Stand Tall: How Emmagness Ruzvidzo Redefines Inclusivity and Self-Worth

She has over 15 years of strategic brand management, and she's known for creating powerful results driven brands. Her accolades are impressive. She's been named among Queensland's 40 under 40. She is one of the top 25 influential African Australians, and she's received as Queensland's day award, as well as the wonderful women of Waterford award.

And Emmagness influence in brand strategy is matched by her commitment to authentic leadership and impactful inclusion. Now in this conversation, she opens up about why we must stop shrinking ourselves to make others comfortable. A message she lives by as she shares her journey from Zimbabwe to Australia.

Let's dive in.

Good morning, Emmagness. I'm so excited to finally get you on my podcast. How are you?

Emmagness: I'm fantastic, Janine. I feel like I, I know you, like this doesn't feel like it's a first time speaking to each other. Me

Emmagness: too.

Emmagness: most of the accolades that you've mentioned, um, and the, the awards and achievements that I've been publicly recognized for It's been through nominations by other people. So it's people that have seen the work that I'm doing, and nominated me for an award to win something And I've won and I've been awarded.

So it's the award itself. While it's nice to display my offers and look at at times when I'm not feeling great, what's most important is that people see the work that I'm doing and think it's valuable enough and has contributed enough to be. put forward for an award. So that's what really it means to me.

Janine: Yeah, well, you deserve it because you really are absolutely laser focused in terms of the work that you do. So for our listeners, can you share when you talk about the work that you do, what, is that work and why, why does it matter so much to do the work that you do?

Emmagness: I'm a multi disciplined person. And what this means is I do a lot of things within a specific area. So in brand and marketing, my passion is on inclusive brand strategies. So included inclusive brand strategies through brand consultation and brand strategy design. And the reason I'm passionate about this is because I think there's so many.

The way the brand is positioned doesn't quite align to those people's values. So I'm passionate about that because, first of all, it makes everyone seen, heard, and valued, and everyone can feel they belong. But it's also good for business. So if you are focused on revenue generation, sustainability of the planet, all those things, Then it makes sense to have a brand that fosters inclusivity and belonging.

You will get the recognition. The salary increase will come. The promotion will come. That did not work at all. And I realized that I needed to articulate my unique value a little bit more. I needed to understand who the influencers were in my career and who could sponsor me and I needed to articulate what I wanted.

So Because I know that works, I'm passionate about helping everyone else. I want to take everyone else along for the journey and so that people align their careers and their aspirations, their experiences and their qualifications to the career that they actually want to thrive in.

Janine: I love all of that. And we're going to delve into that consistent thread that runs through your work, both from a branding point of view from an organizational perspective, but also an individual with that piece about being seen and heard from an inclusivity perspective. But before we do, before we jumped online, we were having a little bit of a giggle about running our own businesses.

Emmagness: I would love to have a conversation with that person who said when you do what you love, you don't have to work a day in your life because I'm pretty sure something was happening in their life and they thought, Oh, I love what I'm doing. It doesn't feel like work as an entrepreneur. I have not experienced that at all.

I love what I do. I'm passionate about what I do and I'm so driven for it to be successful and to amplify. what I do. But man,

Janine: It's

Emmagness: I love it, I work hard.

I remember. in the early days of my own business, the kids were really little and can remember rushing, like rushing around to try and drop them at school and I still had one still at home. and I can still remember like dropping two off at school, pulling Ava to the side of the road. Looking at my little one that was still in his toddler seat going, what the hell am I doing?

So, but we wouldn't change it for the world because we love

what

Emmagness: Absolutely. Absolutely. There's one thing that I read that really challenged my perspective on, I love what you mentioned about who set the rules. And it was a woman who was talking about putting her dishes in the dishwasher. And running them once, but they were not clean. And she was talking to her therapist about it and her therapist said, Oh, but why don't you run the dishwasher twice?

And that's different, right? Because we are taught and conditioned that the dishwasher is run once. If the dishes are not clean, something is wrong, then you get stressed about it. But, hey, run it twice. And it's, it's been challenging, but thinking that, okay, I've got this long to do list and I have to remind myself this all the time.

If it means we have to take a walk and take a few hours off, then that's what we need to do. But it's a, it's that constant reminder of why am I doing what I'm doing? Why is this important to me? And what will it take for me to do it in the best mental state as possible?

So this came to me, Because a few weeks ago, something happened,

I was sitting in a room with a few people and one of the women said to me, Oh, I wish I was as good as you know, I went to school with someone and they're so successful now, but I feel if I talk about what I do, they'll think that I'm just trying to copy what they're doing and I'm afraid to lose that relationship.

So, the way I look at it, if that person is your friend, and if they are your friend and they want to cheer you on, they'll have no problem with you talking about what you do, taking up the space that you want to take up. But if they have a problem with that, then that means their discomfort should not be your discomfort.

