An Interview with Hanif Fazal: An Inside Look into the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Consultancy World

Introduction by Marion Davis

In a continuing series of articles that define the offerings and benefits of training options within the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) space, I have interviewed Hanif Fazal, the co-founder and managing partner of the Center for Equity and Inclusion, based out of Portland, Oregon. Hanif is also the author of the book An Other World. The Center for Equity and Inclusion (CEI) offers workshops, consulting, and online learning for organizations and educators focused on driving culture forward. 

As a disabled white woman in the disability inclusion space, I have witnessed first-hand the many different discussions within DEI on how to best approach equity and inclusion, considering intersectional identities. There was a common complaint from the disability community about being excluded from DEI with arguments positing that disability should be considered first in inclusion considering the size of this minority group that encompasses individuals of all backgrounds. I have also seen the pushback against DEI more recently; heard common criticisms that problems in DEI existed due to a lack of “standards, consistency, and accountability among DEI practitioners;” and watched as many former DEI practitioners rebranded themselves to People Operations with a pitch on using data-driven practices. 

Personally, while having a front-row seat to these arguments, as a pragmatic person, I seek to highlight problems and solutions, including developing my own solutions for problems within my specific area of expertise, which is awareness of and inclusion for the disabled homebound. At the end of the day, what matters is what works. But what does work? 

When conducting further research on the topic of the offerings and benefits of DEI consulting, I recognized that many founders of these training organizations were providing services based on their lived experiences as members of one or more minority groups. This adds a richness to their offerings, but the sheer diversity of human life can create logistical issues as an organization might struggle to determine which DEI consulting group or groups to turn to with so many niched options. 

To this point, I have presented a series of questions to Hanif Fazal based on questions I have encountered from organizations wanting more clarity on DEI consulting as well as some challenges to DEI that have been put forth.

An Interview with Hanif Fazal

Marion: I see that you have your debut book An Other World available now and that you are a nationally recognized facilitator, educator, speaker, and leadership coach as well as the co-founder of the Center for Equity and Inclusion (CEI). Can you tell me a little about your professional background, what led you to enter this field, and what motivated you to convert your knowledge into consulting services for organizations? 

Hanif: I spent nearly 20 years in education and social work. During that period I had an opportunity to build an academic support program for students within Portland Public Schools who were identified in 8th grade as most likely to not graduate high school. The program would go on to get national recognition and is still in operation 17 years later. 

This youth program resided within a larger non-profit that I helped lead. When I started at this non-profit, it was a vastly white organization both demographically and culturally. As the organization began to diversify, it began to embrace a commitment to what we would now refer to as diversity, equity, and inclusion. Over seven years, I had the opportunity to lead this organization through an on-going transformative process that centered diverse perspectives, increased organizational diversity, enhanced the workplace culture and transformed not only how people felt internally, but the way we ran as a business and the programming we provided to the communities we served.  

My success in the education sphere surfaced a few things for me. I learned that in order to make a dent in persistent and historic disparities, more than just individual transformation was needed. A more systemic approach that could address needed cultural shifts (belief systems, language, values) and institutional shifts (resourcing, policies, representation, decision making/makers, access) needed to take place. I also learned that meaningful cultural and institutional shifts took time, intentional process, vision, accountability, and a commitment to on-going learning that translated into new actions and behaviors.

I knew from my experience leading these efforts within a system that organization transformation was possible, and it could lead to a healthier, more effective, more profitable organization. As our process unfolded, other organizations noticed the changes, and we started receiving inquiries, requesting consulting and training. At about this time, equity and inclusion started taking hold, and organizations were feeling a pressure from a variety of stakeholders to engage in meaningful equity work. 

I would eventually leave that non-profit, and in 2015, Frewine Kiros and myself would co-found the Center for Equity and Inclusion. The Center’s focus is to support organizations (corporate, non-profit, education, philanthropy, and government) to embed equity, diversity and inclusion across their organization’s culture, operations, and services

Marion: What are the benefits that diversity and inclusion training can bring to an organization? 

