Beyond the Water’s Edge: How Organizations Can Better Integrate Equity Into Their External-Facing Work

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This session will aim to directly address how internal DEI impacts can actually translate to improved access and output for a company’s customers and prospective customers. Malcom will acknowledge the numerous challenges related to DEI work at many companies, including but not limited to how to appropriately collect internal demographic data, who has access to that data, and how to fill in data gaps—particularly as it relates to federal government reporting requirements that require reporting even for employees who choose not to self-identify in some way.

Malcom will share how he's helped employees at various organizations identify solutions for how they can make inclusivity a core part of their external output, how he's created mechanisms for measuring the quality of that inclusive output, and how people working at organizations can create a blueprint for how inclusive design can be more intimately embedded into DEI work. Malcom will also talk through issues of conflation, specifically across superficial similarities between employees of companies and people in communities served by those companies.

Finally, and importantly: there’s a massive, ongoing political backlash against increased points of focus on demographic differences, by lawmakers both at the state and the federal levels in the U.S. This movement doesn’t necessarily bring about legitimate ethical concerns, but certainly does create an opening for lawmakers to regulate various industries in a way that limits the ability to measure the impact of DEI on external output. It’s not a reason not to do work, but one that affirms why it’s so important in the first place.

Learning Objectives:

• How do companies integrate their DEI work with product inclusion? How can they employ principles of inclusive design? How can internal teams better align?
• How do we understand the similarities between rank-and-file Black employees and the average profile of a Black American who is a consumer or user of a company’s products? And how do we extend those considerations to other demographics?
• How do we create more accessible products for people with disabilities, considering the foundational limits around designing and coding tools for people with certain disabilities (e.g. people who are blind or have low vision)? How do leaders balance practical considerations compared to cultural ones?