April 10, 2024

Last fall, our internal Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI) Committee repeated and expanded upon the first anonymous survey of our staff’s diversity that had been completed in 2022. The 2023 survey included a wider variety of questions that measured diversity, and new questions about feelings of belonging among Wild Animal Initiative’s employees. 

At the time of survey administration, WAI had 21 full-time staff members, who were invited to participate in the survey voluntarily, and all of them completed the survey. Their responses have been aggregated in the data below. The individual survey responses were available to only one member of the staff, who is on the JEDI Committee and completed the data analyses before sharing the aggregated results. 

The JEDI Committee then reviewed the results and identified responses indicating areas of success and areas with room for improvement. In addition to sharing this initial report with staff, the JEDI Committee will further discuss the survey results and make recommendations to leadership as appropriate to address the needs identified by the survey.

Below are some highlighted data from the 2023 staff survey results. We chose to focus on race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality for this analysis blog post because the questions about those identities were open-ended and received the greatest range of responses, but the survey also had questions about dimensions such as disability status, neurodiversity, educational background, and others.

Race and ethnicity

• White only: 72%

• Hispanic and/or Latin(a/o/e/x): 12%

• Asian: 4%

• Black or African American: 4%

• Middle Eastern or North African: 4%

• Jewish: 4%

Gender

• Identify with the same gender as the one assigned at birth: 85%

• Identify with a gender different from the one assigned at birth: 10%

• Sometimes identify with a gender different from the one assigned at birth: 5%

Sexuality

• Heterosexual: 28%

• Queer: 20%

• Gay: 16%

• Bisexual: 12%

• Asexual: 8%

• Unsure: 8%

• Fluid: 4%

• Pansexual: 4%

More survey data

The full survey comprised 51 questions about staff demographics and their evaluations of perceptions/culture, comfort/belonging, experiences, management, and organization-wide initiatives. In addition to the demographic data presented above, a few more insights worth noting are:

Do you feel that the organization communicates effectively about its DEI efforts?

• Yes: 90%

• Unsure: 10%

• No: 0%

Rate on a scale of strongly agree to strongly disagree: Our organization hires people from all backgrounds.

• Strongly agree: 95%

• Agree: 5%

To what extent do your personal values align with the values of our organization?

• Highly aligned: 90%

• Somewhat aligned: 10%

Do you feel like you belong within your department or team?

• Yes: 95%

• Unsure: 5%

If you are still working at Wild Animal Initiative in two years, would you be happy?

• Yes: 81%

• Unsure: 19%

Have you ever felt uncomfortable discussing your race, nationality, gender identity, or disability with anyone at work?

• Yes: 5%

• Unsure: 5%

• No: 90%

How we will use the survey data

This year’s survey is part of our intention to continually assess whether Wild Animal Initiative is an inclusive and equitable place to work. Our JEDI Committee plans to repeat the survey annually so we can stay up-to-date on the diversity represented among our employees at any given time, and so we can track changes over time.

In addition to demographic questions, the survey asked respondents to indicate their ideas for how we can improve inclusion in our workplace culture. Our JEDI Committee and leadership team will consider the ideas that were submitted to identify which ones we could feasibly implement with a reasonable expectation of inclusion improving as a result.

We also plan to use the data to measure whether we successfully recruit employees from different backgrounds at all levels of our organizational structure. We want a staff that represents plurality in perspectives and ways of thinking so we can make the best possible decisions about our mission to accelerate science that helps wild animals.

If you have ideas about how to measure and improve representation in our organization, or if you have suggested reading you'd like to share with us, please contact our Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Committee at jedi@wildanimalinitiative.org.