The first pillar of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Initiative is Community Diversity. This pillar includes our efforts to improve the recruitment and retention of students, faculty, and staff to create a truly diverse School community. The DEI Initiative works in partnership with offices across Columbia Business School on this work. 

In order to build upon our diverse community, we have introduced retention efforts such as the Admissions Advocates program, in partnership with External Relations and the Office of Admissions, which connects Black and Hispanic admitted MBA students to alumni from our African American Alumni Association and Hispanic Alumni Association. 

Some of our additional efforts this year include developing long-term strategies to increase the diverse pipelines to our MBA, EMBA, MS and PhD programs and introducing policies to promote the recruitment of diverse adjunct faculty. 

To ensure accountability and to promote evidence-based decision making, the DEI Initiative has established an internal DEI Dashboard to track key metrics. This dashboard will allow us to assess our progress and will help us in setting future goals.