I had a great time at the Raleigh Chambers #DEIconf24 yesterday! Thank you Torri A. Staton, Ph.D., Serenia Parsons M.A. and your team for all the work you put into this event. As always, I met amazing people and had amazing conversations. A few of the major themes that came out across the keynote from Matthew McCarthy and other conversations that stuck with me were:
- C-suite leaders do not need to be experts in #DEI to be champions of this work, you just have to be willing to support the work and surround yourself with advisors whose expertise you can lean on (note, you must be willing to be humble and listen to your partners advice). I loved Matthew’s quote “to be on the leading edge, you have to be on the learning edge”. We can’t be afraid to make mistakes and fail forward, it slows down progress.
- The importance of highlighting the business case and the moral case, especially in these times of pushback. Of course the moral case should be the underlying reason of this work, but we have to tie this work back to the business as well. Ask yourself why do we want to focus on DEI? What does it mean to us? Then collect data (external and internal, quantitative and qualitative) to help you figure out where you’re starting at, plans for moving forward, and to measure outcomes and business impact. Organizations are made up of people and if we can improve the experience at work for employees, then it is bound to have an impact on the businesses bottom line through things like retention and productivity.
- Lastly the importance of community! No one can or should do this work alone. No one has all of the answers. If we lean on each other, we can all make progress a little faster vs working on an island. Also, being in community provides an invaluable support system to help you celebrate wins and keep pushing on the tough days.
Speaking of community, special shout out to all of the Triangle DEI Community members I ran into! I am so proud of the community I’ve built and the connections we’ve made. Having yall around makes this work a little easier. If anyone is a DEI advocate in the Triangle and hasn’t joined the community, I’ll drop a link to our next event (which is tomorrow!) in the comments. And if you want an invite to our GroupMe to stay in the loop with our group over time, send me a DM and I’ll get the link over to you!
Plan To Action
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Always a pleasure working alongside the Blue Connections team. Enjoy the festive season and I’ll see you all in 2025 💙