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 college. Reminiscing on the plethora of clubs on our college campuses dedicated to helping embrace individuality in a community setting, and observing a lack of the same at BXTI, Meiya and I understood what had to be done. With a dream and a plan, we set out to build a Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) Committee at BXTI, from the ground up, to create a safe space for our colleagues to grow personally and professionally.
Meiya and I applied ourselves to carving out a structure for our BXTI colleagues to contribute ideas around creating equity and nurturing growth in our workplace. Our first attempt at structuring the D&I Committee is below. Recognizing that integrating diversity principles into our company culture was multifaceted and must be split into actionable focus areas, we defined 4 key project tracks as well as goals within each track. Along with the few interested colleagues we had gathered by then, we each aligned ourselves to a single focus area.
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 offered an established structure and the ability to pursue independent tracks; however, traction was relatively slow, and the Committee was ultimately not set up to achieve its broader mission. We observed 2 common problems:
Employees did not have encouragement from Senior Leaders to allocate working hours to D&I, which was considered a peripheral activity
The 4 key tracks overlapped in different ways and caused confusion among Committee members, who were unsure which projects were independent versus cross-functional
In order to address these pain points, we restructured the D&I Committee to focus on 3 new areas with clear and distinct target audiences. We also brought on dedicated Executive Sponsors for each of the 3 verticals to address the lack of Senior Leadership involvement and encouragement. Below are graphics used to present the new structure to prospective members as well as stay aligned 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 was much different in structure and scope than 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 be key drivers of success
Aggregate impact reporting would increase fulfillment among Committee members and funding for the Committee overall
To incorporate these pillars into the operational fabric of the D&I Committee, we used an industry-standard organizational tool that was already familiar to BXTI employees: Jira.
As shown in the corresponding image, 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. This helped organize and fuel the various efforts of the Committee.
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 has also been a recent emphasis on aligning the Committee’s technology-oriented efforts with ongoing firm-wide initiatives. This way, the Committee’s work can benefit from the involvement of not only BXTI members, but also 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.