IHSI Diversity Committee Monthly Resources
Each month, the IHSI Diversity Committee shares resources and learning opportunities with the rest of IHSI staff. Curating and sharing these resources allow us to educate ourselves on various topics related to diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice. As an institute devoted to promoting all forms of health, we want to share these resources more broadly with our campus and community stakeholders. We hope that you will find them as useful as we have.
Inclusive Meetings
Love them or hate them, many of us spend hours each week in meetings. Instead of wondering if your latest meeting could have been an email or Teams post, Senior Research Development Manager Maggie Berg encourages us to view meetings as a great starting point for driving culture change and increasing inclusion in the workplace. She has curated a few resources to describe inclusive meetings, why they are important, and how to make meetings more effective.
If you have 5 minutes...
Read "To Build an Inclusive Culture, Start with Inclusive Meetings" by Kathryn Heath and Brenda F. Wensil. The authors posit that meetings are where institutional culture takes root. “Meetings matter. They are the forum where people come together to discuss ideas, make decisions, and be heard. Meetings are where culture forms, grows, and takes hold,” they write.
Wensil and Heath urge leaders to commit to three key practices that foster inclusive meetings and the culture that grows from them:
- Customs – Set the tone before the meeting even begins: prep intentionally, welcome people by name, and establish expectations for respectful dialogue.
- Conduct – Act like an orchestra conductor. Watch for dominators, interrupt interrupters, and ensure all voices are heard—especially those who might not naturally speak up.
- Commitment – Treat inclusion as essential—not optional. It should be as baked into agenda items and follow-ups.
If you have 30 minutes...
Listen to "Inclusive Meetings as a Catalyst for Culture Change" from the Inclusion at Work podcast. Kerry Boys and Phil Cross share why meetings are a microcosm of organizational culture—and one of the most scalable ways to spark inclusive change. Their advice? Host fewer, better meetings with purpose, participation, and psychological safety at the core. Meetings with high psychological safety foster better ideas, stronger decisions, and more engaged teams. Similarly, when these commitments are modeled in meetings, they spill over into day-to-day work—and that’s how culture shifts.
If you have 55 minutes...
Tune into Inclusion in Meetings: Kieran Snyder on In-Person vs. Remote Dynamics from the Radical Candor podcast. In this episode, Kieran Snyder, Ph.D., founder of nerd processor and co-founder of Textio, discusses remote and hybrid work dynamics and inclusion in meetings. With over 1,100 hours of meeting data analyzed, Dr. Snyder sheds light on the complexities of hybrid and remote work, the power of structured agendas, what really drives participation, and who gets left out.
Whether you're leading the meeting or just trying to survive it, these resources offer simple, actionable ways to create space for everyone to contribute and be heard. Meetings don’t have to be a drain—they can be a driver of real change. By making them more inclusive, we improve collaboration and help shift workplace culture, one conversation at a time.