Tag: Diversity at Olin



Women

Saint Rice, Ed.D, contributed this to the Olin Blog. He is assistant dean and director of faculty, staff and community engagement on the IDEA team.

As a community, Olin is making amplified efforts to support our diverse population by creating a welcome and inclusive educational environment. This month, we celebrate and observe a significant milestone that marked American women’s advancement toward equality with men. Here, the women’s suffragist celebrates a generation that stimulated change to make what was thought impossible possible.

 In addition, we would like to recognize and celebrate Lt. General Michael Langley for his historic Senate confirmation on Tuesday, August 2, as the first Black four-star general in the United States Marine Corp. 

Likewise, as we prepare for a new academic year, we encourage you to explore and consider ways you can encourage each other to persist and prevail in an inclusive learning environment.  

Together, we welcome and value all. Click here to learn more about Olin’s commitment to equity, diversity and inclusion.  

Women’s Equality Day (August 26, 2022) 

Description: Women’s Equality Day is celebrated in the United States on August 26 to commemorate the 1920 adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment (Amendment XIX) to the US Constitution, which prohibits the states and the federal government from denying the right to vote to citizens of the United States based on sex. 

History/Origin: The Constitutional 19th Amendment, which afforded women the right to vote, was ratified on August 18, 1920, and certified by U.S. Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby on August 26, 1920. In 1971, Representative Bella Abzug championed a bill in the United States Congress to designate August 26 as “Women’s Equality Day.” The bill passed in 1973. This was the finale of a massive, peaceful civil rights movement by women that had its formal beginnings in 1848 at the world’s first women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York. The observance of Women’s Equality Day not only commemorates the passage of the 19th Amendment but also calls attention to women’s continuing efforts toward full equality. Workplaces, libraries, organizations and public facilities now participate in Women’s Equality Day programs, displays, video showings or other activities (Nationalwomenhistoryalliance.org). 

Ways to oberve

Get informed. Reading and learning more about feminism and the fight for equality through history can inform children, teens and adults (see additional resources below). 

Advocate for fair pay everywhere. Whether in your workplace or as an effort to boost revenue in your community, understand the long-term consequences of unequal pay. Gender and racial equity can begin with fair and better compensation.    

Advocate for paid parental leave. The motherhood penalty is tangible and measurable. Whether you fight for it in your organization or communicate the need for it to policymakers, childcare concerns and costs weigh heavily not just on the family purse but on the mother’s career. 

Vote. Whether for the school board, city council, community representation, state representation or the office of president, exercising the right to vote that was hard won a century ago is the best way to celebrate Women’s Equality Day.   

Additional resources 

 5 Black Suffragists Who Fought for the 19th Amendment—And Much More 

By One Vote: Woman Suffrage in the South | The Citizenship Project | NPT 

Gender and the Economy, “Intersectionality and the Implications for Workplace Gender Equality.” 

 Women’s History Milestones: A Timeline 

 2022 Gender Pay Gap Report 

We invite you to continue to learn more about how you can engage in the work of positive change and champion inclusion. In addition to the resources included above, our microlearning journeys from Blue Ocean Brain housed in the Learn@WashU platform are another place to start.   

Our new micro-learning journeys for August, available on the Learn@WashU platform, include:   

Women @ Work Bridging the Gender Gap




Written for the Olin Blog on behalf of Bear Studios by Laura Glanz, BA ’21, who is majoring in international and area studies.

Since my start at WashU last semester, the most important lesson I have learned has revolved around the value of the word “reframe.”

While I originally thought college life would be about studying and meeting new people, it has proved to be so much more. I have discovered that college is also about the ability to take advantage of new, impactful opportunities. As students, we hold the power to determine how our four years at WashU will inspire intellectual and emotional grow. Our minds can be so greatly expanded given the access to fascinating people and tangible resources.

Perspective to Tackle New Experiences

However, taking advantage of the multitude of opportunities and trying new things is not easy. After all, students already have many obligations to balance and attend to: homework, a social life, self-care and mental health, etc.

Diving into the unknown, creating new experiences, can be scary. Joining a certain student group, trying to develop friendships, or dedicating time to a career path creates vulnerability. Uncertainty is a bottle of questions. However, we move forward, change, and grow in life through such experiences; pushing boundaries can lead to inner strength.

The value of the word “reframe” comes into play upon facing such uncertainties. Rather than acting habitually, we can choose to pause, breathe, be mindful, and reframe the discomfort. The closer we approach this line of discomfort, the easier it will be to cope with the unknown of the future.

I attempted to enact this philosophy my first semester at WashU by making a concerted effort to prompt conversations with strangers in order to spark friendships. Furthermore, I actively tried to learn about our campus’s student groups, especially those involving upperclassman whom I admired.

In the fall of my first semester, Jacob Finke, BA ’20, international and area studies, my Washington University Student Associate, introduced me to Bear Studios—a student-run strategy and design firm that predominantly services startups. The opportunity to join such a group sounded amazing, yet I questioned my ability to contribute.

Despite my lack of confidence at the time, I decided to reframe my skepticism and apply. I am so grateful now to have joined the team and become a part of their inspiring mission. Among hard skills, Bear Studios has taught me how much one can learn from taking risks. My colleagues there have shown me the beauty of mindful leadership, and they have made me more comfortable with uncertainty. A little reframing can go a long way.

