Generations in the Workplace: Understanding Differences and Achieving Common Ground

Dr. Lucy C. Arciniega has over ten years of experience in the diversity, equity, and inclusion industry. She formerly served as Director of DEI at Salk Institute for Biological Studies where she headed the DEI team. She was responsible for developing and implementing sustainable strategies to further diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging. Dr. Arciniega functioned as the subject matter expert on DEI and as a strategic partner across the multiple groups and functions that do DEI work at Salk, helped to initiate and measure the success of DEI efforts. She also secured and managed partnerships between Salk and external community members to further the diversification of Salk and the STEM workforce. Dr. Arciniega co-founded Willing Observers with Dr. Melissa Maceyko to provide DEI strategies and services from an organizational culture perspective. Her company uses insights about company beliefs, values, norms, and practices to drive the creation of DEI plans, metrics, training and programming to meet the specific needs and expectations of a company’s stakeholders. As a scholar-practitioner on diversity and inclusion, Dr. Arciniega has 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. Dr. Arciniega has worked with the National Diversity Council since 2015, being in the inaugural cohort of the NDC Certification Program. Later, as Managing Director at the National Diversity Council, a non-profit 501 (c) 3 organization, she oversaw the NDC Index, an annual survey which measures organizational commitment to diversity and inclusion. In this role, Dr. Arciniega 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. Dr. Arciniega 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. She lives in and works out of San Diego, California.