 Hello, Demita. We've briefly met before, but today it's an honour to be having a candid conversation with such an esteemed champion of diversity, equity and inclusion. Beat has the Director's Pure Heading Accessibility and DEI Strategy for the American Society of Civil Engineers, and we would refer to it as ASCE, Publications and Standards, to being an imperative part of the Women in AI Collective. Your pioneering efforts are opening doors for underrepresented groups and setting industry benchmarks for inclusive policies and processes. What is rather inspiring to me and I'm sure to everybody else who will be fortunate enough to be listening to your experience and being inspired by it is how you go beyond your professional accomplishments and carry a vision for systematic and systemic change, if we may call it so. Today, not only I, but also the researchers globally are eager to gleaning your insights on the progress being made with respect to DEI, persistent challenges ahead that we are foreseeing and how we might collectively build a more equitable landscape in scholarly communications. Most of all, I would like to emphasise that I'm keen to learn what fuels your passion for this work every day. With several wins along the way, I'm sure your wisdom and triumph is what we're looking for in understanding better and learning more about you today. So, welcome, Damita. Thank you very much. Thank you for the invitation to be here. Firstly, congratulations on being a finalist for the top 100 DEI professional award. Well, this nomination only scratch the surface of your achievements. I can only imagine how thrilled you must have felt on seeing your name among such distinguished honorees. What was your first reaction, if may ask, like when you saw your name amongst the finalists? Well, I'll tell you, I received an email about it a few weeks before the announcement, and I thought it was spam. I did not, I didn't believe it. And then I saw a post on LinkedIn and I said, Oh, wow, this is, this is real. You know, I need to pay attention to this. So I was shocked and I was honoured at the same time. It was it's an honour. Over the years, you've held various influential roles within the American Society of Civil Engineers. Have how do you think have these experiences contributed to your expertise in publications and standards especially? And particularly when we talk about the realm of accessibility and DEI strategize? Yes, I've been at ASC for several years and I actually began my career there as a graphic designer. And I was always doing, you know, outside volunteer work related to justice with the National Association for the Advancement of Color People for the National Council of Negro Women. And I'm still a member and I still do work with them as well in my local area. So I was always doing that. But, you know, I was working every day and that wasn't a part of my day to day. You know, I didn't, 20 plus years ago, I didn't know what scholarly publishing was, you know, I was just going to a job. And still to this day, unfortunately, there are many like me that look like me that still don't know what's a career path. And so a lot of what I do wants to bring that awareness to historically excluded communities. And so that that fuels me. I will say, I don't think that I'm an expert because I'm still learning. I learned a lot. I learned something new. I try to learn something new daily. I've been lucky enough to be a member of committees or lead teams that are focused on making the industry more reflective of the public that it serves. Yes, definitely. And like as you speak about ASCE, being a director of the accessibility and DEIA strategy for publications and standards at ASCE, what prompted this transition and how do you envision shaping the accessibility and DEIA landscape within the publications domain, especially the scholarly publications domain, if I may ask. Well, as I mentioned, I was doing DEI work and within ASCE with the Staff Diversity and Inclusion Council, and I was working in publishing technologies. So I kind of had two jobs. And the managing director and publisher of publications and standards Dana Compton saw the need for the dedicated for a dedicated position that was focused on our publications DEIA strategy. And that's how the position came to be. She was she's a visionary and she saw the need. Now I can work with other teams within ASCE. And luckily now I only have the one job. So it's great. I'm more able to focus on on, you know, what fuels me. And DEIA is a part of our publication strategy. And of course, you know, it's a strategy based on ASCE's overall organizational strategy. With that being said, there are several things that I have on my to-do list. And I'm not doing it by myself. Since it's a part of the ASCE publication strategy, it's a part of everyone's job within publications. But I'll share a few things with you. We recently redesigned our online publications website ASCE library. And with the redesign, we realized that usability testing needs to happen to make sure that it is serving our members as we expect it and hope it hope that it will. So that's in progress. We are starting to collect, we'll be starting to collect demographic data on our authors. And that will help us. It will