How One Woman Is ‘Advancing Inclusion for Better Tomorrows’

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Creating a more inclusive workplace isn’t just achieved by hiring more diverse employees or hosting a few one-off inclusion workshops — it’s an ongoing initiative that requires time, attention, and commitment. Artist-researcher, personal-innovation mentor, and author Yvette Dubel has made it her life’s work to help companies and individuals around the world effectively address diversity and inclusion. To do this, she created the Empowered Innovation System.

“My business is about forward-thinking solutions that increase the peace and advance inclusion for better tomorrows,” Dubel explains to CircleAround. “New thinking is required for today’s leaders to address the challenges within innovation, equality, diversity inclusion, retention, and risk management.”

Diversity Is Better for Your Business Bottom Line

Dubel’s program addresses not-so-obvious pitfalls that negatively affect a business’s ability to achieve diversity and inclusion goals. For example, Empowered Innovation System helps companies with employee retention — an important issue given that it costs employers 33 percent of a worker's annual salary to hire a replacement, according to the Work Institute's 2017 Retention Report.

Dubel’s system, based on decades of her experience, helps employees and employers transform challenges into launchpads for success. “It has led to a focus on individual momentum as the key to systemic transformation toward innovation via more effective diversity inclusion,” she adds.

"I know I am giving it my best to do my part and to empower the better angels in others."

One of her proudest moments includes collaborating with We the World, a New York City-based nonprofit that aims to “maximize social change globally...until we have a world that works for all.” Her experiences with this organization, and her involvement in the MLK 40 Days of Peace celebration, helped inspire a new mission — "a cure for racism" project.

Love Is a Powerful Force

In association with We the World, Dubel describes this project as “what you have to gain by putting allyship and advocacy into a new framework.” The project aims to dismantle systemic racism by helping people of all backgrounds and experiences develop a more meaningful understanding of racism, and empowering them with “easy-to-digest takeaways to begin taking action on.” The project is still under development but she hopes to release it publicly within the next year.

“Refusing subjugation when confronted with racism oriented me toward empowerment,” she tells CircleAround. “Finding my voice through creative expression, and those experiences, have shown me love is a real and powerful force.”

“Staying hopeful is the most persistent challenge, and the biggest reward is that I know I am giving it my best to do my part and to empower the better angels in others.”