TMI Consulting envisions a world in which our individual differences drive our collective success. Dedicated to “Inclusion for Innovation” as their core approach, the diversity consulting firm gives communities the tools to harness each members’ full potential, teaching them how to celebrate—rather than marginalize—the personal backgrounds that they contribute to the common goal.
“The biggest challenge that I see goes back to people forgetting or minimizing the humanity of the people around them,” notes CEO Tiffany Jana, who co-founded TMI with Matthew Freeman, the firm’s president.
“When you give people the opportunity to bring the fullness of their experiences, their expertise, preferences, hobbies, and lives to the work that they do, all of a sudden your ability to really have an engaged, happy, productive workforce just goes through the roof.”
TMI’s approach to cultivating cultures of inclusion is based on two bodies of research—one indicating that trust within groups declines as diversity increases (both within and between different demographic groups) and the other indicating that groups representing greater variety outperform their more homogeneous counterparts.
“There’s a bridge between the two and that’s where TMI lives,” says Jana. “And it is about getting from simply having the diversity to being able to actually create high-functioning teams.”
True dialogue among co-workers, employees, classmates, governments, and neighbors is an antidote to the sense of alienation we feel when discussion of differences is inhibited, Jana points out. According to TMI’s philosophy, discomfort with diversity often arises from fear that saying the wrong thing can be misconstrued or have catastrophic consequences.
“As a nation, we have done such a poor job of acknowledging what we’ve been through and really addressing and dialoguing about it in meaningful ways. One of the things that TMI does really well is to create safe places for people to be able to have those dialogues.”
TMI—a Certified Benefit Corporation—works with an assortment of businesses, government entities, civic associations, and communities to help them overcome miscommunication and encourage more robust participation. Employing a host of diversity-training activities, the firm engages participants through interactive programs, inspirational speakers, and theater.
“Diversity should be something that people take into consideration in everything they do. So we have partnerships with folks like Coalition Theater in order to provide people with a condensed experience that has really, really high value,” explains Jana, who is also a thespian.
In addition to local projects, such as developing a companion exhibit and related events for the national traveling exhibit of “Race: Are We So Different” during its 2012 tenure at the Science Museum of Virginia, TMI’s efforts have had an impact far beyond Richmond’s borders.
Last summer, the firm partnered with The Faith & Politics Institute to plan and facilitate a bipartisan tour for members of Congress wishing to explore the theme of immigration. Working with the German Marshall Fund of the United States, the firm has also developed “Dialogues for Change” to facilitate discussions among representatives of three U.S. cities and three German cities pursuing solutions to a range of civic challenges.
But while the issues that TMI addresses are universal, and its endeavors have international reach, Jana believes its service to the Richmond community is of particular significance.
“I think that Richmond has the potential to really be the capital of reconciliation one day, “ she says. “I see Richmond as a kind of Mecca for people who want to come together and have meaningful dialogue to really address the hurt and the pain and the mistrust.”