Workplace Design – Design Tools and Practice 

9 am – 10:30 am: The creation of shared language and revision of key concepts surrounding diversity, equity and inclusion design and practices. 

 

10:30 am – 11 am: Morning Tea 

 

11 am – 12:30 pm: The Aotearoa Inclusivity Matrix (AIM) as a vehicle to ignite change in systems and benchmark progress in diversity and inclusion journeys. 

 

12:30 pm – 1:30 pm: Lunch 

 

1:30 pm – 3:30 pm: The use of design methodologies and approaches to build inclusive systems, solutions and interventions from a new diversity and inclusion management perspective. 

 

Dr Guillermo Merelo

Head of Research and Innovation 

Diversity Works New Zealand 

  

With a strong background in public management and public policy, Guillermo has worked as a senior public officer, columnist, lecturer and academic researcher in Latin America, Europe and New Zealand. He is a published author on integration and inclusion. His academic work revolves around the value of migrants’ processes of integration to their receiving societies. He is also a HR specialist with more than 20 years of experience in talent management, organisational development and change. 

 

Brought up in a family of strong women and being a member of the LGBTI community, Guillermo truly cherishes diversity and he is convinced that diverse workplaces have the potential to foster understandings of the self and others, unleash organisational potential and make this a better world.

 

 

 

 

Dr. Diana Albarrán González 

Professional Teaching Fellow 

University of Auckland

 

Dr Diana Albarrán González is a Native Latin American design researcher from Mexico. She is a design lecturer and researcher in the Design programme in the Creative Arts and Industry faculty at the University of Auckland. She graduated from the Māori and Indigenous faculty at Auckland University of Technology where her PhD research focused on the decolonisation of design in collaboration with Mayan weavers from Chiapas, Mexico, her birthplace. She proposes a Buen Vivir-Centric Design model towards a fair-dignified life, based on collective well-being, textiles, crafts-design-arts, embodiment and creativity.  

 

Diana has more than 18 years of international experience in places like New Zealand, Singapore, Japan, Spain and Mexico applying, re-learning, researching and teaching design. This has given her the ability to address challenges in a variety of contexts, and the opportunity to develop a meaningful sense of culture and diversity awareness and sensitivity. She is a craftivist, a mother and an active member of the Latin American community seeking to contribute to women's and families' well-being through connections to our cultural roots.  

 

 

 

Nata Tolooei 

Research Fellow 

Diversity Works New Zealand 

 

With a human-centric design background, and previous experience in planning and conducting qualitative and quantitative research, Nata wants to use her skillset to contribute to designing inclusive workplaces that are meaningful for diverse people. 

  

Nata is passionate about translating people’s unmet needs into meaningful experiences and in particular those who likely experience exclusion. As part of her interest in the area of user experience and inclusive design, through her PhD research, she has explored how inclusion and equity can create meaningful experiences for marginalised people and how product design can empower those experiences. 

  

Nata has worked in the field of diversity, equity and inclusion for several years. Before doing her PhD at AUT, she worked on inclusive design projects to develop products and services and taught in this field at Tehran University in Iran.