Interrupting Unconscious Bias: Raising Social Awareness and Fostering Inclusive Workplaces

Dr. Lucy C. Arciniega has over ten years of experience in the diversity, equity, and inclusion industry. She currently serves as Director, Diversity Strategies & Implementation at Salk Institute for Biological Studies. She co-founded Willing Observers with Dr. Melissa Maceyko to provide DEI strategies and services from an organizational culture perspective. Lucy is a scholar-practitioner on diversity and inclusion, having published academic articles in several peer-reviewed journals, as well as opinion editorials through her column, "Diversity in the Workplace," which was hosted from 2017 to 2019 by the American Anthropology Association, a professional membership organization with over 10,000 members. She also served as Managing Director at the National Diversity Council, a non-profit 501 (c) 3 organization, where she oversaw the NDC Index, an annual survey which measures organizational commitment to diversity and inclusion. In this role, Lucy designed the methodology for assessing the results of a 200+ question survey according to global diversity and inclusion best practices. She also designed the NDC Index Report to help companies use their survey results to create an efficient DEI organizational strategy that maximizes their investment in organizational change. Lucy has held positions in academia, including as a Visiting Assistant Professor in Business and Organizational Anthropology at Wayne State University. As a trained anthropologist, she has also used her cross-cultural perspective to bring key insights into customer service experience, management leadership strategies, and employee and team engagement dynamics through change management consulting. Lucy C. Arciniega received her Ph.D. and M.A. degrees in Anthropology from the University of California, Irvine. Her doctoral research on the diversity and inclusion industry received numerous awards, including the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research Grant.