Berkeley Haas Center for Equity, Gender & Leadership Philanthropic Impact Update 2023

We are so proud of our work this year and could not achieve this level of success without your continued and committed support. It is sadly and surely a time in which leaders in the diversity, equity & inclusion (DEI) space are facing considerable headwinds. We have deepened our focus on the leadership tools and strategies of DEI, as opposed to engaging in the politicized side of the equity debates. Advancing evidence-based tools and strategies for Equity Fluent Leaders is squarely a core competency of ours. Thank you for your belief in this work.

- Kellie McElhaney, Founder & Executive Director, Center for Equity, Gender & Leadership (EGAL)

Academic Impact

This year, your support has enabled inclusive growth opportunities for our Berkeley Haas students and faculty by:

  • Continuing our Equity Fluent Leadership and Personal Brand course designed for student-athletes who are planning to enter contracts with the intent to be compensated for their name, image, and likeness (NIL), which weaves in Equity Fluent Leadership competencies linked to business value, purpose, and success.
  • Becoming the institutional home for Berkeley’s first DeCal course on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) – DEI for Global Leaders. This course equips students with skills to be equitable leaders in the workplace through the instruction of DEI terminology, corporate case studies, and tools that enable engagement in open dialogue.
  • Redesigning our case compendium of business school case studies with diverse protagonists and/or on DEI topics into a searchable database that is intuitive and easy to navigate.
  • Engaging the EGAL Student Advisory Board and seven student initiatives: Berkeley Women in Business (BWIB), Latin Business Student Association (LBSA), MBA Association VP of DEI, Native American & Indigenous Business Association (NAIBA), Net Impact, Partnership for Pre-Professional Pilipinxs (P4), and Women in Leadership (WIL).
  • Providing $50k in financial support to two faculty, three PhD students, and three postdoctoral fellows who are advancing critical research in DEI through our research grants program.

Academic Highlight

The researchers who received funding from EGAL’s research grants program this year are:

