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Forty years ago, business leaders could not imagine an entire career path in diversity management, let alone schools offering diversity and inclusion majors.
But now chief diversity officers at Facebook, Google and other high-profile companies are taking a deeper look at how their companies recruit, promote and welcome employees from all backgrounds.
The business world is finally paying attention—and so are future leaders.
But how do you succeed in this growing field?
Learn about psychology
“I certainly didn’t grow up thinking, ‘I’m going to be a diversity director at some company,'” said Candice Morgan, director of inclusion and diversity at Pinterest. “I didn’t know it was a career. the way.”
In college, Morgan studied psychology and business, where she fell in love with courses like “Cross-Cultural Business.” In psychology classes, she learned more about how cultural and racial differences affect how we interact. In her business courses, she focuses on how companies can help prepare employees for these interactions.
At Pinterest, Morgan works with colleagues outside of the HR and recruiting teams. She even collaborated on a new product feature released last year that allows users to filter search results by skin tone.
She also spends a lot of time talking to employees about their experiences and career dreams. Making them possible, she says, is key to her work.
“I break down inclusion efforts into three areas: Are people showing up? Are they developing? Are they advancing into leadership positions?” she said. “All of these are part of the metrics or outputs.”
know the business
Rosanna Durruthy, global head of diversity, inclusion and belonging at LinkedIn, said she also spends a lot of time thinking about relationships at work.
“There are still businesses or industries where (lack of) representation creates ‘uniqueness’ as I described it,” she said. “They may be the only ones representing their population: the only women or the only people of color.”
But as she tells future diversity leaders, you also have to understand the business. What does it take to be successful in this organization? What goals are important to leaders? Can all employees achieve these goals?
These questions are important to understanding the work of diversity and inclusion officers, Dulusi said. They help reshape company culture, not just the face of employees.
know the people
Two years ago, Tufts University launched the Diversity and Inclusion Leadership Program, an interdisciplinary program designed to prepare students for diversity Cross-industry roles. Robert Cook, dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Tufts University, said the idea behind the program is that students in the program can learn from a variety of different fields, all of which can be combined to give them an increasingly popular Position ready.
“It’s becoming more and more of a profession. It’s getting more attention from various institutions,” he said. “What we want to do is provide people with leadership skills to understand how organizations work, as well as analytical skills so they can do their jobs effectively.”
Ciara Trinidad, Inclusion and Diversity Program Manager at Netflix She learned to appreciate how all these different parts fit together. From here, she says, good diversity and inclusion leaders must ensure that the message permeates all levels of the organization, not just the hiring team or the executive team.
“Companies are like ‘We care deeply about diversity and inclusion, but if you go and ask a lower-level manager, ‘Why do you care about diversity and inclusion?’ they’re not going to know,” she said. “That’s the problem.”
Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly reported Ciara Trinidad’s production on Netflix.
CNN Business (New York) First published August 22, 2018: 12:03pm ET