What a secret struggle with homelessness taught Charisse Fontes about making Silicon Valley more inclusive

The Business of Business: I'll just say in general, we're just we're trying to explore business from different perspectives — talk to people about the impact business can have on human existence. Yeah. So your story was very moving for me personally. I was wondering if you could sort of introduce yourself, talk about what you're working on, and some of your stories so far. 

CF:  So my name is Charisse Fontes. And I like to let people know that I'm human. It's so important to remind yourself of your humanness and also others'. Currently, I run two companies. One is called CultureCircle, where I help companies create healthy and inclusive workplace cultures. We're really focused on creating a culture of care, which means culture, amplified, represents everyone.  So really making sure that we're bringing humanity into the workplace. 

The second company I have is a nonprofit called Humanity Power, which is focused on ending the "isms" that are harming our humanity, so ageism, ableism, colorism, classism, sexism, racism. And we do this with high vibrational, so inspiring and positive content. So teaching people what is ableism, what is sexism, and how to really debunk some of the things our brains tell us. 

And so everything that I do really falls under humanity, whether it's in the workplace or in home space. And how that relates to my story is I've gone through a lot of different adventures in my life. And being homeless was one of the bigget eye openers for me as it relates to finding myself and also finding myself in the workplace, because that was very key to my survival at the time. 

So what I'm trying to think of in terms of the origin, I started out here. I'm in the Bay Area. And the way the programs work out here is you go to like a county office. And if you're unhoused, or homeless, and at that time I was pregnant, and I had two small kids, so they tried to speed up the process for me. But essentially, you go into like a motel and a hotel, you get the vouchers, and then when they have a space in the shelter, you go into a shelter and depending on the type of shelter, and the family, we usually get our own room so we were able to get our own room. 

There was a three-month, like maximum, that you could stay at the shelter. So, at that time, I think I was four months pregnant. And I needed a job. Because if you could get a job in the system, you would be able to get into transitional housing, which is essentially like your own apartment, and you would pay a small portion of your income, and you need an income to do it. So, um, I just recall every day going down and dropping my kids off at the daycare, going to the computer lab and just applying for jobs as much as I could. I didn't do it, my resume was not good.  

I don't recall there being any resources, like there are now, that really like helped you with your resume. But essentially, what I did was I went every single day, applied, applied, applied until this recruiter reached out to me. And I found this opportunity where I could potentially get a job. So I recall going into the environment. It was awesome. I'm still friends with the receptionist that was there. I just remember the whole feel of it. And you know, what's interesting is I have a people ops HR background, and I just bring in a lot of that, a lot of that has been influenced by my story.

For me, it was just a beautiful experience. The interview went really well. I interviewed with five or six people on the team. And then I got accepted. I got the job offer, which was amazing. I just remember thinking, I want to create spaces like that for other people, because then they didn't know they were interviewing somebody that was homeless. They didn't know I had two kids, and I was expecting. Like, they didn't know these things. But they treated me with humanity and respect and kindness, and so, fast-forward, I tell my manager, "Hey, I'm expecting, and she was like, 'That's amazing. Whatever we can do to support you." And I was like, it was a game-changer for me. And I knew that more companies needed environments like that. 

"They didn't know they were interviewing somebody that was homeless...But they treated me with humanity and respect and kindness." 

Now my view was a smaller team within a larger company, but it didn't matter. It changed my entire life. So through that, through getting that job, and working really hard, the program that I was in at the shelter, recommended me. I moved into transitional housing, which is like an apartment. And then the program recommended me to be in permanent transitional housing, which was a house that they got from a church that a church owned, and I was probably around six or seven months pregnant at this time. Where it stood, I would have to take my baby back to like this transitional housing, but this home that they had, I sat in front of this board of directors.  And because of all the stuff that I was able to do, they were like, "We want to offer you this house." And it was one of the happiest moments of my life, because I felt like I had a home to come to. And really just everything started to blossom from there. 

So my story is, what I'm finding out, is not uncommon, you know? And I like how you're talking about, like, what other business perspectives can happen? Because this is one side that a lot of people do experience. 

