Meet Allison
Allison Kam (they/them) is a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion professional, world traveler, activist, and self-proclaimed adrenaline junkie. They life is lived at the intersection of vision and execution.
Their desire to explore the heights and depths of people emerged from their experiences growing up in a small town in Alabama as a gender nonconforming, racially ambiguous, child of Trinidadian immigrants with a strong Catholic foundation. Their journey through identity, faith, education, and lived experience led them to radically reexamine the world, cultivating a profound capacity to listen, bridge perspectives, and cultivate communities.
Allison is a lover of design thinking- the systematic extraction, teaching, learning, and application of human-centered techniques- and utilizes it to address large social issues. Specifically, they design around the question, “How can we create spaces where people who want to be both supported and challenged in the collective pursuit of social equity feel a deep sense of belonging?” They have a particular affinity for developing these spaces for BIPOC queer and trans folx.
Allison holds a degree in Neuroscience from Duke University and a Master’s in Community Planning from Auburn University, grounding their curiosity about people in both science and systems.
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Specialist, Encompass Health
Current Commitments
Allison develops trainings for managers on how to deal effectively with DEI situations that arise in hospitals. They also create materials for Hospital Diversity Committees across Encompass Health's 160+ hospitals, oversee the company's partnership with a local high school, analyze data, and facilitate employee engagement groups.
Podcaster, Queer Becomings: Beyond Survival
Allison is one of the hosts of the podcast Queer Becomings: Beyond Survival. They interview queer people about transformational moments in their lives, provide insight, and ultimately provide a place where people can ask the question, “What does it look like to live beyond survival?”
Senior Event Leader, Landmark Worldwide
Allison leads introductions to the Landmark Forum, a personal development course that invites people to take a deep look at how they relate to themselves, others, and life. Doing the Forum was a major turning point in their life and, like everything that makes a differences for them, they are passionate about sharing it with others.
Career Highlights
Institution-wide LGBTQ+ Inclusion Plan
AJ designed an organizational structure centered around collaborative leadership and built upon an LGBTQ+ inclusion national benchmarking tool. With the help of several others, they refined the concept, pitched it to senior leadership, and worked with a diverse team to develop and execute a recruitment, selection, and on-boarding process. This initiative has involved managing over 50 people across 4 committees each tasked with researching and recommending an implementation plan for one item on the Campus Pride Index each year. This structure enables movement in multiple areas of the institution on an annual basis.
Embedding Equity into faculty Course (Re)Design Program
The Course (Re)Design is the Biggio Center’s flagship program that helps faculty create or re-envision a course in preparation for teaching in an active learning space. Allison redesigned the diversity module to instill an equity mindset, focus on specific classroom equity goals, and give faculty the opportunity to practice creating and utilizing community norms in a challenging discussion about identity. In addition to that, they embedded equity into the program by modifying existing activities to focus faculty's attention on issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion that often arise.
eLearning Course on Gender Identity and Pronouns in Classrooms
This eLearning course was created in collaboration with subject matter experts and Auburn Online's Instructional Designers. It is designed to help Auburn University faculty and instructional staff develop knowledge around gender identity and implement trans-affirming practices in their courses and professional work. Through videos, interactive activities, and discussion boards, participants learn the policy context, background, important terms and concepts, and affirming practices related to transgender and gender non conforming people.
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Training
Allison has trained over 1000 people on topics pertaining to diversity, equity, and inclusion. They tailor all of their trainings accounting for relationships, feelings, and cultural context and focus heavily on the WHY and HOW of the material. Allison has experience training adult learners from a variety of settings including higher education, government agencies, and healthcare, community, and religious organizations. They have also trained middle, high school and undergraduate students. Topics include but are not limited to unconscious bias, microaggressions, emotional intelligence, equity, privilege, oppression, allyship, intersectionality, environmental justice, gender, race, sexuality, age, nationality, and class.
Office of Social Equity at ODOT
Together with the Assistant Director of Social Equity, Nikotris Perkins, Allison supported the building of a new unit of the Oregon Department of Transportation. They wrote guidance for diversity working groups which included information, resources, and activities so employees can learn and meaningfully integrate the material into their work. See here for examples.