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Interested in tools to enhance diversity in your organization? Need to pitch diversity to your management, board, or leadership? Let us help.

Your strategic starting point

Ask yourself:

• How can you build diversity in leadership where you are?
• Who is represented within the corridors of power?
• Who is able to lead organizations, make decisions and shape the future?

Diversifying your leadership is not just the right thing to do, but it’s also a tool to fuel the region’s prosperity.

Ratna Omidvar – Why you need diverse leadership

Leaders signal who belongs and who does not. They provide role models. They are a powerful symbol, for future generations, of what they can and cannot aspire to become.

Diversity in leadership won’t happen by accident. We need to be deliberate and systematic. We need to develop and deploy strategies for making change. Networks matter. Who you know can even become what you know. Deliberately sharing networks expands opportunities in a key way.  Networks and training programs make core leadership skills accessible to the best and the brightest.  Those with access to power can transfer this to new, emerging leaders by becoming mentors.

Making the case for diversity in leadership

DiverseCity

Through the DiverseCity Counts project we dig deeper into relevant data to better understand the extent to which some organizations have made diversity a priority. The research and results may be useful for you.  Download Year 1 and Year 2 full research reports, summaries and video links for DiverseCity Counts – The Importance of Diverse Leadership in the Greater Toronto Area.

The Conference Board of Canada report The Value of Diverse Leadership (PDF) measured the impact of more diverse leadership and found that the benefits include:

• improved financial and organizational performance;
• increased capacity to link with new global and domestic markets;
• expanded access to global and domestic talent pools;
• enhanced innovation and creativity; and
• strengthened social cohesion and social capital.

Learn more about making the business case for diversity.

Don’t reinvent, learn from the leadership of others!

We’ve got 10 practical tips for diversifying organizational leadership (PDF). Each tip briefly tells the story of how one organization took advantage of diversity to become stronger, more representative of their community and better.

Dive a little deeper into some promising practices of organizations diversifying their leadership.

Download Diversity in Governance: A Toolkit for Nonprofit Boards (PDF) a comprehensive toolkit for you to use when working with boards on issues around diversity and governance.

Maybe you’re interested in going even further, replicating DiverseCity onBoard (a matching service for boards and diverse candidates), or you just want to learn more about how it all works? We’ve created a replication website with resources, a toolkit and more. The site includes a free toolkit and answers the following questions:

• How can I connect qualified members from under-represented communities to agencies, boards, commissions and nonprofits?
• What can I learn from Maytree’s DiverseCity onBoard program?
• Where can I find up-to-date resources and sample tools?

Maybe you need more research?

We’ve compiled some research, newspaper articles and other resources that explore various facets of diversity in leadership. This is a new but growing area for exploration. You’ll find research on why diversity matters and some specific research for business, nonprofits and governments.

Long live the conversation

Would it be useful to facilitate a conversation about diversity in leadership in your community or organization?

We’ve got a great starting point for you: Diversity Perspectives – A Manual for Leading Dialogue on Diversity in Leadership (PDF).

Find out more and watch some great leadership stories on the DiverseCity Toronto site. You can watch the growing series of videos on their own  or within the DiverseCity blog.

Get inspired with some DiverseCity stories

Alejandra Bravo, on DiverseCity School4Civics

Tina Edan, on DiverseCity Voices

Cathy Winter, on DiverseCity onBoard

Related Links

• Download the DiverseCity Year 2 Review (PDF).
• CBC Metro Morning series: Beyond Diversity
• DiverseCity: The Greater Toronto Leadership Project
• DiverseCity Knowledge Centre – Research
• DiverseCity Knowledge Centre – Ideas That Work
  
• DiverseCity Knowledge Centre – Why Diversity Matters

• Are you a visible minority, an Aboriginal person or someone from an under-represented immigrant community (and arrived in Canada as an adult)?
• Do you blog or have opinions and ideas to share?
• Are you interested in connecting with journalists?
• Maybe you want some media training?

