8 Things I Wish I’d Known When Creating an Affinity Group for People of Color at Work
Members of the People of Color Employee Resource Group in 2019. I wrote this blog when I worked for a large conservation organization in Washington, DC and posted it on my LinkedIn in 2021 , about six months before I resigned and changed jobs. I helped bring together what is now a people of color employee resource group towards the end of 2018 during a time that my employer was beginning to look into issues of diversity and inclusion in the workplace. My former employer hired an outside consultant to conduct an audit of JEDI issues in the workplace, and during that time I was invited to participate in a focus group comprised of people of color who worked there. The emails for all of the participants were in the calendar invite, and three staff took it upon themselves to organize an affinity group, starting with the 20 or so focus group participants, but open to all staff who were interested. Two and a half years into the experience of organizing this affinity gro...