DIVERSITY, EQUITY & INCLUSION Flashcards
How do you support and promote DE&I? Where can you improve?
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) is personal for me. That’s part of the reason why almost half of my time within the ICE and then BTI account, I have led the account’s DEI efforts. I have a proven track record of promoting a culture of inclusion, maintaining diverse teams and driving towards equity.
In my role as the CTO for our Platinum level BTI account, I was responsible for DE&I as one of 4 core workstreams. In the year that I was in the role, I led Leadership Panels, Reverse Panels, and Courageous Conversations sessions to discuss Women in Law Enforcement, Black Practitioner Experience and Mental Health. I also provided account, offering and project team Unconscious Bias, Intersectionality & Hiring Bias Training. Currently, I lead the Black Practitioners & Allies Accelerator to address unconscious biases about the black community, strengthen the diversity across the account, facilitate networking opportunities and accelerate existing DE&I initiatives/activities.
- Where I’d like to improve is in my teams’ support outside of teh firm. That’s why I’ve engaged in a new BTI Antiracism Initiative to spearhead how the account could expend staff time and skillsets to support anti-racism and to minimize racial inequality.
Describe how you build diverse teams and enable an inclusive mindset on the teams with which you engage
Starts with the formal and informal mentorship, sponsorship and providing the right opportunities to our women and URM practitioners. Engage with my SM and M so that they understand the importance of building diverse teams and encourage them to take on coaches and mentor/sponsor roles.
Actively engage with practitioners in the URM communities to gauge interests, help work through challenges and remove obstacles.
Enable Inclusive mindset comes from active conversations about gender, race, religion and well-being. As an example, on one of my project teams we have bi-weekly all-hands with brownbag topics. The week or month may drive the topic as we explore topics that may be unfamiliar to us. We recently discussed Diwali - the celebration of lights a couple of weeks ago and focused on mental-health during mental-health week a couple of months ago.
Share examples of how your personal leadership creates the right
environment for people of all backgrounds to thrive
I’ve provided a bit about my background, and how that has influenced my leadership style. I have a unique advantage of seeing things from many different angles. Ex. being black and supporting some of our federal law enforcement clients, being an immigrant and supporting our immigration clients, being a veteran and a civilian, being a strong ally for women and particularly women in technology as well as our LGBTQ community. All of that is exhibited in how I lead my teams. I listen to my people and lead with heart, I have open and sometimes crucial conversations with my people. I’m a straight shooter and I take deliberate steps to build diverse, equitable and inclusive teams.
What are our biggest challenges around DE&I and how would you
recommend we address them?
Not doing more outside of the walls of our firm… I understand that we have to get our house together, but it should not be as sequential as it seems. What is going to attract and retain diverse talent is not just what we do inside of the firm but what we do outside as well. We’re a firm built on solving tough problems - the kind of problems that only a global firm with our capabilities could solve. We need to not just passively donate dollars or provide skills-based labor support, but we need to evolve towards solving the problems of social and racial injustices of the world. We need to affect change with our clients, we need to focus on Law Enforcement reform and criminal justice reform. We need to operate postehaste, as if one of our black practitioners were murdered senselessly. We need to be vocal and vulnerable, and then we will see a massive shift around our firms metrics and our impact around DEI.
