The event is a joint collaboration between Goizueta’s Roberto C. Goizueta Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation and The Hatchery.

This year’s Demo Day began with Dean Gareth James offering welcoming remarks. Then, the 12 participating startups took to the stage and delivered five-minute pitches to about 40 prospective investors. Emory University faculty and staff and more than 80 local community members filled the crowd.

Each year, we’ve seen the quality of startups in the cohort get better and better.

Brian Cayce, managing director, Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation

“Demo Day was exceptional,” shares Brian Cayce, managing director of the center. “The turnout was fantastic.”

The 2024 cohort included the following startups: Excellence Box, Motian, BrICS, AskSci, Team Swift Gear, Immform, Explorify, Uppergate Bio, Direct to Camera, Por+, Xpediter, and Alabaster House.

Learning the Path to Success

The Emory Goizueta Startup Launch Accelerator is an initiative of The Roberto C. Goizueta Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation. The program is open to anyone affiliated with Emory—from faculty and staff to students and alumni. In fact, the majority of participants over the years have come from outside of the business school.

The goal of the program is to help early-stage founders turn ideas into solid business models. This year’s participants conducted a total of 180 customer interviews to refine and sharpen their plans. All 12 startups felt confident in their pitches before Demo Day. They said they had a much more complete and thorough understanding of their business models by the end of the program.

We view this program as a service the Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation provides the university.

Brian Cayce

“There are innovators across all pockets of the university, and we want to support them.” explains Cayce.

The Expert Behind the Entrepreneurs

For the last three years, Christy Brown has been the primary accelerator instructor. Brown, the chief executive officer of Dr. Noze Best, designs the sessions and pulls from her extensive network to bring the most realistic information and lessons to the participants. Goizueta’s own mentor network also contributes to these sessions.

The 10 modules cover critical topics for early-stage ventures. These include subjects such as the business model canvas, go-to-market strategy, market entry, raising venture capital, and pitching, explains Brown.  

Participants were grateful for Brown. They praised her willingness to share her contacts, experiences, and knowledge throughout the course of the program.

One of the most rewarding aspects of participating in this program is the opportunity to share hard-earned lessons and wisdom with budding entrepreneurs.

Christy Brown, lead accelerator instructor

“Watching these founders pivot, adapt, and ultimately scale their businesses is incredibly fulfilling,” shares Brown. “Being part of their growth journey and witnessing their progress firsthand is what makes this work so gratifying for me.”

Building a Business Blueprint

Karthik Ramesh and Hyunsuk Shim are both professors of radiation oncology at Emory University’s School of Medicine. The idea they brought to the Startup Launch Accelerator is the Brain Imaging Collaboration Suite, also known as BrICS. The software platform helps doctors customize plans for brain-tumor patients, explains Ramesh.

Ramesh’s favorite part of the experience was developing and refining BrICS’ pitch and pitch deck. In order to get there, he had to first identify and understand his ideal customers. Then, he had to figure out what the market looked like for the product, including researching any existing competitors.

This accelerator helps people turn an idea into a tangible business plan with actionable follow-ups for the future.

Karthik Ramesh, BrICS

Participants also got to meet with lawyers who specialize in startups as well as CEOs of other ventures and financial experts.

“Pitching at Demo Day truly felt like an accomplishment,” recalls Ramesh. “Every founder formed a bond with the others as we learned about and gave advice for everyone’s companies. It felt special to sit together and cheer each other on during our pitches.”

Tapping Into Resources

For fellow founder, Douglas Brooks II 24MBA, the confidence that the program – particularly Brown and Cayce – helped cultivate was one of his favorite parts.

“You really work on the psychology of your business and ask yourself a bunch of times throughout the workshops, ‘Why am I doing this?’”

Douglas Brooks II 24MBA, Team Swift Gear

Brooks has been working on his startup since 2019. His venture is a health tech company that aims to reduce the number of heart attacks in the U.S. each year with aquatic exercise. His father was a special education teacher and swimming coach. Together, they began to develop an apparatus that people can wear in the water to add resistance to water-based physical activity. Better yet, it does so without adding extra pressure or stress to joints or existing injuries. After watching an elderly fraternity member decline in health and disposition following an injury, Brooks wanted to bring the device that he and his father created to other people.

“We had a technology that can decrease people’s fall risk and improve cardiovascular health. I felt like there weren’t enough tools to bring people to the water for strength training. So, that’s what really made me want to go into the health space,” says Brooks, who joined Goizueta’s One-Year MBA program to learn more about raising funds after working in finance for several years.

Since launching the startup, Brooks has secured a U.S. patent, gathered dozens of testimonials from consumers and college athletic departments, established a medical advisory board, and conducted a study about the benefits and outcomes of using his device.

Brooks says he has grown tremendously through his experience in the Startup Launch Accelerator. He found it especially helpful to share ideas with fellow founders and learn about how someone as successful as Brown deals with challenges.

Now, Brooks is spending his summer as part of the incubator at The Hatchery.

Everyone has a greater understanding of where they want to go. You might not have the entire puzzle figured out, but we at least have the outside pieces.

Douglas Brooks II 24MBA

Experiential Learning for Students

In addition to the benefits for program participants, the accelerator also serves as a learning experience for Goizueta students. Fellows of The Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation play a critical role as program managers. They act as resources for the startups and ensure that everything runs smoothly throughout the sessions.

