WIFA's Ongoing Commitment to DEI Work

In June 2020, WIFA Founder and CEO Lindsey Rainwater said: When I created WIFA I wanted a safe place for every single woman  in fitness to come and grow in her career, to network and be offered opportunities, and impact her community in a meaningful way. In the past year we put a lot of effort into diversifying our panel panels of speakers and contributors and we can always do more.

We believe in collaboration; when we help each other we all succeed.  We are working together to see women change the face of fitness and to share a diverse and inclusive future in our industry.  We want to see all women achieve their full potential.

This work is never ending.  We are committed to getting better every day, week, month and year.

With love and solidarity,

Lindsey Rainwater

As part of our ongoing DEI journey we are worked with Dynasti Hunt (and team) to conduct an equity audit, which provided us with a transparent lense to where our own gaps with addressing inequities in diversity, equity, and inclusion are and helped to inform where we will focus our work next.

This resulted in a detailed report about our strengths and gaps and will be the basis for our short-term and long-term planning for DEI development and improvement.  This isn’t work that we will ever finish, WIFA has a lifelong commitment to continually iterating this process.

WIFA’s CEO and Founder, Lindsey Rainwater comments, “The Women in Fitness Association is honored to get to work with Dynasti Hunt on our internal DEI audit, we have made a lot of progress in our efforts and the work is never done.

Looking back over the last few years, we have made tremendous strides in our impact of global DEI initiatives. We reached the milestone of our board of directors being represented by 50% non-white women in the fall of 2020. WIFA puts on events that represent a diverse and inclusive background of women from all over the world. As well as work to make sure our marketing efforts are equitable.

It’s time again to reflect on our actions, share them with you, our community and make another commitment for the next year ahead.

 WIFA’s 2021 DEI Commitments:

Commitments are important to WIFA as they give us the opportunity to create a desired aim to evaluate ourselves and create new learning opportunities for a stronger DEI culture.  The below commitments are what we have identified as next steps in our DEI learning and development, the areas of focus are listed as a guide for the next twelve months.

• Training for our team leading the organization by providing WIFA’s board and ambassador Leadership Team with DEI Training.
• Build a DEI Council that is inclusive and representative of diverse women's voices.
• DEI Commitment Statement, Vision, and Strategic Plan Actively engage in D.E.I. conversations with partners that impact women.
• Define and communicate what diversity means at WIFA
• Diversify the current composition of ambassadors.
• Identify and implement strategies to further diversify the membership representation. 
• Begin collecting data from members directly on their diversity. 
• Regularly audit and evolve the language in all marketing materials and platforms to accurately reflect D.E.I. and WIFA's definition of women.

Lindsey Rainwater, WIFA’s founder and CEO adds this thought as we set our DEI commitments for the next 12 months: “As WIFA grows our ability to maintain the integrity of our commitment to our DEI work is paramount to our success. Much of our work this year will revolve around supporting our teams and community to be more equipped ally's. I am proud of where we have come and enthusiastic about where we are going, the work never stops.”