How Does Equity In Action Work?

The Equity in Action Program – Overview & How To Participate

High potential employees are a rare find. You must invest in them to retain them.

Equity in Action helps you do just that—our program is geared towards investing in high potential African-American talent and small business owners.

Through this program, an organization identifies participants into the following categories:

• Sponsors: Senior leaders or highly influential community leaders
• Proteges: Black high-potential employees or Black talent that the organization wants to retain

Before we understand what the program is all about, let’s first take a look at what it’s not:

• It’s not your typical Employee Resource Program – It involves only potential senior leaders, high priority employees, or talent you want to retain.

• It’s not your typical Sponsorship Program – It invites sponsors to become change-agents and allies in their organization and community. These sponsors advocate for inclusion, diversity, and equity in the workplace.

• It’s not your typical Mentoring Program – It’s based on the concept of growth where Sponsors engage in reverse mentoring with their Proteges. Sponsors guide their Black partners towards progress while identifying and acknowledging unconscious biases and systemic racism.

Equity in Action: What goals does it help you achieve?

• Challenging the White leadership status quo by increasing awareness about diversity in thinking and unconscious biases
• Skill development to facilitate courageous discussions about systemic barriers that cause inequity
• Developing strong partnerships that result in social Action
• Learning about workplace racial dynamics and stress
• Developing and driving career objectives for Black employees
• Expanding and increasing the visibility of Black talent using Sponsors’ networks
• Recognizing the accomplishments of Black employees
• Identifying and addressing the barriers that Black employees often encounter

Equity in Action: How does it work?

• Strategically pairing each Black employee (Protege) with a senior leader or manager (Sponsor)
• The relationship continues for 12-15 months
• Training both the sponsor and the protege to engage in inter-racial courageous conversations
• Coaching them to facilitate career development and enhance protege’s exposure and visibility for better advancement

Equity in Action Programming

• Leverage Diversity of Thinking – Demographic and cultural competency training, understanding the effects of white culture on organizations, and team diversity training

• Build Inclusive Leadership – Training in identifying & eliminating unconscious biases, training for proteges to target and eliminate performance-limiting behaviors, executive presence training, and tools for racial fatigue in the workplace

• Engage Fierce Conversations – Guided facilitation to learn and practice engaging in racial conversations.

• Group Project – Sponsorship pairing that focuses on designing a DEI solution-focused project addressing systemic racism for implementation in Nashville, Tennessee

Why partner with Equity in Action?

• To offer exceptional inter-racial training through external subject matter experts
• To facilitate inter-racial conversations and challenge everyone to be their best selves
• To ensure that Black talent matters
• To deliver a message of collaboration and willingness to grow
• To provide a guided, long-term path for people to walk together, make a change and grow
• To send the message of awareness and Action