• ⏰ Time: 9AM – 11AM PT, 10AM – 12PM MT, 11AM – 1PM CT, 12PM – 2PM ET
• 🎯 Title: NWDLS Workshop #2: Working with Polarizing Tensions: Practicing Inclusion with Compassion and Care
• ✍️ Register: https://i4sdi.org/registration-2026/
• 📅 Date: May 14, 2026
• 🎤 Presenter: Bernardo Ferdman
• 📚 Series: Navigating Workplace Uncertainties: Let’s Recommit to Practicing Inclusion to Foster Safety, Belonging & Healthy Relationships

Polarizing tensions in our society don’t stop at the door of your workplace. Indeed, they just walk in the door and can make inclusion difficult.

“Inclusion work has always involved navigating tension,” says presenter, Bernardo Ferdman. “What is different now is that those tensions are more visible, more contested, and more consequential.”

So this raises two challenging questions:

• How do you lead with compassion, care and accountability when differences feel polarized or personal?
• What small, everyday actions make people feel they belong, or quietly push them away?

Save Your Spot: Join in this critically important learning opportunity with Bernardo Ferdman, editor of Diversity at Work: The Practice of Inclusion (Jossey-Bass/Wiley, 2014), and author of the recent blog post, “Staying the Course: Navigating the Tensions of Inclusion in a Time of Pushback” (The Inclusion Solution Blog, April 2, 2026).

Our presenter, Bernardo Ferdman is widely recognized for his work on inclusive leadership and for framing inclusion as a practice, because he is the one that conceived of it that way. A “practice” is something that you continually do and improve. It must be developed in every situation and practiced every day. And no one can just say you’re “included.” Each individual is the one who determines whether they are included. Each individual is the one who points to the behaviors, the structure & policies, and the communications in the context that makes them feel included, or not.

You’ll discover what it takes to practice inclusion with intention, skill, and care when it matters most. You’ll learn how to practice inclusion in real time, especially when conversations feel difficult or charged. You will learn not only practical ways to navigate tension, but how to strengthen connection and trust. And in the process, you’ll have ample opportunities to dialogue with your fellow participants about how to do this!

Learning Outcomes

By the end of this workshop, you will:

• Recognize and name key tensions that arise in polarized conversations
• Use simple practices to stay engaged with others across differences
• Learn how to respond with compassion and care while addressing difficult issues directly
• Apply an inclusion lens at multiple levels, from individual interactions to group dynamics
• Take specific actions to foster more inclusive and constructive dialogue in your workplace

Reserve your spot and join us in this important conversation.

Register Here

We can’t wait to see you at the next workshop.
Until then, please share this post with anyone you think would be interested.

The post NWDLS Workshop #2: Working with Polarizing Tensions: Practicing Inclusion with Compassion and Care | May 14, 2026 appeared first on Institute for Sustainable Diversity & Inclusion.

The Institute for Sustainable Diversity & Inclusion (ISDI) launches its 2026 series of Special Events with this critical strategy session focused on the evolving legal and political environment shaping Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion work nationwide.

ISDI is pleased to welcome Archbright as a sponsor of this first event. Archbright helps organizations navigate people, risk, and growth through trusted HR expertise, the mozzo resource hub, and experienced advisors. Archbright also offers DEI Flex, an adaptable approach to DEI support designed to evolve with organizational needs.

The conversation in this session is not a defensive one. It is a governance conversation.

As regulatory pressures increase and public narratives attempt to reframe DEI as risk rather than performance infrastructure, organizational leaders must operate with legal precision, strategic clarity, and institutional discipline.

This session will examine:

• Emerging federal and state legal trends affecting workplace DEI
• The recent evolution of legal theory shaping enforcement and litigation
• Distinguishing lawful inclusion strategy from practices that create exposure
• Governance-level implications for boards, executives, HR HR and Inclusion leaders
• How to embed equity into organizational systems in ways that are durable, compliant, and performance-enhancing

Our position is clear: Sustainable inclusion is not a temporary initiative, it is operating architecture.

