TCFS 2H 2021 Diversity Equity and Inclusion Goal Review

The Coaching Fellowship is committed to growing and supporting a culturally, ethnically, diverse global network of young women social change leaders. For many years diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) has been at the forefront of our work.

As part of our commitment to publicly share our DEI focus and progress, we are providing an update and learnings from our 2021 second half of the year DEI goals.

What Did We Accomplish?

In September 2021 after many community conversations we defined and shared our 2H 2021 DEI goals to be completed by December 31st 2021. Whilst not all goals were met, we made considerable progress.

Coaches

We have consciously focused on having a deeply passionate, highly experienced, diverse team of coaches to provide support to our amazing fellows. We are very proud of the growth of the coaching team in every way, and continue to further develop the coaching team with diversity, equity and inclusion in mind.

We have held 3 coach specific conversations and training in the last 6 months focused on DEI, Unconscious Bias and Belonging, and include a conversation about Inclusion and bias in every new coach onboarding call. In 2022 we will continue the open conversations about how as coaches our understanding and practice of Inclusion and Inclusive Leadership is critical to our own development and our fellow’s as well. Highlights of 2021 coaching team development include:

• 51 new coaches onboarded in 2021: 30% of new coaches self-identify as BIPOC; 57% — of new coaches self-identify as white/caucasian
• 37% of new coaches are outside of the U.S. — Canada, India, Croatia, Australia, Nigeria, Guatemala, China, Egypt, Jordan, U.K., Kenya, Bermuda, France, Myanmar

​​Fellows + Alumnae

Our community represents women leaders from more than 80 countries and continues to expand with each new cohort. We are committed to providing a coaching experience that meets the incredibly diverse needs of our fellows and to continue evolving and adapting to these needs as our community grows.

As a part of these efforts, over the last 6 months, we have:

• Hosted three community conversations focused on inclusion, bias, and belonging
• Focused on inclusive representation in all TCFS-led sessions — of the 13 alumnae sessions scheduled, 11 were hosted or co-hosted by a woman of color.
• Met 100% of matching needs for fellows who indicated that their racial or ethnic identities directly impacted their coaching goals
• Drafted more globally inclusive language to better understand the coaching needs of incoming fellows to be implemented in the first application process of 2022

TCFS Organization

It was important for us at TCFS to consider DEI with regard to our own staff and organization as well as our community of stakeholders. We met regularly as a team to discuss our DEI work and goals, often meeting with our DEI Advisor Dino Andersen. We held a team ‘Unconscious Bias’ training workshop, and remain committed to our own growth as inclusive leaders.

We decided not to hold a public all hands meeting in December as had been planned. After much consideration given the timing of holidays, we thought it was best to share details via this written update. We still plan to hold our annual DEI meeting in Summer 2022. We will continue to publicly talk about our DEI focus and progress.

What Did We Learn?

We have learned so much over the last few years with regard to our own DEI work at TCFS, and we continue to be in a place of open learning on how to achieve more, both, in terms of scope and scale of our impact.

There were two big learnings for us in the last year in terms of the goals and goal setting process.

One: Goals Aren’t Enough

We have set several DEI goals and targets over the last two years, especially for coach recruiting, this was the first time however, that we had set DEI goals across the whole TCFS organization. We discovered that even though DEI goal setting was useful in aiding us to be explicit and focused, the actions always felt separate to our work. We reached a conclusion that we must fully integrate DEI into our whole work at a fundamental level, as well as consciously taking care of our activities and programs with regard to DEI. Goals are important and we will continue to do that, we must also take into account the whole picture to work at systems level change.

Two: Inclusive Leadership is Key

Our DEI goals in 2H 2021 were very much focused on people of color. We believe this to be critical, and we continue to be committed to supporting and expanding our efforts for our fellows and coaches of color. Further, we must widen our scope of inclusiveness beyond race. We believe this is essential when supporting women from all backgrounds and experiences. As an organization, as mentioned in our Diversity Statement “In embracing diversity, we welcome in and co-create a community of individuals rich with differences, including but not limited to gender identification, race, sexual orientation, ethnicity, age, nationality, socio-economic situation, thinking and personality styles, physical abilities, spiritual/religious beliefs and practices, and education and professional background.” The work of inclusive leadership must become a paramount focus for everyone committed to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.

We are currently exploring some exciting new ways to bring the work of inclusion directly into our coaching programs in 2022 so that everyone can participate and benefit from learning and practicing inclusive leadership. We hope to have pilot programs active in late Q1 or Early Q2. More details will be shared via our blog as always.

2021 was a year in which we feel proud of the progress we have made as an organization. We will continue to strive for everyone we serve and work with, and for the good of everyone.