“The program helps to move Emory-related ventures forward by leveraging the skills and competencies of Goizueta faculty and staff,” says Jill Perry-Smith, academic director of the center and professor of organization and management.

It is exciting to see students build on the knowledge they learn in our courses via the accelerator and take their enterprises to the next level.

Jill Perry-Smith, academic director and professor of organization and management

From Classroom to Crash Course

Qazi Haq 25MBA says his experience as a fellow at the center has supplemented what he’s learning in the classroom. Whereas course work might focus on how large companies operate, sitting in on the accelerator program sessions inadvertently taught him the ins-and-outs of running a startup. He got a crash course in the early-stage venture ecosystem, including how to raise funds, what investors look for, and startup-industry dynamics.

Haq is also involved in the Peachtree Minority Venture Fund, another program within the center. This academic year, he was an associate, but he’s now a student fund manager. Listening to the pitches allowed Haq to connect several participants to potential funds.

I love being around people trying to build new things because it’s always exciting and they have passion.

Qazi Haq 25MBA

Exploring Career Paths in Entrepreneurship

For Molly McDonald 25EvMBA, being involved in the accelerator is part of her job as community engagement coordinator for the program. She’s also a Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation fellow and working on her MBA through Goizueta’s evening program.

The MBA experience is a time for students to explore career paths, even those paths that involve more risk, such as entrepreneurship, she says. This program is an excellent opportunity for students with business ideas to take advantage of valuable resources like mentorship, networking, and funding.

“There is no clear or defined path to becoming an entrepreneur. However, the Startup Launch Accelerator puts a framework in place for founders to build their business model and move forward,” says McDonald. “The program also puts Emory on the map as a leader in entrepreneurship education and experiential learning opportunities for students.”

To learn more about the Roberto C. Goizueta Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation, sign up for our email newsletter or follow us on our social media channels: LinkedIn | Instagram

Are you an Emory-affiliated startup founder currently seeking early-stage risk capital or interested in learning about other startup programs? Connect with us through our startup pipeline to learn about future opportunities.

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We mark the official start of the new year with celebrations on January 1. New Year’s is a time for new beginnings and a chance to start fresh. We revel in the possibilities and opportunities the new year brings. Frequently, it is a time for goal setting. Perhaps you’ve even made a New Year’s resolution or two?

But New Year’s is also a time to pause, if only for the briefest of moments, before we return to work, school, or whatever regularly scheduled programming life has in store for us. It’s a chance to take a pulse on the current state of things. We reflect on the past year, bask in the glow of its high points, and appreciate lessons learned from the challenges we faced.

So, before we launch full steam ahead into the new year, let’s take a look back at some great stories you may have missed this past year on EmoryBusiness.com.

Students Write Notes to Themselves for the Future

Every August, the students in Goizueta Business School’s Full-Time MBA programs gather for Keystone. It’s a week of giving back through volunteering and catching up with classmates after a summer internship. Students take the opportunity to pause, reflect, and project. As part Keystone, they write a letter to their future self, not to be opened for at least five years. The letter-writing experience has been a Goizueta MBA tradition since 2012.

Emory Entrepreneurship Summit Features Renowned Shoe Designer Stuart Weitzman

Goizueta Business School hosted the 7th annual Emory Entrepreneurship Summit March 30-31. One of the highlight’s of this year’s was the keynote address from Stuart Weitzman. Known for his commitment to prioritizing function as an integral element of fashion, Weitzman encouraged those in attendance to pursue their passions. He shared insights with a packed room of aspiring entrepreneurs and innovators in the form of a number of his truisms—or as he prefers to call them, “Stu-isms.”

Goizueta Launches Graduate Business Degree for Veterans & Active-Duty Military

Emory University’s Goizueta Business School announced in July the launch of its new Master in Business for Veterans. The program is a fully accredited 11-month degree for active-duty military, veterans, National Guard, and Reserve personnel. Spearheaded by Retired U.S. Army Lieutenant General and Associate Dean for Leadership Ken Keen, as well as Faculty Lead Professor JB Kurish, the program will be guided by an advisory board of high-level business executives, several of whom are both retired military and graduates of Goizueta. The working professional program began accepting applications in August 2023 with the first cohort of veterans starting classes in May 2024.

Goizueta Business School Introduces New Master in Management Program for Recent Graduates

This past summer, Goizueta introduced its new Master in Management program. It’s designed specifically for graduates with a non-business major who are looking to level up their undergraduate degree. Experienced professors who are experts in their respective fields help students develop a foundation of with business knowledge and skills. Best of all, students can complete the Master in Management program in just ten months. This provides a fast-track option for students to gain a valuable business education and expand their career options.

Virtual Reality Revolutionizes Classroom Learning

Jill Perry-Smith is bringing an entirely new dimension to Goizueta’s Executive MBA program. Her focus: navigating difficult conversations and finding effective conflict resolution strategies. Through the use of virtual reality (VR) and artificial intelligence (AI), Perry-Smith, senior associate dean for strategic initiatives and professor of organization and management, hopes to provide more students with experience in dealing with interpersonal conflict.

