How I approach DEI Work
I approach diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility work with the following three lenses at the forefront:
Human-centered
Liberatory design
Systems change
Through each of these lenses, I work with clients to build a plan for how we will work together.
Human-Centered: DEI work must be human-centric. The changes we are making within organizations, companies, and schools must increase the human well-being in those places. I begin most of my work by learning from individuals and groups about their experiences. I call these empathy interviews (thank you Mariah Cone from Holonomy Consulting for that naming). Whenever we are trying to make changes, we want to first start wherever we currently are. One of the ways to center our work in the current moment is to understand the experiences and gather the perspectives of people in differing roles and who navigate the world with historically/systemically excluded identities. With human well-being at the center of our process, we seek to improve the work environment and raise the quality of interactions and the ways we can support one another throughout an organization toward an environment that has many practices to engage greater inclusion.
Liberatory design: At the heart of diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility, and belonging is work towards greater liberation for our human selves. I believe in working through systems that help perpetuate this narrative and allow us to work in ways that can help harness liberatory values as we work together. The National Equity Project has a wonderful model for this. When we work together you’ll certainly see aspects of this in our work.
Three key aspects of this approach include:
1. Create designs that help interrupt inequity and increase opportunity for those most impacted by oppression;
2. Transform power by shifting the relationships between those who hold power to design and those impacted by these designs; and
3. Generate critical learning and increased agency for those involved in the design work.
Systems change: Once we have centered human needs and approached this work through liberatory design, we are ready to move into changing systems. I have clocked thousands of hours of giving workshops on topics that were critical to our human well-being and existence, but they were just that - educational workshops. I’m sure some good has come from them, but they weren’t connected to structural change. In my consulting work, I challenge the notion of learning for learning’s sake. Instead, let’s learn about something connected to the systemic change we are going to make.
For example, I’ve given a lot of workshops on pronouns, why they matter, what they mean, and helping people gain more comfort in asking/sharing them. It’s fun, and we laugh and learn together. Without this workshop being connected to an organization rolling out adding pronouns to intake forms, email signatures, name tags/badges, etc., it’s just a nice idea. If it’s being implemented system-wide and then we are educating on both how to make those updates/changes for yourself or for clients while understanding why it’s important, THEN we have some lasting change that goes beyond those who care. I’m so grateful for something my friend Natania Malin Gazek has said: we want our work in diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility, and belonging to be implemented even on someone’s worst day and even for people who perhaps wouldn’t do this work on their own. Once we institutionalize and systemize our work, even on days when we are at our wits ends, we are engaging in equity work because it’s just a part of how we do things.
We are living in times where we can see and feel inequities all around us. We can take action. I encourage you to speak up and reach out for support in implementing ongoing human-centric, liberatory, and systemic change in the environments you work, play, learn, and live in. I hope you’ll reach out for support because we can’t do any of this work alone. Together we can make more inclusive environments.
