The Woods Hole scientific community, working together since 2004 as the Woods Hole Diversity Initiative (WHDI), is committed to making our community more diverse, more inclusive, and more welcoming to staff, faculty, and students from all backgrounds. A diverse science community is essential in the 21st century. We are facing global challenges that can be solved only with interdisciplinary science built on broad perspectives and a wide variety of skill sets. The Woods Hole science community cannot hope to remain relevant in this century without drawing on all available talent and creating an inclusive, supportive community in which to live and work.

The WHDI commissioned a 2018 report by Dr. Robert Livingston, a leading scholar of diversity issues at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, which identified ways we can improve our recruitment and our hiring, and ways we can make our community more inclusive and supportive so that all staff, faculty, and students are able to reach their full potential.

This report galvanized our community and has informed subsequent action originating at all levels across each institution, as well as collaborative multi-institution initiatives. Periodic updates serve as an initial accountability measure as we work to describe our actions and set measurable goals by which we can track progress toward being a more diverse and inclusive community.