DE&I Leadership & Community-Building
Creating a culture of inclusion, equity and respect is an ongoing process.
And this work will never truly be done.
As an ally and advocate, I routinely challenge myself to learn, un-learn, check my biases, and engage in diverse spaces as much as I can.
Below are just a few DE&I efforts I’m really proud to have led and participated in.
Fostering a Culture of Belonging at the University of Notre Dame
In collaboration and solidarity with student leaders and campus-wide affinity groups, the Mendoza College of Business established its first Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Council.
This council was led by three co-chairs: our chief of staff, our director of admissions, and myself.
My responsibility as co-chair was to lead the College’s culture and inclusion committee. My top priority was to align staff-facing efforts with those of our student-run DE&I Task Force, to cultivate a major culture shift for the College.
The experience was an enormous opportunity to flex and grow my cross-functional leadership, change management, active listening and interpersonal communication skills.
Our committee of 10 staff came together to plan and execute priority College initiatives and resources, including:
Curating a staff-facing DE&I resource page for information-sharing, internal engagement and self-education
Developing a public-facing webpage sharing campus and College resources, student affinity groups, events and inspiring stories
Leading a complete overhaul and content plan for the College’s “Women at Mendoza” webpage
Creating a space for collaborative student recruitment in alignment with diversity and inclusion work at the College
Hubs for Learning & Belonging: Internal and External Web Resources
Mendoza Exchange (Internal)
An unprecedented staff-facing web portal filled with resources for learning, sharing and participating in the DE&I space.
Pro Tip: Click the image below for a closer look.
Growth & Inclusion (External)
A public webpage providing information to prospective and current students about safe spaces on the Notre Dame campus to be heard, seen and included.
Pro Tip: Click the image below for a closer look.
Building Engagement: Events & Opportunities
Inclusive Storytelling: Digital Content & Campaigns
Women at Mendoza
Built in WordPress, this female-focused webpage hadn’t been updated for years.
After revamping the information architecture and creating a fresh content strategy to maintain a presence over time, the refreshed page became a space that celebrated and honored the college’s female-identifying and AFAB students, alumnae and faculty.
It also served as a space to curate and chronicle the content our team produced that featured Notre Dame women making strides in the world of business.
Click the image above to explore the page.
Capturing Mendoza Moments
The hashtag campaign #MendozaMoments helped us tap into and humanize the graduate business student experience at Notre Dame.
This short-lived effort encouraged our marketing team to have fun while keeping the principles of diversity, equity and inclusion top-of-mind as we continued to execute on our broader omni-channel strategy.