A year or two ago, Diversity Awareness Partnership (a wonderful St. Louis-based organization which serves as a catalyst to increase awareness, facilitate engagement, and provide education around equity, diversity, and inclusion) asked me to present at a corporate round table. The topic was how to begin to build programs that further equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) within the workplace.
For many mid-sized corporations, building out much-needed initiatives in this space can be stop-and-start projects, whose relative priority can come and go based on changing perspectives of leadership or available personal bandwidth. In some cases a position is formed to begin the effort, but in many cases the effort grows out of the passion and interest of one or more individual employees.
The audience for the round table included EDI leaders from businesses across the spectrum of scale and industry. Some members of the round table had whole teams devoted to EDI, some were running the efforts solo, and some were lone voices in the wilderness and companies that hadn’t yet fully embraced EDI as a priority.
It was an honor to be asked to present. But even as I opened my remarks, I acknowledged one important fact: I was certainly not an authority in the area, at least not academically. Like everyone working in EDI, I was still very much learning (as I still am today) and could simply share one point of view, developed from one specific set of recent experiences through my work at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis.
A St. Louis Context
When I came to OTSL in 2011, one reason I did was the palpable commitment that the company’s then General Director Timothy O’Leary had for inclusion. (Tim has since gone on to lead the Washington National Opera at the Kennedy Center.) Like me, he saw the potential for the arts to address community issues and needs head on. At the time, he was already committed to producing John Adams’ The Death of Klinghoffer, an opera which addressed the hijacking of the Achille Lauro cruise ship, and he had begun the commissioning process to premiere an opera about the true story of closeted Afro-Caribbean prize fighter Emile Griffith. Both were projects that would create the opportunity for meaningful dialogue about difference far outside of the opera house.
Show art for Champion, based on the true story of Emile Griffith. Creative by TOKY Branding + Design
I had come to St. Louis from Atlanta, a place with a high level of racial and socio-economic integration. It took me only a few days living in St. Louis to realize the extent to which St. Louis did not reflect such integration. It took me much longer to begin to understand the extent to which systemic racism, privilege, implicit bias, and overt discrimination had informed the policies and the very political geography of this region. (This was several years before the events in Ferguson after the killing of Michael Brown, Jr. led to in-depth analysis of these questions by the national press and, ultimately, the Ferguson Commission - all of which deepened my understanding and the understanding of so many in St. Louis.)
In Atlanta, race was something people talked about almost daily. The legacy of the civil rights movement was in your backyard. In pre-Ferguson St. Louis, it wasn’t part of polite conversation. There wasn’t a regional imperative to talk about it. Instead, the issues created by system racism hid in plain sight. People used to seeing those issues had gone “nose blind” to them.
Every community is different, but issues of equity, inclusion, and diversity run rampant in one form or another across every corner of our country and across every industry. The legacies of slavery, segregation, and redlining still underpin the lived experiences of many in our community. The rhetoric surrounding immigration has become toxic and divisive. Sexism, pay inequity, gender discrimination, and the threat of assault still cast a daily shadow over the possibility for equality. Stigmas surrounding physical ability and physical or mental illness have never fully left us. And homophobia and transphobia haunt policy and practice from education to military service.
Whatever dimensions of equity, inclusion, and diversity may seem most critical to you, I hope that the basic steps I share below (the same ones I shared at the DAP corporate round table) may be a good starting point to help you consider the work in your organization or your community. The process may be slow to start, but just committing to beginning the work is a meaningful first step (and a step many just like you may have never made). There will be frustrations along the way, and progress may not come at the rate you would hope - but progress will come. And continuing to commit to the work piece by piece, each week, each month, each year, will lead you to a place where progress is inevitable. Whether the work is for your staff, for your community, or some other group entirely, you will be glad you began it - and they will be better because the work started.
Five Steps as You Get Started
Preparing remarks for DAP helped me look closely at how the process developed at Opera Theatre. Sometimes while you are in the weeds of doing the work, you don’t track your process as much as you track your progress. So, I’m doubly grateful to DAP - both for the opportunity to lead the conversation at their round table and for the gift of “enforced reflection” to consider where I’d been along this journey.
Take these steps for what they are: just one road map towards progress. There are plenty of other cartographers who have developed road maps of their own - and as long as your compass is pointed in the right direction (towards improved EDI), it doesn’t matter which road map you use.
