DEI Training Series

Introduction

The Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Standing Group (DEISG) identifies and coordinates training opportunities with a goal for inclusive and intersectional diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) training. The DEISG proposes different types of training to engage Alliance members wherever they are with their DEI practices. Training opportunities will address different learning styles and topic familiarity while incorporating community elements.

  • Training types: speaker/presentation, panel discussion, workshop, multiple session series
  • Learning styles: active learning, group discussion, think + write, interactive response, Q&A
  • Topics: diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging, identity (personal, community, and systems), LGBTQ+, anti-bias, anti-harassment, policies and practices

FY25 Opportunities: Anti-Bias and Anti-Harassment Topics

Human-provided captioning will be available for trainings that are not recorded. Trainings that include recording will use Zoom’s automated captions for the live sessions with human-provided and edited captions for the recordings.

Visit DEI Training, Previous Years to review information for past training opportunities.

Bystander Intervention & Conflict De-Escalation

Trainer: Bianca Carbajal, Training and Facilitation Specialist, Right To Be

Date: October 15, 2024, 10:00am-12:00pm

Description: When disrespect or harassment happens at a public workplace, people are almost always around and if they aren’t around, they can be quickly summoned to show up. Our goal is to reduce instances of workplace disrespect by giving employees the tools they need to disrupt those perpetrating it. We will equip you with tools to be an effective bystander in the midst of workplace disrespect by using our proven 5Ds of bystander intervention methodology – distract, delegate, document, delay, and direct. 98% of employees leave our training committed to intervene next time they witness disrespect or harassment at work.

If your team interfaces with the public, chances are they will face moments of escalation and will need to know what to do. Conflict de-escalation requires patience, a willingness to listen, and an ability to see the humanity in everyone. Using Right To Be’s Observe-Breathe-Connect methodology, we’ll learn how to identify potential conflict before it escalates using our “pyramid of escalation” and how to assess whether de-escalation is the right action. We’ll also learn how to connect with others by validating their feelings and helping diffuse the situation — even if we don’t understand them or agree with them. We’ll have time at the end to practice using real-life scenarios.

Learning Objectives:

  • Participants will gain a greater understanding of bystander intervention and conflict de-escalation.
  • Participants will engage with methods to respond when encountering situations involving bias, disrespect, harassment, and conflict.
  • Participants will identify approaches to respond and support others during times of conflict.
  • Participants will feel confident to use such methods and approaches on their own, outside a training space.

Trainer Bio: Bianca Carbajal (she/her) is a training consultant at Right To Be with over four years of experience facilitating educational workshops and conversational spaces for others. Born and raised in the city of Chicago, she is passionate about supporting local communities through volunteerism. Bianca wants to be a supportive leader that uplifts those around her and provides resources. She enjoys bringing groups of people together to experience, learn, or build something new. In her free time, she likes to dance and play with her two cats, Leo and Luna.

Navigating Our Unconscious: Strategies for Managing Implicit Bias

Trainer: Lourdes Tango, Training Consultant

Dates: November 12 and 14, 2024, 10:00am-11:30am

Description: This interactive two-session workshop will present the latest neuroscience research on unconscious bias and micro-inequities.

The first session will focus on unconscious bias. We’ll set a foundation to better understand aspects of our brains’ instinctive functions and patterns, along with their impacts, and consider how our life experiences frame our references. We’ll learn how managing our own bias can promote stronger collaboration with our colleagues and user communities, which results in more effective leadership, enhanced public service, efficient resource sharing, and innovative solutions.

The second session will expand the topic of unconscious bias by introducing the concept of micro-inequities, which are often expressions of unconscious bias. These small behaviors can have strong impacts on performance, engagement, leadership, and collaboration. We’ll discuss the importance of demonstrating respect and explore techniques for recognizing and addressing counterproductive behaviors and attitudes.

This workshop will feature interactive elements, including videos, chat, pair and small group conversations, and full group discussion. Participants will receive a workbook with activities and reading material a couple of days before the training.

Learning Objectives:

  • Participants will gain a greater understanding of unconscious bias and micro-inequities.
  • Participants will identify methods to manage bias.
  • Participants will recognize common counterproductive behaviors and attitudes.
  • Participants will select specific actions to support and demonstrate respect.
  • Participants will learn about resources and approaches for continued skill-building.

Trainer Bio: Lourdes Tango is a training consultant experienced in designing and facilitating programs in cross-cultural communication and diversity topics.

Safer Libraries De-escalation Training

Trainers: Farah Fosse & Hind Essayegh, Trainers, Defend Yourself

Date: February 19, 2025, 10:00am-12:00pm

Description: Libraries and library workers face challenges in handling difficult or threatening situations while providing services and resources to their communities. Defend Yourself helps libraries address these challenges with de-escalation skills and support.

Library patrons and others often give front-line workers a hard time. The pandemic brought with it a surge in such behavior, as people took out their fear, stress, and anger on public-facing staff in all sectors. In this training, participants learn de-escalation skills for dealing with people who are angry, escalated, stressed out, or otherwise interfere with your job and the general enjoyment and use of library resources and spaces. Sections will include determining when to de-escalate, 5 steps for effective de-escalation, the assertive alternative, working with the fight-flight-freeze response, organizational strategies, and more!

This training will feature interactive elements, including breakout rooms, discussions, polls, chat questions, and digital whiteboards.

