02 Feb CEO Woman: Empowering People and Communities
DEI and cultural competency consultant Alisa Kolodizner on tackling diversity and inclusion in these challenging times
By Ijeoma S. Nwatu
For Alisa Kolodizner, everything comes down to community. A self-described collaborator and active communicator, Kolodizner settled in the United States as a refugee from Ukraine. She is now the co-owner, co-CEO, and managing partner of LCW (formerly Language & Culture Worldwide), a cultural competency and DEI consultancy in Chicago. Her first community is her family, with whom she remains very close—she lives within three blocks of loved ones. These days Kolodizner is laser focused on supporting agents of change within companies and organizations of various sectors and sizes. Think chief diversity officers, chiefs of human resources, and heads of talent and development. From learning about behavioral change to rethinking processes to creating safe spaces, Kolodizner is all in and enamored with the culture-first approach to and celebration of difference in the workplace.
Kolodizner, who acquired LCW in the spring of 2023, not only leans on her village, she brings it along, offering equity to employees and even partners. “I want people around me to benefit as the organization grows,” she says. “It takes a village, and I recognize that.”
Beyond furthering LCW’s mission of championing cultural competency and difference, Kolodizner is a board member for the nonprofit Genesys Works, an organization that supports underrepresented high school students in Chicago by providing skills-based training and placement in internships at large organizations. She describes her involvement as “being part of the solution and [providing help] earlier on than I was exposed to.”
Diversity Woman: Give a snapshot as to where you are professionally, and where you are trying to go.
Alisa Kolodizner: LCW is focused on supporting companies in creating a sustainable culture of inclusion. Acknowledging and being curious about everyone’s differences is important. By doing so, it helps us interact as humans and create spaces that empower others. I love my company. It is my purpose. It’s what success means to me—being a human empowering people. I’m very impact driven. I get a lot of happiness seeing people around me find success. I really focus in on how to support others.
In leading the organization, I would like to solve problems that I personally experienced. Those mindsets and systems that cause barriers were not shaped by difference—they are not set up for everyone to be successful, to thrive. I want to solve that problem [of barriers] because I saw how it impacted people around me, and how it affects even our country. Being a refugee, I saw how it impacted my own family and what that meant. There’s so much more [possibility for success] if the opportunity is provided.
For the future, I would like to grow my organization, to grow our impact. I’d like us to become a household name for supporting differences within organizations. That is going to take a lot of work. I can’t solve all the problems, but I can at least be part of the solution.
I also would like to impact, in the process, what boards look like, what they represent. The decisions that get made in Corporate America, especially in publicly traded companies, really start with the board of directors, who make the biggest decisions—whether the company gets bought or sold, if the CEO stays, etcetera. There are big problems in the boardroom and a need to truly impact the makeup of boards of directors—does a board reflect the differences that [its company] represents?
DW: Give an example of how you advocated for yourself or someone else in a work environment that wasn’t particularly inclusive or supportive.
AK: Prior to acquiring LCW, over a decade of my life was spent in Corporate America, specifically financial services. The financial services industry has a lot of gaps and areas of opportunity when it comes to supporting difference.
At a previous employer, I—along with my community—started an employee resource group. It was the first within the company. The problem there was a lack of representation of women. We created a community so that women could come together and have conversations with one another—a safe space. When you create a safe space, you learn a lot more about a person, and you can become their advocate because you can truly become what they need.
DW: How do you scale impact with regard to diversity, equity, and inclusion?
AK: We’re in an interesting time; there’s this pressure to support the quantification of how DEI works, to show how celebrating difference really progresses organizations. Yes, it’s important to state facts, but it’s also important to explain the “why now.” If you don’t know how to showcase the best product or content, it’s not going to get used or bought. What’s really important to grow impact is to be relevant to the existing problems and to have very pointed conversations within safe spaces, where you learn where the problems exist. In order to gain trust and commitment and to grow that impact, you need the community. Growing your impact really starts with relationships.
We do audits. We spend time understanding the organizations that we work with—our stakeholders. We need to make sure they have all the resources they need in order to get budget approval and to take what we can offer and expand it in the organization. It’s building the relationship, the trust, and then executing through a focus on the reasons why to do this now.
For example, my company’s goal is to have more women in executive leadership roles among our clients by 2025. It’s important to state why that’s key and what that could mean for an organization. But also you need to identify the steps being taken, and not to discredit what has been done. You have to understand how to collaborate together, and then it’s, how can I be a resource to amplify what you are doing, to reach the goal sooner? And that’s exciting.
DW: What do you think of the surge of interest in DEI at the beginning of the COVID pandemic?
AK: Companies have to, and [they] choose to, focus on what currently has the most attention. They think, How are we reacting to and showcasing this change? because they don’t want to lose their customers. That surge happened at the point of George Floyd’s murder. Companies had to react. Our organization was growing year over year, and it was because all these companies were proactively coming to us and saying, “We don’t know what to do, but we know we need to do something.” That was a public commitment.
DW: What recommendations do you have for young professionals and midcareer managers who want a career in DEI, especially for women, immigrants, and others who might not be the dominant group in their organization or industry?
AK: As humans, we are social beings. You want to find your community.
Number one, give yourself grace. Take those deep breaths and acknowledge that it’s going to be tough. What I’ve learned in my career is that you will naturally attract the community you’re most comfortable with. Celebrate that and keep that.
Learn from others. Be open, be vulnerable. State to your community what you are going through. You are in control. Have those conversations.
State what you are looking for. If you don’t have a background as an executive, you’re not expected to know what to do, but you have to acknowledge that—don’t pretend. But if you can be vulnerable and reach out to an executive, they could be an ally.
Be your own advocate and learn what people need. DW
Based in Maryland, Ijeoma S. Nwatu is a freelance writer whose work has been featured in Essence.com, by the Small Business Administration on SBA.gov, and by the Aspen Institute. She focuses on diversity and inclusion, workplace and career, and culture.
