welcome to be on my crisis i'm your co host ron ross think and i'm with v m das bar today tara abrahams is here with an extensive clinical and mental health background with over twenty four years of experience in corporate america tara is focused on educating people and companies about sexual harassment in the workplace through education and bystander intervention training she hopes to create an honest form to tackle this crisis in the workplace thank you to what you say about that so what comes to tag me too and time's up these are two current examples on the momentum that has been created around this issue in the workforce sexual harassment has been around since men and women have worked together and you know this has been going on for years and years and what we're finding is that even with human resources in place and with laws and regulations in place it is not only not improving we have starting to find that  it's actually getting worse i mean all of the mix is turning on the television when i hear a new case can you give me some statistics about this sure so according to e o c equal employment opportunity commission their statistics show that last year alone of the thirty percent of claims that made its way to their desk seventy four percent of them the victim was a woman so i want to preface that for today's conversation and for your audience to understand that anybody can be a victim of sexual other absolutely you can be male female regardless of sexual orientation or cultural background so i just want to make sure your audience ensuring that it doesn't discriminate that it's majority of our e mail issue and but in the news we hear the high profile cases of like politicians or media company presidents doing something wrong but that's just that's the big streamer right the reality is every every day people working in the workplace this occurs absolutely how do you define sexual harassment also let me go back to one point seventy five percent of women actually admit to experiencing some form of sexual harassment so this is a this is an epidemic i mean this is a major problem right so maybe men don't admit it perhaps perhaps and i think we're going to talk a little bit further about why people don't come forward there's a lot of reasons why people don't speak up but i feel like with the civil rights movement that wasn't just  black issue holocaust was it's not just a jewish issue and i feel like with sexual harassment this is not just a female issue this is a community issue and i feel like it is a prime opportunity and a very important moment in our history  to really use the momentum that we have so far with this issue and continue to shine the light i feel it's we have to reshape the mindset of how humans interact with each other a level of respect you know i'm i'm a joker i joke around a lot i may crack a joke that occasionally may be on the order line but i don't mean to offend the secesh are i just mean to like you know have some right spice  in in life but not to like harm somebody or traumatize so adi's so out a lot of weed to prevent that well first thing is it's important to have a clear definition on what it looks like right and i think what's happened in specially men men don't know how to act anymore they're afraid to go out for lunch with a female coworker they're afraid to compliment a woman's suit because they don't want to get her a they're going to cross the line so i feel like education is critical so also so definition according to e o c equal employment opportunity commission sexual harassment is any unwanted behavior of sexual nature or conduct that directly impacts the person's ability to do their job ok which creates a hostile environment so it looks like it's let's let's understand this for our lay people so if you're impeded if you feel uncomfortable doing your job then it could be construed as a sexual harassment actually so let's talk let's talk further about the definition of right so there's many different kinds of ways to harass someone and i feel like now that internet is mainstream in our lives it creates a lot of different mediums and ways for people to harass so there's two main types this quid pro quo which is this for that right so in typically the harasser is in a position of power there either in a manic manager or in management right so if you do x y and z  sexual of sexual nature you will get your promotion that's very clear and obvious i mean i really think that our audience is going to just stand that's quid pro quo that's i'm going to understand then there's also a hostile environment and hostile environment is inappropriate touching inappropriate gestures inappropriate looks or stares staring up and down someone in a sexual way that's about i feel like it has to be there's two components to this if a case ever ended up  in the courts they're going to want to know two things they're going to want to know was it severe and they're going to want to know was it pervasive ok so the key thing to here is if someone does something once in appropriately we're not going to go in quickly defin as sexual harassment in the workplace ok but it could be considered if it creates a hostile environment something can happen once and create have a trickle effect the point being is it has to have a direct impact on the it has to affect their ability to do their job some people start calling out sick some people ignore certain daily tasks because they don't want to come across that person or they want them or come in contact so the full pic you have to look at the full picture ok one isolated incident isn't considered sexual harassment unless it creates a hostile environment situation so a guy or girl to ask someone out do you want to go out for drinks or body he comments on oh i'm going to treat you well and i'm going to do this if i take you out he doesn't stop at no so what are other parameters for this so again i think the key thing here is the severity  of the situation you know if you're i'm sure about whether or not something is appropriate or inappropriate i really encourage people to utilize the resources on the internet i would encourage you to seek legal counsel the free consultation there's a lot of stuff on the internet it's like a too much it or mation but you mentioned bystander intervention what is this short so this is really interesting because you know going back to my comment before we have human resources we have laws and regulations in place but why is this still an issue i personally believe that there's a lot of reasons why people don't stand up and speak up right the victim oftentimes feels intimidated they have fear that they're going to lose their there's going to be some form of retaliation so my standard intervention this is so but i'm just kind of talking a little bit more about the victim here and why they don't stand up and we're finding that the more people involved the more the higher the chance and the higher the likelihood that the victim will feel empowered to to create change and to speak up ok so you know there's