Speakers: Greg Collins, Vice Chair, Board of Governors, Montana State University Alumni Foundation
Greg Collins: In 2020 the Montana State University Alumni Foundation launched a D. E. I. Initiative. The foundation chose a task force of board members and of staff, and they identified immediately the need to secure a consultant with experience in D E I, that could help in the development of an operational plan.
Greg Collins: Ascension was very important to our task force in helping us to develop our operational plan. They provided us training in unconscious bias as well as leadership, gave us great best practices, metrics to use to gauge the recommendations that we were going to be making for implementation of the plan, and then did a wonderful training for a joint meeting of all of our board and staff, very well received by everyone.
Greg Collins: Well, we learned a great deal from Ascension during our engagement on DEI with them. What people mentioned most of all, though, is the training. They did on unconscious bias. A lot of people came into this with some trepidation. This can be a very emotional, confrontational subject, but what Ascension showed us is that we all have bias and that by acknowledging the bias, we can come to understand it and to overcome many of these biases that we develop in our lives over time.
