Executive Leadership Team- When you’re early in your career, you look for opportunities to interact with senior management, and being promoted to work more closely with them is an exciting prospect. Trustmark is the kind of place where these dreams go to die, because once you get there, you realize that the executive leadership team is filled with disappointingly average people at best. At worst, they’re cowards that make decisions about people’s lives based on how to maintain their own tiny slice of power, and not with any sense of personal integrity. It’s like Succession, but with poorer, even dumber people. This is probably true for many companies, but don’t go to this place hoping for any kind of inspiration. Human Resources- White people will get second, third, one hundredth chances, while your colleagues of color will get one. I personally observed several instances of this at various levels, and when I shared this with HR, they just responded with versions of, “but here’s why those people of color deserved it.” Inspiring!