COM 597: Leadership Approaches to Diversity Initiatives in Organizations

Course Description: 

How leaders facilitate an inclusive work culture directly impacts the effectiveness of workplace diversity efforts. Changing workforce demographics and global collaborations create opportunities for greater effectiveness, resilience, and innovation. Without intentional leadership, however, these benefits can be lost. This course examines how common diversity paradigms profoundly shape how organizations approach internal diversity work and why these expectations matter. Students will learn to identify and communicate their own preferred leadership approaches to diversity and inclusion and will practice ways to collaborate with others who may hold very different expectations. In future, whether asked in a corporate job interview or by a journalist profiling a small start-up, students who have taken this class will be better equipped to field questions about these critical aspects of leadership in the 21st Century.

Student Testimonial:

“This was THE BEST class! It was a complete eye-opener. We discussed some of the issues that are so prevalent in our daily lives but we choose to stay quiet and not discuss. Sarah pushes students to think deeper about our own behaviors towards self as well as others. Most of us found ourselves open up so much that by the end of the class, we were always longing for more discussions. The quarter went by too fast but did leave us with lot of learnings.”