At CEA, we believe our differences make us stronger. Uniting to serve the diverse state of California, we have created guiding principles to encourage an open, respectful, and communicative foundation for our staff in working together. While we know we aren’t perfect, we are embracing the journey together—to learn and evolve our shared vision of what inclusion and belonging means for our organization.
In June 2020, after the brutal murder of George Floyd, then-CEO Glenn Pomeroy directed the creation of a staff advisory council to consider what CEA could do internally and externally to address racial injustice. 23 staff came together and established the Diversity Inclusion and Belonging Advisory Council (DIBAC) and agreed on a broad vision for the council. Our staff-driven team, which has executive support, helps to guide CEA’s priorities and long-term commitment to ensure equity, equality, and racial justice are firmly embedded in our culture, activities, and programs.
DIBAC is one of many diversity groups that shares a multicultural calendar with staff and stakeholders. This interactive and colorful evergreen flipbook calendar is designed to help bring meaning to some of the special days of observance and celebrate social and cultural observations, and help facilitate discussions around diversity, inclusion, and belonging. We encourage you to flip through the pages of this dynamic, living, and diverse calendar. Check out DIBAC's multicultural calendar below to flip through the different pages.
Some members of DIBAC
The Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging Advisory Council (DIBAC) helps to guide CEA’s priorities and long-term commitment to ensure equity, equality, and racial justice are firmly embedded in our culture, activities, and programs.
We put our BELIEFS INTO ACTION through our work to:
- Improve the diversity of CEA staff to better reflect the demographics of our state.
- Open doors of economic opportunity for people of color and all underserved populations and for diverse business enterprises.
- Serve our community in meaningful ways that are in-line with our public preparedness mission.
- Ensure a shared understanding of what diversity, equity, and inclusion mean in our work and workplace.
We SERVE OUR COMMUNITY in meaningful ways that are in-line with our public preparedness mission:
- Worked with staff in our California Residential Mitigation Program to help ensure greater equity in the seismic retrofitting of homes by helping to develop a supplemental earthquake retrofit grant program for low-income communities.
- Broadening our recruitment strategies to attract a more diverse pool of candidates.
- Developed multiple paid internship programs.
We ensure a shared understanding of what DIVERSITY, EQUITY, AND INCLUSION mean in our work and workplace:
- First-ever staff ethnicity survey to benchmark our staff demographics and improve diversity
- Installed organization-wide implicit bias training.
- Ongoing internal education program—guest speakers, peer presentations, facilitated staff discussions and activities.
How We MEASURE SUCCESS:
- Measure staff perceptions annually about our diversity and inclusion within our departments and throughout CEA.
- Participate in biennial California Insurance Diversity Survey designed to measure the progress of insurer suppliers and governing board diversity practices.