In Its Second Year, the Council on Anti-Racism and Equity Focused on Diverse Voices In and Out of the Classroom

Two years ago, Yale School of Management Dean Kerwin K. Charles established the Council on Anti-Racism and Equity (CARE) to elevate and address issues related to inclusivity, school culture, and representation. Composed of members from a broad cross-section of the SOM community, CARE acts as a vehicle through which representatives from among the school’s staff, faculty, student, and alumni communities identify challenges and develop and recommend to Dean Charles ways to tackle them.

CARE’s first year in 2021-2022 was dedicated primarily to establishing the council’s norms and mechanics. The council also launched a video podcast series centering diverse community perspectives and the Donald H. Ogilvie ’78 Colloquium series to bring underrepresented professionals of color regularly to campus to visit and engage with the SOM community. The first two installments in the series attracted an audience of more than 600 SOM community members. In addition, as a result of recommendations that came out of CARE’s first year, SOM added a number of DEI-related elective courses to the school’s curriculum offerings and increased the number of diverse protagonists represented in case studies. 

In its second year, CARE turned its attention to pressing concerns council members had been hearing from the community.

Teresa Chahine, the Sheila and Ron ’92 B.A. Marcelo Senior Lecturer in Social Enterprise, is one of the faculty stakeholder representatives on the council. She said that one of the issues she brought to the council to address was one raised repeatedly by the student body: a lack of diversity among classroom guest speakers. 

The solution, Chahine said, is not as easy as simply identifying and inviting more diverse guest speakers; there’s also the matter of valuing and honoring speakers’ time. In her own classes, which often feature lessons and hands-on learning projects that engage with grassroots leaders in New Haven, Chahine found that she and her colleagues doing similar work were often asking the same local leaders to visit their classrooms throughout the year. These leaders were basically semi-regular lecturers whose labor went unpaid—a fact one guest speaker had pointed out to Chahine.

“It felt very extractive,” she said. “If you want to have diversity in the classroom you have to honor people’s time.”

So Chahine consulted with fellow members of her CARE working group on the social culture of SOM, and together they brought to Dean Charles the idea of recognizing guest speakers from local community organizations with an honorarium. Dean Charles approved, and now all grassroots guest speakers receive compensation from SOM. 

“We were able to make progress—a real policy change—on this specific topic,” said Chahine.

By the end of the 2022-23 academic year, CARE had also explored initiatives to solicit anonymous staff feedback on inclusion and belonging in the workplace, as well as a multitude of ways that SOM community members could meaningfully engage with New Haven. 

Now in her second CARE term, Chahine said that the council has honed a successful approach to balancing new and ongoing initiatives. Key on the agenda for 2023-2024 is raising awareness of CARE, its mission, and its accomplishments among the SOM community. 

Trisha Chaudhary ’25, a joint-degree MBA and master’s in public health candidate who serves as a student stakeholder on the council, said its success so far is thanks to the “passion and dedication” its volunteer members bring to their roles, as well as their willingness to collaborate.

“It’s been inspiring to see alumni, faculty, staff, and students come together and work on improving SOM,” she said.

Get to know this year’s CARE members.

The next Ogilvie Colloquium will take place on Friday, May 3, 2024, coinciding with Yale SOM’s annual Reunion Weekend. The theme is “The Evolution of Business & Society.” Details will be available on the Yale SOM website.