inform our decision-making related to make the make-up of our editorial boards in peer review. We're adding alternative text to our figures and tables to allow screen readers to read aloud content for those that are blind, have low vision or different learning styles. We expect that authors will soon have the ability to add journal article abstracts and languages other than English. The focus is on Portuguese, Spanish, Hindi, French and Chinese. If the author wishes to do that, he or she will be able to do that. The other thing we're working on are graphical abstracts. And those are images that visually represent an article abstract. So a few things going on right now. We also have partnerships with other organizations that are focused on DEIA, such as Coalition for Diversity and Inclusion and Scholarly Publishing and Scholarly Communications, I'm sorry, and the Royal Society of Chemistry's joint commitment for action on inclusion and diversity and publishing. And we also support the UN sustainability goals. We currently support seven of the goals and we'll be adding others. And we're also members of the UN SDG Publishers Compact, which aims to accelerate progress to achieve the SDGs by 2030. So if you want to know more, you can always go to our website, ASCELibrary.org, bash slash accessibility. So we have just a few things I'll mention to you today. There are quite a few, I may say. And it's definitely some commendable work that ASCE is doing on their themselves. But while we are at it, how do you recommend other organizations who may have not completely or holistically, you know, taken efforts in terms of embracing DEIA strategies and approaches? Are there any frameworks or metrics that you recommend that people or organizations may start at a smaller scale, and to probably create a very meaningful impact in future? Hmm. For my experience, assessment is key. Determine where you are and where you want to be. And then you can figure out the middle, figure out the middle and how you can get there. What are your objectives, get your strategies in order, and figure out what success looks like for you and your organization. As far as metrics, there are many DEIA maturity models out there. They are maturity models of tools you can use to assess the effectiveness of your efforts. I will say that the Anti-racism Toolkit for Organizations, my C4 disc has a chapter called Measurement and Metrics, and that's excellent if I say so myself. If you're limited by budget, there are some free assessment tools there. I also like the Race, Equity, and Inclusion Action Guide. That was put up by the Annie EKC Foundation. That's really, really helpful. And if someone wants to read a book, I'm reading a book right now called Racial Justice at Work, Okay. Practical Solutions for Systemic Change by the Winters Group. One of the chapters talks about DEIA work being transformational, people focused and emotional, therefore complex and sometimes polarizing. But within that chapter, you know, it provides helpful models. And as the title says, you know, practical solutions and actions that anyone can do. So really helpful. Sure, I'm sure they will be. And like when you work on these projects, and you know, when you work on strategizing certain solutions or approaches in terms of DEIA, were there any lessons that you've learned so far from your leadership experiences that may have shaped in terms of your approach that you take in strategizing DEIA? So I've always thought of this work in a particular way, you know, I think of it like a train, right? Some people board the DEIA train and get off at the next stop. Some state run for a few stops. Others stay on for the duration and some just don't get on at all. Right. That's fine. You know, this work is super hard. It's difficult. I'll tell anyone that's doing this work to take a break if you need it, take a break as long as you need it. And as I mentioned before, assess, assess, assess where you are. The data will allow you to move forward. It will tell you what you need to stop doing and what you should continue doing. You don't have to do one large thing all the time. You know, those small steps, that will end up being impactful over time. So don't think it, you know, I always tell people you can do something that small, it may affect two people. That's still change. Yes, absolutely. Very rightly said. And I completely agree with what you just said, in terms of even smallest of your efforts would make a really long lasting and an effective, you know, impact on someone who has somehow stumbled upon a resource or your approach in any which way. And as I mentioned earlier, your initiatives and efforts with respect to approaches certainly have no limits. While you are being humble and saying that it's just a little thing that you're doing, but I'm sure it is, you know, impacting a lot of humans around us. One such thing that acts as a testament that we've already discussed earlier, and you also recommended for people and organizations to look forward to is the C4 disk anti-racism toolkit involving over 60 volunteers. I would like to understand how would you say has this project contributed to addressing systemic racism within scholarly publishing organizations? And what impact do you see? And