Goizueta Faculty Work to Help the LGBTQ+ Community Thrive

Emory University’s Goizueta Business School and the LGBTQ Institute at the National Center for Civil and Human Rights are partners in the second survey of LGBTQ+ Southerners, released in April 2023. The study is a follow up to the 2017-18 inaugural survey, which was conducted by the Institute and George State University. This newly released study aims to help fill a critical research gap, looking at an understudied group with a larger data set.

The Voice of Alexa: How Speech Characteristics Impact Consumer Decisions

Rajiv Garg is associate professor of Information Systems & Operations Management at Emory’s Goizueta Business School. Garg conducts research that explores the impact of artificial intelligence voices on consumer behavior and purchase intent, along with partners at HEC Paris and The University of Texas at Austin.

So, here’s the question: Can the voice of Samuel L. Jackson sell you an office chair? Read on to find out.

Playing Ball: How One Goizueta Graduate Has Scored Big in the NBA

Meet Lauren Cohen 00BBA, who recently entered her 24^th season with the National Basketball Association (NBA). But she doesn’t play basketball. She’s the vice president of partner management and operations lead for the NBA’s global partnerships group.

Cohen credits two things with the stability and tenure she’s enjoyed at the NBA: the people she works with and her opportunities to change roles every few years. But it all started with the strong foundation she build at Goizueta.

Preparing Workers of the Future

The future of work. What does it mean?

For Goizueta Business School graduates, the future of work is an exciting prospect, and they are ready for it. These workers of the future are embracing their passions and pursuing multiple careers. They are making business decisions for the betterment of society and leveraging technology to enhance their skills. On top of that, they are learning how to lead dispersed, remote teams.

Goizueta graduates don’t fear the future. They embrace it.

Talking about the Business of Healthcare

Healthcare is a business like many other industries, but instead of just making money, healthcare workers must also save lives. Navigating patient care and profitability is a unique challenge that neither business professionals nor doctors are able to address alone.

Goizueta helps bridge that gap. We teach clinicians the fundamentals of business and teach business professionals how to apply their knowledge specifically within the healthcare field.

Help keep the great Goizueta stories coming with a gift of support to Emory’s 2O36 campaign.

The post The Best Stories of 2023 from Goizueta Business School appeared first on EmoryBusiness.com.

Through the use of virtual reality (VR) and artificial intelligence (AI), Perry-Smith, senior associate dean for strategic initiatives and professor of organization and management, hopes to provide more students with experience in dealing with interpersonal conflict, which she defines as a conflict between individuals that involves an emotional reaction.

“Throughout one’s career, there are situations of interpersonal conflict that arise,” Perry-Smith says. “Oftentimes, you need to work with this person. You need to get past the conflict for the good of the company or your professional career development. Everyone needs experience with having these conversations because, oftentimes, our intuition of how to have these conversations leads to more problems, or our inclination to avoid the conversation creates even larger problems down the road.”

The program first came about when Perry-Smith noticed growing interest in an interpersonal conflict module she teaches in her Managing Groups and Teams course. Initially, she designed a roleplaying exercise for groups of three students. One student would engage in a difficult conversation with another student, with whom they’re facing interpersonal conflicts. The third student would give advice and feedback, the most important part of the exercise according to Perry-Smith.

“The student coaches were great, but students learned the most when I ran around to groups and gave my feedback, but it’s impossible to get to every student team if I have 65 students,” Perry-Smith says.

So, she decided to look into a different method.

When I discovered the possibility of this VR/AI approach, I thought, “Wow, this could be a chance for every student to get feedback about their approach. And not just any feedback, but really dynamic feedback.”

Jill Perry-Smith

Wearing voice activated VR headsets, participants engage in conversations with a simulated person in one of five interpersonal conversations, each inspired by real scenarios experienced by students. At various moments in the exchange, participants choose to vocalize one of three responses displayed in their headset, each of which takes a different approach in resolving the conflict. At the end of the simulation, students receive feedback depending on how they handled the conversation; in a constructive, ineffective, or destructive way.

This feedback stems from Perry-Smith’s nearly 10 years of experience working with students on interpersonal conflict scenarios, through which she has recognized certain response trends. 

Ruchika Sethi, associate director of instructional design, helped build the technology and asserts it is a valuable tool that provides a stable learning environment. “It’s communicating with you,” Sethi says. “You’re speaking to this person and you can see their expressions change.“

It is also comfortable for the students because if you’re having a difficult conversation with a friend or a partner, you may not say everything, but here you’re more guided and the person is a complete stranger.

Ruchika Sethi

The first participating cohort consisted of Executive MBA students and took place in spring semester 2023. Many students felt they were having a conversation with a real person. “My favorite aspect of that was body language,” says Kyle Rubright 23EMBA, one of the first participants in the new VR program. “It was very palpable, the immediate feedback I was getting from the counter-party when we were speaking, just from the body language alone.”

For many students, Sethi says the experience was emotionally charged.

“It was interesting hearing students say how they thought they knew how to do this and then seeing them get visibly agitated during the exercise,” Perry-Smith says. “Seeing that tension in the students mirrored the real world. The next step from there was helping students continue to practice other modules so that they feel that they are progressing and improving.” 

The most rewarding part is hearing students talk about the way they have incorporated these techniques in their lives.

