The Inclusion Maine Conference: Diversifying Maine’s Workplace, a three-day conference convened by Muhammad Khan Humza, opened March 28 and closed at the end of the day March 30.
The conference offered five tracks, with sessions and activities relating to each:
● Diverse Talent
● Workplace Inclusion
● Partnerships
● DEI Practice
What follows is an excerpt from an interview between Jean Hakuzimana and Muhammed Humza Khan, founder and CEO of Inclusion Maine.
Jean Hakuzimana: Welcome to our platform, Mr. Khan. Please give us some background on Inclusion Maine.
Muhammad Humza Khan: This organization is focusing on how can we attract and keep people from racially diverse backgrounds in Maine. This is a conference of business professionals, human resource professionals, municipal leaders, nonprofit leaders. We are working on how organizations can work together, both within their own organizations, and with other partners, to keep people in the state — because Maine needs people. We need to figure out how we can keep folks here and build an environment that attracts more people, because this is the demographic that’s going to help us with our workforce challenge.We need people to be in Maine, feel welcome, feel like this is a place where they belong so that they want to stay here.
JH: Have you seen any progress on this front?
MHK: I think the wonderful thing is that employers are recognizing that we need to take action on this. That’s why they were in the room…But we’re still very much in the early stages.
For more about the conference, see the May issue of Amjambo Africa.
