Credera Hosts Second Annual DE&I Summit

In the fall of 2022, Credera hosted our second annual DE&I Summit to continue in our diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) journey. The summit’s goal was to gather with our DE&I champions, business leaders, and employee resource group (ERG) leaders to:

• Align on the current state of DE&I at Credera.

• Explore DE&I planned initiatives and priorities.

• Articulate the needs to support DE&I and ERG roadmaps and goals.

• Curate synergy of thinking and creation of a unified mindset.

• Co-create a vision about what DE&I can and should be here at Credera.

• Cast a short- and long-term vision for our ERGs.

• Discover how best to measure and track our ERG’s progress.

• Generate support and create excitement across all stakeholders.

Over 50 leaders were included from our global CEO and UK CEO, our UK DE&I team, our practice and market leaders, ERG leaders, DE&I committee leaders and additional DE&I champions. We hosted around 25 leaders in person and the rest attended virtually.

To help deepen our various discussions, we brought in experts on the globalization of DE&I and developing sustainable ERGs. We also incorporated opportunities for small group worktime, included a DE&I experiential component, and incorporated team building/social components for our in-person team members. We’ve included a breakdown of the full agenda below:

Credera DE&I Summit Session Overviews

Welcome and Guest Speaker on the Globalization of DE&I:

We kicked off the summit with a warm welcoming message from Nickoria Johnson, chief diversity officer, and Justin Bell, global CEO of Credera, helping to set the intentions of this DE&I Summit. Next, Farrah Qureshi, owner of Global Diversity Practice, presented her insights on how best to impact DE&I from a global perspective. She encouraged our teams to connect to the heart behind the work, presented the business value and case for a global DE&I approach, and led us to understand how each of us can impact DE&I globally. As pre-work, attendees completed a cultural inclusive leadership assessment, and she shared our aggregate results and implored us to review our individual results to understand ways we can progress in our own journeys.

Review of Current State of DE&I at Credera:

This session provided visibility into the 2022 office of chief diversity officer (OCDO) priorities and accomplishments. We also learned of the wins, challenges, and 2023 priorities of our DE&I committee pillars and ERG leaders.

2023 Priorities and 2023 DE&I Commitments:

We shared the high-level 2023 priorities from the OCDO. Then, we provided workshop time for the practice leads, market leads and DE&I champions to gather to brainstorm on aligning their 2023 DE&I commitments. At the end of this sessions, each group reported their high-level goals for 2023. We learned some ideas for best ways of working along with potential challenges we can begin solving to help us all be successful next year.

Experiential Exercise: “The person I’d least like to be…”

This exercise was aimed to increase our level of empathy for others’ lived experiences. The activity supported conversation and reflection of our current biases and areas of opportunities and privileges that are unique to each of us.

ERG Guest Speaker:

Lola Adeyemo, owner of EQI Mindset, presented the business case of ERGs and how ERGs increase belonging and retention. She further shared case studies and best practices for an optimized operation of an ERG with recruiting and retaining members, reviewing data, and revising the strategic plan.

ERG Metrics and Score Card:

We have identified six factors that lead to successful ERGs that are directly contributing to business outcomes. Based on these six factors we engaged in an ERG assessment to analyze the current health/state of our ERGs and identify areas to improve. From this assessment, the groups will work to identify objectives and key results and metrics to measure their progress in 2023, which will be evaluated semi-annually through our new score card process.

What’s Next for DE&I at Credera

As a follow-up to this year’s DE&I Summit, Credera walked away with the goal of launching 2023 in lock step and fully aware of how we can cross collaborate and support each group’s initiatives. In particular, we identified natural intersections of how the DE&I Committee can better serve the Practice and Market areas, or how the ERGs can better partner with the DE&I Committee on executing specific DE&I goals. Furthermore, we believe this will help us better understand the impact of DE&I internally in Credera, which will allow us to more easily share our impact internally and externally.

To learn more about DE&I initiatives at Credera and our DE&I leaders, visit us at Credera.com.

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