Module 8: Measuring your progress beyond participation
Facilitators: Working River Leadership Consulting + National Ski Areas Association
Overview: Representation matters beyond marketing. It’s critical that our people – staff, colleagues and industry leaders – bring diverse backgrounds and experiences to the table, and, most of all, that they feel welcomed and included. NSAA and Working River Leadership Consulting developed the Ski Area Employee Engagement and Inclusion Survey to learn more about our people, and the degree to which they felt included and engaged. The panel will share results from the first two seasons of the survey, and discuss the roadblocks and breakthroughs they found during the process.
Module 7: Disability is Diversity, Building an Accessible Outdoors.
Facilitators: Syren Nagakyrie of Disabled Hikers, and Gerry Seavo James
This module led by Syren Nagakyrie, founder of Disabled Hikers and Together Outdoors Advisory Council member, examines the historical contexts of disability in the outdoors and discuss frameworks for implementing disability access, inclusion, and justice.
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Crip Camp a documentary about Camp Jened, a camp for people with disabilities in the 1970s, and the history of the Disability Rights Movement. Available on Netflix and YouTube. The website has many resources.
Resources on Eco-Crip Theory, which examines the intersections of Disability and the environment. Of particular interest are the three articles linked under Academic Articles that discuss creations of wilderness, adventure culture, and disability.
10 Principles of Disability Justice, as articulated by Patty Berne and Sins Invalid
“Disability Justice is Another Term for Love” by Mia Mingus
Access is Love Project aims to build a world where access is considered an act of love. Includes extensive accessibility resource list.
Disability Justice Audit Tool written by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha and envisioned by Stacey Park Milbern and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha. Aimed at helping Black, Indigenous and POC-led organizations examine where they’re at in practicing disability justice, and where they want to learn and grow.
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Module 6: Marketing that includes Everyone
Facilitators: Yvonne Leow of Bewilder, Syren Nagakyrie of Disabled Hikers, and Gerry Seavo James
This session led by Yvonne Leow of Bewilder, Syren Nagakyrie of Disabled Hikers, and Gerry Seavo James, Together Outdoors Coalition lead shared thoughts and concepts on how the the outdoor industry could approach marketing, outreach, and branding strategies through a J.E.D.I lens.
Module 5: Implementing DEI - Aligning the Suits and the Boots
Facilitator: Annie Kao of Ascent Inclusion Consulting.
This session shares insights on common challenges and suggested tips for how to infuse DEI at all levels of an organization and translate strategy into action.
Bio: Annie is the Founder of Ascent Inclusion Consulting, which provides Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion guidance specializing in outdoor industries. Her representative clients include organizations such as the the U.S. Ski & Snowboard team, Fox Racing, Alterra Mountain Company, Mountain Hardwear, National Forest Foundation, and others. She currently serves on the Boards of the Share Winter Foundation and the National Ski Areas Association. Prior to Ascent, for over 10 years Annie worked at Vail Resorts, including as Assistant General Counsel serving as the lead operations attorney for ski areas including Vail, Beaver Creek, Breckenridge, Keystone, and Whistler Blackcomb. Annie got her first outdoor industry job in 1998, as a ski instructor at Keystone Resort.
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When reviewing the persuasive communication techniques (appealing to ethos, pathos, logos, and/or kairos), which persuasive method do you tend to find the most compelling when you are in the audience? What method(s) do you tend to use when you are the presenter?
Is there a person (or group of people) in your organization that you have previously labeled as being resistant to DEI? Use the tips in this module to break down the possible sources of resistance and build back up an alternative strategy for re-engaging them in a productive DEI conversation.
Module 4: Equitable Partnerships and Giving
Facilitator: SaraDay Evans, Accelerating Appalachia
This session gives an overview of how to approach partnerships and giving through a J.E.D.I lens. Saraday founded Accelerating Appalachia (ACAP) to combine her years of work in sustainable economies, environmental protection, and social justice into a program to accelerate a regenerative, socially-just economy. For seventeen years, Saraday worked at Kentucky’s Department for Environmental Protection and North Carolina’s Department of Commerce where she built programs to promote healthier people and places. She received U.S. presidential commendations and state and regional awards for this work. When Saraday’s sustainable economy program for high unemployment counties in North Carolina lost its funding, she launched ACAP to continue the important work of restoring the people and places of one of the most biologically diverse, yet poverty-stricken and over-extracted, regions in North America: Appalachia.
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What will you take from this session to your team to help your giving program evolve?
Module 3: Building a Better Team- Recruitment
Facilitator: Hannah Malvin, Hannah Malvin Coaching & Consulting
Hannah is a coach and consultant focused on infusing equity and wellbeing into workplace culture and project manager for The Bridge Project, a new public-private partnership and equitable hiring pathway for the environmental sector focused on people of color and underrepresented communities. Through this session share tips to build more equitable hiring practices and attract more diverse candidate pools. Barriers and biases that show up in job postings, recruitment, interviews, and candidate selection were also explored.
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What’s an example you’ve seen of how bias has shown up in hiring in the outdoor/environmental sector?
What’s a qualification you’re reconsidering including in a job description?
How could you treat candidates better along the way throughout the hiring process?
What’s a next step you’re going to take to advance equitable hiring at your company?
Module 2: Building a Better Team- Retention
Facilitator: Chandria Harris, HireCultures
This session covers topics including onboarding programs, effective mentorship, and strategies to examine organizational culture. Through Chandria’s knowledge and expertise, we hope that organizations are equipped with tools and practices to create a more just, diverse, equitable, and inclusive workspace.
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As we approach winter holidays, how might you incorporate retention strategies into your organization’s events?
Module 1: How We Got Here - Barriers to entry + history of access to outdoor recreation spaces
Cherokee State Park, Kentucky’s first and only state park for African-Americans during the Jim Crow Era.
This session provides foundational knowledge to understand and analyze how historic systems of exclusion intersect with current barriers to access, resulting in reduced participation for groups including BIPOC, Disabled, LGBTQ+, different socioeconomic status, immigrants, and others.
Facilitators: Gerry Seavo James + Chris Perkins, Outdoor Recreation Roundtable
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What will stick with you from the presentation?
How might you apply some of the learnings to what you do?