been a lot of studies around bystander training and i think this is perhaps the missing link in sexual harassment training at companies you know we always talk about what's appropriate like you even though yes i meant we know what's appropriate you know what i'm saying is bystander what does that mean someone on looking to people having a conversation or maybe a surveillance so we're having a board meeting right and there's a couple of people in the room mix of men and women right and and again for argument's sake we're going to make the woman the victim what a man comments on a woman's brea bystander would be somebody in that conference room that overheard or saw that interaction right now most people mind their business right they kind of let it go some people laugh it off when they get nervous they don't know what to do basically most people do nothing right so the whole concept behind bystander intervention is when other people get involved it gives the victim bar of hope motivation it provides accountability and sometimes all it can take is a male to say you know that was not a very appropriate comment you made in the conference room but anybody could say that to somebody  know that you don't think it's appropriate ok and the whole notion behind bystander training excuse me bystander intervention is the behavior of the perpetrator we have found is directly impact guided by the reactions of the people ok around this we have to pay attention so we have a peaceful end to that i feel like this is perhaps the missing link to sexual harassment training at the workplace you know we always focus on empowering the victim and getting the victim to speak up but the reality is most victims don't speak up i believe this is just fix that we have are not fully accurate i feel like there are probably many more people that want to speak up that don't because of fear of retaliation fear of losing their job fear of the stigma around being a victim of sexual harassment so i believe that they're the missing piece to this is educating everybody in the workplace and what part they can play in helping the victim we find that you know bystander training is important because it gives everybody the responsibility to become the solution in this problem and we also find it when i talk about bystanders i'm to make the victim a woman the male a man will make a comment about a woman's figure and it's of sexual nature and typically if you if you observe people in a group setting people get quiet their body language change but a lot of people don't stand up and speak up so the the limousine piece to this i think is that people that witness or are privy to sexual harassment occurring in the workplace it is now become the responsibility of everybody to speak up because we find that a bystander gives the victim bar of hope bard motivation as well as accountability and we find that also to inter and talking about the perpetrator bystanders typically will we've also noticed that you know the behavior and actions of a perpetrator is directly affected by how people act to their behavior so people stay silent what does that message sending right so i truly believe this is not just a victim issue this is a community issue and we need employee training to like diversity training courses so you bring up a great point right so most corporations i think the law is if you have more than five employees you have to or you have to offer sexual harassment training in what's happened and listen the internet is a wonderful thing but what's happened is companies have you know you know decided to utilize these online courses which are inexpensive which are extremely efficient right me basically send your employees a link a web ex a link you log on at your desk at your home and watch a very dry boring propeller point presentation and then you answer a bunch of questions that a five year old could probably answer and then the company can check the box off and they feel good that that person has been trained is that effect it has been feel like although the internet offers efficiency offers you know better pricing for companies and it's just easier especially for remote sales trick sales force sure i but ultimately it's not more i studies there's been some recent studies and that the research shows that the best platform and forum for sexual harassment training is small group under twenty twenty five people and you do employee training and management training but not only sexual harassment training of bystander training as well i think everybody plays a role in this while i really want to thank tara abrahams for giving great information i've learned so much today as a man to improve the workplace and when we improve it together we create in the fish an environment we create opportunities for to generate more income to provide for our families and have just a great community together thank you welcome to be on my crisis i'm your co host ron ross and i'm with the vegas bar and today we have jackie raya she's a trustee of the national association for multicultural affairs and transplantation her experience with or going to tissue donation is a very personal one eight years ago her mother in the loo was killed in an automobile accident this started her path in organ and tissue donation advocacy thank you so much for coming  a heartfelt intro to be here why is this important to have the support or this that's the whole thing is that you don't know when this is going to occur and that's why the so important for me to come and visit the show today so thank you so much for having me it's an unplanned of that always no one plans to be what happen what so i just picked up my mom at the airport and we got on to the highway and within ten minutes the tractor trailer had us thank you so much truly truly the darkest hour of my life but for the fact that my son who is fifteen at the time and i both miraculously walked away from that my mom unfortunately did not wake up from that so in the darkest hour you risen above and you've created something for yourself and other people this is your inspiration today my mom is my inspiration there are lots of people who made that happen if it not if it wasn't for the first responders who got to us on the turnpike so quickly and got my mom to a point where she could get on a ventilator and get to hospital without that she would not have been able to be an organ and tissue didn't die so she could have given her tissue but not her organs so the organs must be kept a french canadian italian guy so the culture in my home is very very vast one of the things though that we don't do is talk about and organ donation and what you want to have happen after you pass away is one of those things that are just not spoken about so unfortunately my mom like most like a lot of people would designate her herself a donor motor vehicle when she renewed her license she didn't do that nor did we talk about it so the unfortunate thing is that we made the decision for my mom fortunately though because of the way she lived her life