About Urban

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
DEI at Urban from 2013 to 2017

The Urban Institute recognized the need to address diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) more proactively in 2013, with a specific focus on examining our institutional status on these issues. We conducted an internal assessment of our workplace culture and sought an independent analysis of our research products. These assessments revealed several findings that called for improvement:

  • Urban remained a predominately white organization, particularly among leadership and senior supervisory positions, indicating a need for improvement in representation;
  • Women, LGBTQ+ people, and staff of color—most of whom were early in their careers—did not always feel valued or treated with respect, indicating a gap in creating a supportive and inclusive environment for employees from diverse backgrounds; and
  • Some of Urban’s research products unintentionally perpetuated stereotypes or made assumptions about marginalized groups such as Black people, Latinx people, and individuals experiencing poverty— emphasizing the importance of critically examining research practices to ensure alignment with principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Informed by these insights, Urban adopted our first Diversity and Inclusion Roadmap (PDF) in 2016 and formalized this institutional priority. This roadmap provided clear goals and mechanisms for holding ourselves accountable to our DEI-related actions and outcomes. After adopting and implementing the first roadmap, Urban began the process of developing our next roadmap which would detail how Urban would implement and measure progress on activities outlined in our Race and Equity Framework.

DEI at Urban from 2018 to 2023

The Race and Equity Framework (REF) describes our organization’s current approach to addressing anti-Black racism, promoting racial equity, and becoming the broadly inclusive institution that we envision. The REF contains three goals under the headings of Climate, Content, and Culture:

  • Climate: Urban will identify and seek to remedy racism and discrimination’s impact within our own institution and strive to practice anti-racism in the workplace.
  • Content: Urban will expand capacity and build bodies of work to address structural racism and discrimination and increase racial justice and equity across all the domains in which Urban works.
  • Culture: Urban’s culture will foster trust and learning, openness to change, even when uncomfortable, provide transparency, and promote individual and collective accountability.

The data below show Urban’s progress toward diversifying the gender and racial and ethnic composition of our staff at all levels. We have made some advancement toward our vision of a more diverse workplace, but the work continues.