After you had a house, did you leave? How did you become an entrepreneur? So you stepped out on your own? How did you sort of make that transition from being an employee? It seems like it's risky now.

Yeah I've always had the entrepreneur bug, when even I was in transition, when I got the permanent housing, while I was on maternity leave, I was making onesies for people. I just made like baby onesies. And so I think that I've always had this inside of me. What happened next was actually pretty interesting. I partnered with this program called Wanda, it's out here in Silicon Valley, and they help single mothers with financial literacy. And essentially, what they do is they go through a cohort and you learn about different financial things, and they match you dollar for dollar.  And you can invest it in a house, you can invest it in a business, you can invest it in different things like that. 

And so, I went through this program, and I've always wanted to do business. But, you know, like you said, there is a lot of risk with that. But I always had that in my vision, you know, just having that in your vision. And through working at different companies, one of the ocmpanies I worked at, I ended up getting laid off, right, as I was transitioning from transitional housing, and I was like, "Oh my gosh, I can't go back."  And that's when my manager had told me to find something that fits you that you're passionate about. And then that's when I found startups back in, oh, gosh I forget exactly the date. But I founded my first startup, and it changed my life, being in that ecosystem. And watching all of these ideas pop from nothing, and you know, Lyft, Uber, Postmates, all of these things.

"I founded my first startup, and it changed my life, being in that ecosystem. And watching all of those ideas pop from nothing." 

So I got the bug, you know, honestly, and I realized that a lot of startups were also failing. And it was because of this thing called culture. And so I was like, "Hey, I could help other companies do this." So in 2016, I left the company I was at and started CultureCircle. To your point of risk, I didn't really know too much about what I was doing. And so I call it my beans and rice phase, because we ate beans, rice, and potatoes. Because I was not like, I didn't know how I was doing it, what was going on.

So for a whole year, it was like that, that we were very tight. And then after that year, I joined another company, and was able to you know, get things equal a bit. And still doing some consulting on the side, still learning a little bit of things. But it was that period of time that I needed to understand not only myself, which you know, was a big thing, heal, and then just get more exposure to business and culture and all of those things. 

During that time, I became a birth doula, which changed a lot of my life and how I deliver and develop certain things. I went to Bali for this experience, and you know, again, immersing myself in different areas. And then, just last year, I picked everything back up again, in a bigger way. And I do this full-time now. With no, there's no safety net other than faith. And it's much about, it's much about that, for me, my transition is when my faith became greater than my fear. And I joked with my mom, I said, we have an RV outside that we're renovating. And I said, "Mom, if it doesn't work out, I'm gonna sk you for $500 and we're gonna go in the RV, and that' s gonna be our life." But it's been almost a whole year since I relaunched a lot of this stuff. And I've just been in a state of gratitude, as I'm refining and you know, going out to companies and saying, "Hey, if you treat your people better, you're gonna have a better yield. And this is how you do that." 

So just want to clarify one thing — I googled — a birth doula. I was wondering for the audience, can you explain what that is?

Yes. So birth doula or birth worker is a person that helps families go through the experience of birth. So usually, every doula is different. Every birth worker is different. And essentially, we come in around, I don't know, 16 weeks of pregnancy, and we stay with the family. We're there in the birth room, whether it's a home birth or hospital birth. And I also the type of doula that I am, I also do the postpartum which means after the baby's born, and I stay with my clients for a whole year. So helping them navigate. I'm a mother of five. So I bring in a lot of good expertise if they ask for it, but essentially, birth doulas or birth workers are different from midwives. So midwives do everything medical. Doulas do nothing medical. So we don't prescribe anything. We are there as emotional, mental, physical and spiritual support for not only the person birthing, but also for the partner and the family dynamic. 

So one specific question that's the comes to mind just talking to you and sort of seeing your presence is like you have very positive energy. Just like your attitude and your way of phrasing things and seeing things. At the same time, there's reality. So I'm not trying to bring in negative energy, but I'm trying to see how like, at least even for me, I'll say the most natural way to see things is like life is not fair...Someone shouldn't have to go through that...So how are you able to stay positive? Were you ever angry?

