Diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) can unlock your leadership capacity in ways that you cannot imagine at this moment. Why? Because becoming a more inclusive leader is about deepening your understanding of who you are and how you lead, challenging those assumptions, and learning new tools to become a more impactful leader. Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in Organizations is ultimately a class about leadership. Students might walk into this class with beliefs about what DEI is, how it works and why it matters. Perhaps this was learned in your company or in an organization that you lead. Perhaps your personal background has offered you a window into what DEI is and how it works in your life. While your existing ideas offer a critical starting point, we will challenge your assumptions, widen your knowledge base, and offer novel experiences that will allow you to think differently about DEI. In this course, we introduce students to conceptual frameworks and strategies for how to approach DEI from a leadership perspective. Students learn about the importance of a deep understanding of the organizational, cultural and intergroup contexts in which DEI initiatives arise, which DEI initiatives work and why, the drivers that motivate DEI initiatives, and the opportunities and barriers to building effective DEI initiatives in organizations. Students learn about varieties of differences that you are likely to encounter in your lives and your leadership, including (but not limited to) race, ethnicity, gender, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBTQ+) groups, religion, social class, able-bodiedness, neurodiversity and political identities. We will examine how these identity differences combine or intersect to create new opportunities and challenges for individuals and global stakeholders. Finally, we will explore how to work across differences to create personal and organizational transformation. Specific course topics include: identity and leadership, leading authentically, understanding and mitigating stereotypes, bias and discrimination, leading diverse teams, leading global teams, organizational drivers of DEI, legal frameworks that affect DEI policies, marketing and DEI, and how companies leverage technology to accelerate DEI initiatives. When you complete the course, you will have had the opportunity to: ● Develop the mindset needed to be an effective leader in a diverse organization ● Learn core skills for engaging with others of different social identities ● Discover how to manage both one’s privilege and one’s minority status ● Practice tactics for managing conflict across difference ● Understand how to drive broad-scale organization climate and culture change
Division: Management

Spring 2024


B8597 - 001


B8597 - 002


B8597 - 003

Spring 2023


B8597 - 001

Fall 2022


B8597 - 001