DEI at MFA: Progress and Future Plans

In 2019, MFA launched a diversity, equity, and inclusion initiative. Three core values guide DEI at MFA:

1. Everyone deserves a safe, equitable, and inclusive workplace.
2. We can better serve the communities where we work by increasing the diversity and cultural competence of our firm.
3. We must work to resist and reverse systemic racism within our firm, and in the communities where we live, work, and serve.

Our DEI work took on a concerted focus in 2020 to become anti-racist. We joined many organizations in denouncing systemic racism and reaffirmed our commitment to resisting and reversing it.

We want to share with you the progress we made within our DEI initiative and how we intend to progress further. To date, MFA has:

• Formalized our DEI committee of 20 employees representing varied areas of the company and seniority levels. The DEI committee’s work is continuing with specific emphasis on hiring, company culture, partnerships, giving, and volunteering.
• Drafted a DEI policy statement for company-wide understanding of DEI and its importance.
• Developed a job posting resource guide to advertise positions to underrepresented groups. We are using and refining the resource guide on an ongoing basis to expand our outreach.
• Created benchmarks to track our progress in attracting diverse candidates. This data are used on an individual posting basis to understand how to tailor our advertising and generally to ensure candidate demographics represent communities.
• Focused on partnerships with MWEB subcontractors and added a teaming partners webpage to connect to more firms.
• Committed to the Emerging Leaders internship program for 2021. We will interview intern candidates in April and welcome our intern this summer.
• Hired a DEI consultant Future Work Design to lead our management team and the DEI committee through a series of workshops to explore opportunities of growth and change.

We are proud of what we have accomplished and simultaneously humbled by what remains to be done. We welcome your questions and feedback at any time at info@maulfoster.com.