When MPI was founded more than 50 years ago, our founding members ensured that the foundation of our community and the core principles of our association would be built on an unwavering commitment to inclusivity and diversity—and a steadfast dedication to social responsibility. These visionary leaders recognized the simple reality that an openness to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) creates not only a welcoming and forward-thinking community, but also more successful event professionals, events and industry.
Chardia Christophe-Garcia, global head of audience strategy for TIME magazine events, expressed this sentiment adeptly when recently speaking with BizBash:
"There are so many reasons DEI is important, and it’s not just the obvious. As event professionals, it is our responsibility to create experiences that not only resonate with our brand and partners, but also with our audience.
As part of a diverse community, it’s essential that our members understand what’s expected of them—and what’s not acceptable. Collectively observing these agreed-upon norms enables MPI to stay true to our ideals.
An important component of MPI’s commitment to its core values and providing an inclusive and safe community is our Principles of Professionalism. This living document necessarily evolves alongside our community, while remaining true to the core principles established by our founders. Originally codified in 1973 as MPI’s Code of Conduct and established as the Principles of Professionalism in the 1990’s, it spells out business and interpersonal ethics by which all members agree to abide.
Last year, with the intention of making MPI better as a community, a group of volunteer leaders courageously stepped forward to share concerns with association leadership about how some of MPI’s business practices, systems and communications were creating barriers to increasing the diversity of our community, and even hostile environments within our volunteer leadership structure. Their input led to the launch of an outside review, as well as a working group tasked with identifying opportunities for improvement.
As a result of the recommendations from this group and other thoughtful volunteers—and in alignment with our promise of providing a safe and inclusive community—we’ve made some important updates to our Principles, communications and volunteer training.
Our Principles of Professionalism were refreshed, including clearer language on inclusion, diversity and social responsibility, while also spelling out MPI’s dedication to combatting human trafficking. The updated Principles were published in December, given more prominent positioning online and will be included in volunteer and staff annual training.
The MPI Cares program, launched in 2018, through which anyone in our community can anonymously report unprofessional behavior (harassment, threats, discrimination, bullying, etc.), is being completely revamped to ensure greater awareness of the program, increased confidentially for those who use it and ease of use. The program will be relaunched in the coming months under a new brand.
Annual training in DEI, conflict resolution and anti-human trafficking will be required of all MPI staff and volunteers.
Increased governance, process and structure will be developed for chapter leader recruitment and development.
Additional training, processes and guidelines will be developed to support the Chapter Facilitator program.
As inclusivity is at the very heart of the events space and will remain core to MPI’s ethos, we are excited to introduce these changes which will lead to a better, safer, more inclusive global events community and even greater opportunities for you to thrive.
When we meet, we change the world.