Jill Perry-Smith

Sethi says the technology also allowed them to collect valuable data—such as how long students took to answer a question and which questions most people got right and wrong—and make changes to the scenarios accordingly.

Perry-Smith hopes to make this VR technology more turnkey with a teaching guide so it can be rolled out for use by other groups. Sethi says the ultimate goal is to take the technology to a global audience.

More generally, Perry-Smith says VR’s full value remains largely untapped.

“We are seeing more of these tools being introduced into the classroom but nowhere near the rate that is equivalent to their potential,” Perry Smith. “My philosophy is that it’s important for us to constantly evolve and innovate what we’re doing in the classroom, and this is an example of a technology that is just at the beginning stages of making an impact.”

The Difficult Conversations VR Simulation was created as part of an Innovations in Teaching Fund at Goizueta that was established through generous support from The Goizueta Foundation. 

Whether you’re looking to accelerate your career or make a career pivot, our full-time One-Year MBA and Two-Year MBA programs and part-time Evening MBA and Executive MBA programs, prepare you to challenge business as usual and become the innovators who disrupt it. Learn more here.

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Each year, PMVF students acting in the investor role, along with faculty and advisory board input, hold the Spring Showcase at The Hatchery on campus to announce new investments. To date, the fund has made total investment commitments of $170K into seven companies in seven different industries in six cities. In the first round for the 2021-2022 academic year, the investment process began with commitments to CommunityX, Ecotone Renewables, and FundStory. Just this past spring, investments were committed to Arch, Chezie, ConConnect, and Tuyyo.

JB Kurish, professor in the practice of finance and a Business & Society Institute faculty advisor, guides the PMVF’s academic curriculum with Jill Perry-Smith, senior associate dean, strategic initiatives, and academic director of The Roberto C. Goizueta Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation, Rob Kazanjian, Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Organization & Management, and Juanita Velez, adjunct professor and senior manager diversity, equity, and inclusion operations for Delta Airlines. In addition, Brian Cayce recently joined Goizueta Business School as Managing Director of The Roberto C. Goizueta Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation. Cayce brings 17 years of venture capital experience to the team having founded the early-stage impact-focused funds of Gray Ghost Ventures.

Nurturing Future Investors and Entrepreneurs

“Through directed curriculum and classwork, students gain the real-world analysis skills required to make informed investment decisions,” Kurish says. With an industry agnostic approach, “The fund follows a holistic research process during which the students operate in the role of investors. Investors not only learn about the company in front of them, but also about the larger industry and its risks and upside.”  

Student participants come from a wide range of degree programs, including Goizueta’s undergraduate Bachelor of Business Administration program, the school’s multiple MBA programs, and Emory University’s law school. This diversity excites Kurish. “We like the fact that we’ve got students from various academic programs involved. Add to that their unique cultural perspectives and age differences and we all benefit from the interaction.”

A richness and experiential value come to students by what they bring as individuals to each discussion. This sharing develops a collective holistic appreciation for the needs and desires of underrepresented founders.

JB Kurish, professor in the practice of finance and Business & Society Institute faculty advisor

The PMVF documents investments of entrepreneurial funding ranging from $5-50K through a simple agreement for future equity. Kurish explains, “Most common are seed stage investments of $15-$30K. The goal for these investments is to gain allocation into a financing round led by institutional investors.”

In addition to benefiting each founder and company, this process also provides students unprecedented access and exposure to the world of venture capital–not to mention potential job opportunities.

JB Kurish

To educate and empower founders, the fund offers resources and tools such as Cap table simulator, talent locators, pitch deck examples and basics, and financial modeling for startups. As an educational partner to founders, Goizueta will continue to expand its impact for growth. Kurish notes, “In the future we will incubate their success with even more educational and professional networking opportunities.”  

Changing the Funding Narrative 

Each fall, student class members and leaders are selected for participation in the fund activities. Past student participants continue to support the fund by taking part in evaluative and processing activities in the fall. These fall activities pave the way for the main thrust of student engagement in spring.  

During the 2023 spring class, the fund received over 50 applications. From this applicant pool, managing partners screened over 100 deals and engaged in preliminary due diligence on over 50 of them. To further narrow the pipeline of potential investment, the PMVF team conducted another round of deep due diligence on 10 deals. The investment committee then reviewed the final five deals and ultimately selected four companies to receive PMVF investment. 

JB Kurish

After extensive research, interviews, and analysis by the PMVF team, the following companies received investment commitments through the fund in the 2022-2023 academic year: 

• Chezie, Co-Founder and CEO is Toby Egbuna, COO is Dumebi Egbuna 18BBA 
• ConConnect, Co-Founder and CEO is Andre Peart 
• Tuyyo, Founder & CEO is Stefanie Garcia Turner 21EMBA 
• Arch, CEO & Co-Founder is Gabriel Huertas del Pino and Adam Mutschler 

It is an honor to receive an investment from Emory University’s Peachtree Minority Venture Fund. As an alumna of Goizueta Business School, this investment is a full circle moment as I began working on TUYYO while I was receiving my Executive MBA in 2020-2021. This investment will further support TUYYO’s growth in new retail locations across the United States and assist in our efforts to provide clean ingredient, Latin-inspired products to the LatinX community and beyond.

