In the summer of 2020, amid the devastating toll of COVID-19 and a nationwide rupture over racial injustice, I found myself unexpectedly stepping into DEI work. Within Stanford Health Care, I saw our staff, who were grappling with grief, anger, and exhaustion, had nowhere safe to process their experiences. Their resilience on the front lines was undeniable, but their emotional toll was too often invisible. As a multiracial person navigating the same moment, I felt that weight too. That experience became a catalyst; one that compelled me to propose, and ultimately launch, our organization’s first DEI program.

I didn’t have a playbook. What I had was a response to an urgent need. We began with listening sessions before policy, small group conversations before guidelines and stories before strategy. It was less about knowing the “right” way forward and more about making sure people had a place to be seen and heard.

A quickly shifting landscape

Of course, DEI didn’t begin in 2020. The values of equity, fairness, and belonging have existed as long as human communities have. What changed in recent years was that more companies and institutions began to formalize these values into programs and strategies. Since then, the landscape has shifted:

• From reactive to embedded. What started as responses to crisis is now maturing into integration. DEI is less often a side project and more a lens: embedded in hiring, budgeting, communications, and strategy.
  
  

• From awareness to systems. Early efforts leaned on awareness–heritage months, pronoun norms, trainings. These were important beginnings. But in 2025, more organizations are layering in structural reviews, examining promotion equity, communications and budget allocations.
  
  

• From one champion to shared leadership. A single passionate person can spark progress, but the work sustains when responsibility is shared across teams and leadership.
  
  

• From urgency to sustainability. Momentum is vital, but so is durability. The most effective DEI efforts are built to endure leadership changes and shifting priorities.

At the same time, we can’t ignore that DEI has become politicized. In some circles, the term itself has been twisted into something divisive, used as shorthand for lowering standards or sidelining merit. That makes the work harder. But the values behind it–fairness, belonging, opportunity–remain non-negotiable. They simply need clearer framing and steadier leadership.

What this means for your organization

If you’re thinking about how to sustain DEI in your world, here are three places to start:

• Listen before you act. Ask your teams: What does inclusion look like here? What would belonging feel like? Ground your actions in what people actually need.
  
  

• Pair gestures with systems. Celebrations and awareness campaigns matter. But also look at hiring pipelines, promotion data, communications and budget flows. Inclusion has to live in the mechanics, not just the moments.

• Center your strengths. There is a temptation of both practitioners and organizations to solve many things through DEI. However, a successful way forward involves recognizing and centering your strengths and partnering with those individuals and organizations with complementary strengths.
  
  

• Design for endurance. Build shared ownership from day one. Rotate leadership, create working groups, and institutionalize accountability so the work doesn’t depend on one person.

Looking back–and ahead

What amazes me when I think back to 2020 isn’t how small the beginning was, but how meaningful. DEI isn’t a box to check. It’s how we show up for each other through our questions, our decisions, our systems, and our culture.

At KQED, our DEI Director Candace Rucker recently reminded me that this work can’t stand still. “DEI has always been about making sure everyone has a place. At its core, it’s about lifting up all perspectives. When we bring together diversity of thought and experience, design systems with equity, and act with inclusion, we build the conditions for belonging, fairness and real innovation.”

Minal Bopaiah, owner of the human-centered design firm Brevity & Wit, adds: “Behavioral science tells us that novelty is great for sparking change, but not great at sustaining change. Sustained change takes discipline. Everyone who's passionate about DEI needs to remember that consistency is far more important than intensity. Small improvements over time will yield transformation more than disruptive acts that can be undone just as swiftly."

Their perspectives are a good reminder: the story of DEI is never just one person’s or one moment’s. It’s carried forward by practitioners, leaders, and teams who keep finding new ways to practice equity and belonging even when the landscape shifts.

Five years in, the language and the terrain around DEI may be evolving, sometimes even contested; but the urgency hasn’t faded. The question now isn’t whether your organization “does DEI.” It’s whether you are practicing equity, inclusion, and belonging every day.

That’s not a program. It’s a practice. And over time, that practice reshapes culture.

by Vanessa Merina