Have you ever thought about the importance of embracing inclusion and diversity as a philosophy? At Making Sense, we encourage our team to build an environment where those words matter and where equal opportunities are a reality. For that reason, we take every moment we need to think about it and to shape a culture of equality.

This March 10, we gathered at our offices to commemorate International Women’s Day and to discuss with all the Making Sense folks all over the world, not only women’s rights and the challenges they are still facing but what we can do to build a more equal landscape for everyone.

Getting all of us involved

Based on our experience in 2019, where our women leaders talked about their experiences and careers, we sought a larger perspective that includes all of us – not only girls. For that reason, we reached out to Gabriela Hostnik and asked her to join our initiative and share her knowledge with our team. The idea was to go beyond women ‘s reality and talk about something that impacts everyone: Inclusion, Diversity, and Equal opportunities. So, we brought to the table these concepts, joining together people from the United States, Spain, Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador, México and Chile.

What we talked about

The meeting revolved around diversity and inclusion, genders, disabilities, unconscious bias and the ideal kind of leadership we must strive to create to lower barriers. After listening to our speaker and learning from her experience, we were invited to participate in a reflective activity, where we had to list our 10 most closely related persons, describe how like-minded they are with us and what we do, and ask what we can do to have more open and inclusive relationships.

This was a space full of learning and where each of us had a place to share with others their personal experiences. A sense of inclusion is building through each of us and as a company, we’re committed and motivated to going toward this more inclusive world, to training leaders and building more inclusive teams. After all, we all have something to learn and teach.

What we’ve learned

We understand that being inclusive is an action, that diversity enriches us and strengthens us as a team, as a company, and as an individual. From each place, it means respecting different opinions and multiple worldviews, and not raising barriers against those who think differently.

We are committed to promoting multifunctional teams and conforming to more heterogeneous work environments where people from minorities have a voice and a place for their development. We are sure that, from these teams, come the most innovative solutions and better results. These are differences that make differences.

It’s well known that opportunities and challenges arise within workplaces that embrace diversity, but these differences – which come from different backgrounds, experiences, and identities– help us to improve our team’s performance and creativity, and that leads to greater engagement, satisfaction, and inclusion.

We know that diversity without inclusion doesn’t work and each one of our leaders plays a crucial role. As an organization and as leaders, we should ask ourselves: which goals are we following to build an inclusive and diverse culture? There is a lot that we have done and there is still more to achieve. As a part of the Making Sense team, I feel proud that we will be actively including this topic on our agenda. We’re very committed to continuing to build a culture toward inclusion.