Speaker: Laura Garcia, Director of Undergraduate Career Education
Hello, I'm Laura Garcia. I'm the Director of Undergraduate Career Education, the Georgia Institute of Technology Career Center. I am thrilled to share that we are the award winners of the 2024 Diversity Equity and Inclusion Excellence Award.
Talk briefly about your program and what sparked you to develop it.
Laura Garcia: The AuthenTECH: Lead by Example initiative playing off of "Tech" in George Tech, began in 2020 due to an office restructuring that led to the recent hiring of over 75% of our staff. This provided a unique opportunity to focus on creating an office culture that was inclusive. We embarked on a series of hiring, retention, well-being, and other initiatives to develop an organization that both reflects the demographics of Atlanta and society at large. As members joined the team, the career center focused on fostering an environment of inclusivity and psychological safety by yearly surveying staff on our retention and well-being efforts, developing internal cultural initiatives to foster team building, and lastly providing opportunities for inclusive decision making and office priorities through cross-functional teams. Building off of this multi-faceted team and healthy workplace, we created relationships with our identity and affinity-based partners and student offices across campus. These initiatives were often led by full-time staff who had a shared identity or passion to serve our equal employment opportunity, protected classes and other high priority groups at Georgia Tech. Our populations included students who identify as LGBTQIA, first generation, limited income, Black, Hispanic/Latinx, women, International students, and students with disabilities.
What were you trying to achieve? Did you achieve what you expected?
Laura Garcia: Overall, we achieved more than we expected. Especially considering we have a relatively new staff. Over the course of two years, 100% of career center staff members indicated they felt psychologically safe and provided positive comments such as this is the best team they have worked on, they appreciate the culture, feel supported and so on. There's the expression that you can't pour from an empty cup. Our focus on creating a collegial and healthy workplace enabled us to build bridges across campus to effectively engage the full spectrum of students here at Georgia Tech. In addition, our team banded together to create a three year strategic plan that included these overarching goals. 1) To cultivate an inclusive and robust career education experience for all Georgia Tech students, and 2) To advance equitable hiring practices. In three years alone, we have more than doubled our reach to our measurable high priority populations as determined by sex, work authorization, ethnicity, and class year.
Were there any surprises—any results you weren’t expecting?
Laura Garcia: Overall, I was surprised by how quickly our team was able to formulate strong relationships that led to internal and external success. Like many offices, we had siloing issues but seemingly little things can make a big difference. One example is our staff meetings. We rotate leaders weekly. And this provides an opportunity for us to kick off a meeting, ask a fun icebreaker or another question so we can get to know each other. We also established summer working groups to mix up our teams to focus on top office priorities like the AuthenTECH partnership program and expanding our efforts there. These cross-team collaborations have increased our understanding of as well as respect for each other's work. And I believe the time that we invested in our staff well-being and retention initiatives on the front end have enabled us to launch several successful programs.
How did you develop this program? What processes did you use?
Laura Garcia: To cultivate a diverse, multi-faceted and inclusive workforce, we first focused on search committee best practices. We talked about how positive and negative bias can impact a search. We challenged language related to fit and professionalism and we widely advertised our openings. These efforts resulted in high caliber diverse finalist pools for our positions. So we onboarded staff, it was also critical for leadership to monitor our culture and cultivate positive working relationships. We did this through our annual retention and well-being survey, in addition to focus groups. The feedback we received resulted in new initiatives that included more teambuilding activities, professional development, and flexible work arrangements. In addition, it provided the data we needed to advocate for the implementation of various initiatives to senior institute leadership.
From your perspective, what was the single most important outcome of this program?
Laura Garcia: Now that we had a strong workplace foundation, we need to get organized to serve our high priority student populations. We prevent core programming for all students, but there are some unique circumstances certain populations will encounter on their job search journey that may not happen to the general population. Guided by the framework of the equal employment opportunity law, protected classes as well as assessing the student landscape at George Tech, we instituted a staff liaison model to engage in concentrated efforts for our student populations. Some programming examples include a diversity first career mixer, which is a reverse career fair concept where student group leadership tabled and employers were put into the shoes of students and visited their tables to pitch their organizations. We also launched a first generation student job shadow program and a three week career immersion program with a particular focus on our high priority student populations, that include limited income students. Our follow-up assessments indicated growth and overall confidence, career clarity, and the development of meaningful networking relationships. All of these programs— it's important to say—were coordinated in partnership with our campus partners as well as informed by students from these populations.
If someone wants to replicate your program, what do they need to know upfront (the first steps to take, potential pitfalls to watch for)?
Laura Garcia: My advice is just get started. There is no reason to wait and don't focus on perfection. Start with your current staff. Really focus on cultivating a healthy and inclusive and psychologically safe workplace. This will enable your staff to more effectively engage and authentically engage with all of your student populations. I also recommend that you include your target populations before any program building or other initiatives are implemented. Otherwise you may build something they already have, they don't need, or they don't want. You don't want to end up checking a box. This is when you will truly lead by example and shine as an inclusive office on campus.