She's not intimidating. People are intimidated. She does not push anyone's boundaries. People's boundaries are pushed based on their insecurities and the way they view the world. So she will not tiptoe around people's insecurities because she's done the work to take up space. And she encourages people to do the same and not tiptoe around other people's insecurities.

Janine: Gosh, I love that I'm curious, Emmagness, have you, always been an individual that has been, empowered enough, strong enough to have your voice, to take up that own space, or has this been something that you've also had to identify? as an area to work on for yourself.

do whatever I set my mind on. I was also really fortunate because I grew up surrounded by very powerful, strong, opinionated women you know, that were senior leaders in huge corporations. My, I've got an aunt, she's, she's late now, I'm sorry, my guru, who Was one of the first black women to do anything.

You think of something. She was the first black woman to do it. You think of, acting in theater productions. She was one of the first black women to be on stage and have a main character. So the background that I have, my aunt used to appear on ads when black women were not really appearing on TV at that time.

Janine: Oh, wow. Where did the fearlessness disappear? What triggered that?

Emmagness: I think one of the things that A lot of people, including myself, underestimate and underestimated at the time was that moving countries has a psychological impact on a lot of things, confidence, the way you view things, the way the world interacts with you and how you interact with the world.

And my. version of the world had been an environment that is extremely affirming. I've been brought up and raised in a very affirming environment where if I said I wanted to, discover a mineral no one knows on this planet, my family would have been like, yay! And given me the resources and tools to do that.

And I was on a call with my aunt and she She said to me, I sounded like I was in a cage, like I sounded caged. And that was a very interesting expression from her. And later on that week, I had another call with a friend of mine who is in South Africa, Nyasha, and she asked me why I was whispering.

And after those two conversations, I I took a break from everything and sat with myself and realized that I was not the person that I've always been. Something had happened and I was in this cocoon and I was so uncomfortable. I was literally suffocating and I needed to get out. So I invested in coaching and to be honest, I tried, counseling initially, but I quickly realized that's not for me because I love to take action and be responsible for my outcomes.

I lost a few friends

But I'm glad I did that. I Make that investment because it made me realize how far gone into a shell I've become and How I wasn't leaving my truth, which I'm glad I'm doing now

Janine: I love that. I'm sure you see it with, your clients. I certainly see it with many people that come into my world, This, absolute inner passion and fire for work, but combined with a fear of being seen.

Emmagness: there's an exercise I love doing That has helped me a lot and that helps a lot of the people that I work with and it's what I call, I think there's a lot of talk around rediscovering or reconnecting with your inner child. So there's a space in time, in all our lives, where we were inhibited.

I think a lot of us heard that when we were growing up. Be seen, not heard. and what that does is the passion, the intrinsic passion and motivators that we're born with, that are natural to us, they get really squashed down. And you align yourself to what's acceptable in society. So for some people, maybe the medical profession is what's more acceptable.

Maybe being a lawyer, maybe working as an accountant is more acceptable. And slowly that chips away at our core and what we naturally have as our intrinsic motivators, as our passion. So when the best exercise anyone can do is to take a moment, take a moment to sit with yourself when you know you won't be disturbed and think about a point in your life where you were absolutely joyful.

Janine: I love that. I was visualizing myself dancing. I'm always, I always love dancing and it's funny. I literally found something on Facebook yesterday called, I don't know, it was like 90s dance and exercise. I'm like, Oh, I have to do that. Uh, and I'm in my happy place. Live music, dancing, just in uninhibited.

Emmagness: invest in coaching. Invest in coaching. I don't believe life is meant to be done. alone, and we're not meant to carry certain burdens by ourselves. There are people that are equipped to help us carry these burdens to make them more manageable and to align ourselves with the purpose and the passion that we want to be having.

Because it's important to leave it I mean this is a bit morbid, but when you're on your deathbed not having regrets. Because you didn't live life the way you wanted. People are afraid of change. And there's actually a psychological explanation to it.

That people are afraid of change because you are entering into the unknown. And the unknown is scary, it is dark, it is unfamiliar, you don't know what's going to happen in the unknown, you might lose friendships, you might lose your job, your business might not go well, you might lose very important relationships you, but what happens in the unknown as well is that you're becoming someone that is Can leave life out loud in the way they want to leave and then when you're living life in your authenticity What then happens is that you are attracting people that are aligned with that?

and people ask me about what made me do stuff. And I could never have predicted where I'm at now. I had zero plans to write books. There was no way it was on my agenda to run my own business. no plan at all to speak. And what I do know is that moment when I decided. Enough of the excuses,

technology. First up, what are you angry about right now? When you think about brands, when you think about businesses, when you think about technology, you know, as a woman of color, as someone that you've just shared, you came to Australia and you felt like you were put in a cage as someone that's invested to get out of that.

