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Students from HABSA walking outside of Harper

Our Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion

At Chicago Booth, we have a steadfast commitment to building a more diverse and inclusive world and leading change within our own community.

Diversity and inclusion are central to the mission of Chicago Booth.

Respect for each individual’s perspective, ideas, and humanity is one of our core values. We welcome and embrace people from all ethnicities, cultures, genders, sexual orientations, and religious beliefs. Fostering an inclusive community of individuals with diverse backgrounds, experiences, and viewpoints is essential to create an environment of rigorous, open-minded inquiry and to produce knowledge with enduring impact.

We recognize our critical role in educating and influencing current and future leaders to value, support, and celebrate diversity and inclusion. Booth continues to increase our ongoing commitment to build a more diverse and inclusive community that better reflects the world we live in, and to lead systemic change in communities, organizations, and populations around the world.

We will continue to take meaningful action, measure our progress, and promote a diverse Booth community to shape the next generation of groundbreaking ideas and empathetic, inclusive leaders.

Strengthening Our Work

Booth’s Diversity and Inclusion Action Plan serves as the cornerstone of our efforts to build a more diverse and inclusive community.

The plan—announced in July 2020 by Dean Madhav Rajan—outlines D&I initiatives across Booth in six key areas: recruiting a more diverse student body, developing global leaders who prioritize diversity and inclusion, increasing faculty and staff diversity, strengthening internal communications around D&I, building relationships with inclusive employers, and shining a spotlight on diversity and inclusion.

We strive to do better, and are inspired by the members of our community and those outside who are blazing the path for a more diverse and inclusive world.

Woman speaking in a class discussion

Recruiting a Diverse Student Body at Booth

We are reviewing our recruiting initiatives; emphasizing qualities of empathy, self-awareness, and resilience in our interview process; providing implicit-bias training to interviewers; and evaluating and implementing new ways to develop a strong pipeline of diverse candidates.

Key Efforts

Asian students at an event with Stacey Kole

Developing the Global Leaders of the Future

We are evolving and enhancing our curriculum and leadership programs with a focus on developing leaders who prioritize diversity and inclusion.

Key Efforts

  • Diversity and inclusion, ethics, and leadership are focus areas for ongoing MBA curriculum review and LEAD curriculum review. The Leadership Orientation Retreat will include an enhanced focus on diversity and inclusion. Implicit-bias workshops will continue to be part of Orientation+. We’re also exploring university-wide opportunities for increased bystander-intervention training and implicit-bias training.
  • For the 2020–21 year, Booth’s Leadership Development Office offered programming on a variety of inclusion-related topics, including: addressing systemic racism; tackling social identity and bias at work; navigating power, privilege, and microaggressions; developing successful allyship and bystander intervention; fostering inclusive leadership; and more. The programming is currently being evaluated for insights on how best to integrate inclusion-related material throughout leadership learning experiences offered by the Leadership Development Office.
  • LEAD—Booth’s experiential leadership development programming for students—includes new and updated modules on inclusive leadership and related topics.
  • Programming at the Harry L. Davis Center for Leadership continues to feature guests and participants from diverse backgrounds in events such as Leading with Inclusion and Creating Inclusive Workplaces: What Should Leaders Do?
Professor Linda Ginzel pointing while teaching

Increasing Faculty and Staff Diversity

We are working to strengthen the pipeline of diverse faculty candidates, and have redoubled our efforts through a more expansive search process that ensures we identify and recruit from the most diverse candidate pool available. We are examining our own hiring practices for Chicago Booth staff and adjusting to eliminate biases.

Key Efforts

  • We continue to increase our outreach efforts and expand our faculty network in order to increase the pool of talented candidates, most immediately for our adjunct and visiting professor positions. Our efforts to expand the talent pool has led to the hiring of exceptional new instructors for the coming academic year.
  • In partnership with Kaleidoscope Group, we are increasing diversity in the Chicago Booth staff hiring process and cultivating an inclusive environment for current Chicago Booth staff. We are piloting blind hiring practices within our human-resources efforts.
  • We participated in the foundation of PREDOC (Pathways to Research and Doctoral Careers), a consortium of universities and research institutions working to strengthen diversity and inclusion in the PhD student pipeline and in PhD programs.
  • We launched D&I initiatives at Booth’s London campus focused on staff hiring and development, student recruitment and support, programming, and community engagement.
  • Enhanced training opportunities related to D&I include new and ongoing senior leadership training, two-day mandatory Booth Management Group D&I training, and additional training for all staff that will be informed by the summer 2021 staff climate survey.
Four men sitting at a table having a discussion

Strengthening Internal Communications

We have expanded and enhanced efforts to improve communication and foster dialogue about diversity and inclusion among our student, alumni, faculty, and staff communities.

Key Efforts

  • In order to improve communication with our students around diversity and inclusion, we created a new student group called the Deans’ Diversity Advisory Committee to provide continued collaboration and communication between the students and the Deans’ Office. The committee addresses diversity and inclusion at Booth and the broader university, focusing on developing meaningful D&I programming, advocacy, and other topics.
  • We expanded the Chicago Booth Staff Diversity and Inclusion Committee with the purpose of enhancing awareness and understanding of diverse perspectives, identities, and experiences to promote engagement and learning across all backgrounds and to promote a community that welcomes and embraces all individuals while ensuring an equitable culture that allows everyone to impact our community.
  • A staff climate survey launched in summer 2021 will help guide Booth leadership and our staff D&I committee around D&I efforts.
  • We hired D&I consultants to help us develop a strategy to better engage our alumni community.
  • The Diversity and Inclusion Alumni Task Force launched in January 2021, comprising more than 35 alumni members split into three distinct committees: admissions, engagement, and fundraising.
Fred Clark, '20, smiling during Chicago Booth's Marketing Summit, 2019

Building Relationships with Inclusive Employers

We expanded efforts to proactively develop and maintain relationships with employers who articulate a commitment to diversity and inclusion as critical to business success. We support business leaders who take a strong and public stance against racism and whose actions influence positive change. We are taking steps to address and eliminate biases in the recruiting and hiring processes of firms that source Booth talent.