DiverseCity Voices could be the opportunity you’re looking for.

More than a database, DiverseCity Voices is a tool which connects experts from diverse communities with media on a wide range of topics.

Signing on can help you:

• Get your message out to media
• Build profile and credibility
• Connect with new audiences
• Access media training by Media Profile, Canada’s largest public relations firm
• Attend skills development and networking events
• Become part of the Maytree Leadership Network

News media is listening

The news media is catching on to what we’ve always known: people from diverse communities can talk about much more than just multiculturalism and ethnically-designated months.

So far, we have tracked over 500 stories in which our members have appeared. There are currently over 125 journalists actively using the database and contacting members.

From newspapers such as the Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star to broadcasters such as CBC and CTV, DiverseCity Voices candidates have been interviewed on a broad range of topics, including jobless rates, patriarchy and fundamentalism, LGBT opposition in schools, managing financial risk and events in the Arab world.

Success Stories

Toronto District School Board Vice Principal Gary Pieters has been interviewed by numerous media outlets including the Globe and Mail and Canoe Live. He commented on issues ranging from the G20 Summit, Afrocentric Schools to the VIA Rail strike. Here’s how DiverseCity Voices has helped.

Last year, Ravi Jain, Artistic Director of WhyNot Theatre was selected as one of the Toronto Star’s People to Watch. Here’s what he has to say about DiverseCity Voices.

Do you have something to say?

Start using DiverseCity Voices as a tool to amplify your voice in the media.

We’re nearing the end of our current recruitment phase so if you are interested, please sign on by March 21, 2011.

Imagine the flow of creative solutions if we could tap into the wealth of ideas and experience that our diversity offers? How many new jobs might we generate if we mined all the international networks at our disposal? What if we became the top choice for the best and brightest from around the globe? What would happen if our public institutions truly reflected all of us? And what a shining future we would have if every young person had a role model to point them forward and prepare them to lead. Innovation, world markets, global talent, social cohesion – all of these are within our grasp.

In 2008, Maytree and CivicAction launched DiverseCity: The Greater Toronto Leadership Project. We knew then that accelerating the diversity of our region’s leadership will create a city region where we all prosper and thrive. Today, we know it’s an essential piece of our region’s prosperity.

As you can see from our just released Year 2 Review (PDF), we have already accomplished many of our original goals ahead of schedule.

Highlights include:

• DiverseCity onBoard, a program to match diverse individuals to governance positions on public and nonprofit agencies, boards and commissions, has surpassed its goal of 500 appointments (with 524 to date!);
• DiverseCity Fellows has just announced its 2011 cohort of twenty-five rising leaders poised to take action on issues critical to the health and prosperity of the Toronto region;
• DiverseCity Voices spokespersons have shared more than 400 media stories from new sources and perspectives with mainstream readers and audiences; and
• School4Civics has trained 100 individuals who have volunteered in an election, by-election or nomination process. Twelve participants ran in the recent municipal elections and several are considering nominations in the upcoming provincial election.

But we’re not resting on our accomplishments. After the recent CivicAction Greater Toronto Summit, we are invigorated to work even harder and with even more partners and networks.

We have worked over the last two years to realize the promise of a stronger and more prosperous Greater Toronto region through a more diverse leadership. It makes good business sense. It builds community. It feeds innovation. It puts us at the forefront of global efforts to acquire, integrate and value the diverse leadership that will ensure our  region’s future.

We could not have done all this without the valued help of our Steering Committee and our 166 partners, all of whom are working towards our mutual similar goal of a strong, healthy and prosperous city region:

• building stronger public and private institutions through diversified leadership and governance;
• expanding our networks to attract and retain the best global talent;
• advancing our knowledge of the benefits of diverse leadership; and, finally,
• tracking and measuring our region’s progress towards these goals.

The Greater Toronto Summit showed us that many, many more of you share these goals. Find out where you fit and join us!

