Advancing Equity, Inclusion and Belonging in the Workplace
Champion Equity and Embrace Inclusion in the Workplace
In 2020, two crises emerged into national and global prominence—the COVID-19 pandemic and the civil unrest following the George Floyd murder. Both exposed many of the inequities in our society, and corporate leaders found themselves under significant pressure to publicly commit to tackling systemic bias, particularly within the workplace. From adding chief diversity officers and creating affinity groups to increasing community outreach and developing diversity performance metrics, many companies have started strong in their entities’ DEI journey. However, many are now discovering that these actions are just that, a strong start. To date, the gains of these corporate efforts have been mixed. This is because advancing DEI within an organization also requires learning to value the experiences of colleagues with different backgrounds and viewpoints, making room for their colleagues to bring the fullness of their lived experiences into the workplace, and offering the right resources for them to thrive. Specifically, companies are coming to realize that championing equity and embracing inclusion is the hard work of DEI.
According to a recent Kantar report, a lack of diversity, equity and inclusion could be costing businesses $5.4 trillion. A commitment to equity, inclusion and belonging in the workplace enables organizations to foster inclusivity and attract, motivate and recognize exceptional individuals. This environment cultivates innovation and creates a culture where every person feels there is an equal opportunity to fit in and build a career. Through evidence-based research and contemporary practices from companies making DEI strides, participants will gain actionable strategies for successfully advancing DEI within their organizations.
Program Details
Program Dates
December 5-6, 2024
April 24-25, 2025
Registration Deadline
Winter 2024 Registration Deadline: November 21, 2024
Spring 2025 Registration Deadline: April 10, 2025
Delivery Method
Three full days, on campus
Cost
$1,950 per participant
Promotions and Available Discounts
- Save $100 by registering for the Winter 2024 program by November 7, 2024, use code EARLYBIRD24DEI
- Save $100 by registering for the Spring 2025 program by March 27, 2025, use code EARLYBIRD25DEI
- Discounts are available for Ohio State University employees, OSUWMC employees, Veterans, employees from non-profit organizations and organizations who send 3 or more employees. For more information about discounts please contact Meredith Conder at conder.11@osu.edu.
Prospective Participant Profile
This program is valuable for...
- Executives and professionals in senior leadership positions who define and cultivate the desired culture
- Managers and team leaders who mentor and coach fellow colleagues on projects and assignments
- HR professionals who play a critical role in shaping the employee experience
- Professionals who work in teams to complete work assignments and achieve organizational goals
- Professionals who serve in administrative and technical roles that support their colleagues in achieving organizational goals
Course Takeaways
- Explain the value of an inclusive workplace culture
- Articulate the business case for diversity, equity, and inclusion
- More readily recognize and identify bias and prejudice in the workplace
- Better facilitate dialog around bias
- Be a better ally and advocate for one’s colleagues with different backgrounds and experiences
- Identify ways to improve one’s workplace culture and increase employee engagement
- Better position one’s organization to attract and retain top diverse talent
What You Will Earn
Once you successfully complete the program, you will be eligible to receive a certificate of completion from The Ohio State University Fisher College of Business. You may proudly display this certificate in your office or home to showcase your accomplishment. You may also add this certificate to the licenses and certifications section of your LinkedIn profile. This will allow you to showcase your newly acquired experience to your network and stand out in your field.
We also value your commitment to learning, and as a token of appreciation, we offer a 10% discount on future topic-based programs you wish to pursue through Executive Education at Fisher College of Business. We believe that learning is a lifelong journey, and we are proud to be a part of yours.
- Understand what it means to be an inclusive leader
- Understand the history of systemic bias in the workplace and its present impact
- Recognize and address individual biases and prejudices in the workplace (including one’s own)
- Understand how to be a better colleague to peers with different backgrounds and experiences
- Develop new skills in facilitating difficult conversations
- Understand and address institutional patterns that lead to disparities in workplace culture
- Enhance inclusive excellence within the organization
- Increase employee engagement
- Reduce occurrences of workplace harassment
- Gain a competitive edge in attracting top diverse talent
Our Faculty
Dr. Terry L. Esper is a Logistics and Supply Chain Management researcher, educator, and change agent. He is on the faculty at The Ohio State University Fisher College of Business, at the rank/title of Professor of Logistics. Esper’s research has been published in top-tier academic journals and industry outlets, and shared through academic conferences, symposiums, and roundtables. He regularly contributes his research-based insights to several media outlets, including Forbes, the Wall Street Journal, NPR, BBC World News, CNBC, USA Today, Sirius XM Radio, several local newspapers, blogs, and podcasts, and he has a featured TedX Talk.
