Looking Back, and Forward, as the DEIB Committee Begins Year Two
DEIB at Activate
November marks one year since we convened a committee focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion at Activate. In recognition of that milestone, committee chair (and our chief people and inclusion officer) Lisa Tomlinson sat down with new committee member and strategic partnerships manager Calvin A. Cupini, and Randy Allen, the executive-in-residence for Activate Boston, to look back at the committee’s efforts to date and its objectives for year two.
Their conversation—below, and edited for length—illustrates deeply personal matters of race, highlights how much work remains ahead for Activate as an organization, and shows how committed Tomlinson, Cupini, and Allen are to doing the work directly and supporting organization-wide efforts.
Left to right: Calvin A. Cupini, Randy Allen, Lisa Tomlinson
The committee launched with a charter to actively promote diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) across our business, including in our operations, our fellowship, our partnerships, and our brand. As it begins its second year, it is also amending its name to the DEIB Committee, including belonging as a fourth pillar.
The committee engages the Activate staff in weekly discussions on gender and race from the lens of intersectionality. It convenes our full community—fellows, staff, and partners—for discussions on equity and inclusion with leading experts. It advocated for Activate’s supplier commitment, which includes bidding, procurement, and contracting requirements to promote a diverse vendor pool.
Kelliane Parker, who provides fellowship support through our Berkeley partner, Cyclotron Road, and who also co-chairs Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s Lambda Alliance Employee Resource Group (ERG) and is on the steering committee of the Latin American and Native American ERG, has been a key member of the committee since its inception, as has our chief fellowship officer Brenna Teigler. They join Tomlinson, Cupini, and our editorial director MC O’Connor on the DEIB Committee.
Calvin A. Cupini:
Lisa, I'm pretty honored to be part of the DEIB Committee and to be here at Activate. You've been here longer than Randy and I have so can you give us a short overview and background on the committee?
Lisa Tomlinson:
Happy to and I'm glad both you and Randy are here at Activate.
Interestingly enough, the committee was not my brainchild. It was Ilan’s! He felt compelled to do something in the wake of a string of deaths in the first part of 2020, including George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery, and in response to the Black Lives Matter movement.
Ilan was moved by a Slack message a Black woman on our team posted about our silence on matters of brutality, by police and others, against members of her community. Her raw emotions were on full display for the organization and that affected Ilan. He put it quite simply: Lisa, we have to do more. We have to engage more. And I’d love for you to champion this.
I replied that this initiative is more than a one-person undertaking and that we needed a cross-functional committee. We launched the committee one year ago with an amazing, committed team. We knew we couldn’t affect change until we heightened our own awareness by introducing our community to DEI. The focus for year one has been discovery, education, and awareness. We held community-wide events with renowned leaders in DEI education, Jane Elliott, Dr. Jackson A Collins, and Dr. Kira Banks, with the understanding that not everything our speakers had to share would necessarily be well received. But that too was intentional—we wanted a variety of speakers to engage with our community and trigger emotions and then we would examine their reaction and reinforce it with a more academic approach to enlightening people about DEI.
I now hear people reference DEI so much, and that’s the beginning of the impact that we are making. DEI is top of mind for everyone in our community.
Calvin:
Activate is set up to address the gap between research and commercialization. But researchers and scientists often feel that there is a sort of boundary to what they work on and what they'll intervene in if it’s not their field. They often won't comment on another scientist's work. Or maybe sometimes when their science invades policy, they say I don't want to get into politics. I'm just working on research. But after the events in 2020 many of our fellows and staff felt compelled to be involved in a role that they never thought they'd take on and a topic they weren't expert in. How did you see that, within Activate?
Lisa:
I don't think I did see it. I wasn't thinking about Activate’s work and the intersection of race, I'll be perfectly honest with you. The lens that I used is that of a Black woman who didn't have a privileged background but was taught to work hard and give back. To allow the road I was permitted on to include other similarly situated Black and brown people. As a woman of Black and Puerto Rican heritage, I saw an opportunity that put me in a position to help other Black and brown people, and introduce them to Activate and our amazing fellowship and allow them to benefit from an affiliation with us.
