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Optera taps Leeds underclassmen in helping it attract and retain diverse talent as it grows.

When it comes to diversity, equity and inclusion, it鈥檚 easy to talk the talk.听

For Optera鈥攁 Boulder-based sustainability software company鈥攖alk isn鈥檛 nearly enough.听

The growing business is interested in attracting and retaining diverse talent, along with measuring progress on its diversity initiatives and finding ways to track inclusion. To help get there, it turned to teams of undergraduates at the University of Colorado Boulder鈥檚 Leeds School of Business.听

Four student teams completed in an extracurricular case competition for Optera after attending a series of workshops covering topics such as implicit bias, microaggression, sexism and racism. They then developed and pitched strategies to a panel of judges from Optera and Leeds.听

鈥淭here is such a huge value to us in listening to and learning from the students,鈥� said Nancy Schoemann (MBA鈥�16), vice president of operations at Optera and a member of the judging panel. 鈥淭hese are individuals who are going to be entering the job market in a few years鈥攖hey鈥檙e looking at DEI from an angle we don鈥檛 necessarily see. Getting their insight and perspective is so helpful to us as we decide where to focus our time and resources.鈥�

The winning team, consisting of Caroline Horn (Bus鈥�25) and Grace Vaughn (Bus鈥�24), drew praise for creating solutions designed with a small company like Optera in mind. Both have participated in case competitions before, 鈥渂ut working with a small company was a great experience,鈥� Horn said. 鈥淲e were really challenged to fine-tune our recommendations to what they needed.鈥澨�

For Vaughn鈥攖he lone sophomore to participate鈥攑ast case competitions were hypothetical. 鈥淏eing able to interact with a real company, to really research them and think about what they were doing to address these particular challenges, was so much more valuable to me,鈥� she said.听

A detailed set of听recommendations

During their presentation, Horn and Vaughn walked the judges through an ambitious set of recommendations that touched on everything from better visibility of the company鈥檚 commitment to DEI to restructuring its interview practices to avoid bias. They also spent considerable time walking through the feasibility of their plans鈥攅specially costs and time鈥攁gainst the potential risks, including drowning in survey data.

鈥淵ou鈥檙e a data company. You know how to do this,鈥� Vaughn said.听

Other teams also brought up the idea of surveys, often backed by incentives; cultural intelligence tests for employees; sponsoring internships and scholarships; and creating pathways for talented employees to move them up the ladder.

Kelvin Davis (CompSci鈥�20), a software engineer at Optera, asked participating teams difficult questions, challenging the reliance on surveys to provide useful data and pushing teams to consider how they could be authentic in their approaches to DEI.听

鈥淭he future is bright,鈥� Davis said. 鈥淭hese are freshmen talking about some very difficult challenges we鈥檙e all facing. They came up with a lot of great solutions that we can take home, discuss further and refine.鈥澨�

The extracurricular project and case competition were led by Marcia Kwaramba and Stacey Edgar, both faculty in Leeds鈥� social responsibility and sustainability area. The project, including prizes for the student teams, was supported by the Diversity and Inclusive Excellence Grant from CU鈥檚 Office of Academic Affairs.

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