do you hope to see for it to make in the future? Well, first, it was a big project and I have to give a shout out to my project co-chair, Jocelyn Dawson, she's at Penn Press. I don't think either of us realized what we were taking on at the beginning of that project. You know, it was a lot, but we had a great group of volunteers. They were wonderful. They were engaged, dedicated. I learned a lot from each of them and it was an experience that I was lucky to have and I'll always value it. And we did have a lot of fun. The toolkit was actually written by a multi-racial group of industry professionals and it's intended to help individuals at all levels within the scholarly publishing industry. The goal is to help them implement inclusive policies, procedures, and norms. The goal of the another goal was to provide actionable items for organizations in their journey. That's why it's broken down into small chapters. You don't have to read the entire toolkit at once. And within those, there are five chapters within those five chapters are several sections within them. So you can take, you know, bite-sized pieces and implement them in your organization. Can I mention some of the other toolkits? Sure, sure. Okay, so that toolkit is the second in a series that's called the Toolkits for Equity. And I would recommend that you read those toolkits as well. They are the anti-racism toolkit for allies, which was actually the first one. The anti-racism toolkit for organizations was the second one. And the anti-racism toolkit for Black indigenous and people of color was the third one in that series. The other two resources I want to mention quickly are the guidelines for inclusive language and images and scholarly communications and the toolkit for disability equity. All of these resources were created by C4Disk, all volunteers, all great work. There's another guideline coming out in the next few months related to editorial peer review. And last thing I'll say about the toolkits right now is that they can be adapted by other industries. We want people to customize them for their own use. There's a CCBY license so you can copy and redistribute the material in any format you wish. You can build on it. But C4Disk will ask that you do not customize the content so it does not, you know, we don't want you to dilute the language or alter the spirit in which it was originally written. So we want it to be adapted, but please keep the spirit of the product. Absolutely, absolutely. And the messaging I believe should not be, you know, disturbed at any stage of it being kind of propagated across different areas probably. Like for our listeners and our audiences across the globe, would you give a little more information as to are these toolkits openly accessible? Do they need to subscribe? Do they need to be a part of the C4Disk community? Can you give some more information on that? You do not need to be, I will say, I'll say two things. It is open to anyone that wishes to access the content. And the second thing is if you see something on the C4Disk, you don't have to be a member of C4Disk to volunteer for any committee. So please, if you feel, if you see a project and it speaks to you, please sign up for that project. And they do have a community of interest. You don't, as I said, you don't need to be a member. I'm a member of the community of interest. The last time we met, we talked about recruitment and retention. So there are a lot of great topics. I think the month before was about creating a safe space for discussion. So a lot of great things going on at C4Disk. Definitely. And I'm sure that this will inspire a lot of organizations as well to put forth some fundamental rules and some kind of strategies so that they are more inclusive and make the scholarly publishing domain or even otherwise more inclusive in terms of the kind of approaches that they take. Like I was saying that, you know, how important it is for like-minded people to come together and drive such forces together and bring a change that again highlights us into getting into the topic of, you know, DIA approaches and the goals that we aim to achieve. When like-minded people come together, a more inclusive structure is formed. That's when we can look for a progressive and a very sustainable kind of, you know, scholarly publishing or overall a very, you know, cultured and, you know, culturally diverse communities, also something that is really essential to bring in people from different geographies, right, to come and speak about similar things. Absolutely. Yes. And when we speak about these DI approaches on an industry-wide level, let's say, so according to you, where are we heading with this progress and what works, what work do you think is still not done or it's yet to be done? According to you, what would that be? I would say accessibility, content access for those without funding for research and content access for those that have disabilities, the people with disabilities. Progress. We, you know, I believe that countries, a lot of publishers believe that countries should and should support authors, researchers, peer reviewers and emerging economies. ASCE especially has a lot that they, we've just launched our early last year and launched our first open access