Written by Ashley Peterson, Product Marketing Manager, IBM Z and LinuxONE
The past year has been a whirlwind of change for me. I graduated college in 2020 and started my first-ever full-time job at IBM – all during a global pandemic where we were isolated at home.
It seems change is the constant now and has made our society look a lot different than it did a year ago. The global pandemic, racial reckoning and digital transformation have forced us all to rethink and maybe reconsider what we believe and support. I personally evaluated many of my beliefs relating to diversity and inclusion, leading me to recognize that I needed to play a bigger role in supporting diverse communities.
In April, I was able to discuss some of these thoughts and ideas with industry peers and leaders during a webinar sponsored by the Open Mainframe Project. The webinar, titled “How Personal Experiences Shape Corporate Inclusion” was part of an initiative within the enterprise computing industry to share experiences and best practices related to diversity and inclusion.
The initiative “Making Our Strong Community Stronger” is a collaboration between Broadcom Mainframe Software, IBM, Open Mainframe project, Rocket Software, TechChannel and Virtual Z Computing. With a goal of accelerating diversity by sharing voices, perspectives and corporate cultures, we hope to inspire meaningful conversations and most importantly, approachable actions that elevate inclusivity with lasting impact.
The next installment of the series, “Unmasking Our Whole Self: Can We Create Psychologically Safe Spaces in the Workplace?” will cover some of the same themes, but dive deeper into the panelists’ thoughts on returning to the workplace and bringing our true selves to work.
In many ways, working remotely has offered employees more flexibility and freedom. With cats wandering on screen or children playing becoming routine background noise, we’ve had to be more open about who we really are. But for some, being our true selves at work can be difficult. As we return to working in person, how can we ensure our companies create psychologically safe places for everyone?
I hope you’ll join me in tuning into “Unmasking Our Whole Self: Can We Create Psychologically Safe Spaces in the Workplace?” on July 28 at 9 am PDT/12 pm EDT. Register here: https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_9lBJWkNzSpChfbUQoa8n3w.
Other resources:
- TechChannel article about “Unmasking Our Whole Self” webinar
- Video and blog for “How Personal Experiences Shape Corporate Inclusion”
- TechChannel article on highlights from “How Personal Experiences Shape Corporate Inclusion”
- TechChannel article about “Why mainframe executives are investing in diversity and inclusion”
- Open Mainframe Project Slack (#wg-diversity)
- Join the Open Mainframe Diversity & Inclusion Working Group mailing list
