Engineering Social Change in the Workplace and Beyond

After graduating amid the arrival of COVID-19 and ongoing protests of racial inequities in the United States, Nwanacho Nwana, SB ’20, reached out to the MIT Sloan Office of Undergraduate Education. The former MIT senior class president was eager to remain involved with the school. So after some back-and-forth, they co-founded Engineering Social Change (ESC)—a virtual panel series designed to connect students with alumni and industry professionals to brainstorm the best ways to achieve social change in the workplace.

“As the protests continued throughout the summer, I realized we needed to have a more in-depth discussion about how to effectively make these changes in our workplaces,” says Nwana. “People often feel alone when it comes to experiencing workplace inequities like racial and gender discrimination—but if you can connect them with people at the highest levels of industry who have had the same experiences, that can be very impactful and powerful.”

Nwana and the Office of Undergraduate Education began laying the groundwork for ESC in fall 2020. Hosted by Nwana in early February 2021, the first panel featured an interactive discussion of “Racial Equity in the Workplace” among the participants, then-MIT Sloan undergraduate student William Little, SB ’21, MIT Sloan alumna Stephanie Preston, MBA ’08, and others. A month later, a second panel on “Women Leading in Industry and Inclusion” was hosted by Kerry James, SB ’95, MBA ’01, and featured Kristen Robinson Darcy, EMBA ’13, Andrea Gutierrez Marty, SB ’14, Sanjana Shukla, SB ’21, and Julia Wada, SM ’90.

“If there’s one thing that stands out to me after three years here, it’s that institutions like MIT Sloan really do make the world go round because of students like Nwanacho and alumni like Stephanie,” says Austin Ashe (Senior Associate Director for Culture and Belonging), who worked in the Office of Undergraduate Education before joining the MIT Sloan Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. “When we asked Stephanie and other Sloanies for help, they all said yes. They were so incredible to our students. It’s because of them that I remain hopeful about the trajectory of our country and our ability to advance racial, gender, and socioeconomic equities.”

Nwana, Ashe, and their colleagues will continue to organize and host additional ESC virtual panels covering topics related to accomplishing social change in the workplace. They are even hoping to host a few in-person iterations of the discussion series as well, for as Nwana explains, this kind of innovation is now more important than ever.

“I love entrepreneurship. I think there’s a vital role for it in our economy, but there are other important things, too,” he says. “As Sloanies, we can create a lot of different things—not just companies. We are smart, passionate, and innovative. Though I believe we should continue creating new businesses, we should also create new initiatives like ESC that bring people together to figure out how to solve the world’s most pressing problems. That is real impact.”