Tuyyo Foods Founder/CEO Stefanie Garcia Turner 21EMBA 

To carry on the rich tradition of investing in and supporting underrepresented founders, the new managing partners of the Peachtree Minority Venture Fund have been named. Brandon Best 24MBA, Sumo Desai 24MBA, Savannah Holmes 24MBA, Brandon Jacobs 24BBA, Madeline Ledford 24MBA, Kevin Liu 24EvMBA, and Benedict Owanga 24JD will all lead for the coming year.  

PMVF Wins the AACSB Innovations that Inspire 2023 Award 

AACSB International, a global nonprofit, is the world’s largest business education alliance that connects educators, students, and businesses across the world. Since 1916, the organization has been committed to creating the next generation of leaders. As part of its advocacy outreach in more than 100 countries and territories, AACSB selects 25 Innovative Business Schools of Tomorrow that drive new value for stakeholders.  

Kurish shared, “In the words of AACSB, Goizueta’s Peachtree Minority Venture Fund ‘was one of 25 institutions that demonstrate how AACSB member institutions are creating new value for a continuously evolving business world and global society.’”  

Learn more about the Peachtree Minority Venture Fund and access founder applications.  

Follow fund news on Twitter @Peachtree_Fund and LinkedIn @PeachtreeMinorityVentureFund.  

Read more about the prestigious AACSB International award here. 

The post Minority Founders Earn Funding Through Million Dollar Student-Run Peachtree Minority Venture Fund appeared first on EmoryBusiness.com.

Emory Business is pleased to share the following op-ed that appeared in Harvard Business Review by Jill Perry-Smith, Goizueta Foundation Term Chair, professor of Organization & Management, and the senior associate dean for strategic initiatives at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School.

Whether business leaders have social justice aims in mind, wish to win the war on talent, or embrace the value-creating potential of a diverse workforce, race is at the forefront of everyone’s minds.

But evidence-based strategies and resources on racial diversity and teamwork are few and far between. In fact, a quick search of ProQuest, a popular database for articles, revealed 339 scholarly and media articles with team and diversity in the title with only three emphasizing racial diversity. That’s 1%.

For more than 20 years, I have researched how relationships, networks, and collaborating with others, either in teams or one on one, enhances creative problem-solving. I have also taught courses on managing teams for nearly 10 years. I draw from this experience to suggest where we must start. With societal hunger for tips on how to create inclusive environments at an all-time high, and the importance of team dynamics integral to success at companies, large and small, I offer the following recommendations to business leaders interested in driving their teams forward.

Recognize differences. 

Many business leaders today grew up with a common practice encouraged by schools, parents, and other institutions – colorblindness. The main idea: If you don’t allow yourself to recognize race, you can never be biased. We now know this well-meaning strategy does not work and can, in fact, exacerbate racial inequality.

Why? Because pretending differences do not exist and failing to acknowledge them exacerbates the downsides of difference and mutes the upsides. There are two key reasons why.

First, a lack of authenticity and failure to share information, experiences, or ideas hurts both individuals and the team as a whole. As Katherine Phillips, Tracy Dumas and Nancy Rothbard highlight in their research, people who are in the racial minority are less likely to share personal information with majority colleagues in ways that highlight their difference. That’s because we often anticipate that those who are similar will understand us and those who are not similar will not. So, we withhold and are careful not to reveal differences that coincide with racial identity, such as weekend activities, parenting assumptions, and extended family obligations. Actively withholding comes with emotional and cognitive costs, distracting attention from the task at hand and thwarting close relationships among teammates.

Consider this theoretical example: Jeb, a Black professional specializing in computer engineering, joins a prestigious company — with a largely white staff makeup — and relocates to a new town. In an effort to be helpful, his new teammates inquire which neighborhood he plans to purchase a home. The reality: Jeb does not have the capital to purchase a home due to continuing obligations to support extended family. So, Jeb plans to rent instead, underscoring a different personal reality than his teammates. Due to this difference, Jeb starts disengaging from personal conversations about his home life, limiting interactions where these conversations may come up or joining in with an underlying feeling of being on guard. His colleagues, on the other hand, wonder why he is less engaged with the team.

Second, while differences can create divide, they also offer opportunity. In fact, the very differences that create lack of engagement are also essential for the creative and quality problem solving that teams are often assembled to produce. In my recent research, I found that individuals tend to pay more attention to novel insights contributed by people different than themselves. We expect people we know well — who tend to be like us — to think like us. When they offer new information, we discount it. Yet, when an acquaintance offers new information, we pay attention, play with the new information, and are more creative. But these processes and realizations cannot occur if differences are not revealed in the first place.

Further, research by Jack Goncalo and Joshua Katz demonstrates that the act of sharing creative ideas is considered another type of self-disclosure. It makes sense that if our teammates are uncomfortable sharing personal aspects of self, this carries over into sharing other non-conforming ideas that may be unrelated to race but may help the team produce impactful quality products.

Leaders should create climates that encourage differences to come out. If your identity is in the majority, look for opportunities to self-disclose with racially underrepresented team members. Reveal ways that you may be different — something in your past or a current position or interest that may be unusual. Start with something small and reasonably safe. For example, perhaps your guilty pleasure is watching reality TV fashion shows — an interest that is in contrast to your image as a serious and driven career woman. Or perhaps you enjoy nurturing your thriving herb garden, which counters your persona as an aggressive tough-minded man. We all have some aspect of ourselves that we assume others in some contexts will not understand. Sharing in this way helps to establish a norm that authentically self-disclosing is welcomed.

