What does remote DEI look like for you?
by Stephen Pham
In 2019, The Learning Accelerator (TLA) partnered with six remote education organizations to create the Remote DEI Collective (RDC), a community of practice focused on the intersections of remote work culture and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). After launching our community and collaboratively investigating key learning areas, we shared our emerging insights on the Remote DEI Toolkit — an open site with insights, strategies, and resources for remote DEI.
Little did we know what would come in 2020. With a global pandemic, an economic crisis, and a racial reckoning happening simultaneously, many organizations rapidly pivoted to remote operations while also looking in the mirror to ask: how do we advance DEI and racial justice while operating remotely?
As organizations that are committed to both distributed teams and DEI, we’re doubling down on finding ways to advance remote DEI. We’re excited to launch the next phase of the Remote DEI Collective with our newly expanded community of remote education organizations:
- 2Revolutions
- Deans for Impact
- EdTec
- Gradient Learning
- Highlander Institute
- Illustrative Mathematics
- Next Generation Learning Challenges (NGLC)
- PowerMyLearning
- The Leadership Academy
- The Learning Accelerator (TLA)
- Transcend
- Transforming Education
In this next phase, our 12 organizations are partnering with Promise54 to expand on insights from our first phase and deepen our understanding of remote DEI. We’re asking ourselves:
1. How can we develop and sustain multi-year DEI plans that incorporate remote work dynamics?
2. How might remote or hybrid work offer opportunities to advance equity? How might distributed work exacerbate biases, White Supremacy Culture, and inequities?
3. How can organizations live out their DEI and antiracism commitments remotely? How do we build capacity while holding individuals and organizations accountable?
We’re looking forward to learning as a community and sharing our journey through updates to our Remote DEI Toolkit. We also welcome any input and partnership — please reach out to Stephen Pham, the RDC lead, with any input, suggestions, or questions.
About the Author
Stephen Pham is the director, organizational learning for The Learning Accelerator (TLA), a non-profit that connects teachers and leaders with the knowledge, tools, and networks they need to transform K-12 education, and is based in Seattle. @stephenqpham
