Donate here to support our work. We are grateful for your generosity.
The outcome of the SCOTUS 2023 affirmative action decision in President and Fellows of Harvard College and Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. University of North Carolina had a decisive chilling effect. Many corporations are no longer willing to stand behind their own DEI policies let alone engage in or send their employees to training. And that was before the election decisively pointed us in the direction of Project 2025, under which anything associated with diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging, and access has been defunded, defiled, and branded "illegal."
Meanwhile, nonprofit organizations, including public media, continue to seek out and request our training for either a discount or on scholarship. It’s likely they will be more motivated to do so under the 47th president’s regime. We developed this model of funding to expand access to our services to those not-for-profit companies.
With so much uncertainty, we appreciate donations of any amount. One hundred percent of your donations go into paying our teaching staff, sponsoring class participants, and covering our expenses. It also sponsors free tuition for one or two deserving students in every class we teach. That includes their books, everything. We have a waitlist.
We’re not daunted by the change in our country’s political climate. People still want to connect, to understand co-workers, and to foster a respectful and harmonious work environment. That’s what we do. It’s still valuable.
It's always going to be important to work with businesses and nonprofits of all sizes to help people listen, understand, and relate better. Whether it’s called DEI Training, Cultural Competence, Workplace Belonging or something else, we’re going to keep it up, and we’d like to keep expanding. Your help makes it possible. Thank you.
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Headway Training is a 501c3 nonprofit providing science-based Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Belonging and Accessibility training that changes company culture from within. We’re challenging the traditional top-down model so that anyone — employees, volunteers, facilitators & management, not just HR folks or consultants — can move their organization towards measurable progress. We offer our services to both for-profit and nonprofit organizations. In addition to increasing and improving belonging in the workplace via a healthy environment, we strive to provide training to registered nonprofits that can benefit from our help at very low or no cost.
Historically, most diversity, equity and inclusion programs, designed by HR professionals and lawyers, focus on limiting liability and risk-mitigation. Ironically, this can backfire because bias can be triggered or reinforced by attempts to reduce it. The billions of dollars U.S. businesses spend on D&I training is often wasted because they are not science-based and don’t focus on the need to feel included.
Headway Training relies on the best research in sociology, psychology and neuroscience to study what does work. We use scientifically proven techniques to increase awareness of inherent bias. We also teach what to do to change biased behavior, and how to avoid the mistakes that can prevent workplaces from becoming equitable and inclusive. We integrate evidence-based strategies into a set of actionable programs that work, centered around collaborative problem solving, healthy communication and behavioral change.
When we focus on belonging, a fundamental human need, companies benefit tremendously. A 2019 study by BetterUp found that workplace belonging can lead to an estimated 56 percent increase in job performance, a 50 percent reduction in turnover risk, and a 75 percent decrease in employee sick days. For a 10,000-person company, this would result in annual savings of more than $52M.