Intersectionality: Designing from the Center Out

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There is a design principle that shows up across many fields, from architecture to technology to urban planning, it is called Universal Design. The theory behind Universal Design is that when you design a space, a tool, or a process for the person facing the greatest barriers, you build something that works better for everyone.   

Curb cuts, originally designed for wheelchair users, turned out to be essential for parents with strollers, delivery workers, and cyclists, to name a few. Captions, designed for deaf viewers, became indispensable for people watching videos in noisy environments or learning a new language.  

The same principle applies to organizational culture. When you design your workplace systems, policies, and programs in a way that works for your most underrepresented employees, you build an organization that genuinely works better for everyone. 

Start by understanding who is most underrepresented in your organization.

Before designing any culture or inclusion effort, take an honest look at your workforce. Who is present, and who is absent? Who is advancing, and who is not? Who is thriving, and who is quietly struggling or leaving? The answers to those questions are your design brief.

Every organization is different. The employees who face the greatest barriers in your workplace may vary based on your industry, your geography, your history, and your current culture. What matters is that you identify them honestly and start your design process from their experience, not from the experience of the employees who are already most comfortable and most represented.

Recognize that barriers compound.

Here is something important to understand about how exclusion actually works in organizations: it rarely operates along a single dimension. An employee does not experience their gender separately from their race, or their ability status separately from their caregiver role. These identities interact, and when they do, the barriers often compound.

Workplace systems that are not designed with this reality in mind will consistently fail to retain, support, and advance your most underrepresented employees, no matter how many good-faith efforts are made in other areas.

Design a workplace that truly works for everyone.

A targeted approach does not mean ignoring the needs of other employees. It means recognizing that a truly inclusive organization, one where every employee can contribute their best and genuinely belong, requires intentional design.

When you ask "how do we make this work for the employee who faces the most barriers?" you almost always end up building something more flexible, more human, and more effective for your entire workforce.

More accessible onboarding benefits every new hire. More transparent promotion criteria benefit every employee who has ever wondered how advancement decisions get made. More flexible work policies benefit parents, caregivers, people managing health conditions, and frankly, most of the workforce.

The goal is universal: a workplace where everyone thrives.

The strategy is targeted: start with those who are furthest from that goal and design your way outward from there.