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Listen to this articleBy Evan J. Cutts
Moncton, NB — Dr. Leeno Karumanchery, Chief Diversity Officer of Enkidu, is recognized as one of North America’s preeminent diversity and inclusion experts. Launched in January of 2017 with CEO and business/IT expert Mike Wright, Enkidu was built upon Dr. Karumanchery’s 20+ of diversity and inclusion experience to help people reach their potential within diversifying workplaces and communities.
He said, “Our collective desire to combine my experience and expertise with a software platform that could provide actionable metrics for D&I Programs is what pushed us to create Enkidu, We approach D&I with the recognition that you cannot improve what you don’t measure. Decades of research tells us inclusion is not just a word. It’s a quantifiable, manageable commodity. So our approach uses a scientific approach to measure inclusion and drive diversity in a way that is pragmatic, effective and sustainable.”
As Chief Diversity Officer of Enkidu, Dr. Karumanchery focuses on supporting organizations interested in bringing Diversity Intelligence ™ into the mainstream of their culture and approach. He reflected that it is challenging to work with organizational leaders who view “D&I as a compliance issue rather than the positive driver it really is.” He continued, “Regardless of race, gender, sexuality, etc., inclusion drives our need for safety, engagement, passion, loyalty and even innovation, so engaging D&I properly can only be of benefit to culture and the bottom-line.”
He explained their approach. “Diversity Intelligence ™ dovetails with the science of emotional intelligence and decades of research into diversity & inclusion. It’s framed across 4 main domains: 1) Growth, 2) Performance, 3) Partnership, and 4) Leadership.”
These four domains are designed to identify, assess, address “the behavioral markers that either promote or damage inclusive potential.”
“Using Diversity Intelligence ™, we break down the science underlying inclusivity and help our clients apply metrics that are appropriate and actionable to their individual diversity strategies, at the pace they need, and to the scale they want,” he said.
With all there is to say about Enkidu and its impact on the future of D&I, there is one thing we cannot yet explore. The company is in the midst of name/branding change and Dr. Karumanchery is not yet able to share the new name or the meaning behind it until the official reveal in a few weeks. He does provide a hint, however:
“Because we enable D&I to be threaded through an organization’s programs as opposed to being simply bolted on – our new name sums up what we bring to the fabric of our clients’ teams.”