1) Build Buy In. This has to be your first step. You can’t manage an EDI initiative on your own, and to make any internal (or external) progress you will need partners. Start talking with other staff members who you believe may share your values on the issues. Learn which board members might share an interest as well and meet with them. Start asking your first circle of contacts who they know, ask for introductions, and see if anyone in that second circle might be able to meet to give you advice. You’ll get great perspective, and you’ll build even deeper buy-in from your first circle of contacts because they’ll know you’re proceeding forward with the advice of people they know and trust. Yes, you’ll meet with some reluctance on all sides, but by approaching these conversations from the position of learning, you’ll grow enormously and you will build remarkable allies.
In the case of Opera Theatre, these conversations led me to recognize just how many people were in the OTSL community who cared about equity, but how few of them realized that there were others like them equally bought in. There was a latent desire to move the needle (which is no surprise, as within OTSL’s supporter base you’ll find some of the most thoughtful, remarkable people in St. Louis). In the area of EDI, that base simply hadn’t yet been activated together to do the work.
There were also people who hadn’t yet felt this work to be a priority. That wasn’t their fault - the system itself had created structures to make it difficult for them to realize that there was an issue that needed to be addressed (or that they had the ability to do something about that issue). Even during these initial buy-in conversations, seeing conversion moments begin for others was a beautiful and inspiring thing - and just as rewarding as meeting people who were already bought into the potential work.
2) Inventory Your Assets and Programs. Once you have the lay of the land and know who your prospective allies might be, you need to begin to explore what resources are already available in your organization to do the work. It is rare that a new EDI effort is going to come with a five figure budget. To start, until you can prove the impact of the work, fiscal responsibility dictates that you need to work within the context of what you already have. Once you build out that inventory, you may be surprised by how much is already there. Odds are you have access to artists, you have a brilliant production team, you have core programming (on stage, in your galleries, in the classroom), and you have an existing community footprint. It doesn’t take much to gently tweak any one of those efforts to broaden your focus towards an EDI lens.
Show art for Man of La Mancha at Stages St. Louis
Recently I learned of a St. Louis theater doing just that. Stages St. Louis had always had a post-show talk back series during the first week of the run of each of its summer and fall musicals. Instead of simply having a conversation about what people enjoyed about the production, in the coming year they are re-orienting those conversations slightly. So, in conjunction with The Boy from Oz, their existing post-show talk back will explore coming out stories (which is one aspect of the story in the musical). In conjunction with Man of La Mancha, the talk back will address race in casting. These are first steps to leverage existing resources and begin stake a position with their audiences that equity and inclusion matter. Making the change cost them no money, and only gains them community good will (and a more informed community in their audience).
Also remember in this stage that one of your assets will always be data. Take the time to analyze what your organization has done in the past. If your goal is to increase participation from the Latin-American community, look back at your history and see when your organization was successful doing so previously. If there are certain geographies that matter to you, understand better who you are already serving in those locations. Talk to them to understand what drew them to you in the first place. Invite them be part of the work. Dig a little deeper into your organization’s history and its database, and you’ll be surprised what you might find.
3) Organize Your Allies. You now know who is bought in and you know what programs you already have. It’s time to bring all of your allies together, so that you can shift away from learning from them one-on-one and move to create an environment in which they can learn from each other - and together build your efforts to a level you could never have taken them alone. If your goal is to create a more equitable, inclusive, and diverse community (or such a community for your organization), bringing your allies together to sit at one table models the very experience you’d like to see created writ large.
In the case of OTSL, within a year of starting the work, this act of organizing allies led to the creation of the company’s Engagement + Inclusion Task Force. (After 5 years, it became clear that the group needed a new name, as “task force” sounds far from permanent. I hope that in time the group will indeed get rechristened to reflect the level of on-going commitment that I believe the company has to this work.) At first the group met as a think tank, to give advice and perspective to ensure that our community work was resonant, appropriate, and included the right partners. It was extraordinary and humbling to sit at a conference room table with staff, board, and community volunteers who each reflected some piece of St. Louis’s rich diversity. (Leaders from the African-American community, the Latin-American community, the South Asian community, the immigrant community, and the LGBT community all came together in support of building a more inclusive community at OTSL.) It was also beautiful to see the way in which convening the group broke down artificial barriers between staff, board, and community volunteers. When doing this work, everyone sits on an equal playing field because the lived experience of each person has equal value.
