Overtones LIVE

In this episode of Women of the Bluegrass, the host Dr. Jordyne Carmack interviews Renee Collins Cobb about growing up around music and business, supporting local musicians through advocacy and leadership development, unconscious bias, and more. About this week's guest: Renee Collins Cobb is the President/Owner of Collins Consulting Group, Listen Locally, LLC and is the Executive Director of Room 17 Productions, a nonprofit organization that promotes music education. She is also the former host of NPR’s Red Barn Radio and radio shows titled “Overtones” and “Gray Matters” – a show about unconscious bias” which airs weekly on WLXU, Lexington Community Radio and across the state of Kentucky on various platforms and radio stations. She is also the co-chair of the University of Kentucky School of Music Alumni. Renee is also the project manager for The Sara Holroyd Oral History Project, The History of the UK Cheerleaders Project, The Greg Austin Story and I Am Diversity at the University of Kentucky Louie B Nunn Center for Oral History. She has also facilitated career development courses for incoming freshman at the University of Kentucky and served as an unconscious bias consultant for UK as well. Unconscious Bias Exercise: Read the following story. Do you know this story? A man and his son are driving in a car one day when they get into a fatal accident. The man is killed instantly. The boy is knocked unconscious. He is still alive and is rushed to the hospital for immediate surgery. The doctor enters the emergency room, looks at the boy, and says “I can’t operate on this boy, he is my son.” Wait. What? How can this happen? The fact that some of us struggle to make sense of this story illustrates just how pervasive our biases are. To be clear, the doctor is the boy’s mother. Bang! Is it possible that you struggled with this story because you imagined (assumed) the doctor to be a male? You are not alone. Indeed, I would suggest that most people – men and women – envisioned a male doctor entering the emergency room. Such is the hidden influence of unconscious bias.