Frequently asked questions

Diversity in Sustainability was started in 2020, after the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery. As sustainability practitioners of colour, we felt the need to create a community to advance inclusion and equity, and as a way to interrogate pre-existing practices that do not focus on justice.

We recognize the importance of applying an intersectional lens to diversity and layering different identities, including gender, gender identity, mental/physical ability, sexual orientation, geography, religion, education, social mobility, country of origin, lived and work experience. In the work we do, we are sensitive to these identities but centre race, given the significant correlation between race and environmental and social injustice. We are choosing to focus our efforts on addressing the racial diversity gap in the sustainability field and equipping current and future Black, Indigenous, and other ethnic and racial minority sustainability leaders with the skills, networks, and resources to accelerate the transition to a sustainable and just future.

Within our member base, we have a Slack community and people with certain identities can join special affinity groups (e.g. neurodiversity, women, LGBTQ+, etc.) .

Now that we have DiS Circle active, we are always on the look out for moderators for different groups and also geographical leads. Email us for more details at info@diversityinsustainability.com.

We receive a large volume of emails and are a volunteer-run organization, and unfortunately, cannot always reply quickly. If it has been longer than a few weeks, please send us a second email to follow up. Thank you for your patience!

Please email us at info@diversityinsustainability.com with details of the event, including date, time, location, audience and objectives. Please note that depending on the level of preparation and type of organization, we would ask that you consider providing a donation or honorarium to Diversity in Sustainability.

You can do this through one of several methods:

Free:

Join our Google Group to post opportunities directly to over 2,400 sustainability professionals. If you are the hiring manager, we ask that you provide a salary range and provide details on how your organization is creating an inclusive culture.

Paid:

To make your role stand out amongst the clutter, we are now offering a jobs board for employers who are looking to hire diverse talent. Those who use the jobs board will also have a feature within our monthly roundup and our LinkedIn.

Go to https://jobsboard.diversityinsustainability.com.

We created the DiS Job Board to help employers and diverse sustainability talent in connecting and finding the opportunities that are right for them.Employers can post employment or volunteer opportunities on our job board, which shares your posting with Diversity in Sustainability community members. This job board also connects job seekers with new opportunities. Jobseekers can sign up for a complementary profile so that a tailored list of opportunities can be sent directly to you.

We periodically hire interns at Diversity in Sustainability. ECO Canada and the Government of Canada provide us funding for the internships, and a condition of the funding is that interns must be Canadian and enrolled in a post-secondary institution.

If we have roles open in different jurisdictions, we will post this in the Careers section of our website and in our Google Group and jobs board.

DiS started the Google Group as a way to create space for BIPOC/BAME and ally sustainability practitioners to share opportunities and receive relevant information about the field of sustainability and diversity, equity, inclusion and justice. The Google Group is where you will also receive Diversity in Sustainability’s bi-weekly roundup, which includes a curation of thought-provoking articles, events, and approximately 100 jobs per issue. Group members are also invited to share relevant jobs, volunteer positions, grants, events, resources and speaking opportunities. The DiS Google Group is free to join. Go to the Google Group page to read the rules and sign up. For deeper engagement, consider our DIS Circle membership.

Yes! We invite allies to join us. We think it is important to bring everyone into the tent to create an inclusive sector.

Accessibility is an important part of Diversity in Sustainability. We offer a full range of services for free to ensure accessibility. This includes the DiS Google Group and monthly roundup, community calls, career series webinars and other learning events, speaker database, and our research publications. See more details about ouf offerings on our membership page.

Please email us at info@diversityinsustainability.com if you would like to access a partial or full scholarship for our paid DiS Circle membership.

Yes! We welcome it. Please see the Donations/sponsorships part of our website for more details on how we work with partners.

Protecting the privacy of respondents who participate in our research is critically important to us. We do not divulge the names of respondents within their permission and for surveys, we try to anonymize identities at an aggregate level such that it would be difficult to identify a specific person.

Please also see our privacy policy for further details.