Commitment to Diversity
Goizueta has a legacy of a commitment to diversity through student recruitment and support organizations. Recently, Goizueta Business School took several major steps to make our commitment to diversity more sustainable and ingrained our culture.
A Message from Director of Diversity and Community Initiatives Alicia Sierra
Goizueta Business School has a longstanding commitment to diversity. This commitment is core to our goal to develop principled leaders for global enterprise. A diverse community provides us with some of the best intellectual capital in the world among our faculty, staff and students. It also provides our students with practical experience working across cultural boundaries -- experience that they could not gain in a homogenous class environment. It is extremely important that our students learn to work in teams and lead people from diverse backgrounds and ethnicities as the demographics shift to a more diverse and global workforce.
Alicia E. Sierra was appointed as Director of Diversity and Community Initiatives for Goizueta Business School in 2006. In this role, she serves as Chief Diversity Officer for Goizueta Business School and leads the effort to develop and implement Goizueta’s Diversity strategy.
She began her career at Emory University in the Rollins School of Public Health as Director of Student Services in 1991 joining the Goizueta Business School in 1995. Her most recent role in Admissions was Associate Director of MBA Admissions and Manager for Diversity Recruitment. During her tenure at Goizueta, she has developed partnerships and collaborated with students, faculty and other organizations to ensure that Goizueta’s MBA program has a diverse student body. Some of her efforts include the development of the Inside Goizueta Diversity Conference and the inclusion of Goizueta in the Consortium for Graduate Study in Management, where she served as a Board Member for two years.
In her current role, Alicia has led the School in developing Goizueta’s Diversity and Inclusion strategy and initiatives to promote a culture of respect and inclusion. These initiatives include annual Diversity Dialogues and diversity learning seminars and programs for staff, students, and faculty. She is also a member of Emory’s Diversity Officers Council, Goizueta’s Diversity Committee, The Atlanta Diversity Manager’s Group (ADMAG), Emory’s Latino Task Force, and Emory’s Martin Luther King Celebration Planning Committee.
Alicia holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Journalism/Public Relations from Florida A&M University and a Master’s of Science in Higher Education Administration from The Florida State University.
Overview of Diversity
Goizueta has made it a top priority to recruit the best and brightest students, faculty and staff that represent a variety of ethnicities and cultures. Goizueta’s commitment is core to our vision of becoming a model business school. Striving to achieve a diverse community at Goizueta Business School is not enough. We have gone a step further in our commitment. We are committed to ensuring that every member of our community is respected, supported and valued while pursuing their studies, research, teaching and professional roles..
Goizueta’s Diversity Vision
We aspire to create and sustain a community at Goizueta that is the best place to study and work. In support of this, we are committed to be a destination where all are respected, supported and valued.
Goizueta Strategic Diversity Initiatives
Goizueta’s Diversity Strategy
Our commitment to diversity is essential to our mission to operate as a model business school developing principled leaders for a global enterprise. That mission is supported by a strategy and action plan targeted at diversity and inclusion and features the following six strategic themes: Recruitment, Retention, Education, Communication, Research and Partnerships and Outreach.
Recruitment: We are committed to having a diverse community and seeks to achieve this through multiple recruiting tools targeted at diverse and under-represented minority groups.
Retention: We believe that student support is a core driver of retention and student satisfaction. Our clubs and organizations, as well as our university resources, provide support to our diverse student community.
Education: We are committed to ensuring that our community understands the importance and value of diversity in business, the classroom and society. Our school offers many opportunities to experience this, such as our Diversity Simulation at Orientation, diversity topics in various courses and our student-created Diverse Leadership Conference.
Communication: We believe communication is key to managing diverse audiences. We seek to first give students the opportunity to learn how to discuss diversity issues and then inform them of the diversity resources, programs and learning opportunities that are available.
Research: We support research and understanding on the topic of diversity and several Goizueta faculty work in this area, including Jill Perry Smith’s work on worklife initiatives and Andrea Hershatter’s research on millennials.
Partnerships and Outreach: Goizueta partners with many organizations whose missions include diversity as ours does, and we actively look to increase the numbers of minorities, women and other diverse groups throughout the business world.
