Welcome, DEI Leader
We see you. You’re leading the charge for more diverse, equitable and inclusive work environments where people feel they belong. Perhaps you have a small team, limited budget and are asked to transform the culture of your organization. Your role is unique, often bridging the chasm between compliance and genuine impact. Maybe you feel alone and tired of championing such a personal mission, professionally. Where do you go to connect & grow with other inclusive leaders like you to share stories, overcome challenges, share best practices, and support your peers in this work? As you focus on creating spaces of belonging for your organization, do you need a place to belong?
“When we’re talking about diversity, it’s not a box to check. It is a reality that should be deeply felt and held and valued by all of us.”
How do DEI Leader Circles work?
- Nominated DEI Leaders are sorted and matched in circles of about 8
- Circles gather in six 90-minute virtual sessions over 4 months
- Sessions are virtual (no travel!) but you do need solid and a dedicated location to focus
- A trained Circl.es Guide facilitates each session
- Circles staff provide concierge and logistical support
- Some participants will journey on to form Circles Fellowships - personal advisory boards beyond the initial six sessions
- LinkedIn program completion badge granted for full attendance
We priced this journey at $850 to cover facilitation and management costs.
We’ll be able to provide you with an invoice and other documentation required to expense this program as part of your professional development.
Benefits
- Develop a trusted peer group for your most urgent and important challenges
- Share and hear practices and learnings related to help drive real impact and thriving careers
- Enjoy professionally designed and facilitated sessions that maximize value and tangible outcomes
We will periodically launch a circle when we’ve reached critical mass. We’ll set the schedule before you commit. If invited, you’ll have a few days to confirm. The program is fully refundable after the first session.
What do others say?
TIMELINE
November
🔹 Inviting nominated leaders
🔹 Leaders confirm participation
December
🔹 Curate circles
🔹 Invites & Confirmations
🔹 Schedules
January
🔹 Two Launch Sessions
Monthly meetings
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?
We’ll take it from here. Once you have completed the form, the Circl.es team will curate your Circle and send invitations. All along, we’re here to explain details and answer your questions live or via email.
About Us
Circles are small groups gathering regularly for meaningful, facilitated conversation, creating community across an organization. Participants connect and grow together as their conversation bridges gaps and uncovers learning opportunities, which fosters engagement, belonging and trust.
Most organizations start by using the CircleSpace platform and services to layer inclusive social learning into leadership development, onboarding, DE&I or group coaching programs. Companies like Glassdoor and DuPont have gone on to deploy CircleSpace widely to cross-pollinate ideas, mend rifts and silos, and support wellness. At the Aspen Institute and Young Presidents Organization, circles are the beating heart of their learning communities.
Along with our partners, clients, and growing community of practice, we are working to bring out the best in humans in #circlesnotrows.
FAQ's
You will gain a circle of others who are invested in the work of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging, and fellow participants like you who are doing the work. You will experience showing up for others, and having a circle of peers show up for you.. You will have a committed space in your busy calendar for reflection on your biggest leadership challenges. Session structure and facilitation foster an immersive experience of , openness, inclusion, presence, listening, blind spots, accountability, storytelling, appreciation of diverse perspectives, & learning itself.
We priced this journey at $850 to cover facilitation and management costs.
We’ll be able to provide you with an invoice and other documentation required to expense this program as part of your professional development.
We’ve met many DEIB leaders in our work. We’re experienced at creating circles of peers that are also diverse, and so are hand picking and inviting leaders that we think will make a great circle. For this program, we’re looking for experienced leaders that have DEI responsibilities in their companies either full time or as a major part of their responsibility.
DEIB Leaders who have participated in a Circl.es experience, and desire to connect and grow with organizational leaders doing similar work.
By saying ‘yes’ to this 6 session experience, you are committing to yourself and the others in your circle.
This is not a webinar where you can watch a recording later. Your circle will miss you. If everyone commits, the circle will thrive. Worse, we’ve seen that missing is contagious and your absence risks setting off a chain reaction. Circle sessions can be very valuable with just a few people, and missing is sometimes unavoidable. But this rare opportunity to show up for yourself and your fellow participants. To lean into new connections and their lived experiences. So you have a choice. A chance to make these sessions a priority. To create a space away from email and your day-to-day. To move past “busy and tired”, and explore what’s possible if only you commit.
Maybe. We are planning for a certain level of churn, and do have a process to add members to another Circle when this happens. You might have to wait until another cohort launches. We also will refund your fees after the first session if you feel it isn’t right for you or you can’t make the commitment.
Our target is 6-8.
Circles Learning Labs has built technology that makes it easy to scale a consistently great circle experience virtually. The warm and welcoming video space itself has purpose-built features that easily facilitate inclusive and engaging dialogue. Our platform, process, and people are intentionally built to engineer for impactful small group conversation.
Years of hardening has made the space reliable. Overwhelmingly, companies have no issue with our videospace – it is just a website. It is built for confidential and secure conversations. We’ve passed rigorous security checks from some of the world’s largest companies. However, from time to time institutions restrict outside websites and do need to white list us. If that happens, the easiest answer is usually to connect from a personal device. Otherwise, we are glad to instruct your IT department how to quickly unrestrict circl.es.
No. The session time will be spent on your actual challenges, so any work you do will be up to you and directly relevant to your “work” work. Engaged participants often recommend reading and other resources to each other that you might want to check out.
We hope that you’ll want to continue. There is another level to the game – a committed Fellowship or Forum that stays together for up to a year or more, forming a personal advisory board. We support this with facilitation and libraries of exercises that can deepen a peer learning journey. Since the curriculum is you and your work, it is always evolving, and doesn’t get stale.
The relationship with circle mates often transcends the words “friend,” “colleague” and “advisor.” At this level, you gain a circle of others who are deeply invested in your success. You will have a committed space in your busy calendar for reflection on your biggest leadership challenges. You will also experience the most powerful leadership lessons other members all have, around vulnerability, inclusion, presence, listening, blind spots, storytelling, diverse perspectives, and learning itself — you will gain leaders around you who get this and become allies and help reinforce those skills while supporting you to transform your work and life.