Good morning, my name is Melissa Watkinson.
I'm here to present about a wonderful group of people and our efforts in centering historically
underrepresented voices within the Salish Sea, which you've already heard a little bit about this morning.
The Salish Sea is the trans boundary body of water that lies between Vancouver BC and Washington State
and it includes the Strait of Georgia, the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and Puget Sound.
There are many people who care deeply and work to ensure that the diverse ecosystems
within the Salish sea are preserved, conserved, and resilient to changes.
To me, as Dr. Finney recommended, diversity is personal.
I'm a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation of Oklahoma and grew up in Washington State
where a number of my family members are involved with the upper Skagit tribe.
Because I grew up in Washington, closer to my father's family,
I more culturally identify with the Coast Salish community.
I work as a social scientist at a program called Washington Sea Grant,
which is focused within, or housed within the College of Environment at University of Washington.
Most of my work engages with coastal tribes to find the solutions to the social, cultural, and economic impacts
of changes within the ocean.
I consider myself a queer, indigenous scholar.
After working with large, mostly white, environmental nonprofit organizations and within the Academy,
and experiencing and witnessing the kinds of disparities that exist there,
I have joined in a broader effort with other underrepresented and underserved communities,
to bring diversity, equity, and inclusion into the environmental and marine studies field
across the Salish Sea region.
And I have two examples that I would like to highlight here.
As I said, I now work at Washington Sea Grant.
We are a program with about 27 staff who do research, outreach, and education programs that serve the
coastal communities of Washington State.
Washington Sea Grant does not currently do well in breaking that green ceiling.
There are about 11 percent of our staff who identify as people of color.
In June of last year, nearly half of our staff, about 14 of us,
came together organically after recognizing that we had similar interests and that there was a deep need
in bringing more diversity, equity, and inclusion into our work space, both internally and externally,
with the communities and partners that we work with.
We quickly identified ourselves as the Washington Sea Grant DEI Work Group,
or Diversity Equity Inclusion Work Group,
and it's co-chaired by myself and our Assistant Director for Programs, Kate Lytle.
We've developed some groups that work collectively to work on assessments and evaluations
for how we are doing in terms of DEI at Washington Sea Grant.
There's folks that help the design and sharing of trainings and resources
and we've worked to create a ten-year road-map on what Washington Sea Grant
will do to implement DEI within our different work areas.
A few of the processes that we've engaged in since June of 2018, so not even a year ago,
we have held, by a third-party facilitator, a racial equity training for all of our staff to engage in.
We have put in a diversity statement and a diversity value statement within our website
and our annual RFP process.
And as some staff members have articulated, Washington Sea Grant feels that it's
becoming a place where they can bring their whole selves to.
I believe that this is a great example and that I'm proud of the work that needs to be done
by organizations and departments that have not historically engaged
in centering underrepresented voices.
And now I get the great pleasure of sharing the phenomenal work
of some of my dearest community-based colleagues.
Together, the folks on this on the stage, who are in this photo,
we share the stage of the DEI panel at the Regional Salish Sea Ecosystem Conference last year.
And we, together, opted to use that energy and momentum that we've gained from that experience,
to try and bring the ideas that we have to a bigger stage.
Like many other regions in most other fields,
there are significant disparities in the representation content
and processes for implementing diversity, equity, and inclusion
within the environmental fields across the Salish Sea and the Pacific Northwest Coast.
Although professionals in this field are aware and concerned about issues related to DEI,
there is an overall lack of understanding for how to integrate
these concepts into the environmental workforce.
Addressing inequity and working towards environmental justice is essential to a successful movement,
we believe.
We also believe that, by creating and fostering the Salish Sea DEI community of practice,
we can begin to help build a critical foundation in this work together.
A majority of the folks here are either alumni or current doctoral students at the University of Washington.
All doing really excellent work to bring stronger representation
of diverse communities into the environmental and marine fields.
In addition to coming together to form the community of practice,
we are partnering with a couple departments within the College of Environment to organize
and host the first-ever Salish Sea DEI symposium this fall.
Collectively, we have designed seven goals and values of collaboration, and I'll just highlight a few.
We aim to support a continuous and meaningful dialogue within a marine environmental field
in order to create internal and external solutions to DEI gaps.
We also aim to elevate historically underrepresented voices within the environmental field of our region.
And as the Salish Sea DEI community practiced,
we hope that we can offer a demonstrated model for implementing an equitable,
collaborative process based on our core of DEI values,
and that seeks to continue learning and understanding equity and justice.
So here I provided two different examples for implementing DEI work,
both in just under a year of actually implementation.
I hope that these can offer really great models for what we can do together in bringing DEI and internal,
inside and outside of our work.
Thank you.
[clapping]