The Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) working group is a cross-division working group with membership from across the Communications Division.  

In January 2024, following an application by the working group, the Communications Division became the first in-house Communications team to secure Blueprint Ally status. The Blueprint diversity mark aims to promote racial diversity in PR and communications. Awarded organisations sign up to a series of commitments aimed at encouraging diversity from entry level to boardroom, from staff culture to recruitment and retention.  

Initiatives

Internships  

We run an in-house EDI internship each summer, offering the opportunity for two interns to join us in the Division for 3 months. This evolved from previous years of hosting interns in partnership with the Taylor Bennett Foundation and Creative Access.  

Recruitment and training 

For recruitment of new staff, we advertise all positions on diverse job boards, such as Creative Access, Diverse Jobs Matter and If You Could, have introduced EDI-focused questions at interviews, share select questions with candidates before interviews, and ensure diverse panels. We have also widened our freelancer network to ensure diversity of opportunity.  

We have also arranged training and workshops on topics of ethnicity, disability, active bystander, LGBTQ+ awareness, neurodiversity, and confronting inappropriate behaviour.  

Imperial as One Media Academy  

The IAO Media Academy runs each year and offers expert media training for minority ethnic research staff and PhD students. It has recently won additional funding from Research England, and will this year be held in collaboration with the Institute of Cancer Research, London.  

Ethnicity style guide  

We drove, in full collaboration with the community and community members with lived experience, an ethnicity style guide to provide guidance around language. We are looking towards developing this style guide into other EDI areas.  

Campaigns and awareness days  

Numerous campaigns have also been produced, in collaboration with diverse parts of the Imperial community, to reflect the diversity of Imperial’s community, and marking events organised by teams within Imperial such as the EDI Centre, Imperial As One, Imperial 600 and Able@Imperial, including: Black History Month, Disability Pride Month, LGBT+ History Month, Pride Month, Women at Imperial Week, Mental Health Awareness Week, Trans Day of Visibility, and other cultural- and faith-based recognition days. All campaigns are built with, and create platforms for, members of our community with lived experience.  

Membership of the working group  

• Abby Bolt, Design Lead (Brand) 
• Andrew Youngson, Head of Internal Communications  
• Gemma Sutcliffe, Operations Manager 
• Hayley Dunning, Science Communications Lead 
• Jesse Alter, Head of Social Media and Video 
• Joanna Wilson, Head of Strategic Media 
• Lily Baker Haynes, Design and Editorial Assistant 
• Maxine Myers, Internal Communications Manager 
• Tabitha Pearson-Moore, Communications Planning, Insights and Evaluation Manager 

If you'd like to get in touch with the working group, please contact comms.edi@imperial.ac.uk