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Our promise to you: DIA will help you develop specific ways to champion diversity, racial equity, and inclusion work within your organization or business on personal, interpersonal and systemic levels.

When your organization is focused on checking boxes you miss out on opportunities to create equity. Unfortunately a lot of DEI trainings focus on the boxes. We don't.

We will take you to your learning edge, create brave space and explore our identities, power, and socialization in order to better understand ourselves and the role we have to play in diversity, racial equity and inclusion work.

We will give you the tools to change your organization and to have courageous conversations across difference.

We will help you create cultures, organizations and businesses that prioritize inclusion and equity in meaningful, actionable and sustainable ways.

• How your own social identities and the way you were socialized will impact the way you experience this work
• How your biases influence your interactions and decision making at home and in the workplace
• How to champion equity and inclusion efforts and help your organization create a powerful DEI statement (and live up to it)
• How dominant culture (with an emphasis on white supremacy) shows up in our workplaces
• What we mean by doing this work from a race equity approach
• How to build diverse professional networks (and hiring pipelines) with intention
• What hiring, retention, marketing, and strategic planning look like using an inclusion and equity framework
• Handling conflict, making mistakes and having difficult conversations across difference
• How to apologize when we mess up

• The class meets six times for 90 minutes.
• Classes will be recorded but we highly recommend you participate live.
• Participants will have access to our Community of Practice via a Facebook group.
• Action packs for each week that will share additional resources.

Class One: Foundations

• Personal and social identities: what yours are and how they impact how you relate to co-workers, clients and partners
• The cycle of socialization
• Key terms and why they are important when you are trying to do this work
• Discover what your hidden biases are, and six ways to mitigate them

Class Two: Oppression at Work

• Identify and navigate through the four levels of oppression
• Recognizing microaggressions and understanding their cost on individuals, teams and organizations. Ways to mitigate and disrupt them
• Beyond EEOC, how to write and live Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Statements that matter

Class Three: Cultivating a Deeper Analysis and Network Building for Impact

• How dominant culture (with an emphasis on white supremacy) manifests within our professional lives and businesses
• How to build networks (online and off) and hiring pipelines with intention. How to create transformative relationships not transactional ones.

Class Four: Handling Conflict

• Strategies for recognizing and dealing with resistance to change and how to have difficult conversations effectively -especially around identity (race, class, gender, etc)
• How to apologize when you or your company messes up

Class Five: Infusing Equity Across Your Business

• In this class, everything you have learned will be woven together to look at recruitment, hiring, promotion processes, marketing and strategic planning from an inclusion, equity and anti-oppression lens
• Q & A and wrap up

Class six: Whiteness Roundtable and POC Roundtable

This session serves as an opportunity for participants who identify as white or as POC to have their own spaces to debrief their DIA experience.

• I’m ready to help my organization/company get serious about being inclusive and equitable, but where do I start?
• My company says they value diversity but they haven’t done anything about it. What can I do?
• How can I make the case to fund and support diversity and inclusion work in a meaningful way?
• Dealing with systemic oppression seems overwhelming and depressing, what can I do as one person?
• I’m embarrassed my professional network isn’t diverse, but how do I change it?
• My colleagues/clients/partners sometimes say offensive things; how can I interject in a productive way?

“Ericka and Desiree bring rigor, compassion, and broad experience to the conversation about diversity. Their course will challenge and enlighten you, and it will also equip you with concrete, actionable strategies and tactics that are well within reach of any individual or organization no matter how small or large.” -Molly

“How often do we get the opportunity to take a class that completely alters our view of how we perceive the world? This class has awakened me to my own privilege, how my ideals aren't always consistent with my actions, and also my responsibility to use what I've learned as a springboard to become more informed, to be in action ... even knowing that I will be uncomfortable and that that is part of creating real change.” -Amanda

“I had been searching for this kind of course, but nobody was offering it. DIA delivered an excellent education on difference, diversity and equity and their business value!” -Peter

"DO IT! This course was challenging and rich with learning. Desiree, Jessica and Ericka are skilled teachers and facilitators - creating the container for us to do deep and brave work. The FB group continues to be so useful and supportive and I am grateful for the experience and for the new connections I've formed." -Carmen