Schedule

Welcome & Open Plenary

With Diarra Imani, Wordsmith

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion: Regional Perspectives
Organizational cultures are just one piece of the picture when it comes to creating a welcoming Pittsburgh region for all - a career destination must be a place where top talent can live, work, and play. What multifaceted efforts are necessary for a more vibrant Pittsburgh region? What could a regional welcoming strategy look like? Join regional leaders for a conversation about the value of place and the creation of a community where all thrive.

Morning Panel Sessions, Part 1

Creating an Inclusion Culture: Practices That Work
Creating an inclusive culture requires intentional, multifaceted efforts, but how does an organization know their practices are making a difference? What strategies, tools, and tactics have been successful for our region’s organizations? Join our cross-sector panel as they discuss what makes for a thriving organizational environment.

Diversity & Leadership: Building a Culture of Belonging
Belonging cultures capture the synergy of diversity, equity, accessibility, and inclusion through purposeful leadership and action with impact. Join Vibrant Pittsburgh member expert diversity leaders for a high-level discussion to energize your DEI efforts and build organizational environments that attract, retain, and elevate top talent.

Navigating Attraction, Retention, and Elevation of Talent
In the Pittsburgh region, and throughout the country recruiting and retaining top talent is no easy task – how can a purposeful organization not only attract top talent but also help them plant roots? This panel will tackle the “elephant in the room” - retention of top underrepresented talent - through the lenses of talent pipelines, recruiting, hiring, and talent management.

Morning Panel Sessions, Part 2

Gender Equity & Intersectionality: Improving Outcomes for Black Women in Pittsburgh
In September of 2019, the City of Pittsburgh’s Gender Equity Commission released its report, Pittsburgh’s Inequality Across Gender and Race, illustrating the stark disparities in livability occurring in the Pittsburgh region, specifically noting that the City of Pittsburgh is one of the worst areas for black women to live and thrive. Two years later, many in the region ask, what has been done with this knowledge? This panel discussion will bring perspectives from the Gender Equity Commission, regional health institutions, and the nonprofit sector together for a conversation addressing the actions necessary to improve outcomes and eradicate disparities in our region.

Data Justice: Ethical Practices + Better Decisions = Equitable Outcomes
Applying a justice, ethics, and equity lens to eliminate data bias.
Inherent bias can be built in the ways in which data is collected, analyzed, interpreted, and distributed. Biased data can be a barrier for innovating meaning actions, strategies, and measurable progress toward more equitable outcomes. As expectations of stakeholders continue to rapidly evolve, the ability to advance equity as a core aspect of an organization’s mission has emerged as the signature professional leadership competency to drive business sustainability in the 21st century—and data integrity will be foundational to meeting these expectations. This panel will highlight evolving thought leadership in operationalizing data justice to accelerate diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Improving Diversity through Corporate & Community Partnerships
How are Pittsburgh organizations making investments in underserved communities? What does responsible social impact look like? This panel will explore the ways in which our region’s employers and community organizations are breaking down systemic barriers and creating pathways to equity through strategic partnerships.

Lunch, Gold Sponsor Remarks, Virtual DJ Dance Party

• Gold Sponsor UPMC: Remarks
• Lunch Dance Party with DJ Selecta

Afternoon Plenary

What's Next for DEI + Belonging? What Can You Do Next to Build a Culture of Belonging in the Region?

Afternoon Workshops

Inclusive Leadership
Inclusive leaders commit to ensuring all team members are treated equitably, feel a sense of belonging and have the resources and support they need. Creating feelings of belonging for all employees is one of the best things you can do to improve employee engagement, performance, and help support institutional goals. Without an inclusive company culture, recruiting a diverse workforce could lead to a revolving door of candidates and employees from underrepresented groups.
In this training participants will:

• have a better understanding of the key features of inclusive workplaces;
• learn about how to increase workplace fairness and respect;
• understand the conditions that to bring all members of the team closer to feelings of belonging, thus creating the conditions that build confidence and enable innovation.

Allyship: Not Performative but Action Oriented
DEI initiatives that use allyship show three times more progress than DEI efforts without allyship. Dr. Victoria Mattingly and Sertrice Grice of Mattingly Solutions share research, best practices, and examples of using purposeful allyship to foster more diverse, equitable, and inclusive organizations.
During this session attendees will learn:

• What is allyship
• How to be a purposeful ally?
• Learn ways to promote allyship in organizations.

Next Generation of Equitable Solutions: A Blueprint to DEI Strategies
For organizations that are looking to spearhead diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in their management practices and approach it from a holistic strengths-based perspective, this blueprint can help. More than ever, a workplace is a diverse collection of individuals proud of who they are: their gender, their sexual orientation, their religion, their ethnic background, and all the other components that make an individual unique.
Participants will:

• Manage organizational change with the four cornerstones of diversity, shared leadership practices, and policies.
• Learn transformative practices that leverage staff’s unique strengths to improve talent retention.
• Develop a roadmap of improvement of cultural competency and for the organization to become a Next Generation Organization

Measuring and Managing Impact
As a leader of an organization engaged in corporate philanthropy and charitable initiatives, you work hard to make a difference and want to give your organization the tools it needs to measure what matters. Knowing that you are making an impact when you are doing good helps you learn how you can make a bigger difference. Join us to explore the process of using data-driven decision making to plan, organize, and implement impact with a measurable outcome in mind.
Participants will:  

• Understand the basics of impact management.
• Gain tools to track impact and manage data.
• Learn how to harness impact data to make organizational decisions and amplify impact.

Closing Remarks