  • Erica Bailey: “Can’t or Won’t? How Beliefs about Trait Immutability Impact Women’s Entry into Leadership Positions” Gender disparities in leadership remain a persistent challenge even in the most egalitarian societies and well-meaning organizations. In explaining why this inequality exists—and persists—past research has pointed to the “Big Two” or that tend to describe how men and women are stereotypically seen by others. On the one hand, men are seen has high in “agency,” a set of traits related to individualism, achievement and mastery, while women are seen as highly “communal,” prioritizing connection, cohesion, and warmth (Abele, 2003; Abele & Wojciszke, 2007; Martin & Slepian, 2021). In the proposed research, we suggest that it is not only the quality of the traits themselves that predict their importance. Rather, we suggest that asymmetric beliefs in the immutability or malleability of agency and communality differentially predict their value.
  • Joan Jennifer Martinez: “Gender Stereotype Training Impacts on Labor Market Outcomes: Experimental Evidence from a Large-Scale School Program” - We study how a gender stereotype training program affects high school seniors' job preferences for analytical or service-oriented internships. Over a semester-long in-person course, 250 Peruvian high schools will teach students cognitive-emotional content and actionable strategies to combat gender stereotypes that distort their perception of their abilities as gender-specific. By collecting rich survey data, we can quantify baseline and endline gender differences in perceived abilities for gender-conforming tasks, whose malleability we want to assess. We can estimate the moderating effect of objective and self-perceived differences in women's and men's abilities on the selection of gender-conforming jobs and their effects on real-world outcomes by linking the intervention to a job choice model. The findings suggest how student-based policies can close gender gaps in the workforce.
  • Rachel M. Gershon: “The Promise of Ranked Choice Voting: Overcoming Electability Concerns to Increase Votes for Underrepresented Candidates” - This research aims to examine the role of electability concerns in voting decisions. We find that voters have greater concerns about electability for under-represented political candidates, which can influence their voting decisions and undermine the potential for these candidates to succeed. We will test whether an alternative voting system – Ranked Choice Voting (RCV)– can mitigate the influence of electability concerns on voters, thereby increasing support for under-represented candidates. RCV allows voters to rank candidates in order of preference. If one’s top candidate fails to secure enough votes, their vote may be allocated to their subsequent choice, potentially reducing the need for strategic voting. We will experimentally test the impact of candidate demographics on electability concerns, the influence of such concerns on voting decisions, and the potential of RCV in alleviating electability concerns. This research highlights the prospective power of voting reform in promoting more balanced political representation.
  • Antonia Paredes-Haz: “Can dictatorships improve women’s representation? Evidence from Chile’s democratic transition” - Transitions from dictatorship to democracy can help us understand how various political contexts can favor marginalized groups in gaining representation. This project investigates the effects of Chile's transition from dictatorship to democracy on gender representation. During Chile's dictatorship (1973 to 1990), dictator Augusto Pinochet suspended the constitution and appointed mayors to each municipality. During the dictatorship's final years, women made up nearly 20% of the designated mayors. When democratic elections were held, the percentage of women fell by about 15 percentage points. This paper will study the long-term impact of women's exclusion following the dictatorship for political representation of women and public policies.
  • Jordan Mickens: “The Psychology of Welfare: How Group Identity and Policy Delivery Mechanism Influence Support for Redistributive Social Policy” - The federal government spends 40% more on economic programs for the wealthy (“wealthfare”) than the poor (“welfare”). While “wealthfare” policies are generally delivered through the tax system, many of the policies Americans consider “welfare” come in the form of cash-based direct expenditures–and this division has meaningful consequences. Recent work from our lab shows that advantaged group members misperceive redistribution as more harmful to them than it actually is. Furthermore, as losses loom larger in people’s minds than gains, they may see direct payments by the government as more impactful, and thus less appealing, than tax credits. In the present context, we hope to better understand how individual and group identity predict support for–or opposition to–policies designed to downwardly distribute economic resources. Further, how do the identity of the beneficiary (i.e. race and socio-economic status) as well as the policy delivery mechanism (direct-spending vs. tax-based) moderate this support?
  • Mengyao Huang: “Leveraging Diffusion Models and Online Reinforcement Learning for Personalized Advertisement Design” - The research objective is to create an AI-driven tool using reinforcement learning for personalized ads, with a primary focus on significantly reducing ad design costs and promoting fairness in business opportunities. By democratizing access to effective advertising, this research aims to address economic inequalities and advance diversity and inclusion in advertising, especially for underrepresented groups and small businesses, and enhance the representation and well-being of marginalized communities. Furthermore, personalized ads, through precise targeting and inclusive imagery, aim to address underrepresentation, foster economic accessibility for small businesses, empower inexperienced marketers, and contribute to improved psychological well-being by challenging harmful societal norms.
  • Merrick Osborne: “Whose voice is it anyways? Voice Solicitation decisions in the context of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Initiatives” - To ensure that initiatives to improve diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) are effectively implemented, managers oftentimes need to solicit their employee’s voices – in other words, ask for their employees to provide thoughts, ideas, suggestions, or input about how to address DEI. Although voice solicitation research has primarily focused on emphasizing the value of soliciting voice, having one’s voice solicited about a topic as contentious as DEI may be a fraught experience. In turn, soliciting an employee’s voice about DEI may risk undermining solicited employees’ sense of belonging in the organization. It is important, then, to understand managers’ psychology when determining whose voice to solicit – and the consequences for the targets they choose.
  • Silvia Barbareschi: “‘Call me when you get home’”: new technologies, and the safety gender gap” - We study how the perception of low public safety leads to gender gaps in a wide set of dimensions, from educational outcomes to choices regarding how to spend free time in the UK. We also jointly investigate whether and how the gender gap can be reduced using a new technology: a mobile safety app. This app enables users to make calls while in public spaces. We randomly assign a sample of students at the London School of Economics to either the mobile safety app or a placebo app. We expect the mobile safety app will expand women’s choices and decrease the gender gap in time spent at the library, gym, and social work events.

Industry Impact

We have been able to advance from the U.S. to the Gulf region! industry change with your support. This year we:

