SEI Women's Network

19 #HERSTORY "We need all the help we can get. One could start simply by listening to our conversations, educating themselves about our communities and our many different cultures." – GER ARDO GUTIERREZ VILLEDA "I would love for people to know that members of the LGBTQ+ community are everywhere, not only at your place of work, but throughout your lives. It is important to treat everyone with respect and dignity and to educate yourself on the community." – OLIVIA M AURER Every employee needs a space where they feel safe and comfortable to be their authentic self. We spend a lot of time at work, so work should be a place where employees can come and feel good about their identities and beliefs. While there are many tangible and intangible factors that contribute to employees being fully authentic and bringing their full selves to work, we believe that creating safe spaces— physical and emotional—can provide comfort to employees and drive awareness for our communities. The creation of these groups is long overdue, but now is better than never. As a company of 50+ years, many of us believe that we at SEI are behind the eight ball in giving a voice to underrepresented communities. While there has been a general sentiment of acceptance, there have not, until this point, been many proactive efforts around hearing from and learning about minority and underrepresented communities at SEI. With the formation of groups like ours, we are establishing formalized places for people to feel welcome and to learn more about the messages we are trying to promote. We need the support of the whole company for these groups to grow and thrive. One of the coolest parts about our affinity group model at SEI is that every employee is a member of every group. We're all a part of the SEI community, so we are all members of SEI Pride and Somos SEI, and we want to make sure that people are aware of this. Awareness is just the first step, though. In order for us to foster a safe and inclusive environment for members of the LGBTQ+ and Latinx communities outside of our group meeting spaces, we need our fellow employees to get engaged with our group, even if they do not identify in our communities. We encourage any and all members of SEI to attend our speaker series, inquire about our offerings, and reach out to members of our groups to learn more about what it means to identify in these communities, both as an SEI employee and as a human being. Workplace representation is crucial. Everyone should know that they are welcomed and wanted at SEI, whether as an employee, client, or strategic partner. But the understanding and feeling of inclusion doesn't just happen. We need to show people that we already make up an important part of the SEI whole. When minority representation in positions of visibility increases, SEI will welcome more and more amazing individuals to our community. We are excited about the future of SEI and believe affinity groups are an integral part of positive change for our company. The support of SEI Pride and Somos SEI from leadership and other affinity groups is very encouraging. SEI Diversity and SBPN paved the way for minority affinity groups, showing our employee population that we are here, and we need to be heard. Positive change can certainly come from our leadership, but we need more than that to make this change sustainable. We need our employee base to educate themselves, participate in our events, and adopt inclusive behaviors that strengthen our inclusive culture. OUR MISSION SEI Pride Mission Statement The SEI Pride Group seeks to provide a network of support at SEI for attracting, professionally developing, and retaining employees from diverse gender identities, gender expressions, and romantic and sexual identities. In so doing, SEI Pride will work with Workforce Development (WFD) and management to facilitate activities that continually build community and sustain visibility among SEI's LGBTQ+ global employees, directly and through its allies, as well as provide confidential advice within SEI. SEI Pride also seeks to enable development of community around LGBTQ+ persons outside of SEI through partnership with organizations tasked with supporting these individuals and their surrounding communities. Somos SEI Mission Statement Somos SEI seeks to create a community for SEI employees who identify as Latinx or are from a Latinx background, as well as those who are interested in learning from one another and collaborating with different cultures. As SEI strongly supports diversity and inclusion in the workplace, it has been a growing interest within the Latinx community to create a group to promote representation and visibility in and outside the company. One of our main aims is to encourage representation and inclusion in the financial services industry for the upcoming generations of Latinx while celebrating our varied culture, heritage, and identities.

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