engineering journal called ASCE Open. It only hosts open papers as the name implies, you know, it brings more people into the research conversation because the barriers to the content aren't there. You know, time will allow for open research to grow, but the work is happening and will continue. I've heard from a colleague that the European Mathematical Society, they've been working with research libraries and they've found a way to make all of their research journals open access without the need for other side fees. And so I haven't dug into that, but I think that's wonderful. The work to be done. I think we, I know we have to be more mindful in our content creation. We have to involve people with disabilities in the design process early on and the creation process early on. So speaking of accessibility as one of the primary areas where we need to do a little more progress, we also conducted a global survey just about the beginning of this year. And we found out that a lot of due to funding constraints or due to heavily levied APC, which are the article processing charges, it becomes really difficult for researchers and authors around the world, especially from low income countries to be paying. And in that course, I think we are losing out on some really important research that needs to go out there in the world. So that's, we got some really interesting insights from the survey that we conducted, which we also presented at the East Conference last year and which kind of brought in a lot of perspectives from researchers from different regions wherein we kind of understood how difficult would it be for someone whose research is ready, but due to publishing fund constraints or due to not being able to, you know, publish in the right targeted journal because of the heavily levied APCs, your important research that could potentially create a very big impact in the society and create probably it could be about environmental sciences, which we are in dire need of at the moment, we need research that would lead us into creating a more sustainable atmosphere to live in. So these are certain things, even medical research for that matter, like I'm sure you must be aware of when during COVID-19, there was so many misinformation, there was so many misinformation that was kind of propagated around and people were not really aware of what to and what not to do in that process. So in this process and this area, especially there are certain sensitive areas of understanding and research where people need to be aware more so and I think with more D.I. initiatives and with more established and structured funding opportunities for researchers around the globe, it will be one of the ways to overcome this challenge, right? What do you think about that? I agree. I think that, you know, we do need to have other voices at the table. We are, you know, the world is huge and there are, you know, we the barriers are there, but we're taking things, you know, taking down some of those walls piece by piece and we could only do that as a collective, you know, we could do our part individually, but I think as a collective, we're stronger and we know that this needs to happen and I think and I know it will happen. It is happening. Sure. Like even with smaller organizations taking their bit and, you know, their approach into dealing with this, I'm sure someday even the smallest of organizations or when a lot of people come together, form a collective, that's when the change is to happen. Change will be more impactful. There's certainly so, certainly so, but I do want to let those smaller organizations know that they can do something. They don't have to wait to be a part of a collective. They can do something and certainly through partnerships, such as the ones that I've already mentioned, you know, C4 Desk and World Society of Chemistry, the other organizations, you know, I have recently become a member of a few council, DNI councils, should say DEIA committees, I'm sorry, I'm thinking about ASEE. DEIA committees of other organizations such as the Institute for Potentialing Excellence National Information Standards Organization. So that's a collective that is working to address some of the issues that we see in publishing, to create equity. And so as I mentioned, I'm a new member of these groups and I'm looking forward to the initiative. So we were talking about collectives. Those are two collectives that are working with many organizations to do good work. When we talk about, you know, the future and when we talk about a more sustainable and inclusive future, what future initiatives or projects do you envision in advancing DEIA goals within the scholarly publishing domain? And how do you plan to engage stakeholders in these efforts other than just other than publishing the toolkits or being a part of several selectives? I can talk a little bit about what we've done with the DNI council at ASEE, how we've impacted the culture. And I'll just tell you really quickly how the council came about, you know, we were all at a staff meeting. We were in person, of course, all at a staff meeting about 10 years ago when our executive director was talking about how important DEIA was to the civil engineering profession. And I mentioned to you earlier that