The effort to organize our allies continued from there, with a series of events that began to expand our footprint: a cocktail reception with a singer of color at a board member’s home, a lecture and recital with a group of students in the auditorium of a major corporate partner, etc. The activities didn’t call out the launch of a new program, because OTSL’s commitment to diversity and inclusion wasn’t a new thing. It was just our mechanisms that had evolved. Because of who was in the room at these events, our commitment to inclusion was implicit. It did not need to be said or touted.
4) Execute. This step is easy to say, but harder to do. It’s at this point that, with the guidance and support of your allies, “the great work begins.” (Apologies for the Tony Kushner reference.) How you execute has everything to do with what your assets are and what ideas develop to address the opportunities in your community. Those initial cocktail receptions I mentioned in the last step were also one way we began this execution stage. But bigger scale programs certainly were too: a free public Q&A with Salman Rushdie, the Opera Tastings series, an exclusive reception for multiple chapters of the Links, etc.
Remember that executing works best when you are doing it in partnership with other organizations. Your company is not an EDI expert, and at this stage in your process, you are not yet the trusted community resource you’d like to become. If a few of the initial allies you were trying to cultivate were a little suspicious to start, you should expect broad swaths of the community may be as well. So, in the case of Opera Theatre, every early program was tied to one or more meaningful partnerships. A panel about the intersection of homophobia and professional athletics happened with the support of Washington University, PROMO (the Missouri statewide LGBT advocacy organization), and Athlete Ally (a national non-profit). A panel about the lived experiences of Hindus and Muslims in St. Louis came to life thanks to partnerships with The Ethical Society, Diversity Awareness Partnership, and Arts and Faith St. Louis.
Lastly, as you execute, deputize your allies to become true ambassadors. By making members of the Engagement + Inclusion Task Force (and members of OTSL’s Young Friends Steering Committee) event hosts, those many wonderful community supporters could build an even deeper level of ownership.
5) Continuous Learning. Each step of the way, once you’ve completed executing an activity, learn from it. Gather your allies together, survey your attendees, do whatever you can to get feedback. It will never be perfect the first time. Be sure to build in an appreciation of that from your team in advance, and then take the time to learn how to make it better the next time around. Ask yourself who was missing in the room and what you could do differently so that that person (or that piece of your community) felt authentically invited. Compare notes with colleagues elsewhere. Odds are something you’ve done well is something they are struggling with and vice versa. In the EDI space everyone wants to get better. If you ask for advice to continue to learn, you’ll likely get it happily.
Reflections on Results
Unlike end-of-fiscal financial results or that beautiful infographic that shows you where all your audiences came from last season, EDI work doesn’t give you neat, clean, final results. However, starting this work at OTSL has definitely generated progress for the company - and sometimes progress alone can be the results you’re looking for.
While at first it took work for OTSL to convince potential partners that the company was the right one to work with on an event that explored diversity, that process has become much easier and moved much more quickly as the track record of the company’s work began to speak for itself. That community trust is a huge milestone, but it is a milestone that must continue to be earned for everyone. Just because you’ve done it well for a few years doesn’t mean you can take a break for a little while and get back to it when its convenient.
When OPERA America began its Civic Action Task Force, an effort to invest in EDI initiatives around the country, OTSL was one of the companies invited to be part of its inaugural cohort. Representatives from OTSL have been at the table for each meeting of that group, helping establish the company as a leader within the field. Then when OTSL hosted the annual OPERA America Conference in St. Louis, as thought leaders partnering on the conference’s content, EDI issues took a position front and center in the national conversation in St. Louis.
Within the organization, the board governance committee has taken on the mantel of equity and inclusion as well, setting specific clear benchmarks for a board that in several years will reflect the racial diversity of the broader St. Louis region. And, long before those benchmarks were set, community volunteers who began their relationship with OTSL through the Engagement + Inclusion Task Force have continued on to become board members, guild board members, and to assume other volunteer leadership roles within the organization. Plus, you can compare the composition of the OTSL audience between 2011 and 2018 and, while there is certainly still enormous room to grow, the growth that has occurred is profound.
And, selfishly, I can say that in leading this work I have personally grown enormously as well. So, as you begin this work in your own organization, don’t be afraid to know that many of your results may be hard to measure. Community impact always is. But it is work that is essential for our organizations if we are to provide the role of service to our community, service which should be central to all of our missions.