Skills-based hiring and workforce diversity are important when it comes to performing workplaces. When we focus on hiring based on skills rather than just traditional qualifications, we open the door to a wider pool of talent. How can we make these practices more widespread in our workplaces?

In this special episode, I’m joined by Maria Putnam of the DEI Leadership Institute and Stephanie Knight, the CEO of Colorado Inclusive Economy. We discussed the upcoming event on October 11 at the Hyatt Aurora, the 2024 Annual Summit. We talked about the event overview, partnerships, mission, and the progress and challenges in diversity, equity, and inclusion. Don’t miss the date—join us! See you there!
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Listen to the podcast here:

2024 Annual Summit: Collaboration of Colorado Inclusive Economy and DEI Leadership Institute with Maria Putnam and Stephanie Knight
Welcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. As you probably know if you’ve listened to some of my other episodes, I’m based here in Denver, Colorado, and probably about half of my guests are in the area and I do like to promote events that are happening in person, especially events around the things that people around town are doing that they’re passionate about. As you know, Denver’s a city with a lot of passionate energy, a lot of people that are starting things up, a lot of people that are putting things together, a lot of people that are thinking through the world and how we can kind of even improve upon humanity, to get a little bit woo-woo and high level. One such event coming up in October, I believe in October 11th, is a partnership between Maria Putnam of the DEI Leadership Institute, who you probably already know from one of my earlier podcast episodes, and Stephanie Knight, the CEO of Colorado Inclusive Economy.
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Maria, Stephanie, welcome to the program. 

 

Thank you. 

 

Thank you. 

 

Yeah.

 

Yeah, glad to be on.

 

Well, let’s, let’s start out by talking about the event in October 11th. What are you putting on? What you were exposing to everyone? And what would people expect if someone might be interested in such an event? 

 

Yeah, well, the event is going to be in October 11, as you said. We’re going to be hosting this event at the Hyatt Aurora and we are expecting to have 350 people from all the industries. So, this is a really good event to go and to meet leaders, actually, who are really proactive and working in diversity, equity, and inclusion. 

 

I would just echo what Maria said, it’s going to be a wonderful event. It is on the 11th, it’s 8 AM to noon, and so, again, it’s going to be two distinct tracks of learning with two separate sessions each and we have engaged wonderful subject matter experts to lead these sessions. They’re highly topical and things that are on people’s mind, like diversity and AI, again, healthcare, inclusion, and scarcity. We’re also going to talk about some legal things, not too deep, but talk about with everything that’s happening in our larger world around diversity, equity, inclusion, how can companies stay the course and stay safe legally so it’ll be a lot for everyone. So excited to host with the DEI Leadership Institute and combine audiences. So we’re really excited about it. 

 

And what type of audience are you specifically looking to reach in this event? Is this the CEOs? Is this other leaders, division heads, more kind of small business entrepreneurs? Is there anyone in particular you’re looking to reach more with a lot of the advice that you have for these companies? 

 

I will say all together, you just said business owners, CEOs, students, people who’s actually doing the work of diversity, equity, and inclusion at whatever capacity they are. 

 

Yeah. It’s open to the public. Colorado Inclusive Economy is a membership organization so we engage C-suite leadership and their teammates and what we...