Building Stronger Teams: How to Create an Effective Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Strategy

In recent years, the business case for diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace has continued to grow. Research has shown us that gender and ethnic diversity at work and financial performance are linked.

In fact, a McKinsey & Company study found that companies with the most ethnically diverse teams are 33 percent more likely to outperform their competitors on profitability. 

Watch Wharton alumni Dr. Maia Hightower, Executive Vice President and Chief Digital Technology Officer of the University of Chicago Medicine, and Ahmad Thomas, CEO of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, for a discussion about the benefits of a diverse workplace. Through this webinar, learn more about how companies committed to DEI can attract top talent, enhance customer and employee satisfaction, and improve decision making. 

Discover how your organization can leverage its power to recruit diverse teams, train employees to identify and prevent internal discrimination, and offer everyone equal opportunities at work.

Maia Hightower, MD, MPH, MBA

Executive Vice President and Chief Digital Technology Officer at the University of Chicago Medicine and  CEO and Co-Founder of Equality AI

(CDTO) of the University of Chicago Medicine, and the CEO and co-Founder of Equality AI. She is the former Chief Medical Information Officer (CMIO) and Sr. Director of Health Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion at the University of Utah Health and former CMIO and Chief Population Health Officer (CPHO) at University of Iowa Healthcare. Her executive leadership experience spans healthcare digital transformation strategy and operations, population health, and diversity, equity, and inclusion, with academic medical centers, clinically integrated networks, and accountable care organizations, and early-stage investor financed healthcare tech. 

Dr. Hightower is an expert and a nationally sought speaker in Responsible AI and the intersection of digital technology with health equity, diversity, and inclusion. She strives to ensure that the value from digital transformation of healthcare is equitable across all stakeholders, including our most vulnerable. In addition to leading digital strategy and operations at UChicago Medicine, she leads Equality AI, an early-stage investor backed healthcare tech startup. Equality AI is on a mission to end algorithmic bias in healthcare. Data scientists are the newest members of the care team. Equality AI empowers digitally enabled care teams to achieve health equity goals through responsible AI and tools to develop algorithms that address bias, fairness, and performance. 

Ahmad Thomas

CEO of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group

Ahmad Thomas is the CEO of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, the region’s most dynamic business association. As a change agent and next generation business leader, Thomas partners with the organization’s 350+ member companies to promote entrepreneurial solutions to strengthen Silicon Valley business competitiveness, bolster its innovation ecosystem, and create shared economic value throughout the greater Bay Area. A hallmark of his leadership is in catalyzing industry-leading initiatives to operationalize change around diversity, equity, and inclusion from the Boardroom to the C-suites and beyond. A former investment banker and senior Congressional aide, he brings nearly 20 years of experience working both in and on behalf of non-profit social enterprises, governments, and businesses, where he has honed a deep understanding of the essentiality of public-private partnerships and the intersection of equity, policy, and technology that drives Silicon Valley’s innovation infrastructure. Thomas holds a B.S. from Cornell University, Master’s degree from the London School of Economics, and M.B.A. from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.