In recent years, promoting diversity has been an expected commitment in all organizations. And while unwavering support is claimed, far fewer organizations can talk to the benefits of diversity beyond the attraction of talent and reputation. Why is that? Surely a focus on diversity is the way to uncover and optimize talent? Is it focus, effort, a failure to move diversity from the fringe to the center, or level of difficulty?
One clear factor, according to global surveys, is that only one organization in five (20 percent) believes it is fully “ready” to address this issue. The gap between the urgency of this trend and organizations’ readiness to address it is particularly wide.
Pride Houston is no different. For the last several months Pride has been working internally to ready the organization to move its Diversity efforts to the forefront and more importantly preparing the path to more than just Diversity and ensuring that true Inclusion makes up the fabric of the organization’s culture.
As a result of this effort a new Committee has been formed, and while still in its ground-roots level, a major shift is forming.
The ever-growing Diversity Committee comprised of existing Board Members, serving as Committee Sponsors, as well as five new members to the Pride Houston Organization from the Houston LGBT and Ally community met on Tuesday, April 7th, 2015 to begin planning the foundation of the Committee.
The Committee has begun outlining and broadening the understanding of diversity to focus not only on the standard aspects of diversity, such as race, color, national or ethnic origin, ancestry, age, religion or religious creed, disability or handicap, sex or gender, gender identity and/or expression, sexual orientation, military or veteran status, genetic information, etc., but also diversity of thinking. This means deriving value from our community’s different perspectives and different ways to address solutions not only within the Pride Houston ranks, initiatives, events and all endeavors, but to also ensure that all of Pride’s efforts are rooted in true Inclusion.
The Committee will begin meeting regularly and will provide additional news on future enhancements or developments as they formulate.
For further information regarding the Diversity Committee please reach out to Pride Houston at Info@pridehouston.org.