Vanessa Vancour is a former TV anchor with a passion for bilingual storytelling and community engagement. Vanessa is passionate about equity, inclusion, and thoughtful diversity initiatives. In this episode, Vancour helps marketers understand implicit bias by sharing her thoughts and lived experience as a mixed-race woman.

In 2017, she delivered a TEDx talk titled "I'm Mexican, Does that Change Your Assumptions about Me?" In the talk, she provides tactical tips on managing your own biases and preconceived notions - a subject she is passionate about addressing with organizations and professionals in a variety of industries.

Vancour has made a career out of working to improve diversity of coverage in newsrooms through mentorship and leadership. One of her largest initiatives is the creation of Noticiero Móvil, a bilingual news program aimed at improving coverage of Latinx issues in northern Nevada. The program is conducted through the Reynolds School of Journalism and was made possible through an Online News Association grant. She also serves as a mentor annually to students during the National Public Radio Next Generation Bootcamp.

For Vancour, the opportunity to work with professionals from around the country to help create a better, more sustainable environment for diversity initiatives in storytelling is what fuels her.

In this episode: 

• What is implicit bias and how does it affect our choices as marketers? 
• How marketers can move past superficial content to drive a deeper understanding of culture 
• Why Cinco de Mayo is not Cinco de Drinko
• Tips on reflecting on your network and who is missing at the decision-making table
• The ways that implicit bias hurt our audiences and potential audiences