The question is not whether organizations should advance inclusion. The question is how to do so lawfully, strategically, and with long-term institutional resilience. This session equips leaders, practitioners and DEI-related groups to move from reactive posture to informed strategy.

Presenters for this special session are Erin Jacobson, attorney and president of Workplace Law Group PC, where she leads a team of attorneys who provide employment law and labor relations advice to Archbright members and clients. Effenus Henderson is co-director of the Institute for Sustainable Diversity and Inclusion (ISDI), where he has become a well-known monitor and herald of the attacks on DEI, Accessibility and Belonging. This is the second time Erin and Effenus have paired up to provide a legal and organization briefing on the status of DEI. You won’t want to miss their latest update!

Reserve your spot today. Stay informed and up-to-date on the status of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) for your organization and your role.

The post ISDI and Archbright Virtual Event: Legal & Political Landscape: Advancing DEI Amid Threats & Challenges: Friday, April 17, 2026 at 11:30 AM PT appeared first on Institute for Sustainable Diversity & Inclusion.

We are so excited to reach out to you as we launch the 2026 NW Diversity Learning Series!

We begin 2026 with a lot of uncertainty, and it seeps into the workplace. In fact, that is the theme of the entire 2026 Series, Navigating Workplace Uncertainties: Let’s Recommit To Practicing Inclusion To Foster Safety, Belonging & Healthy Relationships.

We believe this is a noble goal, we all want to feel safe, to belong, and to have healthy relationships at work. At the same time, people have different viewpoints, different values. So what can we do?

In this climate, we believe it is much more productive to work collectively and co-create than to work alone. So in this first workshop, we will work together to lay the foundation of dialogue, as that is the methodology we’ll use to address all of our 5 workshop topics. This first workshop will focus on, Navigating Conflicting Mindsets: Engaging Skillfully in Dialogue Across Divides.

We ask you, as participants, to help us co-create a dialogue space to explore answers to difficult and complex issues we face, as a society and as organizations. (This is also a chance to practice inclusion together!)

When conversations at work (or elsewhere) become tense, polarized or emotionally charged, how do you engage constructively? Do you lean in or do you silently avoid the conversation?

How do you help someone feel heard when their views differ sharply from yours? What are the best strategies for connecting with people, and potentially persuading them?

Presenter for this workshop, Dr. David Campt, has coached and advised thousands of people about how to build on findings from the arts of dialogue, persuasion and conflict resolution.

“Many of my clients tell me that the methods I teach often help them make remarkable progress when talking to people they have longstanding disagreements with.”

Come and join in a dialogue experience. Become more confident and more skillful in creating dialogue opportunities in your life!

Learning Outcomes:

By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to:

• Shift from a focus on immediate persuasion to the interpersonal connection that is the necessary precursor to greater influence.
• Move the conversation from facts to the experiences and/or the values that influence each person’s perspective.
• Improve the ability to recognize and articulate the key trade-offs in values behind most deep disagreements.
• Learn ways to strategically use stories of one’s own mistakes to change a conversation from a confrontation to one where both of you are re-examining your point of view.

We invite you to join the 2026 Series, as a Sponsor, as a Subscriber, or as a single workshop purchaser. We remind you that we offer non-profit and other sliding scale registration fees.

You can sign-up here as a Subscriber, or you can register as a single-seat purchaser.

✏️ Register Here

Accessibility: American Sign Language (ASL) interpretation, by certified interpreters, is available upon request. If you need an accommodation, contact Abi Depositar, isdi.admin@i4sdi.org.

Requests MUST be made at least TWO weeks prior to the session.

Barbara Deane
barbara.deane@i4sdi.org 📧️
Co-Director

Effenus Henderson
effenus.henderson@i4sdi.org 📧️
Co-Director

Abi Depositar
isdi.admin@i4sdi.org 📧️
Project Manager

https://i4sdi.org/ 🌐
+1 (206) 362-0336 📱️

We can’t wait to see you at the next workshop.
Until then, please share this post with anyone you think would be interested.

