ERGs/Affinity Groups

Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) serve to provide a sense of community among employees with a similar background or experiences to provide support and/or resources. Anyone is welcome to join any ERG or reach out about the process to create an ERG. 

ERGs at J-PAL North America

J-PAL North America can have official ERGs as needed. Funding for ERGs is budgeted by the DEIWG. Currently, J-PAL North America has one active ERG for parents.

Parents ERG

The Parents ERG provides a space to talk about the experience of caring for children while working at J-PAL. Its members share local, MIT, and J-PAL resources related to children. Anyone interested can join, including future parents! Reach out to the group coordinator to join.

• • Current coordinator: Cat Darrow

  • Current activities: Google Group

Other ERGs

If you are interested in creating or coordinating an ERG, please reach out to dei_na@povertyactionlab.org to discuss. A formal J-PAL NA ERG will need to be approved by the XVT. ERGs can focus on specific identities (e.g., women of color), abilities, circumstances (e.g., remote work), etc. 

Being the group coordinator is voluntary and a minimal time commitment (effort is not allocated to staff for this). It involves "owning" the calendar invite, coordinating meeting times, and being the point of contact responsible for requesting DEIWG ERG funding for your group if needed (for example, if you wanted to bring in a speaker or buy lunch). ERGs are free to be as formal or casual as they'd like, so there is no external pressure here. Please consider serving as a coordinator if you are interested in a new or existing group.

ERGs at MIT

If you are interested in joining a larger ERG at MIT, there are institute wide groups as well, more information can be found on at this website: https://hr.mit.edu/eeo/resources/ergs