We are committed to keeping the community informed about our progress on key initiatives. Below are our latest updates.


Key Highlights

2022

Increased diversity among new Faculty

Nine new assistant professors have joined the Haas School of Business faculty this year. Seven of them are women; one is Black, and one is Latinx. Assistant Professor Sa-kiera T.J. Hudson, a queer Black woman, will teach the core Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion course at Haas this spring. Assistant Professor Ambar La Forgia teaches leading people in our Evening Weekend MBA program. The new faculty bring a range of research topics that will increase our DEIJB academic scholarship, such as understanding policy impacts on inequality (Backus), incentives in scientific decision making and the production of new knowledge (Stein), illicit supply chains that undermine social/environmental goals (Wijnsma), unequal social hierarchies, emotions, and stereotypes (Hudson), health care sector managerial processes that impact pricing and clinical performance (LaForgia).

Faculty support around DEI

DEI Instruction support

This fall, Berkeley Haas hired Dr. queen jaks to the role of Diversity Instructional Support Consultant. The DEI instructional support consultant is a new role and source of support for faculty, offering classroom observations, consultation on DEI curriculum implementation and teaching practices, and developing faculty learning opportunities as needed. Dr. jaks earned her PhD in Organizational Behavior from Case Western Reserve University, and brings experience teaching DEI in business courses. This is a half time position embedded in the school-wide Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion team, and will be partnering with EGAL to leverage their work in her role.

Racial Equity Post-Doc Fellowship

A DEI gift by Berkeley Haas alumnus Allan Holt made it possible for us to develop a 2-year, postdoctoral fellowship focused on Racial Equity in Business, bringing added expertise to our academic community. Merrick Osbourne will be the Fellow, and he will be joining Berkeley Haas December, 2022. This postdoctoral fellowship will help us deepen the DEI expertise in our curriculum, and simultaneously build a more diverse pipeline of faculty in business. Fellows will have the opportunity to focus on their research publications and teach; both of which will make them more competitive for faculty roles.

First African American Faculty member receives Tenure

Conrad Miller

This fall, following a rigorous process and a strong endorsement by the Berkeley Haas ladder faculty, Associate Professor Conrad Miller became the first African American to earn tenure at the school. Associate Professor Miller, who came to Berkeley Haas in 2015, teaches “Data and Decisions” at both the graduate and undergraduate level. He has won numerous awards for his research, as well as having over 300 Google citations for his thought leadership in economics.

 

July 2021

New member of the Haas School Board – Realizing a Gap In Representation

Haas made a commitment and concerted effort to identify and invite Haas Board members who identify as African American. Eric McKissack, BCEMBA 04, independent board director and longtime private investor, has accepted our invitation to join our board. McKissack joins Monica Stevens, FTMBA 96, Senior Vice President at Wells Fargo Merchant Services, and Frank Cooper III, BS 86, Senior Managing Director & Global Chief Marketing Officer at BlackRock, as the first African American members to serve on the Haas Board.

 

We decided to postpone the appointment of two Board members who identify as Native American, First Nation, and/or Indigenous Latinx until the next Board recruitment cycle. In the interim, we have been actively developing a pipeline of candidates and have a working group focused on DEI policies and practices within the Board.

FTMBA Admission – Enhancing Outreach To Prospective Students:                 

FTMBA Admissions and Haas partners hosted 350+ prospective Black and Latinx MBA students from the Management Leaders of Tomorrow (MLT) organization. The MLT weekend seminar was hosted at and showcased Berkeley Haas, and supported MLT fellows in their application preparation (a commitment from the 2019 DEI Action Plan)

Brand Marketing team’s analysis on Berkeley Haas DEI web strategy recommends highlighting resources for underrepresented communities, sharing admissions data more transparently on the web site, and reducing emphasis on broad, sweeping commitment statements. Their work will help inform significant updates to the diversity web pages across our school’s website.

KEY UPDATES:

In early August, our Berkeley Haas HR team launched a staff engagement survey to establish a baseline of Belonging

Our degree programs, alumni relations, and some of the research centers conducted an internal inventory of their guest speakers over the past year, to help establish a baseline and increase representation of speakers.  

Our Development & Alumni Relations team is actively working with alumni leaders to establish a framework for identity-based alumni affinity groups.

In partnership with our HR Team and associate deans for faculty, we are continuing to make progress on finalizing the job description to hire a DEI consultant for faculty teaching support.  

March 2021

New EWMBA Fellowship with the SF/Bay Area NBMBAA chapter

We leveraged the existing Berkeley Haas educational partnership with the National Black MBA Association (NBMBAA) to develop this new fellowship to launch in the Fall ’21 admissions cycle (matriculating Fall ’22).

Syllabus developed for “Business Communication in Diverse Work Environments”

Our faculty in the Management of Organizations group, led by Professor Laura Kray, developed the curriculum for this new FTMBA core course requirement. The course offers an evidence-based set of tools to make the workplace more equitable and will launch in the 2021-22 academic year.