Celeste Warren | Beyond DEI: What It Really Takes to Build Equity

What happens to equity when the DEI department disappears?

Over the last several years, organizations have changed how they talk about diversity, equity and inclusion. Teams have gotten smaller. Roles have disappeared. Programs have been renamed. In some places, even the language has changed.

But who gets hired, promoted, sponsored, heard and given access to opportunity still matters.

So if equity disappears when the person with DEI in their title disappears, was it ever really embedded in the organization to begin with?

In this episode of Tune Up Your Warrior, Jenny sits down with Celeste Warren, a global equity and inclusion leader who spent 28 years at Merck, including a decade leading its Global Diversity & Inclusion Center of Excellence.

Today, Celeste is the founder of Celeste Warren Consulting, co-founder of Destination STEM, and the author of How to Be a Diversity and Inclusion Ambassador and The Truth About Equity: What It Really Takes to Create an Inclusive Workplace, which examines what organizations and individuals can actually do to move equity from intention into action.

Having spent nearly three decades creating change from inside a Fortune 100 organization, Celeste brings a perspective that goes far beyond programs, statements and initiatives.

Jenny and Celeste talk about what it actually takes to embed equity into the way an organization operates, why responsibility for inclusion cannot live exclusively with a DEI team, and what leaders need to understand about creating sustainable change.

They explore the systems behind workplace outcomes: who gets access, how talent is developed, where accountability lives, what gets measured and rewarded, and why good intentions don't necessarily create equitable experiences.

They also unpack what happens when the political or organizational appetite for DEI changes.

Because organizations can change the terminology. They can eliminate a department. They can retire an acronym.

But they still have to attract great people, develop them, retain them and create workplaces where people have the opportunity to contribute and succeed.

And that makes the question bigger than whether DEI survives this particular moment:

Did we learn enough from the work to build something that survives without the label?

Celeste's philosophy is simple:

Equity is everyone's work.

If this conversation leaves you wanting to go deeper, pick up Celeste's book The Truth About Equity, where she explores what it really takes to build a workplace where equity becomes something people practice, not simply something organizations promise.

Learn more about Celeste and her work: