Panel Discussion: Designing and Leading Organizations for Inclusion

Panelists:

Sujatha Jesudason (moderator)

Professor of Professional Practice, Milano School for Policy, Management, and Environment

For more than 25 years Sujatha has worked as an activist, organizer, and scholar in a range of social justice movements and is a leading voice on new practices in movement building with a focus on race, gender, innovation, and human genetics.

A professor of professional practice in Management, Sujatha is also the founder and faculty advisor for Social Movements + Innovation. A serial start-up leader, she was the Executive Director of CoreAlign, a reproductive justice organization teaching innovation for social change to frontline activists, which she founded in 2012. And before that, she was the founder and Executive Director of Generations Ahead, highlighting the social justice and eugenic implications of emerging genetic technologies.

In her work, Sujatha focuses on forging unlikely collaborations and looking past forced simplifications at the intersection of issues too often considered separately. Sujatha has worked skillfully with a broad and diverse range of leaders, community members, activists, scholars, researchers, and academics, listening for patterns and trends to prepare for the challenges around the corner and into the future.

Sujatha holds a Masters and a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of California, Berkeley and an undergraduate degree in Economics and Latin American Studies from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Jaye Goosby Smith

Associate Professor of Management/Associate Professor of Leadership and Asst. Provost Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

Smith holds a Ph.D. and M.B.A. in Organizational Behavior from Case Western Reserve University and a B.S. in Computer Science from Spelman College. She is co-author of the book Beyond Inclusion (2014, Palgrave Macmillan) and several academic journal articles. Within the Academy of Management she has served as a past chair of Management Spirituality and Religion (MSR), Newsletter Editor of Gender and Diversity in Organizations (GDO), and current Communications Chair of the Diversity and Inclusion Theme Committee’s (D&ITC) Executive Committee. She is a mentor and facilitator for The PhD Project’s Management Doctoral Student Association. She is an active member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., American Mensa, and Greater St. Luke AME Church. She has also served the United Way, National Alumnae Association of Spelman College and the United Negro College Fund’s Inter-Alumni Council of Los Angeles. Smith is a nationally known organizational consultant, author, and speaker regarding workplace inclusion in corporate, not-for-profit, educational and military work spaces.

Demetra Pappas

JD, MSc, PhD Part-Time Faculty at the New School, Foundations of Diversity and Inclusion in the US Workplace

University School of Law, an MSc in Criminal Justice Policy from the London School of Economics and a PhD in Law and Sociology from the London School of Economics. As a lawyer, Dr. Pappas’s work was based, in large part, of dealing with the effects and consequences where there is a lack of diversity and social inclusion, as a Legal Aid Lawyer, a PINS mediator for the Children’s Aid Society, a judicial law clerk for the first Hispanic justice on the Appellate Division in New York State, an Administrative Law Judge and the Director of Special Projects at a National Law firm (where she engaged in an anti-stalking project regarding the creation and implementation of New York’s anti-stalking law, in school and workplace scenarios). Dr. Pappas had taught about diversity and inclusion/exclusion in Law and the Legal System; Sociology/Anthropology of Health and Medicine; the Legal Environment of Business; as well as Life, Death and the Law, among others. She has also authored dozens of articles, book chapters, panel presentations, book reviews, encyclopedia entries, and the like regarding diversity and inclusion/exclusion of race, gender, sex/gender, sexuality/sexual orientation, ethnicity, national identity, disability, religion, and social stratification/social inequality (including in national disasters); she has done this both as to American society and others, and in comparative studies. She has written a book on the politics of euthanasia and assisted suicide and is working on a book about the politics of genetic testing for Huntington’s Disease, as well as a study of restaurant workers.

Dr. Stephanie Szitanyi

Assistant Dean of Part-Time Faculty Affairs, Schools of Public Engagement, The New School

Dr. Stephanie Szitanyi is the Assistant Dean of Part-Time Faculty Affairs at the Schools of Public Engagement at the New School. She holds a PhD in political science from Rutgers University. Her research focuses on female political representation, gender relations in military institutions, and the militarization of American culture, and has been published in the International Feminist Journal of Politics. Her forthcoming book, Gender Trouble in the U.S. Military: Challenges to Regimes of Male Privilege (Palgrave 2019) investigates challenges to the U.S. military’s gender regime of hetero-male privilege by examining recent military policy changes related to gender including Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, the women in combat ban, and the military’s handling of sexual assault. She teaches courses on gender and war, women and terrorism, militarism and militarization, and is a regular Op-ed contributor for the online news source The Hill.

Nye Jones

Inclusion Leader, Louis Berger; Vice President of Diversity and Inclusion, Hioki Creations, Inc.

As Inclusion Leader at Louis Berger and Vice President of Diversity and Inclusion, Hioki Creations, Inc., Nye Jones leads the leads the charge on both company’s mission to foster an inclusive, collaborative and forward-thinking workspace by focusing on operational excellence, people, and expertise. Nye holds a Diversity and Inclusion certificate from Cornell University. She is a member of the National Diversity Council and sits on the Tri-State Diversity Council’s advisory board and WSP D& I Council. She has worked for several fortune 100 companies where she’s heavily focused on developing an inclusive society for all backgrounds, lifestyles and preferences.

Nye is helping to empower all executives to succeed and contribute to developing solutions for a better world by building an open, inclusive and equitable culture where each person is respected, supported and valued.

Nye enjoys conducting deep dive assessments to help develop strategies that allow organizations to create an inclusive work culture. In September of 2017, Nye launched a dynamic creative silent skit for her clients that demonstrated exclusion, inclusion, engagement and lastly innovation, which challenged employees globally. She created unconscious bias training for her organization called, “Cultivating a Sense of Belonging”.

Nye is known by her powerful message which states “We need to dig a little deeper to debunk some of the stereotypes in our society to focus on better work relations and social ties.”

Nye’s holds a BS in Computer Science, Tusculum College, Greeneville, TN and graduate studies at Kean University in Information Technology and mathematics. She is a 2018, Louis Berger, Global Value Award (GVA) winner for founding and promoting Inclusion and received the 2019 Black Interest Team Enterprise Business Leadership Award for the dedication and commitment towards an inclusive society.