Becoming a diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) consultant was not a career path I had considered when I was in graduate school. Like many graduate students, I had envisioned going into academia, but toward the end of my PhD program, my goals and priorities changed, and I decided to explore other options. After completing my PhD in 2018, I joined the Research, Professional Development, and Academic Affairs team at the American Sociological Association (ASA). One of the most gratifying aspects of my job was the fact that I regularly interacted with sociologists working in different types of institutions and industries: from sociology teachers in high schools across the U.S., to professors in academia, to researchers in global technology companies. During my time in this role, I saw firsthand the many places where sociologists worked and realized the variety of contributions that sociologists can make outside of academia.
After more than two years at ASA, I joined a consulting firm that helps clients in the private sector tackle DEI issues. This seemed like a big professional shift; the only sociologists I knew who were working in DEI were in higher education or government settings. I was expecting the job to be unconnected to my previous experience and expertise, but I have been surprised to see that many of the skills I learned as a graduate student and a lecturer have helped me succeed in my new role. Now, having worked in the DEI field for one-and-a-half years, I believe that this field needs more sociologists.
The Value of the Sociological Perspective
I discovered early on that two of the most valuable assets I bring to this role as a sociologist are the ability to see things from a sociological perspective and the skill to find, interpret, and synthesize research. The sociological lens directs attention to broader patterns and their relationship to social forces and structures. This allows me to identify, for example, how specific practices in hiring and performance evaluations contribute to inequalities in the workplace and society more broadly. As former director of Minority and Student Affairs at ASA, Jean Shin, wrote for the Consortium of Social Science Associations Why Social Science blog, “social science research not only helps us to understand that there is value to diversity and inclusion, but also how we can enhance diversity and inclusion.” At work, I collaborate with other DEI consultants, many of whom have backgrounds in organizational psychology and organizational studies, to make sure we are making data-driven and evidenced-based recommendations. This means that I spend a substantial part of my working hours finding and translating the research that informs the advice we provide to our clients.
My methods training in data collection and analysis have also proven to be important in designing and evaluating our DEI work. In many of our projects, we use employee interviews to guide our decision-making, and my background in qualitative research comes in handy when I conduct these studies. I regularly analyze qualitative data, such as the answers to open-ended survey questions, to assess the impact of our work. And, although I consider myself a qualitative sociologist first and foremost, my ability to interpret and speak about quantitative data has also been very useful.
Finally, the skills I gained through my experiences as a graduate instructor have also easily translated to my new career. There are many similarities between teaching classes such as “Introduction to Sociology” to college students and facilitating workshops with managers on topics such as how to foster a culture of belonging at work. In fact, I often joke that my current job allows me to do my favorite parts of teaching, such as having conversations about research and how we can use the findings for good, without the aspects of instruction that I was never very fond of, like grading. In addition to being confident in presenting material and leading discussions, my teaching experience has helped me create learning objectives for workshops. Writing these objectives, and then using them to create outlines and presentations that we can deliver to our clients, is a significant part of my job.
Applying Academic Skills
Other skills that I acquired in graduate school have required some adaptation to be helpful. Although dissertating taught me many things about project management, the type and length of the projects I work on now are quite different. Working on a dissertation requires one to keep track of different deadlines, tasks, and goals, but, at least in my case, it was ultimately a single project with one person who was responsible and accountable for most of the progress, with a relatively small group of people who provided feedback and support along the way. The kind of projects I work on now involve many more people with much more complex distributions of responsibility and many more dependencies and moving parts. Additionally, projects tend to be shorter and often overlap with each other; it is not rare to have meetings for three or four different projects in a single day and for these projects to be at different stages with very different goals and timelines. As a result, I have had to build on my project management skills and develop new ways of keeping track of progress. I believe these kinds of project managements skills can help prepare graduate students for the nonacademic job market as well as benefit those who want to stay in academia.
Receiving feedback is another skill that I have adapted to my current position, where the nature and goal of feedback is very different. As a graduate student, I became accustomed to asking for and receiving feedback from my committee members. I saw this feedback primarily as a way to test and refine ideas in anticipation of publishing or presenting work to a broader audience. Now, the feedback I receive is meant to provide guidance on how to grow and improve in my role. Consequently, this feedback is much more focused on processes, or how specific actions lead to specific outcomes, and is much more frequent. And, because I now use and teach research that emphasizes the relationship between high-quality feedback and equity, I have become more mindful of how and when I give feedback to others.
The Sociology-DEI Nexus
It was only since I started working as a DEI consultant that I fully realized how much my training as a sociologist prepared me to contribute to the DEI field and succeed in this role outside of academia. My previous research interests, which included exploring how religious organizations shape the experiences of immigrants in the U.S and Spain, have informed a lot of the work I do on how workplaces can foster cultures where all employees feel a strong sense of belonging. The sociological perspective, with its emphasis on group patterns and social structures, has helped me understand how context influences behavior, informing an approach to DEI work that moves beyond the more individual-based approach that has historically characterized it. Furthermore, that same perspective, coupled with my training as an ethnographer, has prepared me for the variety of experiences and perspectives that people bring to the conversations and workshops I facilitate, and has allowed me to engage with them in a meaningful way. Lastly, a strong background in sociological research methods is a valuable asset in meeting the growing need for evidence-based and research-backed DEI solutions.
Many DEI firms and professionals have yet to realize how much value those of us trained as sociologists bring to their field. To bridge this gap, sociologists whose scholarship can inform DEI work should continue to advocate for and conduct research that focuses on solutions and is accessible to nonacademic audiences. The Stanford VMware Women’s Leadership Innovation Lab is one great example of this approach to scholarship. Furthermore, sociologists interested in DEI work might consider how to build the necessary social and cultural capital to enter the field, as suggested by fellow sociologist Gemma Mangione in this recent twitter thread. This entails learning how to emphasize and translate sociological skills so that they are most legible to DEI professionals and firms, as well as connecting with DEI professionals.
While I have recently gotten to know more sociologists working in DEI, I am convinced our discipline still has much more to contribute to this growing field. My hope is for a vibrant DEI community of both scholars and practitioners in dialogue for the purposes of creating more diverse and inclusive organizations.
Any opinions expressed in the articles in this publication are those of the author and not the American Sociological Association.