That's a really good question. Oh, yeah, I grew up angry. I had a lot of anger in my heart. And, you know, I grew up in a very loving and interesting household. But I think one pillar for me was watching my grandmother, my grandmother was one of the singers of Gospel music back in the day, and she went around, she went to she sang for kings. She was in, you know, different parts of Africa, she went to Sweden. At a time where we came off of segregation, like, right off the hills of segregation, and I watched and witnessed this woman be this powerful force, and she was my favorite person in the world.

You know, I hit my wall, rock bottom very early on in life around 14, 15. It was really, really challenging. And I will say that it took me a very, very long time to get to the person that you see today. And I am not oblivious, you know, to, you know, the realities of what's happening. I just have tuned in to a different frequency of where all the sweet stuff is. Because I know I'm going to go through a bunch of stuff in life. But if I can, somehow get to a point where I am 90%, looking at the world in this, in this way of magic, and all the 10% will be taken care of.

Because life is not linear. It's a very lunar, like the moon. And so knowing that and going, what I have, you know, going through what I have gone through, I have made a choice. And every day I make that choice, and very much like, any negative choice, you just continue to do it, and it becomes a consistent thing. And so for me, my faith plays a big part in that.

I seek wisdom. So I spend time with a lot of elders. And I sit, and I speak with, you know, I sit and listen to wisdom. And then I also heal and forgive a lot. It is been one of the hardest lessons life lessons that I'm still learning is how to heal, and how to forgive and how those are not different from each other.

So, you know, one of the things I did not share in my story is during that time of span of being homeless, I went through a nasty custody battle. I mean, the odds were against me, and justifiably so I didn't have a place, I didn't have any place to go. But the manager at the time, wrote a check for $500, to a family lawyer to help me go through the custody battle. I also during that time, went through a I had to testify against someone who sexually assaulted me while I was pregnant. 

"I think business has a beautiful place in our humanity, I just think that both should be equally honored. And in order for that, business definitely needs to catch up with the human." 

And through it all, none, but ourselves can free our minds, and so staying very focused on what I you know, there's only so much energy you can use. And so for me, using the positive energy momentum, it creates this momentum. And there are days that I have, where I'm just like, I can't do it. I don't know how this is gonna happen. And I call my mom and I'm crying and but I get right back up, because I feel that there is a calling on my life just like there is on everyone else's. Everybody is you know, has there's a purpose. And I can very much well not live that purpose, or I can 100% of that purpose. It's a choice, I have a choice.

And things are not fair, but things are balanced. And whether I can see that balance in that moment or not. That's my perspective. You know, it's definitely not fair. But I think that for everything, I'm like, 'Man, thank God, I went through that experience,' because then now I now here I am, being able to help others that go through that experience and having deep empathy, and creating the changes that we need to see in this world. Because there's a lot that needs to happen.

So now I'm just going to go back to your work. So you help companies with your culture? Yeah. So I'm playing devil's advocate to some extent. So in business, you sort of seem to assume that this high vibration, positive energy will help businesses with, but is there a possibility that the world is kind of amoral? And it doesn't really like you know, like, if I think it'd be like sports, I don't really need to be high vibration and positive to win, I just need to win. Whether you're a tyrant, you get it done, or you grow fast, though, we see it all the time, like many companies are successful, they are not necessarily high vibration. But they are very successful. So how do you, you sort of explain that?

Yeah, I mean, I think that there's also a dichotomy with that, too, where companies that have been very successful are no longer around for a number of reasons. But the way that I, the way that I think about it is and I don't necessarily need a company to adopt this high vibrational content in terms of their workplace. What I'm trying to do is more so bring the humanity into the workplace, because business was never designed for the humans. We look at the Industrial Revolution and how business was built. They were using kids, they were using all of these things. It was never designed for the for the humans, yet our humanity has evolved over time, which is why racism and slavery and things like that are not socially acceptable. They're, you know, they happen, but that's like, "Wait, what?" Back in, you know, the 1800s it was okay.

