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In a recent article about how organizations can utilize inclusion as a successful business strategy, Bryan Thomas (Assistant Dean, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) did not mince words .
“This work demands consistency and collaboration and can be challenging,” he said. “However, patience and partnership can yield amazing results for organizations.”
This has proven to be the case not only for Thomas and his colleagues in the MIT Sloan Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) , but for students, faculty, staff, and alumni around the Institute and beyond.
Here are 15 other quotes about DEI from the extended MIT Sloan community in 2022:
“Investing is for everybody.” – Jake Alchek, MBA ’22
“DEI doesn’t have to be about being ‘woke’ or hours upon hours of sensitivity training. Meaningful change is the result of several small, repeated investments in improvement.” – Dev Bala, EMBA ’20
“[Managers are] still trying to figure out how to be more inclusive, or how to help teams and organizations be more inclusive. That’s the pain point, and I think that’s the core insight we’ve learned throughout this process. We want to make DEI more actionable.” – Priya Bhasin, MBA candidate
“Every member of the MIT community has a responsibility and a necessity to take action.” – Paul Cheek, Executive Director, Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship
“Ultimately world views, languages, value systems, ideologies, and philosophies are like tools in the toolbox of the mind. A smart person has a lot of tools, but a smart group of people doesn’t only rely on their own values and life experiences, they go out into other communities and are sometimes granted access to the knowledge of the general family of humanity.” – Wahde Galisgewi, Cherokee Nation Developer of Adult Immersion Language Revitalization Programs
“We don’t want to write someone off just because they said something that was a microaggression. If we do, then we really can’t move forward together. Having that trust and positive intent to grow with each other is super important for us to really achieve what we’re aspiring to do.” – Yeti Khim, MBA candidate
“Not one drop of your self-worth depends on anyone else’s acceptance nor opinion. You are energy, and your energy is enough. You are enough to inject strength, hope, and inspiration into the veins of humanity.” – Monica Lee, EMBA ’19
“Market demand drives increased focus on diversifying talent pools.” – Nicole Lim, MBA ’22
“The worlds of the urban planning space and the MBA space don’t necessarily think about design the same way that I do. For example, when I say ‘design,’ I mean design as a way of process, the way we engage with communities and the users for whom we are creating new things, whether it’s a policy, a program, or a place. How do we design those processes to make people who are a part of it be at the center of decision-making?” – Mariama N’Diaye, MCP and MBA candidate
“It may not be at MIT or Brown, but these students will make incredible contributions to their communities, their careers, their families, and society. We just want to provide access to under-resourced students who are really talented and really deserving of it.” – Logan Powell, EMBA ’21
“The focus on bias and toxicity in language has never been greater and there’s a very clear and rising need for language detox and debiasing products. And given recent advances in [artificial intelligence and natural language processing], it is now technologically possible to build robust products to do this that can work at scale.” – Rama Ramakrishnan, SM ’90, PhD ’94, Professor of the Practice, Data Science, and Applied Machine Learning
“We endeavor to generate enough interest in MIT Sloan so that people from underrepresented groups will choose to apply. We work to make sure that we have a diverse applicant pool, and we work very hard to foster a diverse incoming class by encouraging potential students to come and join us.” – David Schmittlein, John C Head III Dean
“We all come from different backgrounds, but there is a unique Black experience in the U.S. Even if our families have felt oppression and obstacles, we have to understand the impact that this history has had on the Black community, and this means that when we talk about DEI, we need to talk with specificity about what it means for Black people.” – Chavie Sharfman Sosa, MBA ’22
“It’s a movement but it hasn’t been as inclusive of a movement as we have liked. It needs to be a global movement and I think we have a responsibility to make it that.” – Tavneet Suri, Louis E. Seley Professor of Applied Economics
“Over the past five years, a lot more women have started investing in women-founded businesses, and it’s incredibly important for every single woman here today—and in the world—that they invest both their time and their money in things they’re passionate about. Because that’s how we will change the dynamic that exists today.” – Heidi Zak, MBA ’07
