For years, the tech industry has taken heat for its lack of diversity. Silicon Valley companies have long been dominated by white males, but many – especially in the social networking realm – are looking to change that.

Twitter is the place where inclusion lives. It is a platform that gives people across the world a voice: it’s the ultimate equalizer. It has been the platform integral to spreading messages of social and civil rights movements on a mass scale, from #BlackLivesMatter to #LoveIsLove to #NoDAPL, #ILookLikeAnEngineer, and beyond.  

And just as inclusion lives on the platform, Twitter wants to ensure that it fully lives up to that business priority in the workplace. The company wants decisions they make about their workplace to be equally inclusive and to allow for different perspectives to flourish, making Twitter stronger and helping them more fully meet their mission to give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly, without barriers. To help with that, Twitter’s Inclusion and Diversity (I&D) Team hired SNRE alumna Emily Reyna in January 2017. As their first Inclusion and Diversity Business Partner, Emily works with HR, businesses, and other internal partners to help further develop and advance I&D strategies within and across specific Twitter groups.

“Inclusion and diversity efforts at Twitter are about more than just a side project,” Reyna said. “It is about embedding an I&D mindset into everything we do and activating behavior that encourages belonging. Doing so not only leads to an even better culture, but also will lead to innovations and product decisions that best serve our users, everywhere.”   

Reyna has a wealth of experience in this arena, having served as the first director of diversity for the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF). There, she worked closely with the organization’s leadership to deepen diversity and inclusion values in the culture and recruitment efforts, establish metrics to measure outcomes and evaluate progress, and build capacity for EDF to engage in substantive external partnerships with diverse constituencies.

“I graduated from SNRE and Ross, wanting to be a director of corporate sustainability at a company. While I am not exactly in that role now, I do believe that I&D is very parallel. It’s not only the right thing to do – the moral case, but it's imperative to do so from a business standpoint.”