Hanif: The benefits to organizations engaging in DEI span across an organization's ecosystem. These benefits range from increased profit, to higher retention (decreased expenses) from an enhanced capacity to innovate to attracting new talent from a younger generation who are expecting inclusive work environments. Leaders who invest in DEI, understand that when done well, DEI simply makes for a better business.  

Internally, DEI can be extremely helpful in supporting individual leaders and teams learn how to navigate race, gender, and positional dynamics.  As employees and teams  grow their capacity in this area, they create space for diverse perspectives, shared problem solving, informed decision-making, are diversifying leadership, and ultimately begin to cultivate a more inclusive, connected culture that translates into more effective and productive teams.  

Externally, good DEI work also helps companies reach segments of a customer base that have traditionally been ignored or left untapped often, because organizations have been ineffective in connecting with diverse customer bases. Expert DEI training and consultation can assist companies in both recruiting  diverse talent that can assist in bridging into a new market, Consider the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis’ recent statement: “black purchasing power could jump from 976 billion to a potential 1.6 trillion in the US if communities pursued equity in the form of narrowing black-white differences in household income." From a straight financial perspective, businesses lose when they don't proactively engage in diverse communities.

DEI work can also be instrumental in supporting leaders in figuring out how to do business in a manner that doesn’t perpetuate long standing disparities and when possible help close these disparities. Whether that is ensuring that businesses are developing and utilizing a diverse vendor or contractor pool, to supporting more targeted efforts from their corporate giving programs, there is no shortage of strategies that DEI can develop with leaders to make good on the bottom line while having a positive impact on their community. 

Marion: One challenge that corporations may find is that there is a great deal of diversity within diversity–from race to gender identity to disability. Many diversity and inclusion training consultancies focus on one aspect of diversity based on the founders’ lived experiences which adds to the richness of the services they provide within their niche but also can leave corporations struggling to know which consultancies would meet their specific needs or how best to address inclusion for multiple aspects of diversity. What would your recommendation be here?

Hanif: This is a great question and the way that you’ve framed it is spot on. In our approach, rather than providing training about a particular identity group that leaves clients wondering what to do next when the training is over, we focus on teaching organizations how to advance equity and inclusion by providing tools to navigate across a range of differences so that organizational leaders can sustain the work long term. When I say difference, this can mean between people who hold different identities–race, gender, ability, religion, socio-economic class, geography, sexual orientation, and/or positional power. 

And to your point, we also have our focus, and it’s on race. However, race is a starting point not an end point in the conversation. We start there because in equity work, we are concerned with closing disparities. When we look at data on disparities across social indicators, we find that there is a historic and persistent disparity across racial lines. In many cases our racial disparities are actually growing. Starting with race allows us a focus point in which we can introduce protocols, frameworks and tools that can be applied to other disparities that a corporation may be attempting to remedy. 

We often tell our clients, while we start with race, this is never intended to be to the detriment of discussing other dimensions of identity.  Rather, it is a strategic approach: start from the place of the largest disparity. Our aim is to support clients in building internal capacity and skill to cultivate equitable and thriving workplace culture for everyone. An intersectional lens is necessary for that.  

Part of the difficulty of integrating equity and inclusion work is that it requires specific conversations and general conversations.  We need to speak generally about where we hope to get to for all people to be able to thrive. We also need to speak specifically about the fact that different communities have had different barriers to thriving imposed upon them. There are really helpful frameworks for doing this though. One is targeted universalism, from John A. Powell, the Director at UC Berkeley’s Othering & Belonging Institute. Within a targeted universalism framework, we have general conversations around universal goals we want to establish for all groups concerned. For instance, organizations often have universal goals around increasing retention, improving employee engagement, and increasing diversity across their teams. Specific conversations then come in with respect to the strategies developed to achieve those goals. This would include examining performance evaluation and promotion processes, gathering and disaggregating data based on employee engagement opportunities, and developing a deep understanding of an employee’s experience of working at their organization. In order to yield the most holistic picture, these strategies would need to be targeted for specific groups, informed by the disparities that have been created for different groups based upon how they are situated within structures, culture, and across geographies to obtain the universal goal.   