because she was a very very giving person would literally give you the last penny in her wallet and shirt on her back when we were in the hospital and she was in i c u she was on the ventilator and the doctors told us that there was just no brain function and had it not been for this machine that was keeping her heart pumping in her lungs breathing she was gone so that made her an ideal candidate for organ donation so they approached my family my three siblings and i and said do you think that your mom would want to save lives and we said what do you mean by that and they said your mom is in a position right now to save many many other people who are on the waiting list for an organ amount of money how many other people so currently there's one hundred fifteen thousand people in the united states waiting for an organ transplant right each individual each donor like my mom has the capacity to see eight people with an organ donation so the heart that the two kidneys the two lungs the liver the pancreas you can see lives with that eight people eight people with tissue donation what we're talking about there is your your cornea your skin your bone your heart valves you can heal the lives of an additional seventy five so my mom on this horrific night saved three people with her two kidneys and her liver and she touched and healed the lives of forty three others with her tissue donation so now just because someone has the capability to donate eight organs to save other people's lives it doesn't generally happen they can give so many organ because it has to be fresh they're all there all because they're on a ventilator in the hospital so there is some very strict criteria that has to be met but her two kidneys and her liver were good to go and she saved three people to do focus on organ transplantation from people who have died or people who want to donate one of their own kidneys for a living person so we do both primarily though in my world what i have been concentrating on is deceased donation kidneys make up about eighty two percent of the hundred fifteen thousand people waiting in the average wait is anywhere from six to seven years six is where someone who's waiting for a kidney right so you've been hearing a lot about this live donation where a living person says well i only need one kidney i will give someone they might know them they might not know them i'll give them one of my kidneys and if it matches then they can receive the kidney but if it doesn't they will start these chains and i wan say the longest chain that i've heard of is about thirty some odd people where one person says ok i want to give but the person i want to give to i don't match so we'll keep looking for a kidney that matches and we'll start this swapping if us so butt my main concentration is in deceased of the nation wow that's an incredible thing so is there a prevention from people to sign their driver's license card to say i want to be an organ donor of course is that the little that i mean belief that if something happened to me and they see my my driver's license and they say oh an organ donor let's not save her because we need livers and kidneys  something but we say that but all kidding aside when i speak to the community that is one of the top two reasons why even people in the health care industry will say that there fifty so basically you're not just crushing the myth you're actually telling people if you want to be taken care of even better use sign that organ donation card and then you'll be cared for well the truth of the matter is less than one percent of people who pass away can actually give the gift of organs so has the situation in which it occurs you have to be in the hospital on a ventilator ok so the criteria is very stringent and so that is why it's so important to share this information with you today because the more people that we can get to understand that organ donation shouldn't be a scary thing there's there's really nothing but great things to like thinking like oh my religion or i don't want to lose my organs when i'm dead than i can't be reincarnated or maybe a d n a something i mean is there any religion is a huge barrier there are some religions that they thought and maybe five ten years ago in judaism for instance you have to leave the way you arrived so tattoos piercings and things like that now in judaism it is said now you've got a large constituency of donors now well we hope that it gets larger because even though the great majority over ninety six percent of people would say yes to organ donation if you  were to ask you ninety seven verse thirty six percent would say yes i would want to give organs yet only fifty four percent of people in the united states have actually read it in fact what if when when i do my driver's license it only happens every few years so it's not always convenient to i mean i think of it how can people donate on was so i'm so glad you asked because there is a very new way and a very universal way that others that people can go and donate or at say that they want to be a registered donor now and so it's very simple fact if you have your your i phone ok you can go on right now to register me dot org and within two minutes you can be a registered down so i just have to take out my be a donor as looks very simple so if i tap that button if my internet was working oh i see so just put your name your date of birth the last four digits of your social your address  donate that's what i would like to say yes so those who are very close to you you want to make sure that they know what your wishes are because there have been issues where you are a registered donor here in the database and the parents that oh no no no she didn't tell me that she wanted to do that you're not going to do that tell your family as well so as a trustee on this this organization what what is your goal what what what is what is the goal of the organization the next year or two years what 's the plan our goal really is to across every culture across every human being in the united states is to have this conversation not even so much to go on register me or it but to have the conversation w everyone in your circle to say if anything ever happens to me i want to be an organ donor so please follow through what do you want to have happen i mean and then yes go on register me dot org register to be official organ donor and but that is what we want because there are twenty two people i date on waiting for an organ so that doesn't have to be well a lot of people have these this or they just don't tell others and we're concerned being wasted lives are being wasted and so that's why it's so important super great thank you so much for coming we really appreciate this message this is this really great public service that you're you're getting around to people and and i would say just go to register me down or fill in your name tell your family members about it and just express to them that the gift of life you can keep giving and giving thank you so much for watching the show and contribute