Our Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging Mission

Fostering DEI&B in our Workplace, Community, and Partnerships

United Educators (UE) aims to foster an inclusive and supportive culture that embraces diverse ideas and opinions, reflects our membership’s diversity through our insurance policies and risk management services, and provides opportunities for all to succeed.

Many liability risks arise from inequities and exclusion in education. When our members and partners treat diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEI&B) as a moral imperative to create more inclusive institutions, we work to help mitigate these critical risks.

We believe building on and embracing our unique differences and perspectives enables us to better serve our members and fulfill UE’s mission. We strive to advance DEI&B through ongoing workplace initiatives and across our community and partnerships.

UE Workplace

We aim to foster a workplace culture that embraces diverse ideas and opinions and provides opportunities for all to succeed. This starts with recruiting, hiring, developing, and promoting diverse talent and enabling employees to bring their authentic selves to the workplace. On an ongoing basis, we enact, evaluate, and revise policies and programs to promote diversity, inclusion, and opportunity for representation at every level of our company.

We strive to create a more diverse, inclusive, and equitable workplace through:

• Grassroots workplace change initiatives led by a group representing UE employees — called the Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity Alliance (IDEA) — and actively supported by executive leaders and the Subscribers’ Advisory Board (Board of Directors)
• Striving to reflect our membership’s diversity in our workforce, leadership, and Subscribers’ Advisory Board
• Supporting Employee Resource Groups including Pride at UE and Women Working in UE
• Interactive trainings, guest speakers, and events
• Regular workplace surveys to help us understand areas of focus to develop an equitable experience for all employees
• Flexibility and recognition of cultural events, including providing Juneteenth as a holiday and a floating holiday employees can use to celebrate their personal beliefs
• Providing an annual paid day of service and team service days for employees to volunteer for nonprofit organizations of their choice

You can view UE’s most recent workforce demographics here.

Lifelong learning is a fundamental part of UE’s workplace culture and mission to serve education. We provide tuition assistance, mentoring, leadership development, and sabbaticals to support individual growth. UE is committed to providing our team members with opportunities to attain their personal and professional goals.

Interested in working for a diverse, education-specific insurance carrier? Learn more about Careers at UE.

DEI&B in Our Community and Partnerships

The UE community represents the diversity of the students that our members serve. UE’s membership contains community colleges, Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs), historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs), independent schools, institutions in rural and urban settings, off-campus study programs, private colleges, public K-12 schools and university systems, religiously affiliated K-12 schools and colleges, and research universities, among many others. Our broker, defense counsel, and vendor partners add to that diversity.

We are dedicated to supporting our community’s DEI&B efforts with insurance products, services, and risk management resources that are sensitive to their needs. We:

• Reflect the perspectives of UE’s diverse membership with resources that help mitigate risks related to DEI&B. Browse our DEI&B risk management resources.
• Design our training tools with accessibility in mind and commit to continual improvements in this area.
• Identify brokerages and vendors that support our membership’s commitment to DEI&B. Brokers can click here to begin working with UE.
• Grow a more diverse panel of legal experts to best fit the needs of resolving claims.

Our Diverse Counsel Advancement Program (DCAP) introduces highly skilled, diverse attorneys who may be new to UE and/or our members to our claims expectations and provides networking opportunities with members and select counsel with long experience serving education.

UE is proud to be a founding sponsor of the Black Insurance Industry Collective (BIIC). BIIC’s primary goal is to support and accelerate the advancement of Black insurance professionals and increase industry representation of Black managers, leaders, and executives.

Contact

If you have questions about how we are working toward our DEI&B goals, contact us at info@ue.org.

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BIIC’s Mission and UE’s Role as a Founding Sponsor (Video)