Guest Blog: Interweaving the Business Case and Personal Benefits of DEI

By Kuma Roberts

The work of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) is business imperative, but how do we begin, or how do we keep up in an ever-changing society? One misunderstanding is that the work of DEI has to be this large-scale, organization-wide, top-down initiative with sweeping changes. It doesn’t. There is so much more that connects us as people than separates us, regardless of race, gender, and sexual orientation. Everyone has a role to play in working to address inequity and increase diversity and inclusion. There are small bites in our communities, workplaces, and personal growth changes that we all can make in order to shift toward a more inclusive and welcoming culture.

I often describe myself as “diversity personified.” I am in an intergenerational, interracial marriage. (My husband is 33 years older than I am.) And together, we are raising both our three-year-old and my sixteen-year-old child from a previous marriage. My father was an African immigrant who came to America as a foreign exchange student where he met my very religious Southern Baptist mother. I am a career-oriented professional. My husband is the primary caregiver in our home. In short, my life contains many dimensions of diversity, only a few of which have to do with my race and gender.