After engaging in up to 24 hours of diversity and inclusion-focused learning over the past 13 weeks, 70 Georgia Tech faculty and staff leaders across several campus units were celebrated as the third cohort of “Culture Champions” during the Inclusive Leaders Academy closing program and roundtable on May 22.

Program participants Carla Bradley, Jeffrey Hallman, Amit Jariwala, Jerrold Mobley, and Samantha Lie-Tjauw offered thoughtful reflections about what they learned and will take away from their 13-week experience.

“We were moved and inspired by the reflections of each of the speakers and their courage to vulnerably share their insights and personal transformations,” said Cheryl Cofield, director of Staff Diversity, Inclusion, and Engagement (SDIE) and Inclusive Leaders Academy co-founder. “We had another brilliant and conscientious cohort who leaned into the work.”

Launched in 2017 by Institute Diversity’s Staff Diversity, Inclusion, and Engagement unit, the Inclusive Leaders Academy fills the needs of campus managers for career and leadership development. Its goal is to build a leadership community that will positively shape the campus culture through modeling inclusive excellence.

Curriculum content for the program is curated from the NeuroLeadership Institute on the neuroscience of teams, unconscious bias, and inclusion. This year, the cohort studied the book “Dare to Lead,” written by and based on the research of Brené Brown, Ph.D.

“Our vision for this program is that it will grow and continue to provide leaders the space to be reflective and proactively engage in lifelong learning to enhance their leadership agility, said Pearl Alexander, executive director of SDIE and co‐founder of the program.

Closing ceremony attendees – who also included first and second cohort graduates of the program – also heard featured speaker Peter Glick, Ph.D., Henry Merritt Winston Professor in the Social Sciences at Lawrence University, and a senior scientist with the Neuroleadership Institute, present “Playing a Toxic Game: Organizational Culture as Masculinity Contest.”

“It’s so great that Georgia Tech offers programs such as the Inclusive Leaders Academy,” Glick said after the event. “Such programs are important to the development of inclusive and conscious college campuses.”

Alexander added, “Importantly, these skills also support us in the practice of living within our organizational values and creating a ‘new normal.'"

Nominations for the next cohort of Inclusive Leaders Academy participants will open in fall 2019.

For more information, visit the program's website.