Esper has previously served as the Oren Harris Endowed Chair of Logistics and Associate Professor of Supply Chain Management (SCM) at the University of Arkansas Sam M. Walton College of Business, Executive Director of the Walton College SCM Research Center, and was a SCM professor at the University of Tennessee Haslam College of Business.
Dr. Esper is a member of the Ohio State University Faculty Council and University Senate. He also serves on various committees within the Department of Marketing and Logistics, and contributes to the Fisher College via a number of committee appointments and special project teams.
In addition to his full-time academic activities, Esper also serves as an adjunct faculty content expert for the University of Iowa Tippie College of Business CIMBA Italy Program. He also maintains global academic engagement, having served on faculty at the University of Verona (Italy), as a key faculty liaison with Universidad Santa Maria de Antigua (Panama) and ESSEC Business School (France), and as a faculty leader for study abroad programs to Panama.
Esper has published his research on strategic SCM topics in leading academic and managerial outlets. His work combines Logistics and Marketing concepts to investigate how firms can leverage supply chain and logistics operations to differentiate themselves in their competitive marketplaces. Topical themes of his research include studies on supply chain strategy, relationship management, customer service, online retail, leadership, and corporate culture. Esper is also Senior Editor for the Journal of Business Logistics, and Associate Editor for the Journal of Supply Chain Management.
Dr. Esper leverages his research and experiential insights to engage in executive education, corporate training, and industry outreach. Esper is a member of Board of Directors of the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP), a global organization for supply chain executives and scholars. He serves as Chair of the CSCMP Academic Strategies Committee. Esper is also a resident Educational Advisor to several companies in the pharmaceutical and personal care industry, to include Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, Bristol Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly, and Estee Lauder. He serves on the Board of Directors of CBUS Retail, a Columbus, OH-based retail industry think tank, and is on several academic Advisory Boards. Esper also speaks at corporate events around the world and does regular executive-level educational sessions and workshops through the Ohio State University Center for Operational Excellence, the Ohio State University Risk Institute, and the University of Arkansas SCM Research Center. These activities have allowed for regular educational engagements with companies such as Walmart, Procter & Gamble, JB Hunt, Tyson Foods, Unilever, Kellogg, Nationwide Insurance, Apple, Lowe’s, and the US Department of Defense.
Prior to his academic career, Esper worked for Hallmark Cards as a Transportation Manager and for the Arkansas State Highway and Transportation Department in their Research and Statewide Planning Divisions.
Dr. Melissa Crum is an award-winning diversity and equity professional and inclusion coach. She is also an artist, educator, author, researcher, and founder of the Columbus, Ohio-based consulting company Mosaic Education Network. Mosaic infuses the arts, research, storytelling, and critical thinking into professional development, community building, and curriculum development.
Dr. Crum has facilitated training sessions across the U.S., creating a non-judgmental and refreshingly honest look at privileges and privately held beliefs. Her workshops focus on race history and workplace culture development and equip educators, leadership, staff, and board members with the skills to implement inclusive and equitable practices.
Dr. Crum is a Cornell University Certified Diversity and Inclusion Professional and is a certified executive coach through the University of California’s Berkeley Executive Coaching Institute. She earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of Florida. Dr. Crum earned her master’s in African American and African Studies and a Ph.D. in Art Administration, Education, and Policy from Ohio State University. She is an Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI) and The Intercultural Conflict Style Inventory (ICS) qualified trainer and SHRM provider currently in Columbus, Ohio
Kimberly serves as CEO of Women of Color Retail Alliance and as a lecturer of Marketing. An award-winning executive with an impeccable record of building brands, finding the uncut diamonds, and creating product-based stories. Lee-Minor is a customer-focused brand advocate and marketer with expertise in building seamless, cross-functional life cycle product processes, digital to brick and mortar customer experiences, as well as recruitment, engagement, and retention enhancements.
She leveraged her years of leadership experience to create her company, Bumbershoot, a boutique consulting firm that provides cultural and market insights to help business leaders strategically reposition their cultures for collaboration and inclusivity to provide a welcoming and empowering community for career acceleration of women and people of color; creates content and builds networks for support, enrichment and promotion of niche communities.
Her international professional experience spans from Footlocker Global, Inc, to Brand President of London Fog and Joe Boxer to Lbrands, where she led the $2B Home business. She is currently CEO of Women of Color Retail Alliance (WOCRA), an organization focused on career development, economic empowerment, and closing the gap to gender parity for women in retail leadership.
Kimberly holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Temple University in Philadelphia, PA and an Executive Certificate in Leadership and Management from The Wharton School at University of Pennsylvania. She is a currently enrolled in Inclusive Leadership program at Stanford University.
Cynthia W. Turner serves on the leadership team at Fisher as the assistant dean and chief diversity officer and has become a widely sought-after facilitator and guest speaker on the topics of diversity, equity and inclusion.