Related Links

• Download the Year 2 Review (PDF).
• Watch Mayor Naheed Nenshi speak at the Canadian Club, with John Tory’s remarks about the Year 2 Review
• CBC Metro Morning host Matt Galloway speaks to Maytree president Ratna Omidvar about the success of the DiverseCity onBoard program
• Globe and Mail: Diversity not reflected in leadership roles, group says
• CBC Metro Morning series: Beyond Diversity

Sonia Dong’s parents never called themselves environmentalists, she says, but they were committed adopters of the three Rs. Since her parents grew up with tight finances, they continued to be thrifty, using and reusing all available resources was a given as was composting and growing a thriving vegetable garden. So it wasn’t a surprise when Sonia chose a career in the environmental movement.

As a young, minority woman Sonia “fit a lot of those checkboxes, organizations like to check off about being diverse, and I didn’t necessarily want to be representative of all those groups.” While she had no interest in being a representative of a disenfranchised group, she did recognize that she could be a leader. Sonia took on the personal challenge of speaking on behalf of diversity within the environmental sector.

Some organizations she worked with made attempts to broaden their outreach to diverse audiences but had difficulties making inroads. Why aren’t people interested? they asked. Sonia knew that the problem stemmed from a lack of understanding of what was actually happening in communities. The green mindset was alive and well in diverse communities but many organizations are not tapped into this reality. “My parents weren’t part of the discourse,” she explains by way of example.

Sonia challenged the sector to ask itself: “Do we have programs and organizations and messages that are relevant and accessible and inclusive of diverse communities? Maybe we should also be listening to people who are from other parts of the world who have experienced very dire environmental circumstances and have a lot of experiences and knowledge that we could learn from and bring into the sector.” In this way, she has helped the Sustainability Network lead the way in diversity in the sector, including managing a major diversity project.

In the process she’s learned a lot about leadership and her identity as a leader. She credits DiverseCity onBoard and DiverseCity Voices with helping her “affirm my own leadership style. Being a quiet person, I always thought that I needed to be someone else to be a leader. But, I realized that I could lead in my own way.”

Watch and listen to Sonia in her own words (runs 4:42):

Related links:

• DiverseCity: The Greater Toronto Leadership Project
• DiverseCity Leader Profiles
• DiverseCity Knowledge Centre – Why Diversity Matters

We follow a lot of sources and send out links to many articles every day. But we know that your time is limited and you may not be able to follow them all. At the end of each week, we pull out some themes from the week’s headlines that are worth your time. If you’re interested in our daily news coverage (and more), follow us on Twitter.

Celebrating Diversity

It’s been a week celebrating diversity wins (Scotiabank wins Canadian Centre for Diversity Award, Women Entrepreneurs Awarded for Success in Diversity Contracting). Other organizations taking positive steps towards diversity have a number of opportunities to celebrate and be recognized: Diversity in Governance Awards, TRIEC’s 5th annual Immigrant Success Awards, hireimmigrants Ottawa’s Employer Excellence Award and Catalyst Canada Honours 2011 – Celebrating Champions of Women in Business.

At the same time, we’ve also seen the recent unveiling of Lake-Shore (billed as “Canada’s Jersey Shore”, described by it’s creators as a fun, provocative look at multicultural Toronto, more universally panned as offensive and regressive) and a Maclean’s article about some universities being “Too Asian”. Minelle Mahtani writes an insightful and incredibly important piece today: Canadian media: It’s time to cover the undercovered with the simple advice: “Listen, learn and talk with, not just to, your desired demographic. Respect them and find reporters from those communities who speak their language and can communicate, discover and delve into those stories in detail.” Her perspective is echoed in this Huffington Post article 3 Reasons You Should Care About Multicultural Social Media & 3 Tips for Multicultural Social Media Success.

Henry Yu offers an equally important piece: Why Macleans and racism should no longer define Canada.

