Our Goal
As leaders in the fight for equality and the advancement of workers across the country and on a global stage, Equality Action Center has developed programs and trainings to advance historically marginalized employees in the workplace, and remains committed to advancing racial, gender, and class equity in the workplace and beyond.
Our organization has celebrated exciting successes over the last 25 years. Namely, we have seen our impact through widespread adoption of DEI programs, policies, and decreases in bias at over 100 organizations.
- close all
Leadership Academy for Women
The Leadership Academy for Women is an intimate executive education program that prepares law firm partners and in-house counsel to stride confidently to the highest levels of success in their firms and organizations, their communities and the legal profession.
Led by Professor Joan C. Williams, a pioneering voice in work-family studies and workplace flexibility, this celebrated training offers a fine-tuned and practical curriculum, copious CLE credit, and the opportunity to troubleshoot with other women navigating similar systems and challenges in their field. Attendees consistently refer to the experience as “life-changing” since the inaugural 2007 program.
The Academy takes place each July in San Francisco. Space is limited.
“Career-changing…Nobody ever teaches these things!… Our job is to ensure that female associates and partners at the firm are getting the same opportunities as male associates and partners, and that they know how to recognize and make the most of those opportunities.”
– Stacey Rappaport, executive committee member – Milbank“One of the most eye opening and rewarding experiences of my life.”
“Best professional development activity I have ever participated in. It is life changing.”
“I have always been skeptical and resistant to formalized networking and leadership training. The academy has changed my mind.”
Women's Leadership Edge
Women’s Leadership Edge is a membership program for orgs that strive to level the playing field by addressing the structures that contribute to bias. Programming includes leadership training, professional skill building, and action-oriented conversations around race, gender and first-generation professionals in the workplace.
Access is organization-wide and designed for both individuals and leaders looking for sustained support in their efforts to push the needle forward at their orgs.
Bias Interrupters
Our Bias Interrupters program is designed to help companies across the world address systemic racism and sexism by interrupting bias in basic business systems. Our training, best practices and model policies, and open-source toolkits give companies tools to take action in hiring, performance evaluations and other systems. While corporations allow us to study their workforce, we are also gathering data to research what is necessary to eliminate racial and gender bias in the workplace.
- Our Bias Interrupters web pages have been accessed over half a million times by individuals and companies around the world.
- Before our intervention at one company, only 10% of people of color received mentions of their leadership skills in performance evaluations. One year later, with our help, that number jumped to 100%.
“I’ve attended a few too many wishy-washy trainings. I love that [the workshop]…had really hard data to back everything up.” – Bias Interrupters workshop participant
“As a woman of color, I was so impressed with the workshop. It was so engaging, every single topic covered was relatable to my experiences; it was absolutely outstanding. Both trainings were very rich in content…and people could speak up freely without judgment.” – Senior Business Manager at a banking & financial services company