Marion: What topics are included in the training you provide, and what have you found to be particularly popular in what you offer? 

Hanif: By far and away the most popular work we are doing with teams right now centers around accountability. Leadership teams are really struggling with what it means to be accountable to a commitment to equity and inclusion, how to hold others accountable, and in general how to establish a culture of accountability that is empowering and healthy rather than what it tends to be, which is punitive and shaming. Our work helping teams that provide clear framing of the tenants of a healthy accountable culture along with clear processes to hold one another accountable is being received extremely well. 

Yet, that is not the only thing we offer that has been resonating with our clients. We offer a number of training sessions that range from introductory equity training to more advanced work with leadership teams. Offerings can range from as simple as establishing a common language and agreements to help navigate conversations to frameworks that help teams locate disparate policies, practices and belief systems that impact the workplace and how an organization does business. Our coaching and consulting offerings are also really popular as they provide focused support and can be targeted to specific issues or challenges an individual leader or organization may be attempting to address. I think people really appreciate the tangible and applicable nature of the coaching and consulting we offer.We have a similar response to our strategic planning work with organizations. 

While I understand that you’re asking about topics that are popular, I can’t overstate that it is how we facilitate and humanize these topics that makes them so impactful and compelling. 

Finally, our Facilitator Intensive is quite popular for organizations that are looking to build capacity within the staff of their organization to continue to lead DEI related conversations. This intensive training teaches participants how to lead conversations using the techniques such as storytelling, reflective questioning and dealing with resistance that CEI employs. This becomes another tool for sustaining the work long term.

Marion: In what format are your services typically provided, and what do you find to be most effective and efficient for the current climate in 2024? 

Hanif: In 2024 we are definitely finding that prospective clients are more interested in learning about shorter term trainings that have a more targeted focus. And several of these trainings still require a commitment of 3-6 hours at a time and some may involve multiple sessions. Our experience has allowed us to become more tailored than we have ever been before. Clients appreciate seeing the options that we are able to develop for them when it comes to the approach, time, and scope of work. 

Since Covid we have adapted and are now able to work on Zoom which reduces cost and travel time. We have also developed digital capacity for this work. We established our first digital training which is focused on a basic orientation to race equity. In 2023 this digital offering was awarded the Brandon Hall HCM award for Best Learning Program that Supports and Promotes Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. Our digital offerings help larger organizations provide employees with the opportunity to engage with this work in smaller doses over time while also establishing common language, agreements and frameworks. 

Whenever possible we will still do work in person to maximize the type of culture shifts that our clients are seeking.  

Marion: With the growing focus on data-backed DEI and the rising popularity of People Operations as a field that uses many quantitative metrics as key performance indicators (KPI), have you adapted your consulting services over the years to focus more on quantitative measurements for the impact of your training within an organization? 

Hanif: It feels like there’s been an assumption that DEI work hasn’t been focused on quantitative measures, and I don’t think that’s the case. We haven’t focused more on quantitative metrics. We have always had that focus. This began with our development with Portland State University of our cultural assessment which we offer to organizations. It also includes our work on equity plans/strategic plans or action plans. Inherent in those plans are goals, milestones, outcomes etc. Both of these processes help us organize data in a way that helps our partners learn what is working and what is not and address areas in need of improvement with measurable goals and outcomes. 

Additionally, we have helped organizations focus on how to use quantitative metrics in equitable ways. Are you disaggregating your data by race? By gender? Intersectionality? How are you sharing and learning from what your data surfaces? How does the data help inform how to do things differently? 

Marion: What is one of your most compelling stories about how you made change at a client's organization? What problems were they facing, what approaches did you use to create change, and what was the outcome your client experienced? 

Hanif: One of our multi-year partnerships is with Oregon Housing and Community Services (OHCS), a government housing agency whose mission is to provide stable and affordable housing to Oregonians of lower and moderate income. 

