In Episode 2 of They Tried It, host Lindiwe Davis sits down with Shenelle Brooks, a success coach and DEI consultant, to unpack how workplace bias actually shows up—and why it’s so often disguised as “professionalism.”

Shenelle shares her journey from teaching into corporate leadership, where her work in people development, training, and DEI repeatedly ran into familiar barriers: being told she wasn’t “ready,” watching promotion goalposts move, and receiving feedback tied more to identity and appearance than performance. From comments about nails and hair to pressure to shrink or assimilate, the conversation names the microaggressions many professionals experience but struggle to label.

Together, Lindiwe and Shenelle explore how fear of retaliation keeps people silent, how to assess whether a ...