Mapping a Plan for Understanding Diversity

By Joan Slattery Wall 

As a small-business owner, elected official and nonprofit leader, Tina Pierce recognizes the growing demand for diversity, equity and inclusion education and training for public and nonprofit professionals.  

Since joining the Glenn College in March 2020 as a program manager for the professional development programs, she has led the team in expanding the overall Management Advancement for the Public Service (MAPS) program from 60 to nearly 90 courses offered annually. In addition, she created a new MAPS track specifically for diversity, equity and inclusion, expanding the topic already included in current courses and adding new ones. 

“At that time, we were starting to see in popular discourse and publications that organizations were looking for ways to expand how they define diversity, equity and inclusion and how to measure it,” said Pierce. “One could say it was a result of the insurgency happening in communities, but it is important to note the way we approach this work, and the way customers and partners approached us, wasn’t just in racial terms or categories; it was also about class, ability level, gender expression and other dimensions of diversity.” 

For more than 50 years, public and nonprofit professionals have relied on MAPS to become better leaders. Each one-day course is designed to sharpen skills and prepare participants for the next step in their career and nurture their passion for public service. 

Pierce, an Ohio State alumna, recruited MAPS instructors and experts from her professional experience, including that as a higher education teacher and scholar; founder of WORTH (Working Through Obstacles Reaching True Heights), a consulting company that provides evidence-based trainings and programs to cultivate leadership and increase civic engagement; and member of the Columbus Board of Education and the Ohio School Board Association Central Region Board of Trustees. 

With that background and expertise in leadership development and community engagement, Pierce worked with the Glenn College professional development program team to create courses that show participants the cost benefits and the obligations of promoting human welfare and advancing social reforms. 

“We need to be able to connect it to the bottom dollar — how it relates to not just your recruitment but your retention of underrepresented individuals, the capacity of those individuals to work at their optimal level and then of your teams to operate at an optimal level,” she said.  

Moreover, she noted, “Organizations are challenged to show humanitarianism,” adding that Ohio State students, in fact, have demanded that local businesses meet fair labor practices and source food locally. 

“Young people challenge companies to address those social issues,” said Pierce. “Hopefully this generation will influence change in positive ways, reducing -isms and expanding diversity and inclusion. These courses are needed because we want to help organizations understand their role in embracing humanity.” 

Enrollment in the MAPS courses illustrates the demand organizations have for knowledge and training in these areas.  

“Even with pandemic-related issues that impacted professional development budgets and higher education participation, our DEI enrollment actually increased due to the addition of new DEI courses on the schedule,” said MAPS Program Manager Megan Hasting. 

Jennifer Sconyers, president and founder of Abundance Leadership Consulting, has been teaching in the MAPS program since 2018. Her ultimate goal for one of her courses, “Creating J.O.Y. in the Workplace: Inspiring Teams through Inclusion,” is to support companies, organizations and teams in changing their culture. “J.O.Y.” refers to the creation of an inclusive work environment through a Judgment-free Zone where everyone is Owning their personal behavior and Yearning to overcome their personal circumstances. 

Sconyers’ course, which will be offered in the MAPS 2021-22 season, took the implicit biases conversation to the next level for Stephanie Kamer, human resources and labor relations manager for the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO). 

“My takeaways from that course applied to both my work and home life,” Kamer said. “There are so many types of biases that exist, and they are innate to who we are as people. Understanding them, owning them and overcoming them is colossal and essential for the transformation to a higher performing workplace of diversity and inclusion.” 

MAPS courses have been an integral part of the development of PUCO staff, Kamer said. The organization typically contracts for 100 credits in the program each fiscal year and uses them all. Its Diversity Equity and Inclusion Committee coordinates activities such as forums, screening events and external speakers who tackle topics on race, LGBTQIA+ and gender to educate and empower its workforce. 

“Our goal is to promote an inclusive and welcoming culture within our agency, and we are looking forward to developing even more robust diversity programming in the coming years,” she said. “This is in conjunction with our MAPS participation in the DEI courses offered.” 

April Ricciardo, assistant director of administration at the Franklin County Department of Animal Care and Control, took Sconyers’ course to gain a different understanding and perspective to inclusivity. The Franklin County Board of Commissioners, she noted, has addressed diversity by declaring racism a public health crisis, establishing a racial equity council and creating a strategic plan for the county to become economically equitable. 

“It’s important to recognize that unconscious bias exists, but it is even more important to recognize your own and how you think and eventually speak and/or act,” she said of Sconyers’ class. “I thought the resources were a great tool. I also participated in a previous MAPS course that has us take a survey of our unconscious biases. That exercise was very eye opening.” 

Participants in Sconyers’ course, like other MAPS courses she teaches in managing professional relationships and in creating conditions for resiliency, leave with tangible and practical solutions. 

“The whole point is that they create an action plan: What’s the challenge or piece they want to focus on; what’s the opportunity. Then they break it down: Who is involved, what is everyone’s key purpose, what is the desired result, what are some biases, what is the timeline,” she says. “In many cases I’ve gotten feedback that they’ve shared the plan with their supervisor or it’s something they’ve kept at their desk or something they co-created with their teams.”