So we've we've transitioned or we have gone through this awakening as our humanity and business is kind of saying where it is, it's like, you do this, and we do this, and we're going to keep that flowing. But what's happening is businesses want, they're going for this marathon mindset, where we have more of a sprinter mentality with our, with our people, where you must be able to speak to the human, in order to get the maximum results that you want from your company. It's been proven in different ways.

So how do you go about speaking to that human, if your business model is very linear, and eventually, it won't catch up to where we're going as humanity, and these big businesses are going to be falling away, and things aren't going to be accepted anymore, because our humanity is transitioning. So for me, it's preparing business for this next generation of, of where we are as humanity. You know, I talked to my mom, she, she's in her 60s, and business for her, she's like, she's, we would never be talking about diversity in the workplace. They had affirmative action, I was at the bottom of the memo, and we went about our business, however, that's starting to change as more of our humanity is awakening and becoming.

And so if businesses want to be successful, instead of saying, "Oh, I don't care about that," it's "How can I create space for that?" It does not take away from the business model at all. It just adds to it. So my balance or not even argument or just my words to this is, you know, there have been many powerful companies that have fallen along the wayside, you don't even know their names. And I think business has a beautiful place in our humanity, I just think that both should be equally honored. And in order for that business definitely needs to catch up with the human. And so that's essentially what I do with adjustments of words and adjustments of philosophies. And just introducing a mindset that is going to help shift some of the ways that businesses are currently doing things now.

So I'm just gonna push with two specific things. Yeah, so Frank Slootman of Snowflake, so they're maybe like the fastest growing company. He said he doesn't want diversity to override merits. He also added a couple of things, which I think are true, which is publicly, almost no CEO except him says. But privately, many CEOs feel that way. So the so what is your view of that? It's sort of, as if you in your company, if you introduce efforts to diversity, you're inherently sacrificing merits — I'm just picking the best players for the position, regardless if they are all white, so be it? 

So I don't disagree...Where I am in is anthropology, understanding human and humanity. And by nature, we are all diverse. I don't think if you did a poll, "have you ever hired someone that wasn't diverse?" No. So I think I, you know, I actually agree with what what that CEO is saying for the simple fact that by nature, we are diverse.

Where I think where it gets messy is just people not understanding diversity isn't a person, like I am not a diversity, you are not a diversity, we are collectively diverse. Now, when it comes down to providing the representation of the diverse set of our humanity, and how that can amplify business, that should be taken into account. But if you have people, if you have two candidates, and one candidate, one candidate is Black, and one candidate is white, and the white candidate, which is never a black and white issue, let me just put it that way, when the white candidate has everything that you are looking for your wish list, you do what's best for the business there. You, you can't go with what you can't just go with what is being threaded as a narrative, you also have to look at the business component.

However, you should also make sure you have space that's created for people that might not fit everything that you're looking for. You need to look for people that add to what you're doing, not fit. So I think that there's a shift there. And with that, it creates this more inclusive environment. I don't think companies should focus on diversity, because diversity is already there. They should be focusing on being more inclusive. And I think that amplifies components of your business that changes everything a more inclusive workplace, contributes to ideas, makes better decisions, all of those different things. And you don't need to go down to skin tone to make sure that happens.

For me personally, it's also the same in my view, and I think there are issues in society, just history happened one kind of way. So I think you've pointed this out, it's white people can be racist, Black people can be racist. Oh, yeah, that being said, history happened one kind of way. So in other words, at least in America, white people enslaved Black...Um, so it's not symmetric. So that's created all kinds of carry-on effects, right? So society has issues. Now as humans, we want to solve those issues, right. But as a business, your opportunities for dealing with things, in my opinion are far more limited than people assume.  Business cannot tackle a lot of the problems people are placing at their doorstep. That's I think that's the fundamental problem. So I think, whether it be gender or race or class, there are many inequities that have happened in the world. And business is not in a position to deal with all those problems. You set out to build your business for a specific measure. And you can get distracted from that measure. And although there are many other things that we all agree now company is bad when it can't tackle those problems or we will get lost ourselves and we will die? I don't know what do you think of that?