The post ISDI: Next NWDLS Workshop: Navigating Conflicting Mindsets: Engaging Skillfully in Dialogue Across Divides: March 11, 2026: Register Now appeared first on Institute for Sustainable Diversity & Inclusion.

By Effenus Henderson, Inclusion Allies Coalition Advocacy Committee

Look closely at the headline we are being asked to accept.

Citation: https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2025/12/18/trump-anti-dei-eeoc-discrimination-white-men/87830694007/

White men, we are told, are now the most disadvantaged group in America. DEI is framed as a deliberate program of discrimination. Civil rights enforcement is being repositioned as a tool to correct “anti-White bias.” This is not a data-driven conclusion. It is a narrative strategy. And like many headlines designed to provoke rather than inform, it relies on emotional reaction instead of context.

Grievance is not a lived reality. It is a manufactured narrative designed to stop progress.

What the Data Actually Says

If disadvantage is systemic, it should be visible in outcomes. Yet white men continue to dominate leadership, wealth, and institutional power in the United States — from corporate boardrooms to political office, from equity partnerships to executive compensation. DEI did not create this imbalance, and equity efforts have not reversed it. The presence of diversity initiatives does not erase decades — or centuries — of accumulated advantage.

You cannot claim systemic disadvantage while occupying the majority of decision-making power.

FLAW at Work: When Logic Is Intentionally Reversed

This moment represents FLAW — False Logic At Work. Equity is reframed as exclusion. Representation is cast as retaliation. Accountability is described as discrimination. This inversion is not accidental. It allows those who feel threatened by change to occupy the moral high ground without engaging the facts.

When progress is framed as persecution, grievance becomes the weapon of choice.

DEI Challenges Structures

Systems produce outcomes. Leadership pipelines are designed. Networks are inherited. “Merit” is cultivated through access long before performance is evaluated. DEI challenges these structures by asking who benefits, who is excluded, and why. That scrutiny is uncomfortable for systems that depend on silence.

DEI doesn’t threaten fairness — it threatens insulation from scrutiny.

Majority/Next: The Future Behind the Fear

The real anxiety driving today’s grievance politics is not DEI. It is Majority/Next — a future where leadership reflects the full breadth of American society. Where influence is shared rather than hoarded. Where power is earned in real time, not inherited through legacy advantage. For those invested in permanent dominance, equality feels like loss.

When dominance is mistaken for normalcy, equality feels like oppression.

Read Past the Headline

Real journalism demands more than a provocative headline. It demands context, evidence, and honesty. When we read past the grievance narrative, we see what is actually happening:

• Civil rights language is being repurposed to stall civil rights outcomes
• Fear is being manufactured to slow demographic and leadership change
• Progress is being framed as a threat rather than a correction

Grievance survives only when context is removed.

The Truth They Don’t Want Printed

Diversity is not radical. Equity is not revenge. Inclusion is not exclusion. Exclusion has always been the defect. Grievance is simply the headline those afraid of change need you to believe — long enough to stop the story of progress from being written at all.

Exclusion is the defect. Grievance is the distraction.

The Inclusion Allies Coalition (IAC) is a coalition of organizations and practitioners committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion within their organizations and society. We provide resources, advocacy, networking, and webinars for dialogues across differences to promote inclusion. As part of our mission, we are obliged to challenge narratives about the history of discrimination, civil rights, justice and the tangible value of diversity and inclusion that are factually inaccurate, misleading or incomplete.

We can’t wait to see you at the next workshop.
Until then, please share this post with anyone you think would be interested.

The post The Headline Is the Strategy: White Men and Discrimination appeared first on Institute for Sustainable Diversity & Inclusion.

SEATTLE, WA, January 15 2026: As we prepare to honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on Monday, January 19, 2026, I find myself reflecting on the long, courageous arc of justice—and the role the Institute for Sustainable Diversity and Inclusion (ISDI) has played within it. For 10 years, ISDI has been doing something both simple and radical: creating space for people to come together, learn together, and act together in service of equity, dignity, and belonging. 

Nowhere is that more evident than in the Northwest Diversity Learning Series, which for 28 years, has convened leaders across sectors to wrestle with hard truths, expand our moral imagination, and turn values into practice.

