Starting Up a DEI Committee and The Change It Fosters
As Senior Project Planner, Megan Gibbons, is passionate about much more than project management and resource allocation. She cares about the people side of the business too and creating an environment where everyone can be themselves as humans and all perspectives are respected. Which is why she is the perfect person to co-chair Simantel’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) committee.
In June 2020, it was announced that an employee-led DEI committee was forming, and we needed someone to spearhead the initiative. Megan quickly stepped up and worked hard to get the committee off the ground – starting with partnering with an outside consultant and working through a gap analysis. This led to the group’s charter and vision statement: To facilitate an environment that recognizes each person’s inherent value as a human, champions fairness and equity in all dimensions of work and life and encourages inclusive conversations that bridge our differences.
But getting to this point was no easy feat. In this episode, Megan will detail some of the challenges of starting up the committee and how they have gained momentum and are doing big things today – like Simantel’s Diverse Minds Scholarship.
As the co-chair of the DEI committee, Megan has impacted the company’s recruitment and retention efforts, our internal education about DEI topics, our external communications, our volunteer efforts and so much more. She is a constant champion for diversity, equity and inclusion and is able to live out her personal values at Simantel – all while managing her day-to-day projects. I think you’ll find in this interview that Megan is full of grace, empathy and compassion. And that is exactly why Megan’s single greatest point of pride at Simantel is our commitment to each other.
“In an all employee meeting in June of 2020, after some world events, I surely felt that I can’t be a passive bystander to this anymore. Simantel announced we’re going to have a DEI community and I had to keep my arm from shooting up in the meeting.”
Megan Gibbons
Bonus Clip: Megan Narrates Her Story
About Megan Gibbons
Before joining Simantel as a Project Planner in 2019, Megan worked in event planning and then industrial marketing. She quickly worked her way up to Senior Project Planner at Simantel, where she spends her time budgeting, scheduling, building timelines and coordinating resources and deliverables for Simantel’s key client accounts. She also serves as Co-Chair of our Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion committee. And when she’s not project-planning or co-chairing, she leads Simantel’s unofficial book club.
Outside of Simantel, you can find Megan teaching marketing courses at the Foster College of Business at Bradley University, crafting up Simantel’s next winning Fancy Drink Contest cocktail or out and about with her new baby girl. She claims that while she’s never been in a Simantel video, her dog has – and her husband was the face of the Simantel website for 2 years (but she’s not bitter). Connect with Megan on LinkedIn.