Berkeley Haas Center for Equity, Gender, and Leadership Philanthropic Impact Update 2018

Your investment in the Center for Equity, Gender, and Leadership (EGAL) at Berkeley Haas has been critical to ushering in a new era of equity fluent leaders. By partnering with us, you are developing transformative thought leadership in the marketplace that is already having both fiscal and social impact. Thank you for collaborating with us at this historically-opportune time.

Different lived experiences lead to better decision making, innovation, and enhanced team productivity. Equity fluent leaders courageously use their power to drive positive change, address barriers and increase access for individuals at their corporations.

Questioning the status quo

By partnering with EGAL you are questioning the status quo and helping Berkeley Haas to become the #1 international resource for developing equity fluent talent. We are committed to the success of organizational health and are developing an Equity Fluent Playbook for use as a tool to enact change. It will be the only such business resource from an academic institution specifically designed for a corporate leader with limited bandwidth.

The playbook will confirm categories of benefit and identify opportunities where increased diversity and inclusion correlates with financial return. It will organize information from a wide breadth of sources, including industry leaders and world-renowned research centers, from the past 10 years in order to provide the most reliable and up-to-date knowledge base related to gender and equity.

This year, your support has enabled equity and inclusion growth opportunities for our Berkeley Haas students, who are future leaders, by:

  • offering 2 MBA courses: Dialogues on Race; Equity Fluent Leaders: The Value of Inclusion and Diversity; and 1 undergraduate course: Equity Fluent Leaders: The Value of Inclusion and Diversity
  • sponsoring 1 $20,000 MBA student fellowship
  • hosting an AmpEquity speaker series with guest speakers Gloria Allred and Mellody Hobson, over 200 in attendance
  • in April, sponsoring a diversity and inclusion pitch competition 5 teams of MBA students to apply innovative problem-solving to issues of exclusion and marginalization
  • sponsoring a diversity and inclusion case competition in September for over 130 undergraduate students with Zendesk to help solve problems with their existing mentorship program, including an imbalance of mentors and mentees, duration, inadequate engagement, and global scalability
  • engaging an EGAL MBA Student Advisory Board and 5 student clubs

The winning team at the Zendesk pitch competition this year was a group of five Haas junior transfer students forming Team “Azend.” The team developed a women-mentoring app complete with self-assessment and goal-setting, with sessions on developing self-confidence through skills such as public speaking.

In addition to your high-impact student support, your contribution also provides research support to faculty and post doc students. This year’s faculty research includes:

  • Elizabeth Linos, Assistant Professor, Goldman School of Public Policy, who works on unconscious bias in police forces and healthcare, its impact, and bias interrupters.
  • Drew Jacoby-Senghor, Assistant Professor, Haas School of Business, who works on bias and race/ethnicity and its impact on the labor markets
“I hope to be able to help change the status quo towards gender parity in the workplace.” -Margaret Lee, Post-doctoral scholar

“Your partnership with EGAL has never been more critical as the entire UC Berkeley campus is increasingly committed to diversity and inclusion initiatives. With your support, we are creating a new paradigm that will result in better solutions to complex problems, benefiting the common good.” - Ann Harrison, Dean of the Haas School of Business

“After preparing for each lecture, I leave each session absolutely blown away and inspired by the dialogue, the questions asked, the level of understanding and commitment of our Haas students, and the solutions they develop to make ours a more equity fluent world.” -Kellie McElhaney, Founding Director, Center for Equity, Gender, and Leadership (EGAL)

Thank you for investing in a more equitable world through the Center for Equity, Gender, and Leadership at Berkeley Haas. Your partnership is invaluable to ignite and accelerate change for inclusive leadership in the corporate sector.