Amplifying Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at the Los Angeles Zoo

By Suhlle Ahn

Jess Kohring (she/her) participated in the L.A. City Equity Sequence® pilot launch in May, 2023 as part of a cohort of 139 voluntary learners. 

Her use case highlights a small but powerful example of how, with the right tools, people can help produce concrete changes with meaningful impact. In this case, Equity Sequence® was used to support L.A. City’s drive to increase workplace inclusion and expand equity in community and constituent service delivery.

Jess Kohring (she/her) and Suhlle Ahn (she/her)

The Challenge: Broadening Equity through L.A. Zoo’s Paid Internship Program (PIP)

Jess runs the L.A. Zoo’s Paid Internship Program (PIP). It’s a program specifically designed to expand equity on two audience fronts: one external—student outreach for  internship participation; the other, internal—staff recruitment for mentorship candidacy.

Externally, the program is an introduction to the zoo and to the conservation fields. It’s specifically aimed at attracting students who identify as BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, and/or persons of varying abilities. But more broadly, it’s intended to reach students from communities that, for reasons both structural and cultural, have experienced less access to the zoo and less exposure to the conservation fields—from barriers ranging from transportation to trust.

Internally, the PIP recruits staff members to serve as mentors to the interns. And these mentorships are themselves designed to provide more equitable access to professional development opportunities for staff across the organization.

Equity Sequence® in Action: A Transformative Insight

In the course of their learning, participants in the L.A. City Equity Sequence® pilot program were asked to apply the Equity Sequence® questions to a real-life work scenario that involves decision-making of any kind. Jess chose her plans for the upcoming season of the Zoo’s Paid Internship Program.  

For Jess, asking the Sequence® questions sparked an aha moment—one she hopes she will be able to translate into a concrete process change this fall, in time for next year’s internship cohort.

This was her insight:

While the Zoo’s intention with the PIP has always been to broaden inclusion and expand equity, their process has been unintentionally insular. 

As Jess put it:

“Through the Equity Sequence®, I realized that we had not invested time in exploring the needs of both the students and the mentors, beyond those who were already participating.”

Her realization goes to the heart of a problem inherent in so much systemic inequality. 

The Bias-Inequality Feedback Loop: A Challenge Addressed

We call it the “bias-inequality feedback loop”—or the cycle by which bias creeps into a system created by small, homogeneous groups working in relative isolation. If the group does not expand beyond itself, or beyond networks of like social identity, especially at points of decision-making, the biases get perpetuated.

In a nutshell, it’s the tendency for human beings to default to habit in behavior and decision-making, if not challenged to do otherwise.

This is where the power of Equity Sequence® lies.

Equity Sequence® acts as the nudge that challenges employees at every level to work together to disrupt the bias-inequality feedback loop, by prompting conscious, expansive thinking at the moment of decision-making.

While Jess’s insight—that they hadn’t paid enough attention to looking beyond those already participating—may seem obvious, it mirrors so many cases of human behavior in life that can seem obvious in retrospect, while in real time, a nudge or mental reminder is needed to spur the brain to think differently.

In Jess’s words,

“If we are looking to expand our reach and specifically focus on creating a program where we aim to do things differently to have different outcomes, then we need to make the process different too.”

Equity Sequence®: A Bridge Between Intentions and Actions

In addition to its power as a mental nudge, for many users, Equity Sequence® is a powerful bridge between top-down and bottom-up change; between high-level intent and boots-on-the-ground action.

As Jess explained, when it comes to equitable change, “you always want to do everything at once, right? And a lot of times we get stuck in that. We get bogged down. We don’t know where to start.”

“One of the things that I found most valuable with Equity Sequence® is that it kind of walks you through steps. You’re up here, and you have all these things you want to do. Now suddenly you’re down here. It really helped us hone in on, what are the things that we can do now? It was balancing the needs of the program with staff capacity. By going through the Sequence®, the ideas really popped to the surface. Here are things tied to our outcomes that can help us do this better.”

For Jess and her team, two concrete plans of action resulted from the process:

• They plan to conduct listening sessions with prospective mentors from their staff, “to hear what their needs are, what their fears are, what limitations there may be that we can help work through.”

• They plan to do more in-depth assessments of interns pre- and post-program, to measure impacts and identify opportunities for improvement. They will also  work with partner groups that work with target populations to do formative listening sessions to help shape the process and experience.

Both are concrete process changes. But both could bring to the table new insights from new voices, which could result in new innovations toward more equitable outcomes and experiences for both eligible students and mentors.

Building Long-Term Solutions: A Community-Centric Approach

Jess made a further point. 

The work they plan to do in partnering with groups that work with their target populations is not just intended as a short-term means to recruitment. It’s intended as a long-term relationship, toward community trust-building and sustained interaction—one of the missing pieces needed for long-term solution-building.

Empowering Communities through Equity Sequence®

Jess’s case study shows how Equity Sequence®, has the potential to take examples of this kind; of concrete change-making—and multiply them to an exponential degree, toward L.A. City’s goal of “bringing people together—across neighborhoods, ethnicities, generations and ages—to be part of the solution” to the City’s challenges, big and small.