I'd done a lot of volunteer work in that space. And I thought it would be something worth investigating at the office, merging my two, you know, passions together, so to speak, and, you know, create a community with a focus on DNI. And the mission of the council is actually to focus understanding dignity and respect among staff and to cultivate an inclusive workforce that reflects all segments of society. Some of the things that we have been able to do, I'll talk about some of the things we've done and what we are currently working on for a minute. And I will say that I believe that the council has had an impact on the culture and that we talk about DEIA more internally. You know, we have those courageous conversations, be it, you know, one-on-one or with the speaker that we've been able to bring in, you know, I've been at ASEA a while and it's been rewarding for me to see this change or this growth in the culture. I won't say change. I'll just I'll say growth in the culture. People are feeling safe, vulnerable. They're not fearing judgment by their peers because I've heard some things and I'm like, wow, you know, they felt really comfortable. And I'm, you know, I'm glad that they felt that comfort there at that comfort level because not everyone is there. And I think that the council had a small part in making that happen. We have an annual diversity day. It's on May 20. It's based on the May 21st day designated by the UN World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development. We do it around May 21st every year. We've had we've been doing it for 10 years. Before 2020, we had several in-person events to allow staff to celebrate themselves via via family dish. You know, food always brings people together, right? Personal stories in the virtual space. We've been able to do things a little bit different. We brought in speakers to talk about how to be a DEI champion, technology's role in building equity and opportunity for all and consciously overcoming and conscious bias in the workplace. And so, you know, we didn't that's not the only day, you know, we have education. So we have standing events such as our short story club and real talk, R-E-E-L talk, you know, it's a short film and we have conversation after that. They're hosted by staff and they are on D-I-A related topics. We also have had other events which allow such as unique, Y-O-U unique, allows people to share something about themselves such as a special interest. The goal is always for people to share, celebrate and learn. Yes. And we believe that the work allows us to see that we are more alike than different. We have more in common than not. Myself and the council members believe that the similarities allow us to see ourselves and others and we certainly wouldn't have been able to last for 10 years if we didn't have the supportive leadership and we had that from day one and, you know, that support will continue. And I will also say to folks if you do not have a budget don't let that be your stopping block. Short story club is what we do is have a staff member choose a short story. They send out a mass email and those that want to attend will. We ask that you read the short story beforehand then come to the meeting and have a discussion. So the person that chose the short story is the host for that meeting and will bring some of the thoughts from the story, some background on author. So that isn't like no budget. You don't need a budget to do things like that. So yeah, it's great to have a budget but if you don't it's okay. Yes, I think I absolutely agree when you said that you know comfort like people feeling comfortable within the area of where they are or a group or a collective that they are a part of and these initiatives as you mentioned bring a food of your region or your culture or even discuss short stories because of course we relate most to stories and experiences of people and that is what helps us in connecting, understanding and then trying to improve what we are aiming to. As we conclude today's session what one advice would you share with the scholarly world professionals aspiring to make a positive impact in DEIA strategy? Find a community that will appreciate the passion that you have. I was fortunate during my journey I found colleagues, organizations and friends that you know I was able to learn from, get sound advice from, collaborate with and you know share the passion that I have for this work. I came across a quote recently a few days ago actually and it said I don't know who wrote it but it said go where your energy is celebrated it reciprocated and appreciate it. So I'll share that with the listeners today so I want to thank you for having me here today. I appreciate you sharing a bit of my experience with everyone so thank you all. And thank you so much for giving us your time and it's an honor to be having you you're discussing and having this very important conversation while a lot of people talk about DEI initiatives and the approaches that they would want to take. I'm pretty sure that this podcast and this conversation that we have had today is going to help a lot of researchers and organizations together to actually navigate a roadmap and create a proper approach so that they go ahead and create one.