  • Transformed our research-backed framework for inclusive language into a unique, interactive, virtual Inclusive Language Guide (with support from Google and a working group of academics and industry experts). Designed to help users think through their own terminology choices, the tool is relevant for a global audience of English speakers.
  • Formally launched Belonging Sparks, a card deck of conversation prompts that range from casual to more serious and thought-provoking. This tool complements our evidence-based playbook on Advancing Belonging in Organizations, which finds that starting meetings with personal prompts can make individuals feel seen and connected. Within this year alone, these cards have been leveraged to enhance belonging at conference keynotes, workshops, classes, and at Haas’ Fall 2023 FTMBA & EWMBA orientations.
  • Spearheaded an Equitable Product Design Fellowship in partnership with Google’s Responsible Innovation team. Through this project, two diverse teams of graduate students across UC Berkeley compared traditional and equitable product design processes to establish the business case for product equity. Keep an eye out for the results in 2024!
  • Continued partnering with five organizations to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion including BlackRock, Dome Construction, Gap Inc., Google, and Meta.
  • In November we launched our long-awaited Equity Fluent Leadership (EFL) Academy, in partnership with Berkeley ExecEd, domestically at UC Berkeley, and in December launched the global version in Kuwait. The program is designed for business leaders who aspire to further equity and inclusion in their organizations and drive impactful change.

Industry Highlight

The EFL Academy leads participants through the process of learning and applying strategies to advance belonging, empathy, and psychological safety in their organizations and teams. The team uses their combined decades of experience to teach participants how to develop an EFL mindset and toolbox, communicate and use language that advances inclusion, and strategies for having courageous conversations related to diversity, equity, and inclusion. The same goal exists across our domestic and global programs: for participants to walk away with knowledge, strategies, and tools that equip them to drive change for positive impact within their organizations and the broader community. We now have Equity Fluent Leaders connected from the U.S. to the Gulf region!

Community Impact

Your contribution has also allowed us to amplify Equity Fluent Leadership by:

  • Hosting our first industry roundtable on Equitable Language. We asked: what does it actually mean and look like to advance equitable language in our workplace communities and products? A select group of leaders across the tech industry working in DEI/HR roles, working on inclusive communication to users (e.g., through content design), and/or working to support inclusive communication amongst users (e.g., through responsible innovation or content integrity) joined us to share insights around navigating equitable language/responsible innovation at their organizations. All participants left equipped with strategies to implement and advance equitable language in their workplaces and products.
  • Continuing our AmpEquity speaker series with guest speaker Deepa Puroshothaman, including a panel discussion with Emani Holyfield and Colby Sameshima, Full-time MBA students at Berkeley Haas. The event attracted registration from over 125 people.
  • Continuing our partnerships with the Women in Leadership (WIL) & Berkeley Women in Business (BWIB) student organizations to host the annual Women in Leadership Conference and Women in the Workforce conference, respectively.
  • Co-hosting the Equity Fluent Leadership case competition in partnership with Berkeley Women in Business (BWIB). This year’s competition focused on Black women’s maternal health.
  • Sponsoring our Investing in Inclusion pitch competition, where five finalists from UC Berkeley presented their early stage ventures aimed at advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Community Highlight

With continuing support from EGAL’s founder and Executive Director, Kellie McElhaney, the Equity Fluent Leadership Award recognizes Berkeley Haas alumni who demonstrate Equity Fluent Leadership, organizational impact, and advance the center’s mission of educating Equity Fluent Leaders. This year’s award was presented to Liz Koenig, MBA 18 at our EGALapalooza event in the fall.

Liz is frequently described as a role model and inspiration to her peers due to her open-minded, empathetic nature, and is often celebrated for her willingness to hold others accountable. During her acceptance speech Liz shared with us the arc of her career leading up to her MBA at Haas, as well as the work she did at Haas, including launching the impactful course Dialogues on Race. Post-MBA, Liz joined Bridgespan and oversees the company’s racial equity training and programming.

“Reimagining business for an equitable and inclusive society is central to our mission at Haas, and your investment in the Center for Equity, Gender & Leadership helps us develop leaders who will drive the change needed to dismantle harmful barriers. Thanks to donors like you, EGAL is able to provide transformational educational opportunities and resources, and fund critical research on diversity, equity, and inclusion.

I am personally honored to be collaborating with EGAL Faculty Director Laura Kray on important research into gender pay gap among MBA graduates. The persistence of this gap remains, despite a halving of the gap over the last two decades. Much of the gap can be explained by women taking time off from work and reducing hours per week. We are committed to uncovering its underlying causes, which include a number of factors such as what is known as 'greedy work'.

It’s so important that we continue to question the status quo, and we deeply appreciate your partnership in advancing our shared goals.”

- Ann E. Harrison, Bank of America Dean, Haas School of Business

Thank you for investing in the Center for Equity, Gender & Leadership. We couldn't do this work without you.