Work to actively uncover common ground.

While differences are important, so are similarities. Listening and sharing, effective tools in many relationships, also play a key role in team success. We each have a collection of attributes which may be similar or different with our teammates. This includes observable attributes, like gender identity and race, less observable but well-known attributes, like functional expertise, and unobservable attributes, like personality and values. There is rarely perfect alignment such that some members differ from teammates across all attributes.

Similarity and shared interests are the bases for close relationships. A long line of research supports the homophily principle, the notion that “birds of a feather flock together.” This means that we tend to form relationship with those of the same race. So, we have to work harder to uncover our colleague’s complexities, and ways their identities and interests intersect in unique ways. Perhaps your Black teammate likes country music just like you? Perhaps you and your Asian teammate share being married and a parent, unlike all others on the team?

Self-disclosure can reveal commonality as well as difference and is key to building strong, meaningful relationships at work. The absence of these relationships means the team risks an execution problem, and individuals may have limited developmental and sponsorship opportunities that come from informal close exchanges.

Commit to having difficult conversations.

 Even teams that recognize and honor differences and similarities can have conflict. And dealing with interpersonal, emotionally laden conflict is one of a team’s greatest challenges. Let’s say a well-intentioned team member makes a comment that attaches an Asian American team member to the invisible, model minority stereotype. Or imagine an Hispanic colleague’s highlighting the racial implications of a marketing campaign leaves another feeling sidelined. In either case, the slighted team member may choose to remain silent, leaving emotions to fester.

In a quantitative analysis of thousands of teams, Leslie DeChurch, Jessica Mesmer-Magnus and Dan Doty demonstrated that what’s important is not just the existence of conflict but how teams resolve it. Their analysis confirmed that avoidance is rarely an effective strategy.

Despite the risks, it’s vital to build the habit of confronting differences due to race so that the team can effectively move forward. Often, we avoid discussions on race due to fear of negative repercussions. What if someone says the wrong thing and conflict is exacerbated? In the examples above, imagine the aggrieved teammate tells the other that she is self-serving or insensitive. The response may be defensiveness or anger. These are real concerns, but avoidance comes at high cost — the cost of inauthentic relationships and unrealized team performance.

Instead, plan very carefully for how to have difficult conversations so that the discussion brings understanding and problem solving rather than creates more conflict and tension. I suggest applying principles from Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton and Sheila Heen. Here are a few standout tips:

• Understand the goals for the conversation. Is your aim to express your views, learn, or problem solve?
• Be direct and get to the point, but craft your statement carefully to avoid a defensive reaction.
• Focus on the facts — what the other person did or said, your interpretation of the facts, and the effect on you and the team.

Teams have tremendous potential. A diverse team can drive more creativity, encourage individuals to think through and process ideas more critically, and aid problem solving. Instead of pretending that race does not exist, it’s time for business leaders to create environments that encourage authenticity and trust — and build supportive team cultures that help teams reach these lofty aims. Your team’s success just may depend on it.

About the Author

Jill Perry-Smith is Goizueta Foundation Term Chair, professor of Organization & Management, and the senior associate dean for strategic initiatives at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School. In her role, she leads the school’s diversity, equity, and inclusion strategy, as well as teaches courses and conducts research centered on groups and teams, social networks, and creativity and innovation. Prior to joining Goizueta, she secured her PhD in organizational behavior from the College of Management at the Georgia Institute of Technology and served in the oil and gas industry overseeing large refinery expansion projects across the United States.

Learn more about Goizueta’s commitment creating meaningful change through diversity, equity, and inclusion. Read the article in the Harvard Business Review.

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A Look Back

“The historical context is really illuminating. It is important to recognize trailblazers and have an opportunity to think through the events of the country and world as they collide with our local history,” says Jill Perry-Smith, senior associate dean of strategic initiatives who is charged with leading the school’s DEI strategies.

“Emory was desegregated in 1962 – not long ago from a historical perspective,” she said.  As the civil rights movement took hold, then Goizueta Dean Jim Hund embraced the opportunity for discovery, engaging social justice activists and economists to address Southern Black entrepreneurship. Awareness continued to grow through the 1970s, with matriculation of Black undergraduate and graduate-level students and the implementation of President James T. Laney’s President’s Commission on the Status of Minorities. In 1994, the school was renamed to honor Cuban immigrant Roberto C. Goizueta, Chairman and CEO of the Coca-Cola Company.

Global student recruitment gave way to worldwide outreach and a multicultural infusion on Goizueta’s campus, and Dean Tom Robertson responded to student needs by hosting the first Diverse Leadership Conference. In the following years, Goizueta appointed Alicia Sierra as its first director of diversity and community initiatives, along with naming Dean Erika James to guide our institution. Dean James made history as the first Black woman to lead a top-25 ranked business school ahead of its peer institutions.

Progress in DEI has remained a constant throughout Goizueta’s storied history, and Perry-Smith noted that three priorities are at the forefront of the school’s formal DEI Initiative: enrich our community, reflect broader society, and improve equity.