Dr. King once said, “Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable… Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle.”

ISDI’s work has always understood this. The Learning Series has never been about comfort—it has been about courage. About naming inequity. About building skills for change. About sustaining the long work of justice even when the winds shift.

As I step into the role of Executive Director, I do so with deep respect for this legacy and with a clear-eyed understanding of the moment we are in.

Dr. King also reminded us that “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” The arc of civil rights did not end with African American civil rights. It expanded through women’s rights, disability rights, LGBTQ+ rights, immigrant rights, and the growing understanding that our identities are intertwined and our struggles interconnected. Today, we name this truth as intersectionality. Dr. King lived it.

Looking ahead to 2026, ISDI is recommitting itself to this expansive vision of human rights through the creation of the Community Coalition for Sustainable Diversity and Inclusion a membership-based community rooted in collective action, shared learning, and mutual accountability. 

This Coalition is inspired by Dr. King’s belief in equal opportunity and organized, nonviolent, values-driven movements. He taught us that lasting change does not come from lone heroes, but from people acting together with clarity, discipline, and love. “Power at its best,” he said, “is love implementing the demands of justice.”

That is the work before us now.

As we reflect on what ISDI accomplished in 2025 and look ahead to what we are building together in 2026, I invite you to see this moment not as a departure but as a continuation. A continuation of learning. Of coalition-building. Of bending the arc, together, toward justice.

Thank you for being part of this community. Thank you for believing that inclusion must be sustainable, protected, and practiced—not just proclaimed.

In solidarity and hope,
Dr. Kirk Adams
kirk.adams@i4sdi.org
Executive Director
Institute for Sustainable Diversity and Inclusion
www.i4sdi.org

The Institute for Sustainable Diversity and Inclusion is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation registered in Washington State. Our mission is to strengthen individual and organizational capability for creating diverse, inclusive and equitable workplaces.

If you would like more information about this topic, please contact Dr. Kirk Adams, at 206-660-1363, or kirk.adams@i4sdi.org

We can’t wait to see you at the next workshop. 
Until then, please share this post with anyone you think would be interested.

The post Honoring Dr. Martin Luther King appeared first on Institute for Sustainable Diversity & Inclusion.

“We have the capacity to do so much more, to be more, to include an ever-expanding number of people in the promise of America.”
— Joyce Vance, Giving Up Is Unforgivable: A Manual for Keeping Democracy (Penguin Random House, 2025)

Friends, Allies and Supporters of ISDI:

For more than 30 years, my work has lived at the intersection of leadership, disability inclusion, systems change, and coalition-building across nonprofits, business, philanthropy, and public policy. I said yes to leading ISDI because this moment demands experienced, values-driven leadership and because he believes deeply in ISDI’s potential to shape the future of DEIAB in this region and beyond.

That future centers on the Coalition for Sustainable Diversity & Inclusion.

The Coalition is being built as durable infrastructure for equity—bringing together employers, nonprofits, educators, advocates, and community leaders to protect, strengthen, and advance DEIAB, even as it faces growing resistance. This is not symbolic work. It’s practical, strategic, and urgent.

Here’s my ask, plain and simple: Donate

If you believe DEIAB work must be sustained, resourced, and community-powered, I invite you to invest in ISDI right now.

Your gift directly supports:

• Launching the Coalition’s core infrastructure
• Convenings, tools, and shared learning for leaders
• Rapid-response advocacy and communications
• The long-term sustainability of ISDI’s impact

This isn’t about checking a box. It’s about building something strong enough to last.

DEIAB is essential infrastructure for a just and thriving society and together, we can make sure it’s here to stay.

With gratitude and resolve,
Kirk Adams, PhD
Executive Director
Institute for Sustainable Diversity & Inclusion
www.i4sdi.org

We can’t wait to see you at the next workshop.
Until then, please share this post with anyone you think would be interested.

The post Dr. Kirk Adams Executive Director for the Institute for Sustainable Diversity appeared first on Institute for Sustainable Diversity & Inclusion.