From local to global in one month: the story behind the Global Inclusion Online Forum

One year ago, a new business development manager joined our Ukrainian office. Her name was Anna Krys, and at that time, she had just come from Ireland where she had spent four years working for an IT company. 

Being a social activist, she got into Irish Top 30 under 30 ranking by Sunday Business Post as a recognition of her social projects. While Living in Ireland, Anna provided training for women in Irish prisons and was part of the organizing team of “Diversity in Tech Week 2019”, a project of Dog Patch Labs that received an international award from Google For Startups.

Inspired by her diversity experience in Ireland, Anna has brought more awareness about diversity and inclusion into our office. She proposed the idea of arranging a diversity-oriented project in Ukraine, and we started brainstorming all possible formats and options. As it turned out, Ukraine’s corporate environment knew very little about the matter, so instead of focusing only on the tech industry, we decided to hold a nation-wide forum that would bring more awareness about DEI to the country’s leading businesses.

We started working on the idea in the fall of 2019 and reached out to a dozen of international speakers who agreed to come to Ukraine for the conference that was initially planned for May 2020. In early 2020, we already had over 10 speakers confirmed and several sponsors interested.

Yet in March, COVID-19 came. Confined to our homes, we brainstormed possible scenarios of keeping the conference alive, realizing that to make it work, we needed to go virtual. However, having organized many international and global initiatives before, which included special advocacy campaigns in the UN General Assembly and G20 Summit in Argentina, as well as side events in Davos, we decided against constraining ourselves to the borders of neither our country, nor our region. 

Now that we were able to have all global experts in one virtual space without needing them to travel, we said, “Let’s go global!” That is how the idea of the Global Inclusion Online Forum was born. In late April 2020, we were already working on the new agenda, researching and putting together the list of the world’s best DEI practitioners from global corporations, consultancies, NGOs, and international organizations. 

We started reaching out to them in early May and by the end of the month, we already had about 20 confirmations: our speakers were keen on sharing their experiences with the world.

On May 25, George Floyd was killed by the police in the US. Within a day, everybody in the world knew about #BlackLivesMatter. Within a week, it grew into a global civil rights movement, affecting governments and corporations alike. All global corporations have announced their new DEI programs and donated hundreds of millions of USD to educational and CSR projects aimed at countering racism and restoring social justice. 

The interest in our event has also increased significantly as we started getting speakers’ confirmations at an accelerating pace. On top of that, dozens of calls with the leading diversity and inclusion practitioners have further opened our eyes on the most critical issues of diversity faced by the world’s biggest organizations. 

All global corporations have announced their new DEI programs and donated hundreds of millions of USD to educational and CSR projects

Racial equality has become the primary topic not only in the US, where everything started, but also in other developed countries that receive millions of immigrants every year.

Additionally, creating inclusive culture for remote teams emerged among the priorities. As such, leaders around the world are looking for best ways to make remotely dispersed team members feel engaged and included. Among other priorities are gender and disability inclusion, as well as elimination of unconscious bias. Talking to those leaders helped us shape the agenda as we went. 

Our format has also been evolving. Initially planning the event to be a one-day conference, we decided to add another day of live streams from early AM to allow D&I professionals from Australia and Asia to partake in the forum.

Lastly, should one intend to organize an online event that would resemble an offline one, they should consider the fact that people attend the primer mainly for networking, buying first-row tickets for five times the average price. As our COVID-19 experience shows, however, networking at online events does not work that well. 

On the contrary, online events seem to be the ultimate sources of knowledge and education, which is why following the two days of panel discussions and a startup competition, we added six days of practical workshops delivered by the world’s leading D&I professionals. As such, within only three weeks, the event’s format was transformed into a global week of D&I discussions, awareness, innovation, and education. 

It is fascinating to see how one big idea can turn a local project into a global one. As one month remains before the event, there are plenty of details that still need to be put together; one thing, however, is certain: after the forum, many corporations across the world will take their D&I programs to a whole new level. 

I want to personally thank all of our 70+ speakers, moderators, and contributors for making this global initiative happen together with us. We look forward to seeing all interested D&I professionals, HR executives, C-suite leaders, and NGO representatives at the Forum. Stay tuned for further big announcements!