We are owned and led by women, including a woman of colour.
This week, we took a step back. Pausing to listen and learn from the BIPOC community. To have important, raw conversations with our team.
What needs to change in how we operate? How we show up to the community? How we operate with our team? How we lead? How we communicate? These are just a few of the guiding questions we used to facilitate discussion.
We are imperfect. True to our values, our team celebrated what we do well and acknowledged where we can improve. And let us be very clear – we can absolutely do better. Here is our commitment:
1. We will not act in silence.
When we built Envol, we made a conscious decision not to treat diversity and inclusion as a service line. This was intentional: D&I is core to the heartbeat that powers us, fuels our business. To us, D&I is tables stakes and is a key consideration in EVERY decision that we make. We have learned that it’s not enough to ‘do’ in silence; our society is not yet at a place where we can assume that employers understand this premise of D&I being implicit, embedded. Moving forward, we will not be silent. We will be explicit. We will leverage our platform to advocate.
2. We will connect with our community.
Mentorship has played a critical role in each of our lives, giving and receiving. From structure programs and keynotes to spontaneous interactions and coffee talks, we believe that mentorship comes in moments. We are committed to continuing to actively show up for our community, cultivating mentorship moments with diverse individuals seeking growth and development.
3. We will give with intention.
Our giving philosophy has always centered around high-impact, local initiatives that empower and enable. To date, we have chosen initiatives that support women and children. Moving forward, we are adding a pillar to focus on initiatives that support women, children, and marginalized groups.
4. We are version 1.0, and we will continue learning.
Continuous learning is a core value that drives our commitment to ongoing development. Our learning is always at Version 1.0. we are never complacent with status quo. As a team and as individuals, we will continue listening, learning, sharing, discussing & advocating. We will be actively anti-racist.
We are proud of our team. We are proud of how they choose to show up every day. We are proud of our team’s willingness to look at ourselves, to listen and learn, to commit to action. As we slowly, mindfully return to the content you know us for, we look forward to weaving in messaging and stories that share more journeys, more truths.
This is not a moment; this is a movement. As part of our community, we ask you to hold us accountable.
To the BIPOC community, we stand with you.
– Brianna Blaney, Rikka Bouseh + the Envol team
#blacklivesmatter