I can see where you're coming from with this. However, business has the ability to.  So OK, I wrote an article called "Why Being an 'Anti-Racist' Company Won't End Racism." In that article, I point out the core reason why it's not going to help if there are forms of oppression in your company, and I list some of those. You have no business going out and posting and talking about anti-racism, none of that, because you currently are a part of the problem. So whether other than you know, rather than companies going outside, you have the humans inside, do all the good there. And guess what those humans will go out and do good.

But what we've had is companies that don't necessarily do that. And so what happens, those people go out, they don't heal. Hurt people hurt people. We spend 1/3 of our lives at work. That is a beautiful opportunity for companies to dedicate a portion of their space to some type of change outside of the workplace. Does it need to be its sole mission? Do you need to post everything? Every time something happens? Absolutely not? Do you need to take a stance on every I don't think companies should do that. And unless they have the bandwidth for it, but they should not be following the next.

Ben and Jerry's is a perfect example. They have the bandwidth to talk about all of those things. If you are a company that can barely take care of your people, what is it? What does the airline say put your mask on first before you offer assistance, because what they're doing is they're causing more problems. And then you have what you have what either have a mismanagement of resources, or they're just trying to copy cat, a bunch of people.

Right after George Floyd got killed, I got a bunch of different calls from companies. And I had one specific call with the VC company, they templated their responses and pass it on to every single portfolio company they had. So templated as in this is how we feel about the changed a few words. You're not doing you're taking up space, where people can actually be utilizing that. It's just performative. So I think a lot of companies have followed this, like, diversity narrative, and they have no idea what they're doing, they should stick to their business and focus on the internal.

"You should also make sure you have space that's created for people that might not fit everything that you're looking for. You need to look for people that add to what you're doing." 

I think Mother Teresa had said, and I'm not going to quote this exactly right. But she's like, "if everyone focused on cleaning their doorstep, every doorstep would be clean." You know. And so that's kind of the mindset that companies should be having unless they have the bandwidth. But some, their people are burnt out. underpaid, barely appreciated. So companies like that have no business talking about what's going on on the outside. There's organizations that can really hold that space. So fix what's happening internally. And then, and then go out and try and do that work. Because like, you're right, you because, you know, we like to think As humans, we are very complex in mindset, for example, texting and driving, right? I can text, I can drive. So the brains like we can text and drive? No, we can't. Because what else is happening? You know, there's so many different things. And what about this, we are not accounting for the variable, the humans are the variable.

So businesses have enough to you know, and that's what I work on this the foundation of the culture. And I tell companies before you start working on your [diversity and inclusion] or however you want to call it. You need to work on the culture and what is the culture. It's the evolving survival mechanism that the people use within the workplace to achieve a mutually satisfying goal. And once that's solidified, then you can branch outward.

One final question I had for you. Something I spend, you know, I, like I've been thinking about is, so it kind of goes back to this in general.  Let's just say like, let's say we think of like slavery, we think of racism, we think of sexism. The unfortunate thing is that you can hurt other human beings, where you actually can never heal them, even as a dog, you can just maybe try to create the environment so they can heal themselves. In other words, so it's difficult, because, you know, even within our community, let's say, among black people in Nigeria, from Nigeria, from Lagos, when, you know, we're in a Third World country, and I just think of, you know, you think of colonization, I think about things we don't have. And it's easy to sort of focus on all the bad things that have happened to us. While at the same time, we're also imperfect. And there are many things that we say there's a point. So in other words, how, within a community, any community that feels that you're marginalized? How do we talk about personal responsibility of our role for healing ourselves, our associates to our future selves to get it done?

That's a very good question. And it's a question that I least know a lot in the Black community, we felt that somebody did a poll about how do you, like recover from certain types of trauma. It could be any kind, could be losing a job, losing a loved one, losing, you know, whatever. And they gave an option for forgiveness and forgiveness was the less chosen one. Nelson Mandela said, "If I walked out with bitterness and hate in my heart, I would still be in prison."

Our society does not glorify forgiveness. It glorifies revenge. That concept of karma, is really fascinating, because karma actually, if you believe in it, is a Hindu belief of reincarnation, which technically means it's not something that's happening in this lifetime. It's happening after you come. So we use karma wrong anyway. So that's another, you know, kind of topic to dive in later, but we don't.

