As the workplace continues to evolve, businesses are challenged to enhance diversity and inclusion to maintain their share in the global marketplace.
With the right tools and motivation, connected employees can develop a culture of inclusion across distributed teams and in-house.
Culture and inclusion expert Sumayyah Emeh Edu is a diversity and talent management consultant with a background in leadership development, competency-based talent assessment, and strategic plan development. On the Board of Directors of Techtonica, she partners with tech companies to provide free tech training, stipends, and job placement to low-income women and non-binary adults. Her consulting firm empowers others to change themselves and their organizations to enhance diversity and inclusion. Sumayyah took some time to talk with us about her participation in the upcoming Kintone Connect conference.
What are you looking forward to about attending and speaking at Kintone Connect?
I’m excited to talk to people who are attending to gain more insight on team dynamics. Organizational culture is vital to innovation and ultimate performance. Any time people come together to discuss these issues is exciting to me.
What will you be speaking about?
I will be talking about inclusive leadership and cultural transformation for team dynamics. Our talk will be about how it takes explicit effort in order to create inclusion: to adapt to opinions that are different than yours. We’ll also discuss how to embrace conflict and differing opinions and understand the business case on how inclusive leadership has a direct impact on better innovation, increased performance, and ultimately, organizational profitability.
We will be giving some practical examples and experiential models to see what inclusion and exclusion look like in the workplace.
Who should attend Kintone Connect and why?
Anyone curious about what inclusion means and how it impacts their organization should attend. Anyone looking to be a better ally and people looking for personal growth around their own behaviors: insight into their behaviors and opportunities for growth.
Tell us a bit of your history:
I have a background in higher education working with teachers. I began working with leadership and career development with organizations, then with diversity and inclusion groups. This changed my focus to diversity and inclusion initiatives, which took me to working with talent development and management initiatives
How do you see digital connections evolving for workers in the future?
I see pros and cons. Digital will evolve to introduce new experiences and obviously more content – introducing you to more things you might not have had access to which is important for inclusion, as well a different thought perspectives. However, if you aren’t aware of or don’t address your biases, you can end up in an echo chamber and be resistant to new ideas and perspectives.
Kintone Connect is all about Super heroes in the workplace – what’s your super power?
Connecting and engaging with people – and creating an environment where they can explore themselves and how to better connect and engage with others. It’s important to be vulnerable and open: I’m looking to inspire scalable change and demonstrate for others how that’s achievable.
About Sumayyah Emeh Edu
Inclusive culture maven, people developer, activator, systems thinker, relationship manager, policy advocate, Sumayyah works with organizations to support recruitment, retention, and leadership development for underrepresented groups, and overall talent management initiatives. She helps business conceptualize, then follow through with program management and implementation of their organizational goals.
About Kintone Connect: This one-day conference will gather change leaders from around the world to share digital workplace tools and best practices through inspirational talks and collaborative workshops. Attendees will walk away with a better understanding of how to use digital tools to increase team collaboration, transform business processes, and enhance citizen developer skills in the workplace. You will be exposed to a diverse network of businesses to widen the scope and influence of your partnership ecosystem. Register now!
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