DxD Year One Highlights

While 2021 gets further in the rear view and we look forward to the promise of this new year, Impact Collaborative wanted to take a moment to thank our community, and the greater design community, for helping to make Diversify by Design's (DxD) first year a success. As the coalition's managing entity, and but one small part of this critical and massive undertaking, we are humbled.

Since our launch in early 2021, we’ve forged significant relationships, collaborated with community-centered organizations already doing the hard work across the design ecosystem, and experienced growth beyond our expectations.

Here are just a few of DxD’s many first-year accomplishments:

• Established an Advisory Council comprised of 13 subject matter and community experts (expanding in Jan 2022) to set priorities for the coalition.
• Activated working groups with focused efforts across those critical, interconnected priorities: Youth Exposure, Education, Experience, Employment, and Empowerment.
• Engaged 17 partner organizations in the nonprofit, education, association, agency, and corporate sectors to help the coalition catalyze measurable change.
• Launched Design= (co-developed by DxD, designExplorr, and Amazon), which has already delivered workshops introducing design to more than 400 historically excluded middle- and high-school youth since its launch in October.
• Launched DxD Intensives, connecting historically excluded students with industry mentors through a pilot with San Francisco State University (SFSU) and Delta Dental. In 2022, the SFSU x Delta Dental collaboration will continue and the program will expand to other industry/education partnerships.

We’d like to thank the people and organizations in the design industry who have acknowledged, supported, and committed to changing the ways in which they operate; both internally and out in the world, as they dedicate people and financial resources to tangible, sustainable change.

We’re proud of the year we’ve had: the relationships we’ve kindled, partnerships we’ve developed, and programs we’ve help to drive. Most importantly, we’re heartened by how folks are showing up—coming to the table with humility and curiosity to learn; working together to dive deep and create the change our systems and organizations require for a racially just, equitable, and truly inclusive design industry. 

As we look ahead to 2022, we’re excited about what the coalition will accomplish to get us closer to realizing DxD’s mission. Join us. Make a difference in the future of design.