Monthly Conversations For Inclusive Excellence

Conversations for Inclusive Excellence

The UNMC Office of Inclusion hosts regular “Conversations for Inclusive Excellence” for all UNMC faculty, staff, students and community. Sheritta Strong, MD, Assistant Vice Chancellor of Inclusion, moderates the virtual sessions, which run from 2 to 3 p.m. on the second Thursday of every month. Find and add them to your calendar here.
 
During the sessions, individuals engage in meaningful and, at times, uncomfortable conversations to co-create understanding. Participants also gain tools to continue dialogue within their units or offices. The monthly topics challenge participants to think beyond our conscious and unconscious assumptions.
 
Leave the sessions with a CQD (Challenge, Question & Discuss) Guide that you can use to recreate the discussion with your teams! Find all of the session's CQD's down below.
 

2022 Recaps and CQD Guides:

CQD January 2022 - ACCOUNTABILITY - What stories would our data tell?
UNMC welcomed guest host, Ada Wislon, JD, Nebraska Medicine's Chief Diversity Officer to the virtual stage to speak on a TedTalk by Joan C. Willams, PhD. Ada joins us after a long career of serving in the diversity, equity and inclusion space. Ada now serves as Nebraska Medicine's Chief Diversity Officer with a wealth of perspectives and expertise. This month we talked about the importance of data and speculated over what kinds of decisions we would be making if we could answer questions like these. Watch the content recording below.


CQD February 2022 - ACCOUNTABILITY - BHM: Confronting Hard History
Dr. Sheritta Strong speaks on a TedTalk by Hasan Kwame Jeffries, PhD. Dr. Jeffries teaches graduate and undergraduate seminars on the civil rights and black power movement and surveys in African American and American history. He is the author of "Bloody Lowndes: Civil Rights and Black Power in Alabama’s Black Belt." This month we talked about holding ourselves accountable in leaning into un-taught histories. 
 
CQD March 2022 - COURAGE - Women's History Month: Time to Be Loud & Proud
Dr. Sheritta Strong speaks on a TedTalk by Cecile Richards, Activist. Richards outlines some of the political progress that women have made. She goes on to vision out what she believes is next in the movement for gender equity. We talked about how the message translates in our day to day at UNMC. in 2019, Richards founded a non-profit voting organization called Supermajority dedicated to women's activisim. See the recordining below. 
 
 
 

2021 CQD Guide Archives:

CQD January 2021 - Awareness & Ownership in Cultural Humility
UNMC's first "Conversations for Inclusive Excellence" challenged campus participants to be both culturally humble and aware of who they "see" as their neighbors with a TedTalk video by Oluwaferanmi Okanlami, MD.
CQD February 2021 - Combatting Racism & Placeism in Medicine
The session featured a TED Talk video on racism and "place-ism" by Nwando Olayiwola, MD, professor and chair of the department of family and community medicine at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center.
CQD March 2021 - Expanding on the Cultural Humility Paradigm
The session explored how culture intertwines with identity, including social identity, and how culture can guide how we self-identify with a Ted Talk video by sociologist Julie Hogan, PhD, associate professor at the University of Nevada Reno. 
CQD April 2021 - ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences)-- Effects Acrossed a Lifetime
Adversity during childhood dramatically affects health across a lifetime. Conducted in the 1990's, the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) study found that people who had experienced difficult or adverse experiences in childhood had a greater risk of both physical and mental health problems during adulthood -- to the point of being at triple the risk for heart disease and lung cancer. We were introduced to this concept in this TedTalk video by pediatrician and California Surgeon General Nadine Burke Harris, MD.
CQD May 2021 - Behavioral Science & Inclusion
There's a natural tendency for people who are similar or who share similar interests to connect and form groups. The downside? Such actions may intentionally or unintentionally cause others to feel left out. Explore what is means to remember the phrase, "I'm not different from you. I am different like you," in this TedTalk video by Octavius Black, CEO of Mind Gym.
CQD June 2021 - Creating Inclusion at Work
Diversity and Inclusion Strategist Daisy Auger-Domínguez implores us to consider why creating workplaces where everyone feels heard, valued and seen is hard, complex and at times emotionally triggering in this TedTalk video.
 
CQD August 2021 - INNOVATION - Beyond Individual Growth-- Identifying Systemic Barriers
This session explored how unconscious bias within workplaces can limit progress, especially when it’s not acknowledged or addressed in this TedTalk video by Sara Sanford, MPA, PMP executive director of Gender Equity Now (GEN) & GEN Certifications, the first gold standard for gender parity in the U.S. workplace.
CQD October 2021 - TEAMWORK - Building & Rebuilding Trust
Strong organizations -- and relationships -- thrive best with a foundation of trust, which is an important component of teamwork in our ITEACH values. We also know trust can wobble, even break. In this session, we heard from Harvard Business School professor Frances Frei, PhD, in this TedTalk video. Dr. Frei discussed how trust can be rebuilt -- and strengthened -- through empathy, logic and authenticity.
CQD November 2021 - EXCELLENCE - Intentionality in D.E.I.
Affinity bias (a natural and unconscious tendency to prefer others who are like us) and homosocial reproduction (the tendency of individuals to select others socially like themselves) lead to homogeneity within organizations at all levels and often are cyclical in nature. "If we don’t have broad ideas and perspectives at the table from the start it’s hard to be intentional about creating an end result that reflects the broadness we’d like," says Dr. Rogers, Spachman Professor of Human Resources and Labor Relations at the College of Business at the University of Rhode Island in this TedTalk video.
CQD December 2021 - EXCELLENCE - Walking Boldly Towards Bias
Verna Myers, JD, is a Harvard-trained lawyer, founder of The Verna Myers Company and the VP of Inclusion Strategy at Netflix where she leads her team in devising and implementing strategies that integrate cultural diversity, inclusion and equity into all aspects of Netflix’s operations world-wide. Verna challenges us to walk boldly towards our pre-conceived notions to enable us to overcome them in this TedTalk video.