CHICAGO — Alexander Graham Bell’s famous quote—“The only difference between success and failure is the ability to act”—wasn’t aimed at diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) challenges, but it was central to the message delivered by two trade show executives during a recent International Association of Exhibitions and Events (IAEE) webinar, “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Senior Leadership.”
Shari Liss, executive director of the SEMI Foundation, who is responsible for leading the foundation’s DEI initiatives as well as its workforce development program, spoke about the DEI roadmap and toolkit her organization has developed to help both SEMI and its 2,400 global member companies on their DEI journey. It includes a comprehensive list of DEI-related assessments, resources and research. “In order to oversee workforce programs, we need to create a diverse talent pipeline,” Liss said.
“The roadmap explains why we all need to embrace DEI, outlines the process and what to expect as we engage in this work as organizations and companies, and provides a framework for achieving greater DEI, as well as how to measure and track that progress,” she said. The roadmap and toolkit, which were just launched, have already been downloaded thousands of times. They are free and accessible to everyone, not just SEMI and its member companies.
Dave Labuskes, CTS, CAE, RCDD, CEO of AV and integrated experience nonprofit AVIXA, is also a catalyst for change through action on the DEI front. Several years ago, AVIXA created a volunteer Women’s Council and in 2018, a Diversity Council—both are grassroots volunteer efforts. After the murder of George Floyd in 2020, his team began exploring how it can more effectively address DEI needs within the AV industry, many of which are small businesses that may have DEI initiatives but not necessarily the resources to carry them out effectively.
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AVIXA also launched a DEI pledge to create a more diverse, equitable and inclusive AV industry, which more than 1,500 individuals and companies have signed to date. The company also published information and glossaries on inclusive language. “We have a lot of legacy language in the AV industry – like master clock and slave clock, and male/female connectors – that could be hurtful,” he said. AVIXA also launched a series of webinars to help people understand how DEI can positively impact their business and create value.
Building a Business Case for DEI
Panel Moderator Gabrielle Weiss, Vice President and Editor-in-Chief, Trade Fair Managerkicked off the discussion by asking the panelists where they began their DEI journey – and how they presented the importance of addressing DEI in their respective sectors to both their constituents, board members, and other key stakeholders.
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Liss said, “The best way to convince executives is to use data and statistics, because they clearly demonstrate why this is so important.” His organization started by gathering as much data as possible on workforce development strategies and retention rates, including a recent McKinsey & Company report on the importance of inclusion for businesses, which Weiss said found that companies with the most diverse leadership were 33% more profitable than their less diverse counterparts. “There’s a huge body of knowledge that shows that diverse teams and companies with diverse leadership outperform other companies and have higher rates of creativity, productivity, problem solving, innovation and new revenue generation,” Liss added. “By not doing that work, you’re actually leaving money on the table.”
DEI begins at the Ministry of the Interior
According to Labuskes, AVIXA began by gathering information from industry experts and resources who have personal experience with these issues, including members of AVIXA’s Diversity Council. “I don’t think there’s an expectation that we’re going to be absolutely right from the beginning,” he said. “I think there’s an expectation that we’re going to work on it, try it, listen, learn, and iterate.”
It’s also a function of organizational structure and culture, he said. AVIXA’s 12 volunteer board members are men and women representing the AV supply chain from virtually every continent — and that diversity is intentional. AVIXA’s HR team is also working to create a more diverse, equitable and inclusive environment, including bringing in consultants to help address unconscious bias within the organization’s own staff. “I fundamentally believe that the makeup of our leadership impacts our success as an association … we didn’t feel like we should just be banging the drum and not taking action.” Liss said SEMI also provides extensive unconscious bias training to its staff.
Liss said, “We have to first acknowledge that we are all learners in this space” — especially for leaders who don’t represent the demographics most impacted by bias and exclusion. “We have to listen and elevate the voices of the people we’re trying to help and support, while recognizing that we’re coming at it from a different perspective. My starting point is always to gather ideas from people who come from different backgrounds than I do, to really hear, listen, and be a learner.” Among the people she first reached out to were SEMI’s 65-person Diversity Council. She added that there are plenty of DEI trainings and certifications available, many of them free on sites like LinkedIn, to help learners test their own biases and theories. “That’s a good place to start.”
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Although AVIXA has been criticized by some who say it is a societal and political problem, not an audiovisual industry problem, “our response is that improving the diversity of our industry results in greater innovation and higher levels of profitability, while also providing social benefits by opening the workforce to a broader audience,” Labuskes said.
DEI and trade shows
Events are a very public and relatively easy-to-measure way to help build a DEI initiative, the panelists agreed. AVIXA hosts a number of events, including InfoComm 2021, which is scheduled for October 2021 in Orlando. While there was a perception that the speaker lineup was typically made up of 45-year-old white guys, that wasn’t something AVIXA had really considered. “We had to start asking questions that we hadn’t asked before and then compile that information,” Labuskes said. They also launched a “mic pass” program for all of AVIXA’s in-person and virtual events, where they asked “AV celebrities” to reach out to someone from a less-represented community to come on stage with them. “It’s a way to bring in new voices without losing the power of the existing ones,” he said.
“Diversity on stage is pretty easy to identify,” as is the number of companies and individuals who have signed AVIXA’s diversity pledge. “What becomes a little harder is measuring the changes that have resulted and their impact.”
Liss said that while it’s common to have, say, a panel of women in the semiconductor industry at lunch or breakfast, it’s not typically integrated into the program. We also need to move away from performative gestures like having a moderator who’s a person of color and the panel of experts who aren’t diverse, she added. “That’s not real.”
At the most recent SEMICON West, one of the organization’s largest trade shows held annually in San Francisco (although it was virtual in 2020), DEI was mentioned in nearly every keynote on the main stage, even when it wasn’t the focus of the discussion. “That’s when we started to realize it was gaining traction,” she said.
And that’s the goal: to embed DEI both into the workforce and into every conversation at an event so that it’s not an add-on, but is directly integrated into everything an organization does.
The webinar, available on-demand, is free for IAEE members and $49 for non-members, on the IAEE website.
Contact Gabrielle Weiss at gweiss@tradeshowexecutive.com; Shari Liss at sliss@semi.org; and Dave Labuskes at dlabuskes@avixa.org