Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Follow Us:
Top Stories

Anusha Harid-Paoletti: "Diversity is intertwined with success"

Opinion

Anusha Harid-Paoletti: "Diversity is intertwined with success"
Colorful Diversity Free Stock Photo - Public Domain Pictures

Anusha Harid-Paoletti, the CEO of Ellevate Network.

Ellevate’s mission is to “make work, work for all” and to create a world where everyone belongs by helping women thrive at work.


I spoke with Anusha on a recent episode of Fulcrum Democracy Forum (FDF). The program engages citizens in evolving government to better meet all people's needs. Consistent with the Fulcrum's mission, FDF strives to share many perspectives to widen our readers' viewpoints.

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

Anusha shared that Ellevate has a reach of 200,000 plus women globally. "We have 50+ corporate sponsors that we (Ellevate) speak to," she said. "Where we have standing to speak to is what is needed in the workplace for everyone who earned their spot to truly succeed."

In February, the Fulcrum published a column by Anusha titled Even Without The Acronym, Diverse Workforces Thrive. In our conversation, she shared how data does not support President Donald Trump’s executive orders against diversity, equity, and inclusion in government. She noted, for example, that "Boards that have gender diversity are 27% more likely to outperform financially."

Anusha immigrated to the US with her family from India after spending her childhood in the United Kingdom and Dubai.

A graduate of The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, she worked in financial services at Goldman Sachs for 10 years until launching a financial technology company in 2017. "Innovation happens because you are constantly interacting with the best and the brightest from all backgrounds. I live in New York City. I feel that way about my city as well. Diversity is intertwined with success," she said.

If you have a suggestion for a change leader I should profile in an upcoming episode of the Fulcrum Democracy Forum, please email me at Hugo@thefulcrum.us.

I am the executive editor of the Fulcrum and a board member of the Bridge Alliance Education Fund, the parent organization of The Fulcrum. I am also the publisher of the Latino News Network and an accredited solutions journalism trainer with the Solutions Journalism Network.


Read More

Liberty and Justice for Some

Stephanie Toliver examines book bans, transgender rights in Kansas, the impacts of ICE detentions, and the history of conditional equality in America’s schools, libraries, and churches.

Getty Images, Catherine McQueen

Liberty and Justice for Some

Late February brought two stories that most Americans filed under separate categories. In Kansas, the state government invalidated the driver's licenses and birth certificates of transgender residents, erasing legal identities with the stroke of a pen. In New York, a Columbia University neuroscience student named Ellie Aghayeva was taken from her campus apartment by federal agents who misrepresented themselves to get through the door and held by ICE until the city's mayor personally petitioned for her release. Different people, different states, different mechanisms. The same message: for some of us, the promises of this nation were always conditional.

And yet, many Americans hold onto the lie of equality because acknowledging the truth would mean that the foundational promise we have repeated since childhood — liberty and justice for all — was never meant for all of us. It is far easier to accept comfortable fictions than to reckon with a truth that destabilizes everything you thought you knew. That meritocracy is real. That all are equal. That the documents we carry and the institutions we enter will protect us the same way they protect everyone else. But for many of us, there was never a fiction to hold onto. We were born into the conditions the lie was designed to obscure.

Keep ReadingShow less
Two individuals Skiing in the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Paralympic Games.

Oksana Masters of Team United States celebrates after winning gold in the Para Cross Country Skiing Sprint Sitting Final on day four of the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Paralympic Games at Tesero Cross-Country Skiing Stadium on March 10, 2026 in Val di Fiemme, Italy.

Getty Images, Buda Mendes

The Paralympics Challenge Everything We Think We Know About Sports

If you’re a sports fan, you likely watched coverage of the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milano Cortina. But will you watch the Paralympics when approximately 665 athletes are expected in Italy to compete in the Para sports of alpine skiing, biathlon, cross-country skiing, ice hockey, snowboarding, and wheelchair curling?

The Paralympics, so-called because they are “parallel” to the Olympics, stand alone as the globe’s premier sporting event for elite athletes with disabilities. According to the International Paralympic Committee, 4,400 disabled athletes competed in the 2024 Paris Summer Games in track and field, swimming, and twenty other sports.

Keep ReadingShow less
How Fairness, Stability and Freedom Can Help Us Build Demand for Transformative, Structural Change

Claiming Contested Values

FrameWorks Institute

How Fairness, Stability and Freedom Can Help Us Build Demand for Transformative, Structural Change

Claiming Contested Values: How Fairness, Stability and Freedom Can Help Us Build Demand for Transformative, Structural Change, produced by the FrameWorks Institute, explores how widely shared yet politically contested values can be used to strengthen public support for systemic reform. Values are central to how advocates communicate the importance of their work, and they can motivate collective action toward big, structural changes. This has become especially urgent in a climate where executive orders are targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, and some nonprofits are being labeled as threats based on their stated missions. Many civil society organizations are now grappling with how to communicate their values effectively and safely.

The report focuses on Fairness, Stability, and Freedom because they resonate across the U.S. public and are used by communicators across the political spectrum. Unlike values more closely associated with one ideological camp — such as Tradition on the right or Solidarity on the left — these three values are broadly recognizable but highly contested. Each contains multiple variants, and their impact depends on how clearly advocates define them and how they are paired with specific issues.

Keep ReadingShow less