DEI

Overview

As with any pandemic, there will be an imbalance of suffering as climate change progresses. We will fail miserably at meeting the hallmarks of democracy, human rights and social justice if we do not center the most marginalized and vulnerable in every aspect of climate-change work. LEAP’s scientific discoveries may also force us to completely re-imagine fundamental features of society.

At the LEAP Center, DIVERSITY, EQUITY and INCLUSION (DEI) are core to our identity and our commitment to confronting the social and scientific challenges of climate change.

  • Core = DEI is central to LEAP’s mission and is a part of every aspect of the Center’s work. We understand that the burdens of climate change are not equally distributed throughout society.
  • Commitment =  LEAP is to leveraging diverse perspectives, experiences and ideas to produce rigorous climate data science and impactful community engagement initiatives

Key Tenets of DEI at LEAP

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion are critical to LEAPs scientific and social missions related to climate change.

  • Innovation = Richer questions, problems, and solutions emerge from diverse teams. LEAP’s team is equipped to address these complexities.
  • Diversity = LEAP’s ability to impact society is improved if LEAP looks like society. Our work — the questions we ask, and the problems and solutions we identify — are influenced by who we are.
  • Legacy = LEAP is committed to bidirectional knowledge transfer. Not only will we share our science out, we also acknowledge that we have much to learn from marginalized communities that have been deeply affected by climate change, and from other stakeholders who possess knowledge critical to LEAP’s mission.
  • Impact = LEAP’s work aims to address the needs of the most vulnerable communities. Our science must reach beyond the university.

LEAP DEI Objectives

  • Integrate LEAP’s values into recruitment, research, education, and knowledge transfer efforts.
  • Increase representation of underrepresented minorities (URMs) in the burgeoning discipline of climate data science.
  • Assess, review and revise all LEAP activities through an explicitly DEI lens.

Knowledge Transfer Objectives

  • Bidirectional Dialogue = between academia, private industry, government, non-profits and the public, with a particular interest in partnerships with communities of color and climate-action communities. 
  • Innovation = in storytelling, visualization and social media for broad stakeholder intake.
  • Access = so that all LEAP research is open-source and broadly accessible.