Laura Glanz, BA ’21 is a strategy fellow at Bear Studios LLC. Pictured above: The author with her intramural soccer team composed of first-year students. Laura is in the top row, fourth from right.




Written for the Olin Blog on behalf of Bear Studios by Lexi Jackson, BSBA’20.

Young professionals today are far less likely to be drawn to monetary incentives than past generations. As PwC finds, millennials are driven by feedback, fulfillment, and the potential to create impact. They desire to make a difference in their work and reach high levels of social impact.

As I consider my own career ambitions, I find that they align most closely with this idea. I want to use my career as another platform to affect change and create my livelihood from difference-making.

The hardest question to answer is, where do I begin?

In order to begin a journey toward high impact, an individual has to have a healthy degree of impatience. That is to say, the most impactful individuals do not wait until they are at the most ideal state in their lives to make an impact. They act immediately with the resources they have at the time. Most individuals will never feel fully ready or equipped to believe they have the capacity to make real impact, and, therefore, often do not act.

Don’t Wait to Act

What we forget is that our actions are only as strong as our passions, and our passions cannot be cultivated by resources or opportunity—they exist in us inherently. Those who have the passion to create change are those who know that change can’t wait. And neither can their action.

Perhaps this is why I decided to create Olin Business School’s first Diversity and Inclusion Summit on February 9. I recognized a need within the community for dialogue and action on this topic, and while I didn’t have the personal resources to materialize my passion, I knew that by seeking the proper partners, the event could come to fruition. All it took was my decision to begin action.

Lexi Jackson

My team and I planned the Summit for more than five months. We booked speakers from over seven companies and organizations including Uber, Facebook, US Bank, Build-A-Bear, and more. We sought financial assistance of more than five different student organizations before finding success from our central sponsor, the BSBA office. We overcame challenges, celebrated unexpected opportunities, and crafted an event that attracted more than 80 students, faculty, and community members.

At its inception, the summit appeared to be an impossible undertaking. We did not have the resources, brand, or experience to execute a half-day event. However, if we had waited until we felt completely assured of our ability to succeed, we would likely have never succeeded altogether.

Action Leads to Fulfillment

Young professionals must act with the same diligence if they desire to find fulfillment in every stage of their career. I hear all too often that my peers are accepting jobs that do not fully excite them, simply to serve as an intermediary between now and their dream career. However, that does not have to be the case. High impact jobs can be found at every point on the career track and include jobs that are both meaningful AND lucrative. A high-impact job does not have to mean working at a nonprofit or earning lower wages in the pursuit of a greater good.

This understanding is the exact mission of the organization 80,000 Hours. 80,000 Hours was created by two Oxford researchers and philosophers who found that this generation is driven by high impact through a career, but will too often forfeit these positions of change in fear of financial stability.

Therefore, 80,000 Hours serves as a job search platform where users can find positions that produce high levels of social impact without breaking the bank. The jobs are sorted into a plethora of categories and are designed to teach users about the breadth of social impact. For example, with artificial intelligence positioned at the threshold to the future, there is perhaps no higher impact job that one can hold than to research and understand both its dangers and benefits. In this way, users are able to find surprisingly impactful positions that fulfill their interests and leverage their expertise.

As a member of Bear Studios, a student-run strategy firm and LLC, I actively use the resources and knowledge that I can contribute at the time to add value to our clients’ projects. I may not have all the answers, but that does not mean I should not leverage what I do know to make the biggest impact that I can.

When we begin to measure social impact in a different way, we find ourselves more equipped to act. We find ourselves more fulfilled, more involved, more empowered. We find ourselves making a difference. Most importantly, we find ourselves refusing to wait. And that, is where the change happens.

Pictured above: Charlyn Moss (BSBA’20), Lexi Jackson (BSBA’20), Sema Dibooglu (BSBA’20), Claudia Rivera (BSBA’20)

Guest Blogger: Lexi Jackson, BSBA’20, is majoring in leadership and strategic management, political science; she is a strategy fellow at Bear Studios LLC.




The Olin Diversity and Inclusion committee is encouraging everyone in the Olin community to watch “Shining A Light: A Concert for Progress on Race in America” and then post your thoughts and comments to this blog post.

Artists of different races and ethnic backgrounds, including Pharrell Williams, John Legend, P!nk, and Ed Sheeran, are joining together to give once-in-a-lifetime performances. In addition, the program will include powerful conversations on race in America from Charleston, Baltimore, Ferguson, and more. The entire effort will support a Fund for Progress on Race powered by United Way Worldwide and a memorial for the Emanuel 9 in Charleston.

The concert is on tonight. That’s Friday, November 20, at 7:00 p.m. CT on stations in the A+E Networks (A&E, Lifetime, HISTORY, LMN, FYI, and H2) at 7:00 p.m. It will also be broadcast on 150 iHeart radio stations.


More than 150 students and faculty members joined “One World” celebrations in Simon Hall on Saturday, Sep 19. “One World” is an annual event organized by Olin’s student body to celebrate the diversity at Olin. This year saw the highest participation One World in recent years, as the Olin community enjoyed cuisines from different parts of the world.

Video credits – Pawan Dhir, MBA 2017