We believe that change has to start early, and at the top. Arist partnered with Project Include to create a mobile-first course that educates early stage startups on how to create Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) from Day 1.

Hey Producthunt! 🎉 First launch, so a little bit about me: I’m a designer of conversations. Usually, I’m the person automating bots or texts 🤖 so that humans can save their time and focus for complex and high priority discussions. Then, this past summer two things happened: 1️⃣ In light of COVID and the sudden need for remote-education tools, I’ve been working with educators who care immensely about their students and it has really changed my mind about what bots and automation are capable of. Apart from providing efficiency at scale, A text-message course is 👉🏼 A private, anonymous, safe space 👉🏼 Immediately interactive: Multiple Choice & Open-ended Qs 👉🏼 Multimedia - “show, don’t tell” 👉🏼 Very accessible 2️⃣ I joined a team where I was the first POC (and employee)! As an Asian woman in tech, I don’t suffer close to the underrepresentation of my peers of other races, sexuality, and ability. My team was also incredibly welcoming and supportive. And yet, it was still very clear that without conscious effort, there were ways in which Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion were not allotted real time, effort, and money upfront in my ecosystem. Current D&I education lacks a focus on startups because 😓 Attaching metrics early is hard 😓 Leaky pipeline is an easy scapegoat 😓 Unclear benefits for early stage startups (busy putting out fires) Introducing DEI for Startups 🚀 I paid attention to what worked in the BLM movement. And what stuck out to me was the “Required Readings” being circulated. The practicality of unburdening minorities and lowering the barrier to entry by paring down resources to what was essential struck me as both simple and genius. I reached out to @triketora after reading her Black Lives Matter booklist to propose we create a highly accessible text-message course using knowledge she accumulated from co-founding Project Include, and from there she connected me with @ekp. We all agreed that change needed to start early, and from the top. Good, we knew our audience. From there we just kept the content ✨ honest ✨ data-driven ✨ conversational SO excited to get some feedback. There's no way we got it perfect on the first try, and we're excited for what's to come.

@ekp @cmilla_vnilla I want to give a shoutout to Camilla who really made this course come to life. In aggregate we must have spent 50+ hours on developing the curriculum, though Camilla was the one who truly pulled it together with sheer hard work and a real knack for the creativity to make the content resonate in short form and over text.

@triketora @cmilla_vnilla We had fun coming up with questions and scenarios, and Camilla did the heavy lifting to make it all come to life. I wasn't sure we could capture that much in a 2-week text-based app, but this is real, substantive, and I hope it makes a difference!

I'm biased ♥️ but I think this is such a useful resource to the startup community. There are many founders who want to build diverse and inclusive teams, but don't know where to start (or start too late). Took the course myself and bought it for every founder I work with.

So needed for every company, thank you for creating this!!

@hayoung_park Thanks for your support :-) I think so too, and we are very open to requests that we work together to customize a course for slightly different use cases and cultures (We got a couple today from larger companies who still see room for improvement, which is heartening!)

DEI for Startups

Diversity & Inclusion training for startups, all over text.

Diversity & Inclusion training for startups, all over text.

DEI for Startups

Diversity & Inclusion training for startups, all over text.

Diversity & Inclusion training for startups, all over text.

Do you use DEI for Startups?

Do you use DEI for Startups?

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