SMACNA-WW held its first DE&I Summit this summer with 51 participants coming out to learn more about cultural change in the workplace when it comes to creating a seat at the table for every person. The summit is the latest in a series of efforts the association is making to promote DEI and the benefits of a diverse and welcoming workplace culture and industry.
“In 2021, SMACNA-WW held its first DE&I Panel via Zoom during Women in Construction week,” says Patricia Bovie, marketing and design manager for SMACNA-Western Washington. “This year, SMACNA-WW continued to address DE&I by holding in an in-person event. Additionally, a new DE&I committee has been formed to serve the association beginning in 2023.”
Boosting Inclusion in the New Normal
The last few years have brought lots of cultural change into the workplace. What does this mean for teams and leaders looking to avoid the pitfalls—and maybe even tap into the promise—of our diverse world? In this session, Susan X Jane, Principal of Navigators Consulting, explored current language, thinking, and practice around diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging.
Working with the group, Jane introduced basic concepts of identity, culture, and bias, and spoke about the shifts in culture showing up in the work and the workplace. Participants learned basic tools for building belonging on teams, creating an inclusive environment ready to bring cultural fluency into the work with clients and collaborators, and how to connect with more diverse workers, clients, and communities.
Making the Implicit Explicit: Expanding Our Awareness Around Bias
As the United States becomes increasingly diverse amid socially tense times, an increased cultural humility becomes more important for day-to-day interactions in the workplace and beyond. One important way to increase cultural humility is to expand our awareness around how bias and prejudice informs our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. The lack of awareness around our bias can be damaging to the meaningful relationships that we would like to cultivate. Thus, it is important to address the more hidden ways our prejudice manifests through our implicit biases and microaggressions.
In this interactive session, participants Dr. Nevin J. Heard, DEI consultant, facilitator, and co-founder of XNY Genes, LLC, a social equity consultant company, gave participants the opportunity to engage in experiential activities to increase their awareness surrounding implicit bias and microaggressions. Following this session, attendees were able describe implicit bias and discuss tools they can use to deconstruct it.
About the Speakers
“Our speaker referrals came through Executive Vice President Julie Muller’s Yale MBA networking group,” Bovie says. “Both did an excellent job at engaging the audience members and posing thoughtworthy group discussions on DE&I.”
Susan X Jane has more than 25 years of experience exploring race and representation in both the public and private sectors. Susan is a transracial adoptee, a Black woman raised in a white family and community, an experience that created an early focus on the way race and gender shape our concept of ourselves and each other.
Susan has worked to address race and culture as a community organizer, program developer, professor of communications, and consultant to corporations and impact focused institutions. As principal of Navigators Consulting, Jane draws on decades of experience to work with organizations in both the public and private sector to support learning growth and inclusion.
To any who seek to build a better world, she offers her skills as teacher, coach, and strategic partner to help businesses, social impact organizations and communities create diverse and inclusive environments where the humanity of all is respected and protected.
Dr. Nevin J. Heard works as DEI consultant and facilitator at XNY Genes, LLC, a social equity consultant company with the single mission: to bring about greater social equity through partnerships with forward-thinking organizations who have the same mission in mind. Additionally, Dr. Heard serves as an Assistant Professor of Clinical Counseling focusing on multicultural and social justice issues and centering the intersectional realities of racial minorities, LGBTQ+ populations, people of low socioeconomic status, and those affected by HIV/AIDS. Dr. Heard’s scholarship around multiculturalism has resulted in over 30 international, national, and regional conference presentations and invited lectures, speeches, workshops, and publications. Dr. Heard has spent over a decade in diversity, equity, and inclusion work focused on transformation at intrapsychic, interpersonal, community, and organizational levels.
“In the industry, there is a lot of discussion about labor shortages and recruitment,” Bovie says. “I think addressing DE&I efforts is crucial to attracting the next generation of workers and retaining the best talent.”
Attendees had the chance to win the grand raffle prize at this event: A Women’s Louis Vuitton Handbag.
Congratulations to our winner, Liz Kelley-Fong with MacDonald-Miller Facility Solutions, Inc.
Members interested in requesting the presentation slide deck provided by the guest speakers, can email pbovie@smacnaww.org to receive a copy. ▪
