In TREC’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) statement we say: “We believe TREC has a deep responsibility to actively leverage our resources and capabilities to amplify inclusion and equity in ourselves, in our operation, in our services, with our clients, and in our sector.” That’s a big undertaking. While we have made much progress, we know we have much more work to do.
I’d like to take this opportunity to share with you the ways that we are living and leaning into our DEI statement, what steps we are taking, and to share a bit about where we are headed next. I’m sharing this with you to hold ourselves accountable to you, to let you know that we are entering into a new phase of our DEI work, and to introduce you to our newest staff member, Kellie Richardson, Senior Associate – DEI.
We started our DEI journey working internally. At an individual level, we are actively increasing the skill of TREC staff in cultural intelligence, ability to interrupt bias, and awareness of systems of power and privilege. We have put dedicated time, focused energy, and money into both individual and collective learning. Each of us added DEI learning objectives to our annual development plan, and we evaluate progress in our annual staff evaluations.
At an organizational level, we are working to build a culture at TREC that is inclusive. We practice what we teach as far as clear communications and timely and direct feedback. We look to daylight ways that we are impacted by power and privilege in our work together. As a team we collaborate, co-facilitate, leverage and build on each other’s ideas and work, and share our approaches.
We are also are actively changing our organizational systems to mitigate the influence of dominant culture. We have changed our staff hiring practices, our personnel manual and staff evaluation process, and we created a style guide for our communications.
Simultaneously, we have begun the work of adapting all of our programs and offerings to make them more accessible and equitable. We have developed new curriculum for our leadership trainings, adding partnering across difference, creating an equitable and inclusive culture, and mitigating dominant culture as key leadership competencies. We have updated our Organizational Effectiveness Model to include DEI, and updated our other offerings to bring a multi-cultural perspective.
We have offered trainings to clients to help them begin their DEI work including sessions on Crafting a DEI Case for Change, Mitigating Bias in Hiring, and Working Across the Values Divide, amongst others. We held a training in Canada on Reconciliation and working with First Nations. Most recently, we held a webinar on Colonialism and the History of Conservation.
We haven’t done this alone; we believe in partnering and learning from experienced consultants in the DEI field. We have worked with outside DEI consultants including the Avarna Group, Angela Park, Cliff Jones, and Mary Ferguson. Additionally, we conducted in-depth interviews of other DEI consultants so that we could learn from other capacity builders.
We are proud of what we have accomplished, and are forging ahead to keep learning and growing in our awareness and our accountability.
Now we are entering an exciting new phase. TREC is expanding our offerings to clients around Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. We have hired a staff person, Kellie Richardson, Senior Associate. Kellie will lead client trainings on DEI topics, and work in-depth with clients to support their DEI Initiatives.
Kellie comes to us with 20 years of experience in training and consulting in leadership, organizational effectiveness, and DEI. She will be instrumental in helping to weave DEI throughout our consulting and training resources. In addition to supporting the transformative work of leaders and organizations, Kellie is a poet and mixed media artist.
We are thrilled to have Kellie join the TREC team, and are grateful that we will be able to provide more DEI services to our clients. So expect even more DEI work to come!
Best,
Megan