The Person You Mean to Be: How Good People Fight Bias

Chugh starts Chapter 8 with a personal anecdote about her straight white PhD advisor, Max Bazerman. Max practiced inclusivity by inviting Chugh to professional events, respecting her voice and personal needs, approaching their collaborations in an equitable manner, and publicly giving her credit when questions arose about their joint research. Max was warm and professional in his interactions with Chugh. He also included her in dinners usually reserved for senior academics.

Chugh interweaves a discussion of diversity and inclusion with the anecdote about Max to explain the differences between the two concepts. She describes diversity as a gateway (to a school, an organization, or a community)—the intentional decision points that can be tracked by and captured in statistics identifying sex, gender, race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation, among other information. By contrast, inclusion is like a pathway that formally brings diverse people into a group through a series of moments that shape their experience. For Chugh, graduate school was a gateway, while Max built inclusion through small, ongoing acts on her pathway through graduate school. Inclusivity helps combat headwinds women and people of color face in their lives and careers by enhancing opportunities and fostering a sense of belonging.