One of the things I realized early after starting my diversity and inclusion consulting and speaking practice was that many young professionals weren’t feeling like they got the benefit of training and education that higher level professionals were receiving.
So, I knew I wanted to start building out some opportunities specifically geared toward young professionals and the early learning journey around inclusive culture and relationship-building.
In the summer of 2019 I planned and hosted EMERGENT, a full day summit organized around 3 tenets:
- embraceSELF: leadership through the lens of discovering realities, who we really are, why that matters, and how we energize our and others’ journeys with it
- empowerOTHERS: leadership through the lens of sharing stories, leaning into and learning from multiple perspectives, and unearthing unexpected commonalities
- embarkTOGETHER: leadership through the lens of leveraging diversity, creating collaborations that work, and forging partnerships around shared vision
We spent the day in roundtable conversations, exploring these ideas through our own perspectives and the experiences of a diverse table-leader group.
We also heard from DSW CEO Roger Rawlins. He won over the audience with his transparent talk, humble presence, and accessible personality.
Over 200 young professionals gathered for the day, from over 50 companies, and the energy in the room was abundant and inspirational.
