Inside Track: Doyle makes DEI his life’s work

Paul T. Doyle credits his mother, Mae Etta Doyle, for making it possible for him to become the man he is today.

“She provided for and raised the five of us as a single parent in our house,” said Doyle, who grew up in a government-owned housing project in Brooklyn, New York. “She provided me the ability to be empathetic, caring and sensitive to others. It’s settled in my core and influenced a lot of my relationships in my life.”

These days, Doyle is doing his part to shepherd empathy in others by staunching the bleeding of racism.

Doyle works to nurture diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) for companies that have ears to hear. In 2010, he launched Paul T. Doyle and Associates, since renamed Inclusive Performance Strategies. His company hones sustainable and transformative DEI results without relying on a cookie-cutter approach.

Doyle marshaled the fortitude to launch his own company thanks in part to his grandfather Stephen Joseph Doyle’s entrepreneurial, can-do outlook.

“My grandfather, who lived to be 102, had a newsstand in New York City on 42nd and Madison and it showed me the satisfaction of having your own entity,” said Doyle, whose professional background includes working as the director of service strategies for Spectrum Health from 1998-2008.

Word has reached the ears of C-suite executives and others who desire to spark inclusive change in their companies. Doyle’s clients include Steelcase, Spectrum Health, Wolverine Worldwide, RoMan Manufacturing, Mary Free Bed Rehabilitation Hospital, Blandford Nature Center, Ottawa County, University of Michigan Health-West, Meijer and California Pacific Medical Center.

Doyle said his clients want to ensure they’re intentional with their diversity and inclusion practices.

“They appreciate the breadth and depth of our experience and our team of consultants’ customized approach,” said Doyle. “They appreciate we understand their context to make meaningful changes. One of the key components of our work is that we develop measurable frameworks to achieve sustainable results for optimal impact.”

Doyle said DEI work can be intense, but making a leap toward it means people feel more supported and even resilient when they learn to adapt to change.

“We believe at our core, organizations and systems can achieve their desired state by ensuring everyone feels valued and that they truly belong,” he said. “When people’s identities are affirmed and there is psychological safety, their sense of well-being increases, their ability to perform and participate increases. The behaviors, mindsets, skills that are necessary to do that (are) very vast and complex and require a lot of what we would call ‘sweat equity’ investment.”

The work Doyle’s company seeks to accomplish is ongoing and some would argue, never-ending. Overt proof of this conclusion comes to the fore with the scorched-earth rhetoric that comes from the pump of alt-right, white supremacist groups such as The Proud Boys who promote racism and incite violence.

As unsavory as these characters are, Doyle’s drive to make a difference is steadfast. He does not pause to imagine what he would say if he encountered such people.

“It’s not so much what I would say but how much I would ask,” said Doyle. “I would want to find out what is it that they feel they’re trying to achieve? We talk about freedom, being able to make things work well or be impactful. What makes them think they’re the only ones who have the market on that or the ability to make that happen?”

Doyle is convinced the fissures of hate would begin to close if he could get white supremacists to calm down and listen. That’s when change starts to peek through.

“In talking with people who are polarized, or on opposites ends, by the time you facilitate the discussion, they realize how much they have in common, or they really are desiring the same things for themselves and their families,” said Doyle.

“But because of how they feel, they’ve created an ‘us versus them’ lens that influences their behavior. People look at inclusion through the lens of scarcity versus abundance. What do I lose versus what does someone else have? Actually, it’s what do people gain when we all benefit? That’s the work to be done.”

Achieving such work dovetails into what Martin Luther King Jr. implored the world to do in keeping the eye on the prize: “We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.”

“Knowing that what you do, or have done, has not only provided an opportunity to support you and your family but also contribute to making the world a better place,” Doyle said. “I don’t accept, ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.’ If it ain’t broke, improve it, should be more of our focus.”

Doyle was the youngest of five siblings who was the first to graduate from high school and college. That didn’t happen by chance.

“That would not have been possible without delivered decisions to reimage policies and behaviors for someone like me,” said Doyle. “It was intentional to make that happen. I feel I’m a living and breathing example of what happens when communities and systems invest in ensuring equitable outcomes.”

Doyle said he’s fortunate an elementary school was launched within his housing project that hired some of the best teachers in the city to staff it. The school was filled with educational resources in the sciences and arts.

“They intentionally named the school after Dr. Dale Hale Williams, who is the first surgeon to do an open-heart procedure,” said Doyle. “It was an intentional effort to surround us with quality education, have resources around us that would help us to be able to learn, and support us to the point of being able to apply to college. This was a product of the 1965 Civil Right Acts and the things that came with it.”

The new school provided Doyle the means to whet his appetite for music at an early age, learning to play the French horn, percussion and the trumpet in elementary school. He went a step further when he competed in a drum and bugle corps from the time he was 13 through high school, playing the French horn. 

“That really enhanced discipline and a work ethic for those who understand what’s involved in that,” said Doyle. “There is a lot of sweat equity and a lot of work to be a member of the drum corps to work together and be competitive.”

Doyle chuckles.

“Don’t ask me to play anything now. It’s been a long time,” he said.

Still, vestiges of his years as a budding musician remain with him.

“When I go to the symphony now, I always look at the French horns,” he said.

Twenty years ago, Doyle was co-founding board chair of the Grand Rapids African American Health Institute (GRAAHI) whose focus is to bridge health care inequities.

“One of the most significant disparities was infant mortality among African Americans,” he said. “There were actually more African American babies dying per capita than (in) Detroit at that time.”

GRAAHI urges Black people to get the COVID-19 vaccine but therein lie some hurdles to clear, said Doyle, including access to health care and what Doyle said are “trust issues” that emanate from the past.

“There’s a trust issue with so much experimentation, nonconsensual testing from the Tuskegee Institute experiments,” said Doyle, referring to the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis on a group of nearly 400 Black males who were not informed of the study’s purpose, which was conducted between 1932 and 1972 by the United States Public Health Service and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More than 100 men died as a result.

Doyle has his eye on writing a book that would be part biographical with a dose of leadership tips mixed in.

“I’ll probably focus on leadership by using my life’s journey as a backdrop of how basically the challenges and my pathway led to me accumulating leadership qualities in my life’s journey by intentionally navigating challenges as they’re presented to you,” he said.

“My life’s journey is still a desire in me to pursue pathways where I could be a leader who’s committed to inclusive growth because I’m a product of that. And I see what value that brings to everyone.”