Last weekend the Armstrong McGuire team was busy at our yearly retreat and internal strategy meetings. On Sunday and Monday, we learned, laughed, and reflected on our work and processes. One throughline to many of our discussions was diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), why it is important as a value that each of us and the company holds, and how it impacts our work.

We all agreed that DEI cannot be thought of as a checkbox or simply a task to be completed. If DEI is seen as a task, it is easy to participate in a training or conversation once and then not go back to the core ideas again. DEI is not something that should be thought of as “completed.” We agreed that DEI should be present in everything that an organization does, fully intertwined and integrated across values, goals, policies, and processes.

Complete implementation of DEI is incredibly difficult, but it is important that organizations, Armstrong McGuire included, continue to take steps in that direction. Having conversations around DEI and how it can be further developed within a mission, values, and operations should never stop. It is important to also ensure that a diverse group of individuals are a part of those conversations, so that multiple perspectives are able to speak into what DEI is and means to them.

In my short 6 months at Armstrong McGuire, I have been a part of a number of DEI conversations. And based on the conversations during our retreat, it is clear there are more conversations to come. DEI is incredibly important to all of us at Armstrong McGuire, and I know that it is a space in which we will all continue to learn and grow, so that we can bring our best to our work.