Inclusion is Invisible-So How Do We Measure It?

I am so excited to be here with my friend Paolo Gaudiano. He’s the CEO of Aleria, President of Aleria research, and the Executive Director of Quantitative Studies of Diversity and Inclusion at the City College of New York. He has decades of experience in business, technology, and academia to transform how people think about diversity and what to do about it, with the ultimate goal to make our society more inclusive and equitable.

He’s a public speaker and contributor to Forbes, and today we have the great joy of having him on Uplifting Impact. In our conversation, he shares his journey to DEI work as a white male, the research he does, how he shows up in spaces as someone committed to doing DEI work, and how other white people can start doing it on an individual level.

Topics in this episode

• The relationship between what happens to an individual within an organization, and what happens to the organization as a whole
• Just focusing on data has a lot of flaws
  • It doesn’t represent what has happened in the past
  • You’re only seeing things at the population level. It doesn’t provide details on the experience of individuals
• Diversity takes years of change before it can be reflected in the data
• Inclusion is invisible. You don’t notice it until you are excluded from something
• Categories through which inclusivity is measured:
  • Workplace interactions
  • Promotion and career advancement
  • The ability to access information within your company
  • Recognition
• Ways to naturally add diversity and inclusion to your life:
  • Attending cultural events
  • Literature
  • Social media
• What you do outside of the office translates to what happens at the office
• Learning to appreciate the differences without trying to integrate and assimilate.

Paolo’s Literature Recommendations:

• Kindred by Octavia Butler
• Fledgling by Octavia Butler
• Toni Morrison
• The Hate You Give by Angie Thomas
• Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Contact Info

• Email: paolo@aleria.tech
• Paolo’s articles on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/search/?q=gaudiano#6dcdab60279f

I am so glad to have Paolo on the show and to be able to connect with him and share the work he’s doing. I can’t wait to see how it continues to evolve and the impact it’s going to have on the entire sector. If we work together we can have a much more diverse, equitable, and inclusive world. We just have to do it. So let’s do it!