There’s a saying: “The church is the people, not the building.” It means that the church is really about the beliefs worshippers hold inside and the community they build together—not the place where they gather.
In many ways, this wisdom applies perfectly to DEI. As one major company after another rolls back their DEI initiatives, one truth becomes clear: True diversity, equity, and inclusion live in our actions and commitments, not just in corporate policies or programs. A McKinsey and Company study has shown that companies with the most ethnic and cultural diversity achieved 36% higher profitability than companies with a less diverse C-suite—suggesting that negating DEI practices could have real business impact.
If your brand serves people—real humans who engage with your products, services, and experiences—then diversity, equity, and inclusion are not optional. They are essential. The question isn’t whether DEI matters, but whether people matter.
My experience as DEI Committee Chairperson at Codeword offers insights for organizations navigating this landscape, but perhaps not in the way you’d expect.
Being a Black woman at a predominantly white agency made me an obvious choice for the role. Too obvious. Despite having led company culture conversations and actively recruiting diverse talent (bringing three Black women to the company), I had no formal DEI training or experience. The nagging feeling of potential tokenization was real, even if unintentional.
What transformed this hesitation into impact was discovering that effective DEI leadership isn’t about having all the answers. It’s about creating space for every voice to be heard. Organizations that embrace this approach see tangible results. According to Ashley Kelly, co-founder and CEO of CultureAlly, inclusive teams are 87% better at organizational decision-making than non-inclusive ones.
Here are a few tangible lessons I learned that can help organizations build truly inclusive cultures.
1. Listening is Learning
It’s okay to not know everything, even if you think you do. Once you acknowledge that you have room to learn, you gain the freedom to ask for opinions, ideas, and information to help you grow. That way, you can help others grow, too.
Initially I felt that the DEI chairperson should know everything about programs to start, places to volunteer, and ways to engage, but by admitting my uncertainties, asking questions, and actively listening to the answers, I fostered an environment where everyone not only felt valued and heard, but got a chance to learn. This approach can transform organizations. In fact, companies with inclusive practices are twice as likely to meet or exceed financial targets.
When I didn’t know what to do, I often did what I should have done: nothing. I sat back and listened to the committee members in the communities we were supporting who were much better equipped than me to share ideas about how to support, uplift, and champion their people. For organizations looking to make real impact, this kind of authentic engagement, rather than top-down programming, is crucial.
2. Belonging Improves Business
Whether your organization is moving away from DEI or maintaining its stance and keeping its policies, it’s on all of us who believe in the power of diversity, equity, and inclusion to make it a priority no matter what. It takes personal accountability and responsibility with small, consistent changes for a big difference to be made, and we can all accomplish that regardless of what the world is doing (Codeword’s Kyle Monson wrote about that DIY approach to DEI here). HBR research shows that companies where employees report high belonging see 56% increase in job performance and 50% lower turnover rates, proving that these small, consistent actions to show we care about each other add up to measurable impact.
For brands and businesses, this is an undeniable competitive advantage. Your people (employees, customers, partners) are the backbone of your success. Without a culture of belonging and inclusion, retaining talent and fostering innovation becomes measurably harder.
3. Seeing People Builds Success
While implementing DEI, remind yourself, as often as you need, to stay open to ideas beyond your lived experience. Let the notion that the world isn’t American, is not all English-speaking, is not all one color or religion or sexual orientation, and is not all the same, drive everything you do. This goes beyond the DEI conversation, and applies to how we go about our creative work, how we speak to each other, how we tell stories, and how we navigate the world around us. We should measure our success not in attention, but in empathy. When we see each other’s humanity, collaboration flourishes, and barriers dissolve.
As a Christian at the helm of the DEI committee, I discovered that the people whose religious beliefs radically differ from mine are also the nicest people I’ve ever known. As a Black woman in this space, I learned that when I mention DEI, I shouldn’t only have my people in mind—diversity very necessarily encompasses a wide range of individuals and groups. This kind of perspective-shifting matters: Diverse companies are 70% more likely to capture new markets, likely because they better understand and empathize with diverse customer bases.
None of this is relevant to you, however, if your business doesn’t truly care about people. But if your products and services reach real humans—and chances are, they do—it’s time to investigate what DEI means for your organization’s future.
Because in business, as in churches, it’s the people who matter most.