We prepare for our future, our anti-racist future, for Emory and the broader community here in atlanta – and beyond – that we serve. These conversations will serve for more action and progress, and that’s exactly what we need at this moment in time.

Greg Fenves, president, Emory University

Turning to the Future

“The work we are doing now to set infrastructure in place will enable us to make more sustainable and impactful change in the future,” Perry-Smith explained. “For many, the events of 2020 and 2021 symbolize an awakening, a call for more global conversation around vital issues of diversity, equity, inclusion, and anti-racism.”

“Our focus extends to raise awareness for individuals with identities who have been historically marginalized and who have faced systemic barriers to equitable treatment,” she said. “Beyond race, cultural upbringing, gender identity, and sexual orientation, we explore the needs of people who are neurodiverse with unique ways of processing knowledge. Our goal is to discover how every single person can contribute to their fullest to help us achieve a better campus community and society.”

Enrich Our Community: Exposure to cultural knowledge with an aim of increased self-awareness.

“We do not live in a static state. Public sentiments and individual needs will ebb and flow depending on current events and society at large,” Perry-Smith said. Last year, Goizueta Business School established the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Council,for which Perry-Smith was chosen to guide. “Our DEI Council has tentacles into key parts of the organization. We have appointed ambassadors from each program office, faculty members from each area of study, and we touch all aspects of our organization to advise and give input on pressing issues.” She noted, “We are diving into evidence-based data across all constituents. We need to be transparent about that information, even if it’s not all favorable.”

Enhanced awareness education and training is an important tool in the anti-racist cache of resources. Perry-Smith noted that while some diversity training can be ineffective and even harmful to positive outcomes, “research reveals that cognitive learning is helpful. And this is where we shine as an institution, to engage in critical inquiry based on evidence.”

One such global effort began with expanding the scope of the Common Reads Program and the Ally Education Series, both forums for shared understanding and empathy. Goizueta encouraged all students, faculty, and staff, to read Whistling Vivaldi by author Claude M. Steele. Through research and interviews, Whistling Vivaldi speaks to race, racial bias, and stereotypes, both racial and cultural. Goizueta community members participated in peer-facilitated small group discussions designed to delve into the racial biases and stereotype threats they have seen and experienced in their own lives.

Brian Mitchell 00EvMBA/00MPH, associate dean for the full-time MBA program and Goizueta’s Global Strategy and Initiatives, pointed out, “Whistling Vivaldi is a great book for students who are coming into an academic environment because it talks about biases and stereotypes as it relates to academic performance.” He went on to explain the burden these types of assumptions might add to working through an already difficult situation. “The conversation we have with students is ‘Here are some of the realities around the stereotype threat, here’s how they might affect you as a student in this program, and here are some strategies for how to work through it.”

Improving Equity: Inspire our community members to leverage the power of diversity to improve equity in business and society.

“Going beyond the walls of Goizueta, our school also has a rich history of partnership with community organizations to share expertise and insight,” Perry-Smith said. “We explore our connection to one another on many levels, including economic empowerment and social justice.”

In March, Goizueta celebrated the launch of The Roberto C. Goizueta Business & Society Institute, the new home for the faculty and staff of Social Enterprise @ Goizueta along with its programs. The institute reflects the school’s elevated commitment to social impact and seeks to transform business to solve society’s challenges. At the launch event, Goizueta Business School Associate Professor and Academic Director Wesley Longhofer led a fireside chat with Harvard Business School professor and author Dr. Rebecca Henderson, based on her book Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire. The conversation revolved around building a profitable, equitable, and sustainable capitalism grounded in new ways of defining the role of business in society. Longhofer shared, “As an Institute, we do not claim to have all the answers facing business and society; rather, we want to be a catalyst for asking the right kinds of questions.”

One of the Institute’s transformative programs is Start:ME, a free small business training program that provides entrepreneurs the tools and connections necessary to build and grow successful businesses in underserved communities around Atlanta. Eighty-two percent of 2021 winter cohort businesses are led by people of color, 84% are led by women, and 24% are foreign-born entrepreneurs. The 49 small businesses served represent more than $425,000 in revenue for 2020.

On a global level, Grounds for Empowerment provides women specialty coffee farmers the market connections and business know-how to enable them to reach their full economic potential. This cohort program works with small groups of women growers from Latin America through semester long consulting support and in-country workshops supported by Emory students and industry members.  

Funded by the Goizueta Business School Dean’s Innovation Fund, the Improving Goizueta’s Support of Black Entrepreneurs and Black Students Study led by K. Hall Consulting and a team of student consultants this past summer conducted interviews with 30 stakeholders across the entrepreneurship ecosystem both in Atlanta and on campus to determine where and how the business school could better partner, engage, and support Black entrepreneurs. Following up on Phase 1 report, Goizueta faculty and students will continue efforts in Phase 2 which is focused on developing an academic case on Black entrepreneurship to support classroom learning along with the implementation of other internal and external diversity, equity, and inclusion recommendations.  

In the summer of 2020, Mitchell guided candid student conversations around key events highlighting racial injustice, the impact of such instances, and changes that could be implemented. For alumnus Willie Sullivan 21MBA, the repeated rally cry for social justice at the forefront of the Black Lives Matter movement sparked a desire to lead meaningful change.

