Greg Shapiro Hosts ‘Inclusivity 25’ for Hello Zuidas, September 2025
20 October, 2025
“We need someone to host our Diversity event in Amsterdam. Who should we get?” A WHITE GUY?!
Yes. As host of INCLUSIVITY 25 for Amsterdam’s Zuidas business community, I knew my job was to make the event a conversation. I literally passed the mic to as many diverse voices as possible. I used my loud American persona to encourage people to share their own perspectives. And it worked! I “broke the fourth wall.” At the office space known as The Edge – Stadium.
As I found out, maybe my white maleness was useful. Maybe it helps to indeed have a white guy arguing for more diversity. In my solo show Leaving Trumpland 2, I talked about Kamala Harris, and I talked about my experience working for a Black woman as my manager. After the show, I heard from many women – and people of color. Their take was “Thank you for talking about it. When we bring it up, people think we’re whining. When you bring it up, it’s harder to ignore.”
These days the US government is anti “DEI.” My message was “without ‘Diversity Equity and Inclusion,’ you’re at a disadvantage. Without DEI, your organization will D.I.E.” (but seriously, next time make me co-host.)
A Diversity Pub Quiz for Your Organization
My part of the event was organized by Hello Zuidas. The main event was a Pub Quiz with 10 different categories, from ‘Gender Gap’ to ‘Age Gap’ to ‘Digital Inclusivity.’ At the end of the event, the organizers provided the 50 questions in the form of a deck of cards – for people to use if they wanted to host their own pub quiz for their own organization. I still have one deck left over, if you want one.
Thank you to the sponsors and initiators. Thanks to Hello Zuidas for producing the flashy video. And thanks to Elisa Schouten for bringing me on and helping prepare the quiz questions!
Hello Zuidas “Inclusivity 25”
https://en.hellozuidas.com/nieuws/inclusivity-25-let-s-celebrate-together-682489578a151554da037d47
Greg’s Blog piece on working for a woman of color as his manager (Amber Ruffin)!
https://gregshapiro.nl/blog/shapiro-improv-tim-walz/