And now as someone that's making incredible ripples amongst the people that you work with and being recognized. for your work. is it that you want to change? What are you noticing?

Emmagness: I have 3 examples of What made me lose sleep? and the first one is the advancement off I love a I love generative a I and a I in totality and I encourage a lot of people, particularly people of color to use it because it's learning and if we don't feed it information, someone else is feeding it information and that information is not going to be in our favor.

So it's not really an advantage if you are a brown woman or a black woman. Forget it. Forget it. The algorithm naturally just removes if the name doesn't suit. Even if you remove the name, it can pick up the, experience that you've had, the organizations you have worked, the area that you live in, and it can deduce your ethnicity and your race from that.

So most organizations end up just hiring the same group of people because that's what AI keeps recommending. it blows my mind that most organizations are losing out on extremely great Great resources, extremely great talented people because they are leaving all that sorting out of resumes to an AI that's not trained to be objective.

This is Australia. This is not what Australia looks like and while the brand has done the right thing by It's inclusive approach. My question on that was what have they done to support this model? Who's getting all this negative feedback? Does she have a support system? because that's important that's inclusivity It's not just slapping someone on an ad and leaving them What's the support that's now being built around that person and what's the education?

So you've got creative agents, again, that don't have anyone helping them check their blind spots. You've got marketing teams, branding teams, that don't have anyone helping them check their blind spots. And they're putting all this content out there without really checking on the impact it has on the people that they want to include in their targeting.

We start seeing the gaps we're missing, the blind spots we have, Just think of it this way, Janine. The reason I'm so passionate about brands is because a brand has the power to shape people's perspectives and that's Huge power.

So imagine if it becomes normal to see someone like me speaking on stage with a thousand people, people will stop questioning if I'm there as a tokenism or if I'm there because I know what I'm doing, because when they hear me speak, notice, Oh, she's experienced. She knows what she's talking about.

Because we only see them one dimensional and not in many dimensions.

Janine: Yeah, I can hear your passion. and I was sharing again before we started recording my very good friend, Kelly Slezer, who works in the digital space. She has a digital inclusivity project, where it's all about. Diversity and inclusion and, yes, from a, a race perspective, a color of skin and education, but also, you know, we throw in neurodiversity and people that are identifying with some form of disability.

And when you go out in the world and someone disagrees with you, it's a shock because not everyone thinks That way, in your mind, everyone agrees with you. And I've got a really good friend of mine, um, Liz Irvine, she talks about gently waking up the bear. Don't poke the bear, gently wake up the bear. And I love that because it's, I'll give the example of the gender pay gap, right?

A lot of men that. Get into this discussion, say, Oh, we feel attacked. We feel like we have to feel guilty that we earn more than women. So the natural response is defensiveness and the walls come up and they don't want to converse. But if they are brought into the conversation and we have this conversation in a respectful manner.

That's all it is. If the target audience looks the same, then that's what it is. But there's a thing about them bringing people into a conversation and not forcing it on people and making sure that the conversations are respectful and also extending grace. As you have said, the way that I've grown up is different from the way that you've grown up, the way most people have grown up.

How can we then draw in people that have diverse perspectives from the way we think and the way we operate so that the world we're all living in can benefit more when we have applications and branding and conversations and messaging that's diverse, inclusive and

fosters belonging

Janine: Yeah, I love everything. What a beautiful analogy, gently waking up the bear. As we wrap up, and you think about the work that you've done on that branding piece, on that inclusivity piece, when you reflect on the clients you've worked with a main list, who inspires you the most when you look at the work and the journey that you've done, where do you sit there and go, Oh, change is happening.

That was the narrative, that if she uses her hands, that wouldn't make money. And, In discovering her passion and what motivates her, she started using her hands and is now making jewellery. And in making jewellery, because she's got, she now has that inclusive mindset. She uses diverse models that wear her rings or her earrings.

And, and it's a beauty to watch. She recently, moved out of Australia and went back to her home country. Which broke my heart because she became a really good friend. But that's what happens when people find, when they go back to who they've always meant to be. They find themselves and do work that lights them up.

So they challenged themselves in, Oh, we're not sure if our imagery is right. We're not sure if this will perpetuate bias. Is this Is this fair? Is this kind? is this equitable? Would this promote the right attitude towards this group of people? And it was so much fun working with them because we, changed, we refined the messaging a little bit, we refined the imagery, and made sure that the representation of Their target audience online was done very respectfully and in a way that offered dignity to the audience that they wanted to talk to.

Those would be my two favourite ones.

there's anything I can do moving forward, please keep in touch. thank you so much for your time. And Emmagness, I look forward to one day meeting you in

person.

Emmagness: Ha ha ha. That would be fun. Thank

you for having me Julie. so much. My pleasure.

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