Shaping Minds for Innovation thru Diversity: Top Five Reasons Why DEI Matters at Magellan

Diversity Improves Cognitive Skills and Critical Thinking. “Working on diverse teams produces better outcomes precisely because it’s harder.” Harvard Business Review published findings illustrating that when a team is homogenous, reaching consensus is easier but that may not yield the best outcome or performance. Supporting a rich and diverse student population can deliver improved performance and results from students executing the IB curriculum.

Exposure to Diversity Helps Students Enter Adulthood. Multinational organizations, private corporations in particular, express continued expectations for their workforce to be able to engage with people of diverse backgrounds and viewpoints and fostering leadership traits. Employers are looking to hire professionals who “better equipped to understand a wider variety of consumer needs, including needs specific to particular groups, and thus to develop products and services that appeal to a variety of consumers and to market those offerings in an appealing way.” A longitudinal study demonstrated that exposure to diversity is also correlated with leadership gains and psychological safety - and thus delivering confident adults. 

Diversity Prepares Students for Citizenship. The Century Foundation conducted a research study on diversity where the authors reviewed 27 different studies about the effects of diversity on people’s willingness to interact with and improve their local community. The results pointed to showing a correlation between students who learn in diverse environments and their inclination to be more civically engaged. 

Diversity Promotes Creativity. Several researchers have called out the critical impact that diverse learning environments can have on a student’s ability to problem solve