Key Efforts

  • We partner with over 70 percent of DiversityInc’s Top 50 list, a leading ranking assessment of diversity management in corporate America. These companies collaborate with Chicago Booth when seeking talent, hosting educational events, supporting student groups’ programming, partnering with centers, and other efforts.
  • We partner with approximately 45 percent of the public corporations, universities, health-care systems, and private companies featured in Fortune’s Best Workplaces for Diversity list.
  • Career Services and Corporate Relations have expanded partnerships with student groups, Student Life, and Alumni Relations and Advancement to ensure a diverse suite of speakers are present at all Booth events.
  • Career Services and Corporate Relations are actively engaging in conversations with firms about diversity and inclusion and offering students a process to report incidents of bias or discrimination they experience while working at a company.
Cintia Hinojosa presents her findings at the 2019 Fall CDR Retreat, Friday, October 25, 2019 at the Museum of Science and Industry.

Shining a Spotlight on Diversity & Inclusion

We continue to expand our efforts to support and celebrate diversity and inclusion in all aspects of our community.

Key Efforts

  • In partnership with the university’s Office of Civic Engagement and led by the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation and the Rustandy Center for Social Sector Innovation, we continue to develop and enhance opportunities for engagement and volunteerism in the nine neighborhoods around the University of Chicago.
  • In addition to launching two D&I-focused annual funds in fall 2020, members of Booth’s school leadership joined alongside several members of the alumni community to collectively raise more than $1 million for broader D&I-related funds and initiatives.
  • Expanded event programming throughout Booth focuses on diversity and inclusion, including: D&I Dialogues, a quarterly series offering academic lectures, interactive workshops, and peer-led discussions; Innovating for Social Equity, a Rustandy Center series examining racial, economic, and religious equity in philanthropy, private corporations, and nonprofits; Marketing for Good, a quarterly series through the James M. Kilts Center for Marketing; and student-focused events celebrating diversity and inclusion during Women’s History Month and Black History Month.

Explore Programs and Resources

We welcome and embrace individuals from all ethnicities, cultures, genders, sexual orientations, and religious beliefs or no religious beliefs, and we actively recruit and support students from communities that have traditionally been underrepresented in business schools. From diversity dinners to women’s leadership programs to our annual Pink Party, we celebrate diversity in all its forms.

Learn more about our cultural, regional, religious, and personal affiliation groups, and the diversity and inclusion initiatives they host throughout the year.

Woman wearing an LGBTQ sweatshirt in front of the Harper Center

LGBTQ Students

At Chicago Booth, we’re committed to fostering a strong LGBTQ student community through partnerships, student groups, events, and more.

LGBTQ Students

Diversity and Inclusion Initiatives for Alumni

We invite all of our alumni to engage with us in building a stronger, more inclusive community. From listening sessions with Black alumni to identity-based alumni networks and a new series of dialogues on issues such as social justice and equity, Chicago Booth Advancement is dedicated to creating an environment where everyone feels valued and respected.
Explore Our Alumni Initiatives

Faculty Research Making a Difference in D&I

Booth faculty are making an impact on diversity and inclusion through their research into racial bias, the gender gap, inequality, and more.

Diversity and Inclusion at the University of Chicago

Diversity is a core institutional value at our university. In addition to a number of events throughout the year, the University of Chicago website provides you information for getting involved, tools and resources, and the latest diversity and inclusion news at UChicago.
Discover UChicago's Commitment to Diversity

Photo of black students in a classroom at booth in the 70s

A Tradition of Inclusion

Since 1929, when Booth was the first university to grant a PhD in business to a woman, we have broken barriers in diversity and inclusion. In 1964, we were the first business school to establish a minority scholarship program. In 1970, Booth students founded the National Black MBA Association. In 1985, Chicago Booth became the first elite business school with an office dedicated to the support of underrepresented student populations.

In 2014, we partnered with the Chicago Urban League to create the IMPACT Leadership Development program, which connects up-and-coming professionals with senior Black leaders throughout Chicago. And in 2020, Booth hosted the Management Leadership for Tomorrow Pre-Application Seminar, welcoming Black, Latinx, and Native American students interested in business school for two days of virtual learning and networking.

A Tradition of Inclusion

Stories from Our Community

2019 IMPACT Fellows posing on stairs at Harper Center

IMPACT that Endures

Chicago’s first leadership development program specifically for African American professionals, created in partnership with Chicago Booth, is training the next generation of civic and corporate leaders.

IMPACT that Endures

Share Your Ideas

Help us lead change and create a more diverse and inclusive community. Submit the form below to share your thoughts on what we can do better.

Contact Us Directly

Booth Diversity and Inclusion leadership welcomes your questions and comments. Here’s how to reach us.

Diversity and Inclusion
Email Us

Jessica Jaggers
Dean of Students and Associate Dean, Student Life
773.702.6803
Email Jessica Jaggers

Explore Our Programs

Wherever you are on your journey, Chicago Booth will help you reach the next level. Learn more about our top-ranked degree and Executive Education programs.

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MBA Programs

Achieve more with an MBA degree from Chicago Booth. Offered in four formats—including Executive MBA programs based in Chicago, London, and Hong Kong—to suit your personal and professional goals.

MBA Programs
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PhD Program

Explore your research interests and earn a PhD from one of the best business PhD programs in the world.

PhD Program

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