In 2018, Starbucks closed its stores after a manager called the police on two black men waiting at a table. The months that followed brought a rash of incidents of white people calling the police on people of color napping in a college dorm, BBQing in a public park, touring a university campus, and selling water on the side of the road. Each time an incident was reported, cries of racism came to the fore. And yet, if you asked any of those people, they likely would say, “I’m not racist,” or “I don’t see color.” How do we reconcile that? That’s where unconscious bias enters in. How do we interrupt bias? How do we see truth? And, crucially, how can we transform our thinking so we see people for who they are, not who we think they should be? Michelle Silverthorn is the Founder and CEO of Inclusion Nation, a diversity consulting and education firm. A graduate of Princeton University and the University of Michigan Law School, Michelle spent four years practicing for two large law firms in New York and Chicago. She then transitioned into the legal education field where she spent six years training thousands of attorneys - in-person and online - about implicit bias, diversity and inclusion, and millennials in the workplace. She has written numerous articles on those topics, including a well-received op-ed for the Chicago Tribune on implicit bias. She is also the author of the forthcoming book, Your Organization is Not a Melting Pot: How to Recruit, Train and Lead a Diverse Workforce (Routledge Press, 2019). This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at www.ted.com/tedx