Roundtable Discussion: Multiple Lenses of DEI

Neelam Chand is the CEO and founder of Shift SLC, a diversity and inclusion consulting firm located in Salt Lake City, Utah. With over a decade of D&I experience, Chand has worked with different industries ranging from higher education to financial services and tech startups to break down systemic barriers and design a more equitable workplace environment.

When it comes to inclusion work, her philosophy is to "keep it real"and skip the etiquette of making people feel comfortable. She believes that a bit of discomfort is needed to begin the process of empathy and inspire positive change.

Chand has offered thought leadership insights through various platforms including Forbes, Bloomberg Law, Medium, Utah BusinessMagazine, Utah Bankers Association, and Silicon Slopes, for her expertise around anti-racism, intersectionality, tokenism,microaggressions, and women of color in the workplace.

Before establishing her firm, Chand served as SVP, Diversity andInclusion Officer at Zions Bank. Chand currently serves on various social justice boards and commissions throughout the state of Utah,including; Utah Governor's Martin Luther King, Jr. Human RightsCommission, Utah Polynesian Professionals, and the Utah Covid-19Multicultural Task Force.

Chand was most recently recognized as 30 Women to Watch by UtahBusiness in 2021.

Marie Roker-Jones (she/her) is the co-Ceo of Essteem. Essteem organizes Equalithons (hackathons for equality), first-of-its-kind, virtual DEI events that connect tech companies that uphold diversity and inclusion commitments to underrepresented tech talent who want to work for those companies.

She is a social impact startup founder with over ten years of experience in leading gender and racial diversity strategies. As the founder of Raising Great Men, she built a movement for parents, empowering them with resources to raise culturally aware and socially conscious children. She was the senior editor for The Good Men Project, a multimedia, cross-platform site that asks, “What does it mean to be a good man in the 21st century?”

Marie also has workforce and career development experience creating workforce re-entry programs for underrepresented communities through coalition building, employment readiness, networking opportunities, and community outreach.

Marie was the lead for The Charter for Compassion's Compassionate NYC and through her project, #CompassionConvos facilitated cross-sectoral dialogue to examine implicit biases and their impact on our perception of criminality, economic disparities, educational underachievement, health disparities, and other factors that bring about social stratification and separation.

Keni Dominguez is a workplace culture strategist, speaker, and career coach for Black womxn and other womxn of color introverts, with over ten years of leadership experience in People Operations/HR. She is a certified court mediator, a Predictive Index (PI) partner, and a talent optimization specialist, aligning people strategy with business strategy to maximize results. She also volunteers as a pay equity advisor for 81cents. Keni is the advocate you want in your corner.

She attended UC Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco. She specializes in Work Law, an integrated study of the laws and policies governing the workplace, the labor market, and the legal relationships between businesses and workers, including the regulation of work and the problems of inequity, insecurity, and discrimination in the workplace.

As a fierce advocate and ardent believer in a people-first philosophy, she is passionate about workplace issues related to gender, racial equity, and how those issues emerge for Black and other WOC introverts. Keni was cited in multiple press pieces on platforms, including HuffPost, Washington Post, Apartment Therapy, Rolling Out, HushLoudly podcast. She is also a DEI partner with Power to Fly.

Noelle Johnson, Co-Founder and Learning and Development Partner with Johnson Squared Consulting has over a decade of experience working in operations and transforming company culture into a more equitable and happier work environment.

In addition to this role, Noelle is the CEO of My Interview Buddy, a career services company. In this position, she manages a team to help job seekers land their dream job and works with organizations on LinkedIn, recruiting efforts, and personal branding workshops for their staff.

Noelle has earned a positive reputation for her expertise and has been quoted in Forbes, Fast Company, Glassdoor, NPR, and more. She has also written for Medium, Cameron Diaz's Your Body Book, and professional women's websites like InHerSight and PowerToFly.

Noelle has given speeches and led workshops to small and large groups, in person and digitally, on topics including but not limited to; accessibility, psychological safety, establishing inclusion effort at work, self advocacy at work, developing a diverse network, allyship, and addressing internal unconscious bias.