Hello! I am Dr. Kanika. I’m a Board certified Internal Medicine Physician and a Diversity Consultant. I specialize in diversity, equity and inclusion strategy, implicit bias trainings and implementation for organizations committed to creating more opportunities for communities of color. I have spent the majority of my professional life in healthcare organizations doing diversity, equity and inclusion work.
In our current climate, many organizations are becoming aware that improvement in diversity, equity and inclusion provide benefits to their organizations. Unfortunately, not everyone in leadership of these organizations believe that these benefits truly exist. Because of this, I’ve seen organizations who have done nothing as it relates to diversity, equity and inclusion. Other organizations have done the bare minimum and simply created a diversity, equity and inclusion mission statement for their websites, however there has been little to no diversity, equity and inclusion action on the ground. I’ve also seen organizations who have been intentional and purposeful and tried to rise to the call of creating diverse and inclusive workplaces. They have created DEI committees and DEI leadership positions as well as investing in trainings and consultants who assist with updating their DEI institutional policies.
Regardless of where along the continuum the various organizations that I’ve been a part of have fallen, I’ve always played a role in serving on the DEI committees, crafting the DEI mission statements, creating policy and programs, providing Implicit Bias trainings and being that voice of change.
I currently hold a position where diversity, equity and inclusion is a core function of my daily activities and working toward educational equity, health equity and workplace equity is embedded in my role. These goals are also embedded in the mission and values of the organization and guides the organizational policies and actions.
This key component has been missing in all of my previous organizations. I was an Implicit bias trainer at a previous organization and also served on it’s Leadership DEI committee. In spite of the organization’s surface level support of those efforts, there was never a feeling that diversity, equity and inclusion was actually a core value of the organization. There was a disconnect between the policies as written and the implementation with employees. The discussions held in the conference rooms on the leadership DEI committee frequently did not translate to tangible movement and action on the ground.
There is a need for organizations to move from inaction to action, to put words into motion. This needs to happen NOW. Diversity, equity and inclusion are not nouns, they are verbs. Meaningful change will only occur if the organizations commit to doing the work. I work with organizations who are committed to investing resources in creating more opportunities for communities of color. I specialize in diversity, equity and inclusion strategy, implicit bias trainings and implementation. CLICK HERE to set up a meeting so that we can discuss how I can help your organization.
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Kanika Sims, MD, MPH, is a Physician, Health Equity + Workplace Inclusion Strategist and author of “Diversity Is Not a Dirty Word: Harnessing the Power of Inclusion to Create Anti-racist Organizations.“