Does the media have some way to go? Yes. We know this, and we’re working on it with various partners, through a variety of initiatives, such as DiverseCity Counts. This three-year research project conducted by Ryerson’s Diversity Institute is  studying diversity in leadership in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). Recently, CBC News conducted “a large-scale review and analysis of its news content” (CBC News letter: Balance and news) that will “be a powerful tool for our own journalists in terms of long term strategic planning and program development”, leading to more coverage and representation of diversity. DiverseCity Voices is just the tool to help – it is a roster of qualified people ready to speak to the media on a range of issues that affect them – not just diversity – everything from bike lanes to taxation.

So, we’re going to continue to celebrate. DiverseCity onBoard is close to our 500th board appointment. We just launched a blog series that will inform, educate and celebrate the impact of the DiverseCity onBoard program. We’ll give you some background information about the program, including why it’s important, introduce you to some amazing board candidates on our roster, and tell you a bit about where the program is going. Stay updated on the Maytree blog.

Anti-Poverty

Anti-poverty activists appear to be celebrating as well this week, with the release of a Parliamentary report calling for “a comprehensive plan and dedicated funding to ease the plight of 3.1 million Canadians living in poverty, including more than 600,000 children and 700,000 working poor households” (Ottawa needs plan to fight poverty, Parliamentary poverty reduction plan hailed by advocates).

Access the complete report: Federal Poverty Reduction Plan: Working In Partnership Towards Reducing Poverty In Canada (PDF).

Cities, Engines of Integration

Citizens encounter city governments most regularly and it is the order of government that most influences their lives.  The Cities of Migration e-newsletter provides a summary of their recent international conference, celebrating models of diversity, immigrant integration and a “politics of optimism” that is permeating city integration actors.

Along these lines, PricewaterhouseCoopers says “Move over London, New York, Paris, and Tokyo. Make way for a new breed of emerging global cities.” (Weighing in on the world’s cities) and the Martin Prosperity Institute releases their most recent insight: Cities of different sizes draw on different types of skills.

Kingston recognizes that the city’s future depends on immigration, and the city plans to focus on attracting immigrants. New Brunswick recognizes that part of their prosperity hinges on immigrant attraction, and the New York Times recognizes (with many reprints in many US papers) that Winnipeg is, indeed, a newcomer’s mecca (‘Friendly Manitoba’ craves immigrants, New York Times notices province’s ‘parka-clad diversity’).

This comes at the same time that the Toronto Sun recognizes that Fewer immigrants eye T.O., suggesting a trend to more diverse settlement patterns in Canada, and that Toronto can’t take it’s diverse prosperity for granted. There is still lots of exciting work being done (Jane’s Walk and German Parliamentarians in Thorncliffe Park, Diversity in Elected Office – Still a Work in Progress,  Diversity in the Supply Chain), but there is always more we can do.

Interestingly, as the British government “discovers” U.S. (and, now, Canadian) urban theorist guru Richard Florida (Bring me sunshine – The sudden popularity of a controversial American economist, perhaps his ideas may begin spreading to other urban centres in Canada. Along the lines of city prosperity, our own Alan Broadbent has an important message other urban centres and all levels of government can benefit from (Webinar recording: Urban Nation with Alan Broadbent).

To top off the ongoing importance of keeping our city horizons global, is “Katerina Cizek’s Out My Window, the newest chapter in the NFB’s increasingly ambitious and ongoing HIGHRISE multimedia project about human experience in the global vertical suburbs. Credited as one of the world’s first interactive 360º documentaries, the project uses high-end web technologies and innovative photography to create a virtual high-rise dwelling, with each floor corresponding to one of thirteen different global cities. ” (New doc looks at life from Parkdale to Sao Paulo).

Well worth a viewing with a diverse group of friends.

I am not receiving any royalties for recommending this. It’s worth spending the 1 minute and 19 seconds to watch it:

Part of Dove’s Campaign for Beauty, it is a staccato visual drive-by of negative body images of women and girls. Images that are a norm in media and advertising. The tagline is “no wonder our perception of beauty is distorted.”