“We wanted to do something actionable,” said Sullivan, speaking of his MBA classmates. “How could we take a business case note and have students come up with strategic frameworks for a major corporation to do something about large societal issues?”

Sullivan and classmates conceived The John R. Lewis Racial Justice Case Competition to address equity and inclusion problems plaguing corporate America. Sponsored by Goizueta and with the blessing of the late Congressman and civil rights icon John R. Lewis’ family, the inaugural competition earned submissions from 105 teams from 52 of the nation’s top universities. Thousands listened to presentations to corporate partners (HP, Johnson & Johnson, Salesforce, Southern Company, Truist, and Walmart) during which bold student teams confronted issues of supplier diversity to include Black-owned businesses, minority vendor supply chain relationships, STEM careers and scholarship for Black girls, the Black wealth gap, training for people of color on house arrest, and people over profits.

Interim John H. Harland Dean Karen Sedatole praised the student-conceived, student-designed, and student-executed event. “Their passion and leadership skills are a testament to the quality of students, faculty, staff and programs that we have here at Goizueta Business School. We’re so very proud of them.”

Reflect Broader Society: Achieve a composition of our faculty, staff, and student body that fully reflects the broader society.

Goizueta has developed partnerships with a range of organizations to recruit and increase representation of students and faculty from diverse backgrounds in our business programs, including the Consortium for Graduate Study in Management, Forte Foundation, Management Leadership for Tomorrow, MBADiversity.org, National Black MBA Association, The PhD Project, Prospanica, The Robert Toigo Foundation, and Women in Technology. On campus, clubs and groups, too, celebrate the broad range of backgrounds and experiences in our diverse community, with at least 14 distinct organizations for Goizueta students.

In 2002, Goizueta formed a strategic partnership with The Consortium for Graduate Study in Management, a cooperative network of universities designed to enhance diversity and inclusion in business education while at the same time reducing underrepresentation in graduate school enrollment through merit-based full-tuition scholarships to top-tier MBA candidates. From the onset of the partnership, Goizueta has awarded more than $14 million in scholarships to Consortium members.

“I’m impressed by how the school has embraced diversity in a way we were fighting for when we were students. It’s rewarding to see DEI being prioritized,” said Nsombi Ricketts 06MBA, who came to Goizueta through the Consortium and later founded the student-run Diverse Leadership Conference at Goizueta in response to racial incidents on campus.  She noted, “When I look at Goizueta today, I’m proud to see that our work has had a tangible impact and that the DEI conversation impacts so many populations – students, faculty, and even alumni.”

“We are very encouraged by the work being done in the business school and across the university around social justice. the context that comes from addressing this crucial topic from an interdisciplinary perspective enhances understanding and adds depth and breadth to the conversation.”

Andrea Hershatter, senior associate dean of undergraduate education and senior lecturer in Organization & Management, Emory University

Impacting Community

Beyond the classrooms of Goizueta, Associate Dean of the Evening MBA Program and Co-chair for Goizueta’s DEI Council Corey Dortch stressed this point. “We want to encourage students to lean in and face head-on how they can lead on DEI in their workplaces – even where they are right now – from a framework of real-world knowledge and confidence. DEI is a skill.”

Dortch praised the many faculty and staff who listen to the students and their colleagues of color, and then make decisive moves to address concerns. “I’m proud to be part of a community that strives to get it right.”

The strategic, structural, and sustainable principles that Goizueta will continue to evolve to create impactful and lasting change among its community is also mirrored at the university.

“We seek to truly understand how racism permeates so many aspects of society, and to seek to change that, and for Emory to be a model of an anti-racist university,” Emory University President Greg Fenves said.

“We prepare for our future, our anti-racist future, for Emory and the broader community here in Atlanta and beyond that we serve,” Fenves said. “These conversations will serve for more action and progress, and that’s exactly what we need at this moment in time.”

For more information on Goizueta’s longstanding commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, please visit emory.biz/equity.

The post Continuing a Global Goizueta Conversation on Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Anti-Racism appeared first on EmoryBusiness.com.

As a strategic initiative for Goizueta Business School, the principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) have earned recognition and raised awareness amongst students, scholars, staff members, and citizens of the greater Emory community. To pay tribute to 28 significant milestones in our school’s formative years, the Black History at Goizueta timeline was created. 

“The historical context is really illuminating. It is important to recognize trailblazers and have an opportunity to think through the events of the country and world as they collide with our local history,” says Jill Perry-Smith, senior associate dean of strategic initiatives who is charged with leading the school’s DEI strategies. 

Emory was desegregated in 1962 – not long ago from a historical perspective. The Black History at Goizueta Timeline project is one small step in recognizing the past and elevating key figures. As an ongoing effort, Goizueta is continuing to compile historical insight beyond this timeline and will continue to expand it over time.

“Though we have made progress in respecting our individual differences and embracing our commonalities, there is still much work to do before we understand the true beauty of diversity, equity, and inclusion,” Perry-Smith says. “We encourage all members of the Goizueta community to join us as we continue working to create meaningful change.” 

At Goizueta, diversity is a commitment to nurture and challenge the unique perspectives that will shape the future of business. It’s a commitment to innovate in traditional fields and embrace emerging insights. It is the foundation of our intentions and actions. It is one of the core values by which we lead. Find out more about our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion.

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