Diversity and Inclusion Committee
Founder & Co-Chair | Blackstone Technology & Innovations | January 2020
Key Responsibilities: Strategy Lead, Goal Setting and Tracking, Leadership Reporting, Recruitment
Dreaming to Doing
Blackstone Technology and Innovations (BXTI) was the first stop for my then-coworker Meiya Chang and myself after graduating from college. Reminiscing on the variety of clubs on our college campuses dedicated to embracing individuality in community settings, Meiya and I were compelled to address an absence of the same at BXTI. With a dream and a plan, we set out to build a Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) Committee, a safe space for our colleagues to grow personally and professionally.
Favoring a methodical approach, Meiya and I carved out a structure by which our colleagues could target their contributions to nurturing acceptance and growth in our workplace. One early attempt at structuring the D&I Committee is below. Integrating diversity principles into our company culture was multifaceted, so we defined 4 actionable focus areas as well as associated goals. Then, Meiya, myself, and our participating colleagues each aligned ourselves to a single track.
If at first you don’t succeed…
Try, try again!
The initial anatomy of the D&I Committee was effective in attracting early members, as it established a structure and the potential to pursue independent efforts. Alas, traction was relatively slow, and the Committee was ultimately not set up to achieve its broader mission. Meiya and I observed these common problems:
Employees lacked encouragement from Senior Leadership to allocate working hours to D&I, which was considered a peripheral activity.
The overlap between the 4 tracks was detrimental rather than productive, confusing among Committee members as to which projects were independent versus cross-functional.
To mitigate these pain points, we restructured the D&I Committee to focus on 3 new areas —Community, Colleague, and Talent Engagement— with clear and distinct target audiences.
We also brought on dedicated Executive Sponsors for each of the 3 verticals to intentionally involve Senior Leadership. The graphics below announced our new structure to prospective members and enabled alignment within the Committee.
Overview of BXTI D&I Committee Structure, as of 2020. This is not representative of Blackstone's current Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives.
BXTI D&I Committee Executive Sponsor Terms and Expectations, as of 2020. This is not representative of Blackstone's current Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives.
Execution Tactics
The D&I Committee differed in structure and scope from typical projects at BXTI, but Meiya and I hypothesized that there would be some key similarities:
Committee members would need a method of staying organized.
Leadership visibility and support would drive success.
Aggregate impact reporting would increase (1) fulfillment among Committee members, and (2) funding for the Committee overall.
To refine the operational fabric of the D&I Committee, we used an industry-standard organizational tool that was already familiar to professionals at BXTI: Jira.
Each of the 3 verticals in the D&I Committee used Jira to create epics and tasks aligned with their missions. On a weekly basis with the internal team and a quarterly basis with Executive Sponsors, Meiya and I reviewed aggregate statistics across all of the D&I epics in Jira, mapping back to the KPIs that were originally set within each vertical.
Present Day
Today, the BXTI D&I Committee (renamed Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee) continues to grow and prioritize several efforts in the space.
There is a new emphasis on aligning the Committee’s technology-oriented efforts with ongoing firm-wide initiatives. This way, the Committee’s work benefits from the expertise of colleagues across business units like Private Equity, Real Estate, etc.
Meiya and I have both since left Blackstone, but the Committee is in the able hands of a passionate team of diversity, equity, and inclusion advocates.