EDI Volunteer Scheme

Dimitris is the EDI/Executive Officer to the PBS Head of Department and a member of the Staff Network, Spectrum. While volunteering with the EDI Office, his main contributions involve helping to coordinate benchmarking meetings, identifying overarching themes, and aiding communications for the benchmarking forum (launched by the EDI Team in collaboration with Russell Group universities in 2022). Additionally, Dimitris will also assist with the LGBTQ+ action plan.  

His efforts aim to support and assist the EDI Team in the following ways:  

• Providing feedback and advice on advancing actions outlined in the LGBTQ+ Action Plan, providing valuable support to LGBTQ+ staff and students 
• Through his involvement in the LGBTQ+ Benchmarking Forum, Dimitris assisted the team in gathering insights from the forum meetings and facilitating discussions. His active involvement ensures supporting LGBTQ+ students and staff in line with sector standards    

Jo is the Library Readers' Services Manager at LSE. Her EDI volunteer role has involved collaborating with internal and external stakeholders such as DAWN (LSE staff network) and the Business Disability Forum. During this time, Jo has worked closely with both organisations to explore how LSE can better leverage their support to improve Disability and Accessibility Inclusion at the School.  

This work will benefit students and staff by: 

• Provides valuable insights and facilitates discussions aimed at enhancing support for disabled staff and students  
• Works closely with the EDI team and to identify and implement improvements, ensuring disabled students feel supported when accessing essential services such as the Library
• Actively seek different sources of information to inform and enhance disability-related initiatives

Joe Faulkner is the Communications, EDI & Student Experience Officer for the Department of Mathematics at LSE. He has been supporting the EDI office by updating the content and images on their web pages to make them more user-friendly, engaging and dynamic. In addition, Joe has also redesigned the EDI home page and created new pages for the Volunteer Scheme and the EDI external partners.

This work will benefit students and staff by:

• Creating more intuitive and easily accessible information for staff and students
• Ensuring the timely updating of information on our web pages, enabling staff and students to find the support and contacts they need 

Mercedes Masters is the Programme Coordinator of the Kuwait Programme in the Middle East Centre, and Chiara Milani is the Deputy Head of the Student Advice and Engagement Management. Together, they have been actively assisting in gender equity-related projects and obtaining status updates on outstanding actions. 

This work is designed to benefit students and staff by: 

• Collaboratively working to check and update the status of actions within the gender equality action plan 
• Collaborating with EDI Team to ensure the accuracy and currency of information within the gender equality action plan and suggesting improvements for actions concerning gender equality for both staff and students 

Tricia Coyle is the Director of Alumni and Supporter Engagement (North America) at the LSE Foundation. Tricia has been actively contributing to the the EDI Office initiative of the mapping project to identify EDI work taking place within LSE Departments and Divisions to foster collaboration. Tricia contributes to this initiative and aids the team in creating a database to visually map out these initiatives. 

This work is poised to benefit students and staff by: 

• Enhancing communication and support for all staff involved in EDI initiatives
• Ensuring effective highlighting and synchronisation of EDI initiatives for students and staff across the School

Wendy Leung is the Research Excellence Framework Support Manager at LSE and assists the EDI Office in improving the Equality Impact Assessment (EIA) process. Wendy is actively contributing to the EDI Team’s initiative of optimisation of the Equality Impact Assessment (EIA) process by identifying deficiencies, reviewing, and updating the EIA guidelines and templates.  

This work is anticipated to benefit students and staff by: 

• Making Equality Impact Assessments more efficient and transparent 
• Ensuring thorough review and evaluation of policies that impact students and staff with protected characteristics 

Yvonne is the Project Development Officer for the LSE Library and a Co-Chair of the EmbRace Network. Yvonne has been tracking progress on Race Equity Plan priorities and collaborating with internal stakeholders. These priorities are centred around race equity initiatives for both staff and students. 

This work is expected to benefit students and staff by: 

• Ensuring active promotion of actions on race equity, especially regarding career development and fostering diversity amongst the staff body
• Advancing race equity across all educational offerings and departments at LSE, focusing on the diversity of the teaching staff as well as the curricula, by actively seeking feedback to ensure the action plan remains up-to-date 

Charlotte Ennis - Analysing survey results

Charlotte Ennis is the EDI Officer in the European Institute (EI). Her work with the EDI office involved analysing the comments provided by our students to the National Student Survey (NSS) and LSE's student experience surveys, focusing on protected characteristics and socioeconomic background. 

This work will benefit students and staff by: 

• Allowing the EDI team to make informed and evidence-based decisions on improving the experiences of those with protected characteristics at LSE
• Assisting the EDI Team to share these insights to the broader School community and staff members working in student facing roles or on EDI initiatives