Randy Allen:
I'm curious how you feel being one of the only Black people in the organization and then to be driving DEI and working with people who were largely unaware of race before 2020 and who, unlike you and I, didn’t feel the direct impact of racism? Do you feel a burden? How did you approach that mentally?
Lisa:
It’s been interesting for sure. Because DEI is the new bright shining object. It’s the popular thing—to be committed to DEI—right? It is important that DEI has taken center stage, but I've received a thousand little slights and moments of disregard and disrespect in my life. I’ve been overlooked, discounted, and not considered. When you experience racism directly, you have a different drive and passion that propels you. People don't want to accept that someone could feel slighted or not have a sense of belonging here. But unfortunately, yes, that’s true. So I strongly believe that creating a sense of belonging is essential to affect the type of change that we are seeking. This is why we’ve changed the name of the committee to the DEIB Committee. B is for belonging. We need to create that for the talented people that work here at Activate, not just for fellows.
“I just never felt like I wanted to be passive about this. I don’t believe that I’m supposed to just collect a paycheck. I’m supposed to be challenging the organization’s thinking...”
To answer your question, Randy, I just never felt like I wanted to be passive about this. I don't believe that I'm supposed to just collect a paycheck. I'm supposed to be challenging the organization’s thinking and perspective to promote and encourage behavior change and modeling. I'm passionate about doing this.
There is an opinion that it’s hard to recruit people of color into our community. But finding them has to do with where we are putting our outreach and by engaging and making people curious about exploring and being intentional in building an inclusive community. It’s not just oh, our DEI numbers are this or that. Numbers don’t serve or benefit communities—people do. And that begins with engagement and grows into a relationship that fosters partnerships.
Calvin:
The numbers can take away from the human element. That's where we can turn things into a game of statistics and not about the actual experience and the impact that it has on the individual.
Randy, Lisa mentioned the B for belonging in DEIB... Were there times in your career where you’ve found success but not belonging?
Randy:
Maybe this will sound a little sad, but eventually, I got used to being the only Black person around. So it wasn't a sense of belonging. I knew that I belonged in the organizations I joined because of my technical capabilities but when it came to who I am as a person, I knew that I was an outsider. And I just had to say okay. Because otherwise, I was just going to be unhappy in many of the jobs that I could potentially get. Going into graduate school, for my Ph.D., there were a few of us and then fewer of us passed the qualifying exam. So there was also a sense that we didn't have the support that was fully necessary. And then we were just all isolated after a certain point.
When I left academia, it was even more cemented, that I was the only Black person and I wouldn't say that there was ever outreach to try to make sure that I belonged. And hopefully, that's something that's been turned around now with people's awareness that we all are trying to incorporate other cultures or just diversity of thought in terms of how to approach these different types of problems like climate change. There is hope that it does create a sense of belonging to everyone. I think we're on the right path to do so, especially at Activate in terms of the intention and the amount of effort that is being applied—for example, incorporating DEIB discussion into weekly tag-ups. That's something that I had never seen before. It’s been received well, and I hope that is just the start to creating that sense of belonging.
“After the events in 2020 many of our fellows and staff felt compelled to be involved in a role that they never thought they’d take on and a topic they weren’t expert in.”
Calvin:
What do you see happening, outside the DEIB Committee, in terms of how we’re approaching diversity efforts?
Lisa:
In the past couple of years, there was a sense that in recruiting fellows we should just focus on historically Black colleges and universities [HBCUs]. No, Black people don't only attend HBCUs. And there are no analogous institutions for Latinx students. So let’s stop looking at this vertically. That will continue to limit and hurt our outreach efforts. We have got to expand the way we go after attracting people of color to the fellowship and into our organization. We have to stop looking at this activity in such a limited way.
Randy:
I approached my career thinking that I was going to try to avoid the Black tax in terms of trying to take on those diversity initiatives. But then I started to see some aspects of that limited mindset. And I thought, okay, well maybe they just aren't aware of how things work in terms of how people get introduced to different types of initiatives or organizations that can help them in their careers. That's where I was like, I need to step in here, and I’ve brought up the same topic about HBCUs. Ninety percent of Black students are not HBCUs, so if you don't focus on that harder aspect, which is how widespread we are, you'll never really make a dent in the problem. And so that's where I hope that mindset is shifting.
