How Christina Blacken Is Redefining Leadership

Meet Christina Blacken, the Founder and Chief Narrative Strategist behind The New Quo, a leadership development and equity consultancy.  

Christina’s mission is driven by a deeply personal journey, rooted in her family’s migration from the Southern United States to Utah during The Great Migration. These early experiences instilled in her a profound understanding of how stories have the power to shape our beliefs, behavior, and perceptions of power. Christina’s diverse career path within corporate America further illuminated the pervasive impact of cultural and historical narratives on organizations, often leading to toxic power imbalances and bias. Eventually, her journey led to the creation of The New Quo, where she helps leaders uncover and transform the narratives that influence their beliefs and actions. To date, Christina has empowered 12,000 leaders across numerous industries to disrupt automatic thinking patterns and instead embrace conscious and inclusive practices. 

We asked Christina about the founding story behind The New Quo, how her definition of success has evolved throughout her journey as a founder, and what’s next for her and her company. 

Q: Tell us the story behind your company’s founding. How and why did you start working on The New Quo?

A: My family was part of the Great Migration of Black Americans from the Southern region of the U.S. They migrated from Memphis, Tennessee to Utah in the 1950s and 1960s. My childhood experiences of being a minority religiously, politically, and racially brought me up close and personal with how bias and behavior is deeply shaped through the stories we learn. Stories from family, media, education, and more shape what we believe about worth and power. Later in my life, while working across four industries in corporate America, I witnessed how similar cultural and historical stories created toxic environments of power imbalances and bias. These experiences inspired the work I do now at The New Quo. The New Quo is a leadership development and equity consultancy that uses behavioral-science and storytelling strategies to help organizations and individuals to transform behavior and create deeper trust, innovation, and equity in their relationships.

One of the main questions I ask in my work is: How do our relationships with ourselves and others radically evolve when we change the stories we believe about power, self worth, and leadership? I use a unique methodology called Narrative Intelligence. Through this process, I help leaders identify the historical, cultural, and personal narratives that impact their beliefs and behaviors. By deep-diving into the stories we’re told—and telling ourselves—we’re able to strengthen our own bias recognition, and adopt a new set of stories and practices that collectively redefine power.

In my career before starting The New Quo, I spent 10 years using storytelling to change behavior in various roles and industries, from motivating 300,000 young people to get involved in various social causes to closing $6.5 million in sales with various teams I worked with. Every time I began to shift my own narratives and beliefs about myself, my work, and my life and shared that with others, I experienced dramatic growth and change.

Q: What’s been the hardest and most rewarding part of your entrepreneurial journey?

A: The work I do is about complex, and, at times, taboo topics. Finding the balance of tools and approaches to get people to open up, learn something new, and shift their behavior around social issues and relationships has been both a challenge and extremely rewarding. I remember doing a training on inclusive leadership for a leadership group at a large CPG company that was struggling with trust. One attendee approached me afterward saying, “You know, I came here ready to be resistant and skeptical of this topic, but I was pleasantly surprised with how engaging, entertaining, and inspirational this was. It’s changed my perspective about why inclusion is so important.” I call it the “broccoli in cheese’ effect—give people what they desire within what they really need to nourish them and motivate them to change. I have a performance background, so I combine elements of delight—singing, humor, and storytelling—with accessible and actionable tools. That approach overcomes the regular resistance people feel about diversity, equity, and inclusion topics. 

Q: What’s the biggest misconception that others have around entrepreneurship?

A: We live under the pressure of what I call the “King Kong” effect—success means generating more and more and more profit and extraction of resources, with a never-ending moving goalpost to measure success, no matter the harm caused. Cancer is the unfettered growth of unhealthy cells in the body that take over healthy cells. Our obsession with constant extractive expansion is like cancer leading to our individual and collective destruction. I desire the radical imagination of new goals—ones that are regenerative and impactful instead of extractive, especially in the business world. It's what I strive for personally, and I encourage every client and colleague to do the same. Infinite growth isn't a good goal; regenerative impact is. 

Q: Have you struggled with self doubt as an entrepreneur? How do you navigate this?

