Overview

The program has been developed for members of startup technology leadership teams.  We welcome one or two participants per company.  Our experience is that in order to succeed with lasting results, it’s important for the company CEO to personally participate in parts of the program, so if the CEO isn’t the lead person attending the program, we require the CEO to join 1 session specifically designed for CEO participation, as well as attend Courageous Conversation.

The program is focused on the needs of Austin technology companies with fewer than 250 employees to ensure that the practices are relevant to this type of company and can be implemented in Austin, as well as helping earlier stage companies prioritize this work so that they aren’t playing catch up later.

Each program will consist of a small cohort of members from 5-6 companies.  The  group will meet in person and virtually for monthly working sessions.  

Key aspects of the program include how to:

• Introduce the importance of DEI into the company culture by raising awareness of these issues and gaining buy-in from both leadership and employees 

• Provide leadership with a foundational competency in DEI

• Embed these values into the company’s mission, products/services, workplace, workforce, marketplace, and extended community

• Create a pipeline of diverse talent for hiring and find broader, more diverse communities of potential employees in Austin

• Develop employee engagement and retention strategies across employee lifecycle

• Implement a holistic approach to DEI community engagement that will support the company’s mission of providing products/services, cultivating diverse pipelines, build partnerships, and align company brand and reputation with these priorities

The program includes a facilitated consulting session with the leadership of each company to build a custom plan of priorities and next steps based on the DEI needs of the company.

The program also includes tools for analyzing company culture, current results, best practices in creating broad teams, approaches and tools to prioritize future work, case studies of technology companies that have successfully created diverse cultures and teams, and resources on strategies, training, metrics, inspiration, and education.

The sessions will be facilitated by Venus Piñero De Hoyos and Mindy Gulati, who have led diversity work in Austin for businesses, governments, law firms, and nonprofits.

Muna Hussaini, who has led diversity work in Austin and nationally at Indeed and PayPal, as well as worked with other leading companies, organizations, and community groups will also join as an additional resource with DEI expertise.

We have worked with Leadership Austin to integrate the Courageous Conversation into the Recode the Quo program. Courageous Conversation is an award-winning protocol for effectively engaging, sustaining, and deepening interracial dialogue. Over the last three years, over 4,000 individuals from the Austin area have attended one of the seminars that Leadership Austin has been convening in support of the Mayor’s Task Force on Institutional Racism & Systemic Inequities. The seminar goal is to have business and community leaders from across our region have a common learning experience and shared language as we continue to wrestle with diminishing the impact of institutional racism and systemic inequities across our community.