“I approached my career thinking that I was going to try to avoid the Black tax in terms of trying to take on those diversity initiatives. But then I started to see some aspects of that limited mindset. ”
Lisa:
Those are important light bulb moments. But it's beyond the knowing, now let's figure out how we attack and own it.
Calvin:
Let's dive into the work. Because we are a year into Activate’s concerted efforts on DEI. And the work is what's most important to reframe. Has progress been made, and if so where? And what’s next?
Lisa:
I think we need to have a dedicated channel or function that manages DEI throughout the organization. That includes our vendors, funders, fellow recruitment and experience, outreach, partnerships, hiring, everything that touches our business. It has to be woven into the way in which we operate. And if we do that, then everybody gets to be engaged and be a part of it. The DEIB Committee drives the initiatives throughout the organization, but it will be led by someone who's not wearing a bunch of different hats, that more often than not, take priority over DEI initiatives. This is going to be even more critical to our success as we continue to grow.
Randy:
I want to see a shift away from focusing on the short-term and percentage goals in terms of recruitment. I’m looking for long-term planning and that means increasing and spreading awareness, like plugging into networks of Black and brown mentors and entrepreneurs. Every professor that is mentoring undergraduate students of color should know that Activate is a possibility for those who really want to be entrepreneurial. They need to share this with undergrads, this way of life… that you can do science for the sake of solving problems, that you can be highly successful at it and make a lot of money doing so. So, building that desire to be science innovators. Activate actually solves a lot of the frictions that prevent Black and brown people from becoming entrepreneurs, like early access to capital and expansive networks. So I think building that long-term awareness should be a larger focus within the organization.
Lisa:
Yes. And to Calvin’s point, it's not a statistical game. It's about impact on every front.
“There is a lot of work to do. But if we get the engagement right, I think it could be rewarding and game-changing.”
Calvin:
I was really fortunate in my career to work on environmental justice, particularly in regard to air quality and neighborhood health. And one of the things we looked at was the inherent stressors on certain communities that were based on decisions made many decades ago—things that trace back to red-lining in the ‘30s that led to racist housing policies and then highway development and zoning of industrial facilities and the emissions from those facilities, which because of those red-lining practices were all focused on those same communities. So when we looked at air pollution, it’s incredibly discriminatory towards those communities as they had been drawn on the maps. We had foundational issues to solve, based on practices from the 30s. If Activate moves forward by seeking the same types of entrepreneurs in the same types of places that we assume are the right places to search, nothing will change. [Rather] the work involves moving some very, very large systems built over hundreds of years. How much though, in your opinion, can Activate actually shift?
Randy:
Yeah, it's a very important question and a very hard one to answer. I feel like Activate can’t act on this alone, and it'll be interesting to see who Activate needs to partner with to make the impact that we want to see. It’s not fully clear what partners need to be in this group but I feel like they will make themselves known if we boldly claim: This is what we're forging, this is what we’re doing.
Lisa:
Randy, I agree with you one thousand percent. Let's sit down and have a conversation about DEI and getting people of color into the science industry. What role can our partners play in assisting us? We could lead the charge and force both the engagement and commitment. That's real change.
Calvin:
I hope we do take that work on because that opportunity creates an imperative for us. Some of the world’s most powerful and influential organizations, in terms of science, innovation, governments and research, and investments, are a phone call away. We’re making those calls already, to find the best minds and innovators to address climate change. So can we find the best minds and innovators to address environmental justice or to ensure a just transition?
Lisa:
That will do more than grow our business—it will propel us in ways that we've not even thought of, in areas we haven't even explored or tapped into.
Calvin:
I’m just glad to be here, doing the work with you both.
Lisa:
Yeah, there is a lot of work to do. But if we get the engagement right, I think it could be rewarding and game-changing.
Past members of the DEIB Committee include Activate co-founder Sebastien Lounis, former director of strategic partnerships John Nguyen, and DEI-focused intern Saveri Nandigama.
The DEIB Committee invites you to join Activate in building an equitable, anti-racist, and just science innovation ecosystem. Reach out with your ideas, perspectives, and reactions.