Education Impact
This year, your support has enabled inclusive growth opportunities for our Berkeley Haas students by:
- Offering our Equity Fluent Leadership course in both the MBA and Undergraduate programs. This course has a consulting project component that has allowed student teams to support eight companies in advancing various aspects of their diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) strategies and goals.
- Providing financial support to seven PhD students & a post-doc who are advancing critical research in DEI through our research grants program.
- Continuing to be the institutional home for Dialogues over Dinner, a student-led initiative through the Race and Inclusion Initiative (RII) that brings students together in small groups where they facilitate dialogue around race-related issues in the US — more than 122 students from the Full-time MBA program participated in 23 dinners this past year.
- Engaging the EGAL Student Advisory Board and seven student initiatives: Black Business Student Association (BBSA), Berkeley Women in Business (BWIB), Native American & Indigenous Business Association, Net Impact, Q@Haas, RII, and Women in Leadership (WIL).
- Developing a new case study for classroom use, “Responsible A.I.: Tackling Tech’s Largest Corporate Governance Challenges” delves into the promise and rapid growth of AI, how companies have responded, and challenges to responsible AI development and management.
- Launching a new course for undergraduates, “Equity Fluent Leadership and Personal Brand” is designed for student-athletes who are planning to enter contracts with the intent to be compensated for their name, image, and likeness (NIL) and weaves in Equity Fluent Leadership competencies linked to business value, purpose, and success.
- Leading a class on the foundations of EFL for a cohort of undergraduates taking a Data & Ethics class. Within Haas, we also implemented our case study on having difficult discussions around race & identity with a cohort of EWMBA student leaders.
Research Impact
Your contribution provides financial support to academic researchers, including faculty, post-docs, and PhD students who are advancing knowledge and understanding of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging issues. The researchers sponsored by EGAL this year are:
- Aruna Ranganathan, Associate Professor, Haas School of Business, who is exploring the impact of remote work on gender inequalities in worker voice.
- Francesco Trebbi, Professor, Haas School of Business, who is studying demand-side factors affecting voting for female candidates in Brazil to inform strategies for reducing the gender gap towards a more representative democracy.
- Jennifer Chatman, Professor, Haas School of Business, who is examining perspectives on organizational culture across hierarchical levels and demographic groups.
- Sameer Srivastava, Professor, Haas School of Business, who is investigating whether and how the formation of new social relationships in the workplace can influence inclusion and belonging.
- Sa-Kiera Hudson, Assistant Professor, Haas School of Business, who is delving into the impacts of power and gender on authenticity.
- Sydnee Caldwell, Assistant Professor, Haas School of Business, who is assessing whether and how differences in bargaining contribute to a gender wage gap.
- Analexis Glaude, PhD Candidate, Haas School of Business, who is working to assess perceptions of creativity and innovation amongst different intersectional identity groups, and how they can impact hiring and promotions.
- Andrew Choi, PhD Candidate, Haas School of Business, who is determining whether individuals’ biased perceptions of their social networks disadvantage minoritzed groups.
- Derek Brown, PhD Candidate, Haas School of Business, who is studying whether it is possible to control the “automatic” nonverbal expression of anti-Black racial bias.
- Javier Feinmann, PhD Candidate, Berkeley Economics, who is analyzing the selection into reporting and labor lawsuits around sexual harassment in the workplace.
- Sylvia Chin, PhD Candidate, Haas School of Business, who is working to understand backlash to the #metoo movement, looking at how perceptions of hierarchy legitimacy and stability affect the way people manage their identities.
- Merrick Osborne, Post-Doc, Haas School of Business, who is studying how decisions around who is assigned to lead diversity initiatives is impacted by perceptions of occupational and reputational outcomes for assignees.
- Yixiang Xu, PhD Candidate, Haas School of Business, who is looking into improving financial inclusion by supporting marginalized merchants through personalized machine learning decision support systems in India.
Industry Impact
This year, we launched one new Equity Fluent Leadership Playbook. Our playbooks serve as a bridge between academia and industry, highlighting and translating research into strategies and actionable tools for current and future business leaders to advance DEI.
In partnership with Anaplan, we developed a playbook on Advancing Belonging in Organizations. Belonging is a fundamental human need. Organizations that prioritize belonging benefit from increased productivity and job performance, greater innovation, and improved retention. This playbook outlines what belonging in the workplace looks like, strategies for organizational leaders to enhance belonging, and how to measure it. It also explores technological tools that can measure and enhance belonging. We held a hybrid launch event for this playbook in June, featuring an inspiring fireside chat with industry leaders from Ancestry.com and Google sharing their own belonging journeys, and announcing the winner of our student art competition on the topic of belonging!
We also saw and capitalized on the opportunity to further “toolify” our work, focusing on the Belonging playbook. This playbook is accompanied by several research-backed tactical tools – a set of rapid diagnostic surveys for leaders to identify strengths and gaps in advancing belonging, a belonging assessment tool, as well as questions to bolster managers’ performance review structures. We also launched Belonging Sparks, a card deck featuring conversational prompts ranging from casual to thought provoking, for leaders to start meetings off with a genuine moment of connection. The deck is available for purchase, and the other tools are available for use via our Playbook page. These are already being leveraged within and beyond UC Berkeley’s campus!
