Photo by Doug McGoldrick

In the early 1990s, Gloria Lara (MBA 1983) found herself in a debate with five male engineers on Chrysler’s development floor as they tossed around the idea of two sliding doors for the minivan, as opposed to only one on the right-hand side. The men in the Chrysler group were hesitant, thinking that women and children would be hurt in traffic by exiting from the left side. Lara, then a manager of product strategy for Chrysler and the mother of an infant daughter, spoke up. “First of all, we park in parking lots, not traffic. Number two, we’re not stupid enough to get run over. And number three, I’m tired of going around the minivan.” A loss in market share to Ford and GM eventually pushed Chrysler to the left-side sliding door—and market share increased immediately. “This is what happens when you listen to your customers,” says Lara. “Eighty percent of vehicle purchases at the time were being influenced by women, yet they weren’t paying attention to what women wanted.”

Giving voice to those who aren’t always heard has been a hallmark of Lara’s career. Today, she works as the executive director at Lakeshore Ethnic Diversity Alliance (LEDA), a nonprofit that focuses on diversity and inclusion in businesses and organizations in western Michigan. It sprang up in the late 1990s when the area—once largely white—began to undergo a significant demographic change. “A lot of Latino immigrants moved to areas like Holland, Michigan,” Lara explains, “because they would be working out in the fields and on farms gathering the cherries and the vegetables and the fruits, all up and down the state.” LEDA was established to help people understand that the populations are shifting and that they need to be more accepting and open.

It’s not all about diversity for diversity’s sake, Lara notes, although representation across an organization is a valuable first step. For her team, it’s about what follows. “What I’m focusing on right now is, what’s next?” says Lara. “We’re updating our programming to focus more on things like implicit bias and the actions you can take as an individual or as an organization or as a community to be more welcoming. I get employers telling me, ‘Well, you know, we tried hiring diverse people but they don’t stay.’ There’s a reason they don’t stay. They don’t feel like they belong.”

That sense of belonging develops at an early age, so LEDA gears about half of its programming to younger audiences—the future of western Michigan—by offering programs like Calling All Colors, which allows students in middle and high schools to discuss race in their communities, and calls on them to make their schools a welcoming environment. LEDA also offers research-based workshops for parents, caregivers, and educators, to teach them how to speak with even younger children about race and to show them how toddlers’ understanding of race plays a role in their development.

Much of their programming, too, focuses on diversity from an organization or company standpoint. As a businessperson who made her case for the minivan left-sliding door at Chrysler, Lara knows that diversity and retention within a company only make organizations stronger. “We can say, ‘Hey, large corporation, you need to figure out how to do this and we can help you do this, because your workforce is changing tremendously,’” says Lara. “‘If you want to keep your turnover low, you’ve got to be able to determine how to make your employees feel like they’re a part of your organization.’” In addition to its annual Summit on Race and Inclusion, which explores the economic and societal impacts of diversity, LEDA plans to launch a new initiative, the Community Diversity Workshop series, which will focus on equality in specific sectors of the community.

Lara is also well aware that her position requires her to lead by example. She also knows that if LEDA is asking the community to open up and learn from other cultures, it’s on Lara and her team to do the same. Within weeks of taking on her new role, she reached out to the mayor of Holland and told him she wanted to participate in the annual Tulip Time Festival, something LEDA had never done before. The festival is a big deal, drawing nearly 500,000 visitors annually from around the world. “If LEDA is asking the communities to be more welcoming to different groups of people, then LEDA also needs to be a part of the community.” Community officials often show up to the festival, which is rooted in the Dutch traditions of the town, dressed in traditional Dutch dress. Lara will do the same, and she plans to incorporate Mexican embroidery in her Dutch-inspired panel ensemble. “That’s what I'm trying to do—sort of blend traditions. It’s a physical symbol of how people can be welcoming and open to new thoughts and new ideas. But it has to come from both sides.”

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