Dr. Pushpa Iyer is a strategically minded executive and thought-leader, with 25+ years of experience championing international education, racial equity, and peacebuilding efforts. By drawing on a critical-thinking approach and a background leading capacity-building projects, Dr. Iyer empowers the communities she works with to facilitate social change and has extensive experience supporting vulnerable populations and low-income communities. Over the course of her career, Dr. Iyer has come to the conclusion that while courage is instrumental to accomplishing social change, courage alone is not enough; in fact, what is needed is BOTH compassion AND courage.
So what does that mean when it comes to how we approach Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion? For one, it means that having the courage to point out what people or organizations aren’t doing/or are getting wrong is simply not enough. In fact, if we fixate ONLY on what’s wrong or missing without compassion, we run the risk of shutting people down in ways that leave us all worse off.