The challenge that they wanted to address was that their leaders and staff lacked a common understanding of the impact of race on the state of housing in Oregon. While some leaders and staff were well-equipped with knowledge and lived experience, many were not, and as an agency, there was not a common language, set of tools or frameworks, and baseline analysis on how racial disparities, among many other disparities, impacted their day to day work. The Executive Director and Chief EDI Officer recognized that this was a skill gap for the agency as a whole, and as a result, they were not working as effectively as they could be in working alongside agency partners, government leaders, and community members in closing housing disparities. 

In order to address this challenge, CEI employed a holistic approach that we knew would drive meaningful, sustainable solutions for OHCS. In our first stage of work, we engaged with key stakeholders at the agency to understand more about the agency’s strengths, opportunities for growth, and agency culture. We wanted to get a clear picture of both operational and cultural successes and challenges.In our second stage of work, we worked alongside agency leaders to build their capacity to speak to and work through an equity lens. We started this by delivering training to establish a strong foundation on the construct of race; a common language around diversity, equity, and inclusion; and DEI frameworks. This group of leaders committed to engaging in monthly training sessions with CEI, and they also worked together on assigned homework in between training sessions, which included directly applying frameworks, tools, and learning to their day-to-day work. Not only did these sessions spark ongoing conversations but these learning sessions helped to foster more positive, productive working relationships between leaders and staff. With the by-product of these sessions being a sense of connection and trust, leaders reported being able to work together more cohesively, and thus getting to their solutions faster. 

While we would deliver monthly learning sessions, we also worked with identified leaders and staff in 1:1 coaching sessions, consulted with the EDI Dept. and Executive Team on revamping their agency’s mission and vision to align with their commitment to DEI, and provided ongoing, targeted strategic support to meet the ongoing needs of OHCS and its employees as they navigated embedding DEI values, and more specifically for them, a commitment to racial equity and justice into every area of agency culture and operations. 

In addition to this, a few months after our partnership began, Oregon’s governor had delivered a mandate that racial equity was a state priority and that all state agencies were required to submit a DEI Strategic Plan, outlining their goals, strategies, and measurable benchmarks in closing racial disparities through their work. We partnered with OHCS’ Executive Team and leaders in creating this Strategic Plan and sharpening the skill sets needed to work towards achieving the plan’s objectives over time. 

This holistic approach to partnership made it possible for CEI to provide effective consulting and coaching support to OHCS’ leaders and staff efficiently. Since we already had cultivated the trust and relationships with them, we could effectively meet them in their moments of conflict and challenge to offer strategic thought-partnership and coaching when needed. Additionally, since we had a holistic understanding of the agency’s work across departments, the consulting and coaching support provided by CEI was relevant, applicable, and aligned with the agency’s mission and strategic priorities. 

Some additional results and impacts of our work together include the draft of OHCS’s first-ever Equity Statement, institutionalizing an Equity Lens for decision making, and the successful change management with the transitions and changes across teams to arrange leaders and staff in their position of greatest impact. OHCS has also modified their contracts and procurements in order to be more equitable and inclusive. This now serves as the template for other state agencies. Agency teams and committees are employing DEI tools and frameworks in their day to day work with community leaders, partners, and government leaders in order to align with the Governor’s mandate and drive sustainable change in the state of housing. All of this work is only possible because of the commitment of OHCS to reflect this value for DEI internally at the agency as much as they do in their external work. They have worked to operationalize accountability processes, prioritize ongoing learning opportunities across the agency, and foster positive working relationships with one another and this has translated into every area of their work. 

OHCS’ leaders and staff have reported that their teams are working together more efficiently, are able to navigate challenges more effectively, and that they are better prepared to do their mission-led work given our partnership and support. Beyond this, leaders and staff have reported feeling more confident and empowered to speak to matters of housing justice, particularly with a focus on historically and persistently marginalized communities. OHCS continues to be a model for what is possible when leaders and teams cultivate and steward an ongoing commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion. 

Marion Davis is a contributing writer at EmployDiversityNetwork.com. She is a disabled DEIA consultant and writes on the value of diversity and inclusion across multiple industries, specifically as relates to disability and intersectionality.