A Case Study on Including Diverse Perspectives: The NOW Conference
For the organizers of the annual NOW conference, UC Berkeley’s career development conference focused on campus staff, “including and excelling” proved to be a vital part of that conference’s success.
Held on March 1, the event proved popular with campus staff: Within 24 hours of the Chancellor’s email invitation to all staff, the 250 slots for the conference were completely filled and over 100 people joined a waiting list. The conference drew extremely positive reviews from participants, in large part because the conference events had been developed by including perspectives from a diverse and collaborative planning committee.
The first challenge was to figure out who should be involved in the project, said Inette Dishler, strategic development professional specialist with the Center for Organizational and Workforce Effectiveness (COrWE). “On campus there is always a tension in balancing involvement and execution. We want as many people to be involved as possible so we have a good result, but we also don’t want to overemphasize buy-in at the expense of moving forward,” said Dishler, who worked closely with Sid Reel, Director of Staff Diversity Initiatives in the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Equity and Inclusion, to get the idea off the ground.
The team set up a planning committee made up of participants from Equity and Inclusion, COrWE, the Office of the Vice Provost for Teaching, Learning, Academic Planning and Facilities, Human Resources, UC Office of the President, University Health Services and the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Administration and Finance. In addition, the team used its connections on campus to provide Fiat Lux books for keynote speakers and worked with Parking and Transportation to provide shuttles to the event. This team approach allowed the committee to plan and execute the event in just three short months.
“All the egos were left at the door and there were no turf issues. We all just wanted to provide an engaging event for staff, by staff,” said Dishler.