Are you concerned about the current social and racial climate in our community and our nation? Do you wonder if you have a role to play in making things better? Do you ever wonder what steps your organization might take to improve workplace equity (race, gender, etc.)? If you answered yes to any of these questions, this session of the Rising Together Series, Building Diversity and Equity into Your Workplace, is for you! This session, moderated by Peg Moertl, executive director Greater Cincinnati Regeneration Alliance and principal with Grovedale Consulting and presented by Arlene Koth, founder and president with OPC Consulting, will discuss how common perceptions, policies and practices may be unintentionally perpetuating inequities in your industry and/or workplace, and how you can begin identifying them and actually doing something to change them. This session will not provide you with a silver bullet or a big red easy button, but it will help you take necessary actions to begin making sustainable changes to your industry and/or workplace culture.

Moderating this session is Peg Moertl, principal with Grovedale Consulting and executive director with the Greater Cincinnati Regeneration Alliance. Peg is an experienced executive with a demonstrated history of achieving results in affordable housing and community economic development. She is a strong business development leader also skilled in nonprofit organizations, commercial real estate development and finance, budgeting, government, event management and volunteer management. With Grovedale Consulting she focuses on executive level community economic development and affordable housing leadership, strategy, succession and talent, and innovation. Peg serves as executive director of the Greater Cincinnati Regeneration Alliance, as a trustee with the Cincinnati Development Fund and a member of the board of directors for the Greater Ohio Policy Center.

This session will be led by Arlene Koth, Founder and President of OPC Consulting. She has over two decades of human resource management and organizational planning experience, nearly 20 years of nonprofit experience, and 15 years of c-suite/executive leadership experience. She founded her company in order to turn her passion for improving the community into a full-time career. Arlene has lived the experiences she works with others to overcome. Instead of hiding her difficult personal challenges, she uses them in combination with her decades of professional experiences and expertise to create unique and practical solutions to hiring, retention, employee development and employee engagement problems. These solutions strengthen organizations, the people who work for them, and the communities in which they reside by creating more equitable workplaces. Arlene’s clients are various sizes, various industries, and are both nonprofit and for-profit organizations. These organizations also span the life cycle spectrum from less than 10 years old to many decades old. What they all have in common is a desire to improve their workplaces. Arlene uses what she learns from her successes and failures to create user/organization-friendly processes and coaching formats that can be customized to address and resolve people problems using an equity lens. Arlene received her B.A. in communications from the Union Institute and University and is certified as a senior professional in human resources (SPHR, SHRM-SCP). She is a graduate of Leadership Cincinnati, Women Excel Leadership Program (WE Lead), and the African American Leadership Development Program. She has been recognized by the Business Courier as a “Forty Under 40” award recipient, by the YWCA as a “Rising Star,” and as a WE Celebrate “Mentor of the Year” finalist. She currently serves as Secretary of the Alpaugh Family Economics Center Board of Trustees and as a member of the LADD Board of Directors. Arlene has also served on the board of the YWCA, Cincinnati Works, the Over-the-Rhine Chamber of Commerce, and the Good Samaritan Hospital Foundation, as well as Board Chair of the African American Chamber of Commerce, as Secretary of the DCI Board of Directors, and as a Co-Chair of LADD’s Over-the-Rhine International Film Festival. She resides in Cincinnati and travels often to spend time with her children and grandtwins.