Building on our work around inclusive language and product development, we partnered with Meta to advance precise, equitable and inclusive language within product teams. We developed and piloted workshop content to Meta employees, aimed at (1) improving understandings of links between language and power, as well as good language practices, (2) improving knowledge of strategies across the product lifecycle to enhance inclusive language amongst users and mitigate harmful language, and (3) enhance understandings of how to communicate to users precisely and inclusively.
We continued to bring our work to life through a series of workshops and presentations across UC Berkeley. In partnership with the UC Berkeley Office of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging (DEIB), we developed and piloted a four-workshop workshop series on Equity Fluent Leadership (EFL) – called the Inclusive Leadership Academy – with managers across UC Berkeley. This Academy drew from our resources and knowledge base to advance competencies and understandings of EFL, allyship, inclusive language, and belonging. This Academy was incredibly successful and is already secured for implementation in 2023.
Externally, we were invited to present our work at various leading industry conferences as well. Ishita and Dr. Alicia Sheares (who worked with EGAL as a Research Fellow in developing our language work) led an interactive ‘Level-Up Lab’ on leading with equitable and inclusive language in AI research and development at the Grace Hopper Conference. Genevieve and Ishita also hosted a virtual workshop for the 2022 Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (FAccT) Conference on applying a justice framework to natural language processing, and co-created an action plan with participants. We have also shared our Belonging work globally. Genevieve presented at the Women’s Forum in Paris about our belonging work, as well as mitigating bias in AI. Kellie spoke about our playbook on belonging at the Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO) conference in Chicago, for the NextUp Leaders in Retail event in San Francisco, and at Ancestry’s Global Day of Understanding. She also led an Equity Fluent Leadership Academy for the senior leadership team of UCSF and designed and led an Equity Fluent Leadership Academy for the Association of General Contractors. Jasmine Sanders, a Sociology PhD candidate and our Research Fellow on the Belonging Playbook, co-presented with Anaplan’s Sherika Ekpo about our belonging work to an audience of over 400 at the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) Conference.
Community Impact
Your contribution has also allowed us to amplify Equity Fluent Leadership by:
- Continuing our AmpEquity Speaker Series with guest speakers Yamini Rangan of HubSpot and Laurie Weingart of Carnegie Mellon University.
- Hosting five fireside chats and panel discussions to discuss Being Black @Haas, HERstory: Women of Berkeley Haas, the Urban Compassion Project with Vincent Ray Williams III, Advancing Belonging at Work, and the film screening of $avvy.
- Continuing our collaborative partnership with the Women in Leadership student organization to host the 26th annual Women in Leadership Conference, and with Berkeley Women in Business to host the Women in the Workforce Conference.
- Sponsoring our fifth annual Investing in Inclusion Pitch Competition, where five finalists from Northwestern Kellogg, Yale SOM, IE Business School, and Berkeley Haas presented their early stage ventures aimed at advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion.
- Hosting our fourth annual Zendesk Case Competition, bringing undergraduate students together from across the UC Berkeley campus to diversify Zendesk's startups program.
- Hosting our second annual EGALapalooza event which highlighted various aspects of our work, and provided attendees an opportunity to network and learn more about the DEI-focused student organizations at Haas.
- Hosting our first Research Convening, bringing together EGAL's research community to present their research and network.
- Celebrating our five year anniversary with a story salon featuring Equity Fluent alumni, including Om Chitale FTMBA '18, Shaibya Dalal FTMBA '20, Francesca LeBaron FTMBA '19, and Alan Man FTMBA '20.
With continued 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 Cristy Johnston Limón, EMBA ‘16!
Cristy was born and raised locally, in San Francisco’s Mission District. While at Haas, Cristy served as the inaugural VP of DEI in the Executive MBA program. During her tenure in this role, she advocated for a number of process improvements in admissions and in the classroom, toward more inclusive experiences.
Following her MBA, Cristy continued her dedication to diversity initiatives at Haas where she served as the co-chair of the Haas Diversity Alumni Council. She also served as the Executive Director at Youth Speaks, a youth performing arts (spoken word) organization focused on serving youth from under-resourced and disenfranchised communities. Cristy also served as the executive director of the Center for Social Sector Solutions at Berkeley Haas, where she introduced a racial equity plan for the center which informed their strategic partnerships and outreach.
This work would not be possible without the support of our entire EGAL team.
- Sara Friend, Web Developer
- Melissa Kong, Dialogues over Dinner Coordinator
- Laura Kray, Faculty Director
- Esmerelda Lopez Florez, Events Assistant
- Kellie McElhaney, Founder & Executive Director
- Janay Osborne, Project Manager
- Ishita Rustagi, Senior Analyst
- Jasmine Sanders, Research Fellow
- Dhangur Singh, Finance Analyst
- Genevieve Smith, Associate Director
- Amisha Wadhwa, Marketing Assistant
- Jennifer Wells, Program Director
- Danielle Wong, Web Designer
Special thanks for our Advisory Council for their generous financial and expertise contributions which ensure our ongoing success: Jon Altschuler, Camille Asaro, Karin Bauer, Élida M. Bautista, Melissa Berg, Birgit Boykin, Laura Clayton McDonnell, Carla DeSantis, Melissa Dickerson, StephanieDiMarco, Kathy Downing, Sherika Ekpo, Dianna Gonzales-Burdin, InaMarie Johnson, Stuart Kaplan, David Kim, Katie Liang, Holly Liu, Kathryn O’Connor, Smita Pillai, Yamini Rangan, Heidi Ridley, Larissa Roesch, Brit Rocourt, Jamila Smith-Loud, Jennifer Walske, and Donna Wills Colson.