Equity Leadership
Get information on the March Equity Leadership Training Workshops
Registration coming soon!
Strategies for Creating More Welcoming and Inclusive Environments
Working in partnership with the Greater Cincinnati Foundation, Global Lead, Inc., The Urban League of Greater Cincinnati, and the YWCA of Greater Cincinnati, BRIDGES designed the Equity Leadership Program to help graduates of our areas community leadership programs and leaders from a variety of different backgrounds, beliefs and experiences to be more effective in their leadership by gaining needed awareness on issues of race and equity. Our focus is broader, encompassing and highlighting the issues of class, faith/religion, gender and sexual orientation and the places where these topics interconnect and collide.
Diversity describes the spectrum of human differences and similarities; it refers to the composition of people associated with the organization.
Inclusion describes the way an organization configures opportunity, interaction, communication, information and decision-making to utilize the potential of diversity; it refers to the organizational environment.
Organizations can be diverse without being inclusive. Most diversity work focuses on the personal and interpersonal levels. The above definition of inclusion shifts the focus to organizational and holistic levels. Achieving inclusion means creating the structures, policies and practices in organizational life that recognize more than one perspective and emphasize the importance of learning from differences. Inclusion is not limited to internal structures, it also refers to the interactions with customers, partners, vendors, contractors, and all other stakeholder groups.
Equity Leadership v. Diversity Training –
While many organizations are accustomed to being “put through” Diversity training, BRIDGES seeks to provide its clients with a more holistic experience. Diversity happens, while Inclusion and practicing equitable leadership is a choice. BRIDGES invites you to think about how Equity Leadership differs from Diversity Training.
Equity Leadership
• Creates a culture of inclusion
• Visionary approach to building shared accountability for the environment
• Focus on developing existing assets
• Addresses the systemic barriers that prevent individuals or groups from identifying, appreciating and embracing differences to the benefit of the organization.
• Challenges long held assumptions, beliefs, and personal convictions that are based more in rhetoric than experience.
• Acknowledges and addresses where the –isms intersect, collide and interconnect to make social constructs more complex and realistic in our lives.
Diversity Training
• Can focus on creating a culture of compliance
• In most cases, is a response to crisis or incident
• Can be deficit based (focus on what is lacking or not in evidence).
• Tends to stop at identification, appreciation and celebration of differences.
• Can be limited to “shift in behavior” for the specific environment.
• Tends to leave audience thinking about “marginalized groups” and larger social constructs as isolated, distinct and disconnected.
Introductory Segment - 3.5 hour presentation
Sector Focused Segment 2.5 hour presentation (Tailored to address deeper individual, group and organizational/institutional planning efforts)
Target Audiences
• News & Media Leaders
• Emerging Leaders (young adult professionals)
• Education Leaders
Duke Energy
