The Center for Sustainable Enterprise is excited to invite our alumni to join our diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) working group. The purpose of this group is to create an opportunity to explore and improve in sustainability. This is a volunteer group and is open to any alumni who would like to be involved in making sure that the social equity portion of sustainability leads us in a positive direction. There is no sustainability without equity.
We think the DEI working group will be helpful for all involved as we collaborate to improve sustainability as taught to students at Carolina and in the business world overall. Further, this working group will elect a smaller DEI advisory council, who will work with the CSE staff to translate the working group discussions into guidance.
The DEI working group will also help us continue our work with the guiding principles and actions published last summer. We have diligently explored how diversity, equity and inclusion must guide sustainability work. As we said in that statement:
“Sustainability is and should always be about having a positive impact not only for the environment and the economy but, most importantly, for all people, regardless of race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, cultural heritage and any other beautiful differences that characterize us.”
As part of our action plan to fulfill our guiding principles, we have been a very active member of the Kenan Institute DEI working group here on campus. We need to be able to analyze and evaluate ourselves. As such, we have done some benchmarking, continued to incorporate DEI and social equity topics into our courses and pulled together many sustainability standards so that we can learn how academic institutions and businesses can best evaluate themselves. Some of these standards and reporting resources include: Sustainability Accounting Standards Board; Global Reporting Initiative; AASHE Sustainability Tracking, Assessment and Rating System; and the Sustainable Development Goals.
We have organized many topics and metrics related to DEI measurement, prioritizing over thirty, and would love to get the DEI working group to help us operationalize these. The working group will meet quarterly, but will plan two meetings in the working group’s first quarter.
If you are interested in joining this working group please fill out this form here.