comes in — what organizations are actually scoring on the seven competencies, where the biggest behavior gaps are showing up, and what the honest picture of culture looks like when you measure the behavior layer instead of the feelings layer.
I'll be building inside YUPRO Placement in real time. Every week, I'm inside a scaling company, practicing what I teach. The wins, the friction, the moments where the framework meets reality — I'm going to share it with you. Not case studies. Not polished retrospectives. The actual work.
And I'll keep showing you what it looks like to build in public. The decisions. The pivots. The things I get wrong and have to redesign. The rebuild didn't end with Part 4. It's the practice now. And you get to watch it unfold.
If you've been reading for the reflection, stay for the building.
If you've been reading for the frameworks, stay for the proof.
If you've been reading because you're somewhere in your own rebuild — stay because you're not doing it alone.
Next week we start.
One story. One conversation. One action at a time.