Initiatives in Progress

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Committee
  • Established a DEI Committee that all STAR Autism Support employees are encouraged to participate in; meetings are held monthly, during which team members present and analyze research, brainstorm, and conduct action planning on an ongoing basis
  • Created subcommittees in the following areas for focused action planning:
    • Organizational Growth
    • Curriculum and Materials
    • Workshops and Consultation
    • Marking and Reach
    • Green Team (Sustainability)
  • Adopted the use of Global Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Benchmarks (GDEIB) from the Centre for Global Inclusionto assess our organization, create goals, and monitor progress on how we are meeting our DEI initiatives in the following areas:
    • Foundational (organization structure and leadership)
    • Internal (recruitment, development, and learning)
    • Bridging (communication and sustainability)
    • External (social responsibility and products/services)
Personal Learning and Professional Development
  • Participated in professional development from Autism in Black to increase our knowledge of systemic racism, intersectionality of disability and race, and ableism in order to challenge our personal biases
  • Created an internal resource to share ideas related to DEI and resources for personal growth
  • Invited all employees to commit to and sign the “Do. Do More. Do Better” pledge to better our organization through individual commitment to social justice work
  • Carved out time during recurring meetings for ongoing discussions about inclusive language, cultural responsiveness, advocacy, social justice, and representation
Hiring, Recruitment, and Retention
  • Updated our company values to include DEI goals and initiatives
  • Created a more inclusive hiring process as one small step toward building a more diverse team, including rewriting our job descriptions and career page to be more inclusive and creating a structured, objective hiring process to combat implicit bias
Evaluating Curriculum and Materials
  • Dedicated time for our illustration team to increase diversity and representation in characters and themes used in visual supports and graphics
  • Creating a style guide for use throughout the content creation/development process to ensure ample diversity and representation
  • Updating our marketing materials to be more inclusive and representative of diverse populations, including videos and social media
Increasing Access
  • Established a section of our website dedicated to providing free resources to families and educators
  • Created a dedicated team for adding captions to videos
  • Created a dedicated team for Spanish translation