Public Workshop; Building Inclusive Workplaces and Practices

This interactive workshop focused on tools to recognize, articulate, understand, examine, challenge, and change workplace practices with the lens of using curiosity, collaboration, and conversation as a response and reinforcing that learning organizations use these moments (of potential constructive conflict) as learning opportunities. Supervisors and employees will consider their separate but interconnected roles in creating and maintaining inclusive workplaces. Participants had the opportunity to apply these concepts in the context of their personal life in addition to their work, as we know that the ‘person’ and the ‘worker’ are one and the same and that there are no clear boundaries between what we bring to work and what affects us in environments outside of the workplace. In this workshop, participants:

• Gained a deep understanding of key concepts around diversity, inclusion, and equity
• Learned how to apply the EDI framework to build stronger and more productive teams
• Worked in groups on goal setting around creating and maintaining an inclusive and effective organizational culture

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Note: This workshop was sponsored by REACH Edmonton; their generous support made it possible to offer this training at a discounted rate.

About the facilitators:

Mansoureh Modarres, has been an educator and a researcher for over a decade and has worked in post-secondary sector and adult education as well as in the public sector and community engagement programs. Her academic work is focused on transnational feminisms, intersectionality, community and narrative studies, and storytelling. She has designed, developed and facilitated numerous educational programs for diverse audiences, on topics such as diversity and inclusion, writing for academic purposes, and literary studies. She joined our team in January 2020 as a Project Consultant, developing the educational resource “Gender Inclusivity in the Workplace: A Practical Guide”. Currently, she is with the Centre in the role of Education and Research Programs Consultant, and also coordinates our new initiative “Challenging Discrimination through Community Conversations”. Mansoureh is committed to raising awareness about social issues and fostering inclusive practices.

Litzy Baeza, has a Master’s in Latin American Studies and a B.A. in Psychology. She has worked in the field of international education for the past 15 years managing a variety of projects overseas, primarily in Latin America. She started her work in the intercultural field in 2001, when working with students from Asia and Latin America and helping them adjust to Canadian society. She then moved on to independent consulting, facilitating intercultural communication seminars & workshops for a variety of clients from Edmonton. Litzy has also lived and worked abroad in Cuba, Chile and Mexico. Litzy specializes in intercultural competency, cross-cultural intelligence and diversity & inclusion training. She also teaches an online course on Cross Cultural Intelligence at NAIT. She has received training from the Summer Institute of Intercultural Communication in Portland, Oregon and completed a Certificate in Intercultural & Diversity studies through the University of British Columbia. Besides her native English, Litzy is fluent in Spanish. Litzy was a board member for the Centre for Race and Culture in Edmonton from January 2017 to January 2019.