Ideas Group

The Ideas Group creates space for staff to learn, connect, and contribute to agency DEIA efforts.

The Ideas Group is a staff committee with a leadership champion and budget, originally charged in the agency's strategic plan with embodying a cross-agency commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA), promoting diversity in hiring and recruitment, developing a common language, supporting training, and building connections with fiduciary agent MAPC to ensure human resource activities support DEIA principles.

Ideas Group members

  • Tanner Bonner
  • Joe Delorto
  • Shravanthi Gopalan Narayanan
  • Jia Huang
  • Adriana Jacobsen
  • Lauren Magee
  • Meghan O'Connor

Leadership Champion: Annette Demchur

Past members and acknowledgments

We’d like to thank our past members for their contributions to the group: Adriana Fratini, Ryan Hicks, David Knudsen, and Sarah Philbrick.

Standing meeting

Thursdays biweekly at 3 PM.
Would you like to join a meeting? Contact any member or email the group via [email protected].

Charter

The Ideas group has a charter to guide its operations, intended to be a living document. Please reach out if you have any questions or comments regarding the charter.

Ideas Group Charter (PDF)

Priorities

Advancing DEIA is too large a task to tackle all at once and is a continuous process. The Ideas group maintains a short list of priorities, designed to focus its efforts, which we revisit annually.

In July 2025, the agency hired experts from YW Boston to prepare an action plan to advance DEIA in our workplace. The result is the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility Action Plan. The Ideas group is working with the leadership team and YW to determine which tasks the group will lead going forward, and these initiatives will be listed as priorities for 2026.

Do you have ideas or opinions on what priorities we should focus on? We want to hear from you!

2025-26 Priorities

Past work

  • Lunar New Year Celebration in February 2026

  • International Disability Day Lunch and Learn in December 2025

  • Diwali luncheon in October 2025

  • Support to YW Boston consultants on drafting a Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility Action Plan (September 2025)

  • Participation on the RFP committee to select consultants for a DEIA Action Plan (June-August 2025)

  • Pride Month luncheon in June 2025