Developing Equitable & Inclusive Organizational Practices
Throughout my professional and volunteer experience, I have had the pleasure of developing practices that make workplaces more accessible for employees and community members that are less represented. Below are a few of the projects I’ve engaged in.
Organization: Denver Public Schools
Role: IT Project Manager
Project: Website Accessibility
An investigation by the U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights (OCR), led Denver Public Schools to the discovery that many of the public-facing websites contained barriers to access for people with disabilities. OCR requested that DPS perform an audit of all public-facing web pages to determine which web pages contained barriers, and to create a plan of action to eliminate those barriers.
I discovered during the project that there were no standards for DPS departments and schools to develop website content. Working with departments across the organization, I created or managed the development of the below resources (some resources excluded due to proprietary data):
DPS Website Accessibility Guide - a guide to provide guidelines to content creators on website accessibility, including standards from Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)
DPS Website Accessibility Video - a training video that details DPS website requirements that every DPS content creator must watch before creating or editing content on DPS websites
DPS Content Guide - an in-depth guide that provides instruction to content creators on how to plan, write and manage content for newly created DPS websites
DPS Development Style Guide - a guide created to provide DPS website developers with accessible plug and play design and code
Organization: Camber Outdoors
Role: Program Manager
My role at Camber Outdoors focused on developing and maintaining programs that assisted member organizations and individuals with creating equitable and inclusive workplace cultures, and bridging the gap between organizations creating those cultures and people hoping to work with them. In that role, I engaged organizational leaders, employees, and entrepreneurs through networking events, webinars, panel discussions, mentoring opportunities, surveys, and providing researched promising practices. Below are a few highlights.
“The relationships between mentors and mentees in the workforce make an invaluable difference,” says Sasha McGhee, Program Manager for Camber Outdoors. “A McKinsey & Co. study reported that companies with greater leadership diversity perform better but women, especially women of color, remain significantly underrepresented in senior leadership teams. There aren’t as many mentors or role models and the paths toward executive-level leadership are limited – we plan to change that.”
Project: Workplace Inclusion Panel
I developed and moderated a panel highlighting key leaders in the outdoor industries that have helped to pave the way for creating inclusive practices within their organizations and communities. We discussed steps organizations have taken to advance careers and advocate for employees, and highlighted things that are still missing.
Project: Organizational Learning Themes
I created key themes to guide Camber Outdoors’ organizational focus for 2020, including the monthly webinar series, entrepreneurial resources, keynotes and other tradeshow events, marketing and communications. These themes align with organizational culture best practices along with specific needs of industry partners.
Organization: Brown Girls Climb
Role: Director of Operations, volunteer
Project: Organizational Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Trainings
As volunteer Director of Operations with Brown Girls Climb, one of the great opportunities I have is to develop trainings for outdoor-industry organizations that are seeking to create inclusive workplaces, HR policies, or to develop authentic, diverse community relationships and marketing materials.