Stephanie Akunvabey

Education is more than a stop on the path to success; it's an opportunity that should be accessible to all, helping people to improve their lives and make positive contributions to their communities. This understanding is at the heart of the mission of Pace University – and its Chief Diversity Officer, Stephanie Akunvabey.

Max Webber, Co-Host of The Interview, sat down with Stephanie to talk over key issues including the importance of cultivating an environment of belonging and the challenge of building constructive dialogue across difference. 

Stephanie's Journey

Max: Let’s start with a brief introduction to yourself and your university...

Sure! I’m the Chief Diversity Officer at Pace University. I joined the institution just last August, and I’m really excited to be here. The mission of Pace University is opportunitas: that's what drew me to the institution. In my role as Chief Diversity Officer, I'm always thinking about who has traditionally had access to certain opportunities, and who's been excluded from those opportunities. So coming to an institution where opportunity is the focus felt like a great moment in terms of my career.

Max: What inspired you to pursue a career in higher education? 

I think a lot of it has to do with my own personal journey. I was a first-generation college student, but I came from a family that believed firmly in the power of education. They thought that if I had certain educational opportunities that hadn't been afforded to them, new doors would open up for me. So I ended up attending a women's college in Decatur, Georgia, which was a world away from where I grew up in Brooklyn, New York. It was a whole new experience. That institution did a phenomenal job of educating women, but at the same time, being an African American woman, there were certain experiences that missed the mark. I was a sociology anthropology major, and I was elected to carry out a year-long study on the experience of African American women at predominantly white women's colleges. Then, one faculty member suggested that I could pursue this as a career – I hadn’t really thought about it before, but I realized it was something I would love to do. 

Max: What’s your approach to creating a sense of belonging and inclusion for every student, no matter their background?

I often say that belonging is an inside job. When you walk into a room, you need to feel welcome there. But you might have feelings that come up from past experiences, and think, “I'm not sure that I belong in this space.” So in my role, I’m responsible for creating an environment of inclusion – both physically and psychologically. Hopefully, that allows students to experience that sense of belonging for themselves. I don't know that I have the ability to create that feeling for every individual student, but it’s my job to create this atmosphere of inclusion that allows students to find it for themselves. College is such an interesting time in a student's life, where they go through a lot of growth and development. You grapple with questions about your identities and who you really are. I think belonging evolves for students throughout the college experience: what you need depends on where you are on your journey.

Max: How do you try and engage every student within the student body to make them aware of key inclusive behaviors?

Part of the old-school way of thinking about DEI work was asking how we create these enclaves of safe spaces for students, especially those from low-income backgrounds, the LGBTQ+ community, and students with physical disabilities or neurodivergent traits. So the approach used to be, “Let’s create a little space over here, and a little space over there!” But we now know that doesn't necessarily work. One reason is because people bring so many different identities and we want to be able to really support the whole student. So we need to clearly articulate what our values are to everyone who comes to be a part of our community. The only way to do that is to ask people to consider identities outside of their own, to think about what allyship means, and how to support people who have different experiences from your own. So communicating the value of inclusivity to every person in the campus community is something that I work really, really, hard at. We have a little over 14,000 students here, spread across three campuses. That absolutely impacts the way we approach inclusion. Though things look a little bit different on each of those campuses, we strive to create an atmosphere that is conducive to students finding that sense of belonging for themselves.

Max: Students have many demands on their time. How do you make sure they stay engaged with these key topics?

It’s an interesting challenge, and I'm drawing on experiences that I have gained from earlier points in my career. The truth is we are working against a lot of rhetoric and misunderstanding about what DEI is, what it can be, and how it can be a tool to create unification in places that can sometimes be very divided. What has worked for me is never making assumptions about any particular student in terms of what they know and what values they bring with them to campus. We try to start everyone at the same place when it comes to building a common understanding of why folks should be invested. We need to show them that we’re not talking about abstract words and ideas – we're talking about people that you're going to be in class with. We're talking about staff and faculty members that you're going to interact with. So by creating situations where people can remember that we're talking about other humans, we can get students to understand why this really matters.

Max: Against the background of an increasingly polarized political landscape, how can we encourage students to speak across difference?

I’ve just had my team do something called Moral Courage College. Sometimes people are so caught up in making their point and making other people see their point of view, that it can be hard to just listen and actually hear what the other person is saying. So I work really hard with students to take that approach: sometimes, we need to suspend right and wrong as these two absolutes and accept that there may be two things that are true at the same time. If we can agree on that, it means we get to hear each other a little bit differently. Then we walk away from the conversation having learned something. Another thing that I try to instill in students is, even for your opponent, you leave them with dignity. There are certain things that you don't take from a person, even if they disagree with you. That’s critical for helping build dialogue across difference.

Max: What’s the best piece of advice you’ve received in your career?

There is a mantra that I've lived by for the last few years: dream big. If that doesn't work, dream bigger. Really. And that has really pushed me along. You need to accept that failures are part of the process. And that failure just helps you build something even grander.