The Diversity Committee, formed by staff members and professors, proposes actions to make our school more inclusive for all people
Insper’s Diversity Committee was born in 2018. It resulted from the People Management Project, created to understand a series of our associates’ demands. The Committee was proposed in one of the project’s work fronts and with the support of Insper’s leadership, which has always recognized the importance of thinking differently and understanding plurality in the process of education, people development, and our country’s transformation. It has become a fundamental instrument to boost actions that make our environment more inclusive and diverse. In the beginning, it gathered about seven people. As the activities have gained momentum in the last two years, the Committee reached 32 members.
The Diversity Committee’s creation required much reflection from everyone involved in it. Insper and its associates needed to understand the school’s role in promoting diversity, as well as Insper’s mission. Also, how to carry out, in practice, projects and ideas that are important for the future that everyone wants for the Insper Community. In this sense, the first activities were focused on provoking a reflection regarding the behavior of each staff member, manager, professor, and leader.
In that stage, it was also essential to bring the Committee closer to Insper collectives, such as Raposas Negras (Black Foxes), Insper Pride, and FeminInsper (Female Insper, in a free translation). The group proposed joint events, which resulted in complementary activities within the Humanities Track at our Undergraduate Programs. It worked on themes such as racial, gender, and indigenous issues in classes taught at Insper.
For Ana Carolina Velasco, our Institutional Relations Manager and Leader of Diversity Planning, Insper’s role as an educational and research institution is to make people leave school with a critical sense and able to realize what the impacts of a broader experience are enriched with diverse thinking and people. “The Committee’s objective, in this sense, is to understand indeed how to make people — whether students, associates or faculty members — also a part of this cycle and take action to become transformation agents.”
Planning
In 2020, Insper placed diversity on the school’s strategic agenda for the next ten years. The dedication to the theme is a priority for the school’s leadership. The planning will include goals and actions in practice that aim to expand diversity relentlessly.
“We are planning to hire professors and staff members following criteria to expand diversity. We work hard to disseminate our Scholarship Program because we are aware of the correlation between race and income and how much this opportunity can attract more people to participate in our selection process. Also, a Training Agenda is in the works so that everyone will on the same page, respecting the differences and managing to give capillarity to the topic”, Ana Carolina says.
The Diversity Committee recently reformulated itself. Today, it works on seven fronts totaling 32 members. The fronts are:
– Attraction, bringing to the school more professors, students, and associates who represent diversity.
– Training, which intends to teach in the classroom what diversity is.
– Career management, to analyze what are the impediments for a person to advance in their career.
– Organizational culture, analyzing what are the symbols of diversity in Insper’s physical and architectural structure.
– Consideration, to anyone reporting situations that are non-compliant with our moral and ethical codes concerning diversity.
– Communication, which will expand the activities being performed within the organization to the entire Insper Community and outside the school.
– Intelligence, which will work on indicators and figures to monitor each activities’ results and check if they are effectively bringing the outcomes we seek.
Insper of the future
All actions proposed have as their core goal the deconstruction of prejudices and social stigma that hinder the growth of equal opportunities for all. With them, Insper hopes to train leaders who can look at this issue in a sophisticated way and contribute not only to the school’s environment but also to the country’s social and economic development.
“Our goal to expand the school’s diversity, both in terms of attraction and inclusion, that is, to ensure that our environment is welcoming to people. The Insper of the future is an Insper that reflects society’s differences and, at the same time, [is a place] where everyone can develop themselves with equal opportunities,” concludes Ana Carolina.
