All humans habitually categorize and group others who are “different” from “us,” which often lends to black and white thinking, as in “good” versus “bad” or “native” versus “immigrant” and a host of other isolating labels. With this inclusivity presentation, Ellen (Ellie) Krug offers an innovative toolset—Gray Area Thinking™—for interacting with diverse humans in a mindful and compassionate way. Attendees will appreciate and value how it’s necessary to consciously engage in Gray Area Thinking™ in their daily activities. Doing so will lead to a more inclusive life.
Gray Area Thinking™ is a simple three-part toolset for interacting with diverse humans:
- awareness of another human’s vulnerability or suffering;
- risk-taking to alleviate or lesson that vulnerability or suffering; and
- compassion and kindness for both self and others.
About The Instructor: Ellie Krug
Ellen (Ellie) Krug (pronounced “Kroog”), while an Iowa civil trial attorney with 100+ trials, transitioned from male to female in 2009. She later became one of the few attorneys nationally to try jury cases in separate genders. From 2011 to 2016, she served as the executive director of Call For Justice, LLC, a Minneapolis legal nonprofit that was conferred an American Bar Association award for innovatively increasing legal access. The author of Getting to Ellen: a Memoir About Love, Honesty and Gender Change (2013), Ellie currently speaks, trains and consults on diversity and inclusion topics to governmental entities, court systems, corporations, law firms, social service organizations, and colleges and universities. A hopeless idealist, Ellie has presented her diversity and inclusion program, “gray area thinking”™ across the country.
In 2016, advocate magazine named Ellie one of “25 legal advocates fighting for trans rights.” She is a monthly columnist for Lavender Magazine and pens a widely-circulated monthly newsletter, The Ripple. Ellie views herself as an “inclusionist” and founded an inclusion-oriented consulting company, Human Inspiration Works, LLC, in late 2016. In January 2017, Ellie launched her weekly radio and podcast show, “Hidden Edges Radio,” on AM950 in the Twin Cities. The show highlights our commonalities as we each work to survive the human condition.