Learning Objectives:

  • Participants will gain a greater understanding of conflict and de-escalation.
  • Participants will engage with methods to respond when encountering situations involving anger, stress, and conflict.
  • Participants will identify approaches to respond and support others during times of conflict.
  • Participants will feel confident to use such methods and approaches on their own, outside a training space.

Trainers’ Bios:

Farah Fosse (she/her/hers) started teaching with Defend Yourself after taking a 10-week class with the organization in 2005. She also works as a community organizer, affordable-housing consultant, and social worker. “I’m passionate about supporting people in developing tools to take control of their lives and fight back against oppression. I especially enjoy bringing assertiveness and de-escalation skills to people working with the public to create safe and inclusive spaces.” Farah received self-defense instructor training (and offered trainings) through the National Women’s Martial Arts Federation.

Hind Essayegh (she/her/hers) has a diverse background as a linguist, educator, martial artist, and identity-based violence prevention advocate. “My passion is to help people find and use their power to defend themselves and their communities against gender- and hate-based violence. My self-defense training with Defend Yourself was empowering, healing, and life-changing, and I strive to spread the positive impact of this work as widely as possible.” Hind currently serves as Curriculum and Training Manager with No Means No Worldwide. She also works with Defend Yourself and Malikah teaching empowerment self-defense and bystander intervention within the Muslim community and to the general public in person and online.

Defend Yourself works to empower people — especially women and LGBTQIA+ people — to end violence and create a world where they can be fully themselves. Since its founding in 1997, the group has trained more than 40,000 people of all genders and ages in the DC area, and more nationally.

Interrupting Bias and Building Allyship

Trainer: Sirius Bonner, Executive Director, INTERSECT

Date: April 9, 2025, 10:00am-12:00pm

Recording and Materials:

Online Access:

  • Access to these files is limited to Alliance member staff via discussion email lists.
  • Registrants received an email with direct links and instructions.
  • If your email address doesn’t give you access, please send Amy Coughenour an email to request assistance.

Description: Implicit bias and intersectionality are foundational to fostering equitable and inclusive environments, especially within organizations that influence educational and cultural landscapes. This interactive two-hour training will explore and address implicit bias and intersectionality while equipping participants with strategies to interrupt microaggressions and foster allyship. The session will focus on foundations of implicit bias and intersectionality, with interactive discussions on how biases form, the relationship between implicit bias and explicit bias, their impact on decision-making, and how intersecting identities influence experiences.

Learning Objectives:

  • Participants will learn how to identify common microaggressions and understand their cumulative impact on marginalized groups.
  • Participants will receive practical tools for interrupting bias, including strategies for recognizing and addressing bias in real-time and bystander intervention techniques
  • Participants will learn frameworks for building effective allyship, emphasizing accountability, listening, and sustained action to support colleagues and communities.

Trainer Bio: Sirius Bonner (she/her) is the Executive Director of INTERSECT. As a Black, fat, queer, cis-woman, Sirius stands at the intersections of many identities. Her passions for Black liberation and racial justice, gender justice, and fat liberation all stem from her experience navigating oppressive systems. Through these experiences, she sharpened her intersectional analysis and dedicated herself to the fight for social justice and liberation for all. Sirius has a background in higher education, healthcare, nonprofits, and philanthropy. Sirius earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Reed College.

Recognizing, Utilizing, & Disrupting Our Individual Defaults in Service of Equity & Justice

Trainer: Yejin Lee, Founder, Equity & Justice Practitioner, Jeong Coaching & Consulting, LLC

Date: April 30, 2025: 1:00pm-3:15pm

Recording and Materials:

Online Access:

  • Access to these files is limited to Alliance member staff via discussion email lists.
  • Registrants received an email with direct links and instructions.
  • If your email address doesn’t give you access, please send Amy Coughenour an email to request assistance.

Description: As library workers at higher education institutions, we navigate multiple levels of power dynamics – individual, collective, departmental, administrative, institutional, and more. And we often engage with those levels at “default settings” in our expectations and responses. This workshop will guide us in questioning those power levels and defaults. We’ll approach equity and justice through inquiry and curiosity to support generative change. We’ll ask questions of ourselves, our communities, and our systems as part of creating ownership over change, growth, and transformation.

Our continued work towards equity and justice requires care – care for ourselves, collective care within communities, learning how to center care in our work, and recognizing the different types of care that people need. This session will incorporate care as part of our work in the inherent ways we build knowledge, raise awareness, and connect our growing understanding to our choices and interactions.

Learning Objectives:

  • Participants will identify and understand the basic mechanics of oppression within institutions.
  • Participants will increase our individual and collective ability to locate and map power dynamics.
  • Participants will increase our individual and collective attunement to our default thoughts, feelings and behaviors in order to access greater agency and autonomy over our choices, and to imbue equity & justice within those choices.
  • Participants will brainstorm and build tools to keep ourselves accountable to generative growth and transformation.

Trainer Bio: Yejin Lee (she/they) is a queer, genderfluid, neurodivergent, and second generation Corean anti-oppression facilitator and coach who supports individuals and institutions in proactively choosing and materially committing to long-term transformation towards liberatory praxis.

Yejin draws from their professional experiences in nonprofit community organizing, fundraising, governance, strategy, and operations, and also from her informal roles as staff advocate and generative nuisance. Yejin is a lifelong student of abolition, anti-colonialism, anti-imperialism, disability justice and anti-fascism. She is passionate about integrating care, wholeness, and directness into all spaces, and invites softness, lightness, and play when needed and appropriate!