Well, the representation of visible minorities in the media is also distorted.

We know this from watching the news. But now we have numbers. Ryerson’s Diversity Institute has just released the second report of a three-year research project – with a focus on the media.

The numbers aren’t good. And we need to pay attention.

Because who gets represented in the media affects how we think about leadership and authority.

Here’s the picture:

Visible minorities in charge in the media:

• Boards of Directors – 6.1%
• Newsroom Editors and Producers – 5.9%
• Senior Management – 3.6%

Visible minorities represented in media:

• Broadcast Hosts and Reporters – 20.3%
• Print Columnists – 3.4 %
• Expert Speaking Sources in Broadcast – 16.6%
• Everyday Life Story Speaking Sources – 23%
• Photos in Print – 23.4%

One door opening: the power and impact of leadership

David Singh has wanted to be a sports journalist since elementary school.

He didn’t see any journalists who looked like him. His family didn’t talk about politics around the dinner table. But he was determined to connect his passion for baseball with his desire to write.

When he started the journalism program at Ryerson, he didn’t see many students who looked like him. And until his final year, he was not taught by a single visible minority professor.

In April 2008, he graduated.

David got his first job in the media because one of his professors saw his potential and forwarded his resume to the Canadian Press. Again, he was one of very few visible minorities in the newsroom. He persisted, gained some experience then was referred by another professor to the editor-in-chief at Metro where he started writing freelance.

After eight months he was hired on as full-time copy editor and part-time sports columnist.

David has always considered the colour of his skin a disadvantage in an industry where his ethnicity is not reflected in the leadership and content.

He wants to do his part to change this.

His advice?

“Universities need to start going into high schools across the GTA to let kids know that journalism is a career option. This includes Brampton, Markham, Mississauga, and areas where there is a high concentration of visible minority students.”

He continues: “Media leaders need to open doors for rising journalists and media professionals.”

David understands that sometimes journalists may feel that they don’t have the time to look for diverse sources. But he believes that they have to work harder: “Journalists are on deadline and may not be considering race. However, professionally [they] have a responsibility to ensure the content reflects their readers, viewers or listeners.”

A little help for our friends in the media

If there are any journalists still reading, I’ll suggest DiverseCity Voices – a free online database of subject area experts ready to talk to you on issues ranging from theatre to biotechnology. We’ve already found the talent. You just need to sign on for a free account and search!

Let’s start “undistorting” the representation of visible minorities in the media … and set an example of the power and impact of diverse leadership.

Gary Pieters is a vice-principal with the Toronto District School Board. He also talks to the media. To date he has commented on: the VIA Rail Strike, Afro-centric schools, poverty, soccer altercations, summer employment, the Olympic torch relay and Barack Obama’s election victory.

Gary is also among the 160+ candidates who are part of the DiverseCity Voices media initiative.

You may not consider rolodexes to have personalities (and if you’re under 20, you’re likely Googling “rolodex” right now). But DiverseCity Voices does. It’s an online rolodex of experts from diverse backgrounds willing to speak to the media on a wide range of topics. It’s new, up-to-date and very much alive.

And, thank you mainstream Canadian media, you’re catching on! People from diverse communities can talk about more than just multiculturalism and ethnic celebrations.

We know the industry is changing. Journalists have less time and resources to do more. We get it. That’s why we’re doing this. Media shape the way we talk and think about leadership and have a tremendous power to encourage people to get involved where they live. DiverseCity Voices is about engaging citizens along their areas of experience – which is so often well beyond diversity and multiculturalism.

For members of the rolodex, DiverseCity Voices provides media training and will put their names forward to journalists as sources. To date, there are over 160 members, all visible minorities or immigrants. For the over 100 journalists who have signed on, in addition to an ongoing source of new voices, DiverseCity Voices provides a monthly e-alert featuring upcoming issues and events and individuals who can talk about them.

Candidates and journalists can sign up free at www.maytree.com/voices.