BONUS | Linda Devonish-Mills - IMA's Commitment to Diversity & Inclusion

IMA's Commitment to Diversity & Inclusion:
https://www.imanet.org/about-ima/diversity-and-inclusion



FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT


Adam: (00:03)


Welcome back for another special bonus episode of Count Me In.
I'm your host, Adam Larson, and I'm joined by my cohost Mitch
Roshong. Today you will be hearing the second installment of our
IMA focused mini series as we highlight IMA's commitment to
diversity and inclusion. Fundamental to our core values, IMA is
committed to creating and nurturing a diverse and inclusive
member community and accounting and finance profession to foster
mutual respect between individuals. To further explain this
commitment, Mitch sat down with IMA's, director of diversity and
inclusion, Linda Devonish Mills. Mitch, what did you take away
from the conversation? 


 


Mitch: (00:44)


IMA embraces a culture of open-mindedness and encourages multiple
perspectives to enhance our collaborative solutions, drive
innovation, and create and deliver value in all that we do. Linda
is the staff member who steers this education and outreach
through various initiatives. In our conversation, Linda talks
about her role at IMA, emphasizes the importance of D&I and
provides implementation strategies for other organizations to
adopt diversity and inclusion practices. Let's listen now. 


 


Mitch: (01:13)


So the director of diversity and inclusion at IMA. Can you please
explain to us how your role came about and some of the different
initiatives you're working on at IMA? 


 


Linda: (01:30)


Sure. So this is a prime example as to how someone can just
manage or control their career. Where at the time I was
officially a IMA's director of technical accounting activities.
And in that role, I just took it upon myself to go beyond that
role and just look at the environment of IMA in general where I
don't feel uncomfortable saying this since our president and CEO
has said that when we attend our annual conferences, for example,
of many years ago, it's gotten better over the years. But when I
first started my career here in may of 2006, the audience at our
conference is much different than it is today. And back then I
would say the best way to describe it is that it was a
predominantly white males that were coming to our conference. And
with me being an accounting professional all throughout my
career, I knew that wasn't a good representation of our
profession. So during my years, again as director of technical
accounting activities, I took it upon myself with the support of
the leaders at the time that I was reporting to, to do outreach
to students at diverse student populations, you know, at colleges
or universities that have diverse student populations,
specifically you emphasis with historically black colleges and
universities. Because as I started going to those schools the
faculty members at those schools were but informed me that they
didn't have a problem with attracting students at those schools.
The more of the challenge is maintaining them or encouraging them
to stay within their major thinking that it was so challenging
and they may not have a chance to have careers in that field. So
it seems like you know, the leaders here at IMA really
appreciated my efforts and thought that a better fit for both me
and IMA is to focus about around diversity and inclusion
initiatives more so on a full time basis. And here I am today
since July 1st of 2018 being an IMA's director of diversity and
inclusion. And since then, you know, I've just developed my own
path with that particular position. So a lot of the initiatives
that fall under that umbrella is education. For example, with IMA
being a membership organization, you have to provide education
not only for staff but for our members as well. So we've done
training on, you know, various D&I topics recently
specifically has to be laid to unconscious bias. You know, we
have a great course under our Leadership Academy catalog called
cultivating a bias free workplace and we use that as a product
both for staff and members as relates to training in that area.
I'm still doing an outreach where I'm going out next week to
Savannah, Georgia to some of the historically black colleges and
universities in that area. And other areas is the diversification
of a leadership pipeline, both as relates to staff and all
volunteers and then also just best practices determining what
other organizations are doing as it relates to a diversity and
inclusion initiative. 


 


Mitch: (05:16)


That's great. Following all these different initiatives and a lot
of your personal outreach what do you think is the true value of
diversity and inclusion? Why is this important? Why are you so
passionate about accomplishing your own personal goals? 


 


Linda: (05:30)


Right? So you hit it, you framed the question very well that this
is clearly coming from my own personal passion. What's
interesting and I'm so honored that I'm in this role because this
is like the most exciting role in my career. Despite the fact
that I don't consider myself an expert in the area, I'm still
going through a learning curve in terms of how this position
should play out. But the reason why I know I will be successful
with it is because it relates to my personal passion. I can, you
know, speak to it, you know, very directly, just based on when we
talk about unconscious bias or conscious bias. I've experienced
it all throughout my career, you know, so I know specifically how
to apply it. and how I would like you know, a workplace to look
like as it relates to diversity and inclusion. So in terms of
value what I would suggest to other organizations, or what we
have to keep in mind here is that no successful initiative with
diversity is successful if you don't include the component of
inclusion. So when I think about diversity and inclusion
together, I think of transparency so you know, I just saw a quote
recently about how diversity and inclusion should integrate
together. And it said diversity is when you're invited to the
party and inclusion is when you're asked to dance. And I thought
that was a great correlation, you know, of the two just recently
among our staff when we had trained in use India leadership
academies, a course about developing a bias free workplace that
was a great milestone for me and shared with you Mitch that you
know, we actually saw staff, at least my observation was, is that
there was staff that actually spoke up during that session that
I've never seen in any other type of forum speak up. And I think
it's because they, you know, based on what they do here at IMA,
they may not think that they're at a level or maybe based on
their title, they don't feel like they can or should be heard.
But I was very fascinated that it seems like the, the walls just,
there was no walls there and people just opened up and you know,
when I see that type of environment development developing within
an organization, that to me is you know, signs of success. 


 


Mitch: (08:22)


So I think that's a great point because, you know, personally
witnessing the training session that we had obviously there were
very positive results coming from that. So I'm just curious, you
know, as awareness increases in our organization and the other
organizations that you reach out to what kind of positive results
have you seen elsewhere maybe outside of our own building
here? 


 


Linda: (08:47)


Well, actually I just been appointed to serve on behalf...