A: Self doubt is something you learn to manage and move through, as it never fully goes away, especially when you are pushing yourself to do something new or outside of your comfort zone. Self doubt is part of the process of creating and getting to the root of the doubts. In fact, I offer a free exercise called Narrative Inquiry for Navigating Fear to the public and clients. The exercise helps with this process of reframing our thoughts so we can move toward our goals. Discovering your convictions can also see you through those dark moments of the soul when you’re doubting yourself and struggling to move forward. 

Q: We dare you to brag: What achievements are you most proud of?

A: With The New Quo, I’ve helped 12,000 emerging and current company leaders across nine industries disrupt automatic thinking patterns and create more conscious and inclusive practices, habits, and goals through their narrative intelligence. I’ve created transformational learning experiences and courses. One in particular is focused on content moderation for a large social media company to help facilitate respectful conversations. I teach moderators the history and psychology of both conscious and unconscious bias and give them best practices for building inclusive, respectful, and kind communities—both online and offline in the real world. More than 42,000 individuals have signed up to take the course, with a 40 percent full completion rate (three times higher than the standard online course completion average).

I've applied this methodology to various equity problems, and am so proud of the qualitative and quantitative impact it’s having across industries and companies who see diversity, equity, and inclusion principles as key to reaching their fullest potential. 

Q: Has your definition of success evolved throughout your journey as a founder?

A: Success to me is about how closely I am living to my values. I examine regularly if the things I am creating and doing on a daily basis are leading to a liberated, creative, community-driven, playful, and equitable life. I ask myself, “Does my work allow me the freedom to choose how I spend my time, who I spend it with, and what impact I leave behind?” If I’m close to those things, that's success for me. I’ve been financially successful in terms of the lifestyle I’d like to live, but only focusing on revenue and profit is such a short sighted and small way to define success in our lifetimes. 

Q: Have you discovered any underappreciated leadership traits or misconceptions around leadership?

A: We live in what I call a culture of autopilot—where leaders operate on a set of unconscious values of conformity, perfectionism, and toxic competition. This style of leadership creates low levels of trust and tons of bias and harm. I teach a different style of leadership that leads to a culture of curiosity, which operates off the principles of acceptance, collaboration, and experimentation. It encourages a leadership style of being self aware, becoming an active listener, and asking insightful and thoughtful questions. It focuses on really hearing and affirming people’s identities, skills, and needs, and creating mutually beneficial goals informed by social issues, as well as addressing those issues head on so that we can create the best futures for the most people possible.

Q: What would you tell your younger self if you were to start your entrepreneurial journey all over again?

A: You'll achieve greatness by sowing seeds. Share your ideas about the questions and problems you're insatiably curious about solving with values-aligned people you’re inspired by. Those conversations will lead to unexpected connections and opportunities that will propel you forward. You can't control the exact outcome, but you can control sharing your ideas, making quality connections with interesting people, and seeing what grows.

Fear is a useful emotion in helping us avoid certain risks and pain, but if it's your main lens for making decisions, it can be suffocating. We're taught all these "shoulds,” and adopt a fear-based view of the world, worried about every decision and action we make. Using fear as your main decision-making tool is like trying to run a marathon while wrapped in a king-size comforter blanket with no shoes. Dig deeper to discover what your true values are outside of fear. Is it creativity? Community? Connection? Use those values to organize your day-to-day life, and you'll feel a deeper sense of purpose, contentment, and alignment.

Q: What’s next for you and The New Quo?

A: I’ve launched a learning community called The New Quo Leadership Academy that’s the next step of the work I’ve been doing. It’s a learning environment and vibrant community for a new approach to leadership, where individuals can discover the power of their life stories and unique strengths as a guide for every decision and action they take as status-quo breaking leaders. Leadership is not about status, appearances, or accolades; it’s about how you use your stories of change and differences to connect with and inspire the people you care about toward goals you didn’t think were possible. 

Christina is a member of Dreamers & Doers, an award-winning community that amplifies extraordinary women entrepreneurs and leaders by securing PR, forging authentic connections, and curating high-impact resources. Learn more about Dreamers & Doers and get involved here.

The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.

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