 Good morning. My name is Melissa Watkinson. I'm here to present about a wonderful group of people and our efforts in Centering historically underrepresented voices within the Salish Sea, which you've already heard a little bit about this morning The Salish Sea is the trans boundary body of water that lies between Vancouver, BC and Washington state It includes the Strait of Georgia, the Strait of Wanda Fuca, and Puget Sound There are many people who care deeply and work to ensure that the diverse ecosystems within the Salish Sea are preserved conserved and resilient to changes To me, as Dr. Finney recommended, diversity is personal I'm a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation of Oklahoma and grew up in Washington state where a number of my family members are Enrolled with the Upper Skagit Tribe Because I grew up in Washington closer to my father's family. I more culturally identify with the Coast Salish community I work as a social scientist at a program called Washington Sea Grant Which is focused within or housed within the College of Environment at University of Washington Most of my work engages with Coastal tribes to find the solutions To the social, cultural, and economic impacts of changes within the ocean. I Consider myself a queer indigenous scholar After working with large mostly white environmental nonprofit organizations and within the Academy and Experiencing and witnessing the kinds of disparities that exist there I have joined in a broader effort with other underrepresented and underserved communities to bring diversity, equity, and inclusion Into the environmental and marine studies field across the Salish Sea region and I have two examples that I'd like to highlight here As I said, I now work at Washington Sea Grant We are a program with about 27 staff Who do research outreach and education programs that serve the coastal communities of Washington state? Washington Sea Grant does not currently do well in breaking that green ceiling There are about 11 percent of our staff who identify as people of color In June of last year nearly half of our staff about 14 of us Came together organically after recognizing that we had similar interests and that there was a deep need in bringing more diversity Equity and inclusion into our workspace both internally and externally with the communities and partners that we work with We quickly identified ourselves as the Washington Sea Grant DEI work group or diversity equity and inclusion work group And it's co-chair by myself and our assistant director for programs Kate Lytle We've developed some groups that work collectively to work on Assessments and evaluations for how we are doing in terms of DEI at Washington Sea Grant There's folks that help in design and sharing of trainings and resources And we've worked to create a 10-year roadmap on what Washington Sea Grant will do to implement DEI within our within our different areas a few of the processes that we've engaged in since June of 2018 so not even a year ago we've we've held by a Third-party facilitator of racial equity training for all of our staff to engage in We have put in a diversity statement and a diversity value statement within our website and our annual RFP process and Some staff members have articulated Washington Sea Grant feels that it's becoming a place where they can bring their whole selves, too I believe that this is a great example And I'm that I'm proud of the work that needs to be done by organizations and departments that have not historically engaged in Centering underrepresented voices and Now I get the great pleasure of sharing the phenomenal work of some of my dearest community-based colleagues Together the folks on this on the stage Who are in this photo we share the stage of the of the DEI panel at the regional Salish sea ecosystem conference last year and We together opted to use that energy and momentum that we've gained from that experience To try and bring the ideas that we have to a better stage Like many other regions and most other fields there are significant disparities in the representation Content and processes for implementing diversity equity and inclusion within the environmental fields across the Salish sea and the Pacific Northwest Coast Although professionals in this field are aware and concerned about issues related to DEI There is an overall lack of understanding for how to integrate these concepts into the environmental workforce Addressing inequity and working towards environmental justice is essential to the successful movement. We believe We also believe that by creating and fostering the Salish sea DEI community of practice We can begin to help build a critical foundation in this work together a Majority of the folks here are either alumni or current doctoral students at the University of Washington All doing really excellent work to bring stronger representation of diverse communities into the environmental and marine fields in Addition to coming together to form the community of practice We are partnering with a couple departments within the College of Environment to organize and host the first-ever Salish sea DEI symposium this fall Collectively we have designed seven goals and values of collaboration and I'll just highlight a few We aim to support a continuous and meaningful dialogue within a marine environmental field in order to create internal and external solutions to DEI gaps We also aim to elevate historically underrepresented voices within the environmental field of our region And as a Salish sea DEI community of practice We hope that we can offer a demonstrated model for implementing an equitable Collaborative process based on our core DEI values and that seeks to continue learning and understanding equity injustice So here I've provided two different examples for implementing DEI work both in just under a year of actually implementation I hope that these can offer really great models for what we can do together and bringing DEI and internal Inside and outside of our work. Thank you