DEI Strategy, Stories and Syntax: How to Write Inclusively for all Audiences

Gary Cooper is a senior language inclusion and learning leader at Amazon. He's a DEI professional focused on solving large, complex, highly-confidential, and/or endemic problems through equity-centered strategy, leader engagement and organizational adoption of mechanisms or systemic changes. His work ensures platforms, processes, policies and organizational structures allow employees to thrive and not merely survive. His career has included stops in digital marketing, strategic partnerships and community engagement across sports, sports media and tech, with companies ranging from Amazon and ESPN to the Carolina Panthers.

Nicole Vowell is a five-time Emmy award winning journalist and full-time manager of internal communications and employee engagement at University of Utah Health. Her focus is on conceptualizing, writing, producing, and publishing compelling multimedia visual content for the university’s intranet news site—which reaches more than 24k employees.  Nicole is also the  co-founder of the Marketing and Communications Department’s Equity, Diversity and Inclusion committee where she works to strategically educate her department on EDI related topics, and promote inclusivity, and equity in all content. In her “time off” she also owns and operates her own company, We Thrive Media, which offers video/visual storytelling consulting, writing, production, talent and other media services. Previously she served as the interim director of public affairs and communications at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital in Washington, DC and was a national news correspondent for E.W. Scripps News, as well as a news reporter for various local TV stations across the country.

Kena Lewis is a seasoned communications professional and an accredited public relations practitioner (APR) with a diverse background in news, public affairs, marketing and public relations. She is director of public affairs and media relations for Orlando Health, a $3.8 billion not-for-profit health care organization and a community-based network of hospitals, physician practices, diagnostic centers and other care centers in the Orlando area. In that role, Lewis directs the hospital group’s public affairs and media relations team and provides lead support on issues management and crisis communications.