Imagining the Ideal DEI Work for the Future
May 06, 2025Diversity, equity, and inclusion work has never been about checking boxes. It’s about imagining and building a world where every person can thrive. It’s a future-building project. And like all future-building work, it’s not without resistance.
Right now, that resistance is loud and coordinated. The Trump administration and its allies have worked tirelessly to discredit and dismantle equity efforts across the country. Their strategy is clear: stoke fear, weaponize confusion, and roll back progress by rebranding diversity as a threat.
But here’s the thing about fear: it only works when we forget to dream.
So let’s dream.
Let’s imagine a future where DEI doesn’t just survive this moment—it evolves into something deeper, more effective, and more magnetic than ever before.
In this future, equity isn’t confined to HR departments or annual trainings. It’s baked into how we hire, how we make decisions, how we design policies, and how we measure success. It’s reflected in who holds power—and how that power is used.
In this future, DEI is not a political hot potato. It’s a community norm. In this future, the tools of futurism and equity are intertwined. We don’t just respond to threats; we proactively build structures that make justice sustainable and inevitable.
To get there, we need to shift out of defense mode. We need to stop asking “How do we keep this work alive?” and start asking, “What does our best version of this work look like—and how do we make that real?”
It’s not naïve to imagine this future. It’s necessary.
We owe it to our movements, our communities, and our future selves to stay in this work—not just as it is, but as it could be.
To continue the conversation, join our visioning strategist Jerry Hawkins for a live webinar on Monday, June 2nd at 1pm ET. He'll be diving into what DEI can look like when it reaches people who currently don’t understand it—and when it fully realizes its transformative power. Register here.
