Eddie Pate
HE / HIM / HIS
A sought-after speaker on inclusive leadership, Eddie Pate had a 25+ year career as a global executive and leader driving inclusion, diversity, and equity at Microsoft, Starbucks, Avanade and Amazon. He is the published author of “Daily Practices of Inclusive Leaders: A Guide to Building a Culture of Belonging.”
Global, intentional, human-centered, positive, practical, and inspirational.
Popular Talks
Daily Practices of Inclusive Leaders
A guide to building a culture of belonging: Close the gap between good intentions and real results. As the smallest pebble can create ripples across vast waters, so too can small actions foster a sea of systemic change. This approach to inclusive leadership, both inspiring and practical, empowers all to take part in crafting a culture of belonging. With a focus on individual leaders like yourself, this guide shows you what small, yet powerful, daily steps you can take toward driving real change.
Take away: very practical everyday activity, action or behavior that is easy to do and will not be overwhelming.
Creating Inclusive workplaces and cultures of belonging
This course takes a higher-level view of what it takes to create inclusive cultures and cultures of belonging. The course looks at the importance of creating shared understanding, understanding the why, explores the importance of systems, structures, and processes, daily actions that have big impact, and the challenges everyone needs to hear!
Take Away: a blue print for what it takes to create inclusive workplaces and cultures of belonging.
Different aspects of ID&E, leadership, and systems
Ranging from Shared Understanding to Unconscious bias, Microinequities, Privilege & Meritocracy, how to create effective ERGs, Using Data to win, inclusive leadership and/or hiring, and so on.
Workshops & Consulting
Workshops
Inclusive Leadership
This training is designed to be a comprehensive, interactive learning mechanism for everyone in your organization. This training was built to be appropriate for a global audience, for leadership, managers, and individual contributors. This is the flagship training for creating the knowledge and understanding of what it takes to create an inclusive workplace, and the role everyone plays in that pursuit.
Inclusive Hiring
This training is designed specifically to focus on the Talent Acquisition part of the lifecycle approach. How do you inclusively attractive, assess, and hire diverse talent.
Creating Inclusive Cultures and Cultures of Belonging
This course takes a higher-level view of what it takes to create inclusive cultures and cultures of belonging. The course looks at the importance of creating shared understanding, understanding the why, explores the importance of systems, structures, and processes, daily actions that have big impact, and the challenges everyone needs to hear!
Daily Practices of Inclusive Leaders
Close the gap between good intentions and real results. As the smallest pebble can create ripples across vast waters, so too can small actions foster a sea of systemic change. This approach to inclusive leadership, both inspiring and practical, empowers all to take part in crafting a culture of belonging. With a focus on individual leaders like yourself, this guide shows you what small, yet powerful, daily steps you can take toward driving real change. Let’s get to work!
Consulting
Eddie Pate Speaking and Consulting provides a broad range of inclusion, diversity, equity (ID&E), belonging, inclusive environments, etc. services delivered via Executive & Leadership guidance, Presentations of all kinds, workshops, Training development, and consulting and guidance. We focus in on systems, structures, and processes as well as with ID&E efforts related to social identity in the workplace. We specialize in helping organizations integrate ID&E efforts into their functions, actions, systems, and processes.
“Eddie is exemplary at what he does within DEI. His energy, passion and ability to make a connection with everyone he crosses paths with is inspiring. Whether he is talking one-on-one or presenting a training with hundreds of participants, he is able to make people feel seen and heard while meeting each of them wherever they may be in their journey and then brings them along with him. He is also able to take a complex topic and make it relatable to his audience which encourages open and honest dialogue as well as increases open-mindedness and curiosity. I feel privileged to have been able to partner with Eddie this past year on building out a DEI learning curriculum. Not only does the quality of his work speak for itself but I continue to grow as a DEI practitioner because of Eddie’s guidance and coaching.”
– Jessica Hellyer, Sr. PM, DEI Learning, Amazon Web Services TA
“Eddie, I want to thank you for an extra-ordinarily engaging and effective presentation at our divisional retreat this past Friday. I heard comments such as acknowledging how this was the best DEI session that they had ever attended. And I could not agree more!! The messages were very well received and I personally learnt so much from you.”
– Rajnish Mehrotra, Belding H. Scribner Endowed Chair, University of Washington, Seattle
“Eddie Pate is an expert I leveraged at Amazon and in my current CPO role for all aspects of DEI education, communications, data insights that matter, or facilitated training. Their authentic presence enables meaningful and positive discussions in the pursuit of learning. If you are getting started or wanting to build on existing programs, Eddie is a trusted partner I rely on and recommend to challenge managers to lead differently and ultimately enhance the employee experience.”
– Kim Homenock, Chief People Officer, Stem Inc.
“Eddie’s knowledge, skill set and ability to relate the audience to the topic of Inclusion, Diversity and Equity led me to greater insight into how these topics can be practiced, learned upon and taught in my daily work. I was able to see small ways that I could make changes in hopes of greater outcomes. Eddie is relatable and engaging in his presentations and gives the listener ideas and tools to grow upon their engagement with ID&E work. I found his presentation to be highly valuable.”
– Andrea Webb, Assistance Athletic Director for Compliance & Student Success
“Eddie designed and delivered a keynote address for our leadership team on the topic of inclusive leadership. He crafted a presentation that was relevant, personalized and comprehensive. It’s been fun seeing the seeds of perspective he planted come up in discussions since—from idea to action. Thank you, Eddie, for your partnership!”
– Jessica Kelley VP, Head of HR & ESG Longroad Energy
- Traveling from Northwest, USA
For over 25+ years, Eddie Pate has transformed communities and businesses in the realm of Inclusion, Diversity, & Equity (ID&E).
As an operational executive, Eddie has utilized inspirational & inclusive leadership skills to build global organizations that understand and value the power of ID&E, Cultural Competence, Psychological Safety, Belonging, and Inclusive Leadership. His expertise is balanced across social identity aspects of ID&E and with the important focus on systems, structures, and processes. His expertise lies in helping drive intentional global strategic focus on ID&E to help individuals, team, and organizations thrive without getting overwhelmed. Eddie was fortunate to lead at some of the largest Pacific NW companies, such as Microsoft, Starbucks, Avanade and Amazon.
Since retiring from corporate, he is a sought-after speaker, consultant, and advisor founding a speaking and consulting organization—Eddie Pate Speaking & Consulting, Inc., where he engages audiences via keynotes, workshops, fireside chats, panel discussions as participant & facilitator, executive & leadership guidance, and intensive Q&A sessions.
Before his corporate journey began, Eddie was a graduate student at the University of Washington, Seattle, where he earned his Ph.D. in sociology. Before graduate school, Eddie had a short stint in the NFL, but severe knee injuries cut his career short. He excelled in college sports earning All American and All West Coast honors as a wide receiver. He is currently in Cal Poly Humboldt’s Athletic Hall of Fame.
Eddie is the co-author of “Daily Practices of Inclusive Leaders: A Guide to Building a Culture of Belonging.” He has been married for nearly 40 years, has two grown children, Karley & Arthur, and a Chihuahua named Fannie. He lives in the Pacific Northwest USA and is an avid traveler, photographer and nature enthusiast.
Let’s collaborate to ensure a transformative experience.