After joining Fisher in 2013 as a senior lecturer of accounting, she developed the award-winning Project THRIVE program, a diversity initiative designed to increase representation within the undergraduate accounting and management information systems department. In 2018, she was honored with Ohio State’s Distinguished Diversity Enhancement Award for her success in doubling the diversity within the undergraduate program in two short years.
Since taking on the position as assistant dean and chief diversity officer at Fisher in 2019, Cynthia’s strategic efforts have helped double external funding for scholarships and DEI initiatives; facilitating the development of a formal partnership with the city of Columbus to support pre-collegiate programming for its economically disadvantaged and first-generation high school students; developing programming to engage Fisher’s diverse alumni, including the Alumni of Color Network Weekend and the Women’s Leadership Symposium; and creating a new DEI course offering at Fisher.
Andreá N. Williams specializes in African American literature and nineteenth-century U.S. literature. Her first book, Dividing Lines: Class Anxiety and Postbellum Black Fiction (2013), examines the black middle class and class inequality in African American literature between the Civil War and Harlem Renaissance. Her research interests also address black periodicals and print culture, labor and class studies, life writing and auto/biographical studies, and U.S. women writers. She is currently at work on a cultural study of singleness and unmarried African American women in the first half of the twentieth century. She regularly teaches courses such as “All the Single Ladies,” “Labor, Class and U.S. Literature” and “Growing Up Black: African American Coming-of-Age Narratives.” She has won awards for teaching and leadership at Ohio State, as well as national research fellowships and grants from Rutgers University, the National Humanities Center and the American Council of Learned Societies.
Michael Johnson is an executive HR leader with over 24 years of experience in Human Resource Management, Operations, and Consulting. Michael currently serves as the Director of HR Business Partners for Riverside Methodist Hospital. Riverside Methodist Hospital is OhioHealth’s flagship hospital and is the largest hospital within Central Ohio servicing over 100,000 patients annually. As HR Director, Michael and his team is responsible for the organizational culture and all day-to-day HR operations for the hospital by providing HR business partner support to Riverside’s executives and management teams. Michael’s career has included HR and operational leadership roles for several top Fortune 50 organizations. Michael has worked in many different business sectors including Financial Services, Insurance, Manufacturing and most recently Healthcare. Each of these experiences helps Michael to consult with executive leadership to curate HR solutions which achieves organizational goals while ensuring Human Capital needs are front and center in all decisions.
Michael’s training background includes trainings in the following disciplines:
• DEI
• Labor Relations
• HR Management
• Leadership Development
• Organizational Development
• Operations Management
• HR Consulting
Michael holds a dual Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology and communications from The Ohio State University. He also holds an Executive Master’s in Business Administration Degree with specialization in Human Resource Management from Ashland University. In addition to his educational endeavors Michael holds several certifications including Society of Human Resources Management- Certified Professional (SHRM-CP), Professional in Human Resources (PHR), Facilities Management Administrator (FMA), and Charter Property Casualty Underwriter (CPCU). Michael is a proud Lifetime member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc.
Michael and his wife Mary Johnson and son Michael Johnson Jr. currently reside in Blacklick, Ohio.
Heidi Shull is a Senior Lecturer of Management and Human Resources at the Max M. Fisher College of Business at The Ohio State University. She also serves as the MHR department Vice Chair and Program Director for the Graduate Business Minor in Health Sciences. Prior to joining Fisher and transitioning her career to teaching, Heidi spent many years providing leadership to the specialty and emergency space of the veterinary industry including with the College of Veterinary Medicine at The Ohio State University as an Assistant Director and Practice Administrator. While working in veterinary medicine, she also spent several years teaching business courses at a community college. Heidi continues to work lightly in the veterinary field through local consulting. Heidi was a nontraditional student who completed her own education in business while working and raising a family. She earned her MBA to excel in her veterinary career, but it was in this program that she became inspired to explore teaching.
Cancellation and Transfer Policy
All cancellations and transfers must be received in writing. Submit your request via email to Jennie McAndrew at mcandrew.28@osu.edu with the name of the program, followed by “cancellation” or “transfer” in the subject line.
- Cancellations must be made at least thirty (30) days prior to the first day of the program in order to be eligible for a full refund.
- Cancellations must be made at least fourteen (14) days prior to the first day of the program in order to be eligible for a 50% refund.
- Any cancellations made less than fourteen (14) days prior to the first day of the program will forfeit the registration fee.
- If you for any reason are unable to attend the program, please consider sending someone in your place. Participants can transfer their registration to someone else within their organization at no charge up to 24 hours before the first day of the program.
Contact Us
Jennie McAndrew
Education Program Senior Specialist, Executive Education
©2024 Fisher College of Business
2100 Neil Avenue, Columbus, Ohio 43210