UMRC & Porter Hills has recognized the need for a formal strategy for DEI across our growing organization.

UMRC & Porter Hills partnered with Change Works; a consulting firm dedicated to integrating DEI in workplaces. With Change Works, UMRC & Porter Hills was able to define Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion as an organization, and begin a draft strategy that was built from workshops with the Strategic Team, Governing Board, and leaders throughout the organization. UMRC and Porter Hills engaged the Change Works. The consultants at Change Works, Faye Askew-King and Chuck Warpehoski facilitated a series of three diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) sessions with: 1) the organization’s strategic leadership team, 2) the Board of Trustees, and 3) the culture leaders group. In these three sessions organizational leaders with various perspectives on what DEI means and the connection between DEI and the organization’s mission. Beyond mission alignment, different participants recognized different operational, financial, and personal benefits of advancing DEI. The participatory nature of the three sessions was designed to highlight the various perspectives participants brought to the sessions and build a shared understanding of what DEI means, why it is important to the organization, and to begin to define specific behaviors to advance DEI within UMRC & Porter Hills.

This emerging shared understanding provides a strong foundation for further DEI work within UMRC & Porter Hills as the organization moves from the broad conceptual framework developed during the three sessions to define specific behaviors that advance DEI, identify policies and procedures to changes to advance the DEI framework, develop ways to quantify and measure those behaviors, and develop a system for reflecting on the outcomes of DEI efforts.