To heal, it has to hurt. Our wounds teach us that if you ever get like a cut, you got that period where it's just hurting, it's healing. The fever is the body's way of dealing with the sickness. There's birth. My most uncomfortable components of having a baby during birth, is the process in which the birth is happening. We don't honor that enough. We don't sit in that enough, we, we use a lot of our technology to mask distract cyber zombies, different things like that. 

I'm saying all this to say, the answers are always inside of us. And we are we are spiritual beings in physical form. And when we detach ourselves from what we truly are, and we pack ourselves with labels, you know, we will negate once you label me, you negate me. Once you are labeling yourself, you negate all of the things that are needed to process and comprehend and flow through healing. I am tell you, that the healing process for me is not fun. Because it's releasing of the ego releasing of the ego, releasing of the ego. And the ego doesn't want you to heal. It wants you to hang out with misery and doubt, and all of those, you know, negative emotions that don't really serve us.

And so if more people spent time with forgiveness of themselves and others and then of others, we would start to see a shift in the way that we think about things if, you know if Nelson Mandela didn't go into prison, this calm, beautiful human that we saw when he got out, he went in just angry and upset. And it was through the death of the ego. And the enlightenment of the internal, his internal being that he was able to come out the way that he was, you know, kick it with Desmond Tutu, and help Hill, South Africa from an from a very, like, horrible. We talked about segregation. In America, apartheid was horrible.

So I think if we leaned more towards the poets, and the, the philosophers and the, our own internal gauge, we can start to see the the, the the breadcrumbs, that life is trying to lead us towards that it's not about what society paints as glamorous or what you can scroll through on your Instagram feed. It's about you being on your own personal legend. And following that, despite the things that are happening with you, and that's, you know, it's not easy.

It really is not easy, but with the concept of ease, you can do it. I mean, you you come from Nigeria, from Lagos, like, we I know, you're here to talk about me, but I know you have a story to like, and the way and the common thread between us other than our humanity, is that we decided to heal, and move forward. And we will continue to do that for the rest of our lives. It doesn't just stop. So that's what I would say is start with that forgiveness of yourself. And then it just opens up more like, Oh, I have now started to heal, it hurts. But I am healing and, you know, it's, I've practiced this a lot. And I actually have a like a little formula that I use to help me heal with certain things. Because sometimes I am an analytical kind of thinker. And that sometimes gets in the way. But it really this helped me process what needs to be done.

Cool. Awesome. Thank you very much. This was like the most soulful conversation I've had. Cool. So one thing I want to know is like, Is there anywhere where you know, people want to engage with your work, they want to follow you they want to learn more? Where is it? Is LinkedIn the best place to follow? 

Yes, LinkedIn right now, I'm more active on LinkedIn than any social platform. And then I also have a YouTube channel where I do the LinkedIn lives that go there. So can watch some of that stuff. But LinkedIn is the best place to find me. Charisse@culturecircle.com.  I do have an Instagram, which you can follow me there. But I'm like, I'm not great at social media. So I only post every once in a while, though, which I know is not like the perfect algorithm. But that's just how I do it. But yeah, you can find me on LinkedIn, find me on Instagram, or you can email me directly. And I'm always open to having conversations with any human that wants to have them.

Yeah, we'll definitely post your social links. And you have a nonprofit where people can support the work? 

Yes, so we are gearing up. August is nonprofit month, so shout out to all the nonprofits may be thriving in abundance and prosperity. And so humanity power, yes, HumanityPower.org, if you want to support. We feed communities, and we're expanding that we feed the house and we're expanding that and we're also teaching communities how to build community, you know, we don't have porches anymore. So you can't just go hang out on the porch. How do you build community because there is unity in our community, so or there's unity in our humanity, and there's also unity in the community. So you could go to HumanityPower.org and support any of those efforts. We also have a children series with humanity, the manatee. So I'm teaching kids about humanity. The second book is coming out soon. We have some super cool swag. So Humanity Power shirts. And so yeah, just check it out. We have some good material that we're still producing. But it's a beautiful nonprofit with the mission to help in the "isms."