Wandile Mthiyane - Anti-Racist Architecture and Inclusive Workplace Culture
“I feel most healed when I'm in service to others, and in many ways, I'm still trying to figure out and discover that journey.” - Wandile Mthiyane
My friendship with today’s guest is one of the best souvenirs from all my travels around the world. I met Wandile Mthiyane at a conference in Johannesburg a couple of years ago, and we became fast friends. This man has been a constant source of inspiration and motivation since I met him, so I’m really jazzed to introduce you to him.
What’s one of the threads woven through much of the world’s established (read: accepted) architectural design? Yep, it’s racism. It makes sense since white supremacy was exported around the globe. Colonizers razed indigenous structures and constructed new buildings to reinforce colonialism’s authority.
I’ll be honest: before I met Wandile, an Obama leader, TedX fellow, founder and CEO of Ubuntu Architecture Group, and social entrepreneur, I hadn’t given this aspect of institutional racism much thought. Nor had I considered how healing culturally competent architects might be as they incorporate into future designs.
To be fair, Wandile says architecture isn’t inherently racist, but the structures (get it?) imposed on designs by those in power are. The industry is ready for revolution. “My work now centers around using architecture as a vehicle to restore folk's dignity by building homes,” he explains.
But architectural design is just one aspect of Wandile’s creative set of approaches to banishing racism from the homes, workplaces, and spaces in which humans gather. “Using platforms like the Tea and our consulting within anti-racism and inclusion, [we] help companies build homes of belonging for all their employees to thrive.”
The “Tea” is GrindTea, the #1 rating platform on which “truth thrives, careers take flight, and women & people of color find the workplaces where they belong.” GrindTea is NOT your grandma’s Glassdoor! Instead, it uses an algorithm to give minority voices a megaphone to rise above the white noise.
Wandile’s perspective has been shaped by world events and his upbringing to create his multi-disciplined design efforts––and why, for him, representation matters in all things. Born in South Africa just before Nelson Mandela became the country’s first Black president, Wandile then attended school in Zimbabwe during the time of Robert Mugabe, that country’s first Black president. He later went college in the United States while Barack Obama became the United States’ first Black president. I’m not saying these men owe it all to Wandile, but I’m not saying they don’t.
Today, Wandile is serving up his antiracist tea alongside antiracist hotdogs, a strange combination when taken out of context, but you’ll just have to listen to find out more. For my part, I’m humbled to piggyback onto the gorgeous Zulu philosophy that guides each of Wandile’s groundbreaking projects: Ubuntu––I am because we are.
GUEST CONTACT AND BIO
Wandile Mthiyane is an Obama Leader, TedxFellow, architectural designer, social entrepreneur, and the founder and CEO of Ubuntu Design Group (UDG), an architectural organization that focuses on social impact design projects ranging from individual housing to urban design scale.
Let’s be friends! You can find me in the following places…
