Diversity, equity, and inclusion at Whole30
Building our program, resources, and community with you, not for you
From our co-founder and CEO, Melissa Urban
Whole30 began as a self-designed dietary experiment in April 2009. Those 30 days dramatically transformed my health, habits, and relationship with food and my body. Since that day, my dream has been to make the Whole30 accessible to everyone who wants to experience its life-changing benefits.
To that end, I’ve always made the Whole30 program and a wealth of support, resources, and recipes freely available. However, learning and growing with our community has taught me that financial inequities are not the only barriers to successfully completing a Whole30 or joining the Whole30 community.
Our diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts are a more comprehensive means of furthering my original dream. We want to ensure that anyone who wants to be a part of the Whole30 community:
- Feels welcomed exactly as you are
- Sees yourself in our community, social media presence, and website
- Feels included in our resources, communications, and business practices
- Believes your perspective, life experience, and goals will be recognized and honored
- Trusts that you will be treated with kindness, compassion, and respect
- Internalizes the sense of belonging to and shaping of our community and brand
- Feels proud to say, “I am Whole30.”
On a much larger scale, I also want Whole30 to continue to lead by example and with integrity. Within food, health, and wellness, there is a slow but steady movement toward greater accessibility and the adoption of actionable DEI values. I hope our actions encourage other organizations in our space to continue their efforts.
We’ve got work to do.
Our vision is to change lives everywhere, one Whole30 at a time
Whole30 can only accomplish our mission and vision if those who want to join us feel welcomed, included, and represented in all of our spaces. In service of that goal, Whole30 is committed to pursuing and reflecting the diversity of our community in our employees, contractors, suppliers, vendors, content creators, Whole30 Approved partners, influencers, marketing, language, and photography. We also commit to sharing our efforts, achievements, and shortcomings in creating a more diverse and equitable culture.
Whole30 DEI pillars
Diversity, equity, and inclusion is woven into all aspects of Whole30’s business and brand. Through company-wide discussion, we’ve identified four pillars of our DEI framework.
People and culture
Whole30 works to ensure our internal team is a reflection of our DEI values through our hiring practices, representation, ongoing education and training, external partnerships, and contractor/creator work.
Food and recipes
Whole30 is committed to sharing a diverse slate of foods and recipes across our platforms, and acknowledging and appreciating diverse cultural traditions and holidays.
Mental health
We encourage and empower our Whole30 team to prioritize their mental health through our compensation offerings, generous paid time off, flexible work schedules, and clear respect of boundaries. We are also committed to creating and protecting safe spaces for our external partners, creators, and community members.
Community
Whole30 practices acknowledging and “passing the mic” to people of different cultures, gender and sexual orientations, religions, ages, body sizes, and abilities, as a means of recognizing, uplifting, and representing the diversity of our community.
DEI Events
Whole30’s DEI behavioral indicators
Whole30 uses the following questions as behavioral indicators to guide our decision-making processes relating to diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Diversity:
- Have we considered all underrepresented groups in the creation or evaluation of our programs, services, platforms, and assets, to ensure our offerings feel inclusive?
- Are our efforts positively impacting underrepresented groups? If so, how?
- Have diverse opinions, ideas, and unique perspectives been solicited, heard, and incorporated?
Equity:
- Do we regularly evaluate our programs, services, platforms, and assets to ensure that we’re reducing barriers and obstacles to participant success based on diverse viewpoints, backgrounds, goals, and needs?
- What type of social, economic, and psychological support is needed for people to succeed, and are we providing that, or directing people to the appropriate resources?
- Are people provided with fair and equal opportunities to succeed based on their individual needs?
Inclusion:
- Are we creating spaces with underrepresented groups in mind, and with their input?
- Are we creating safe spaces designed specifically to be free of bias, unjust conflict, and potentially threatening actions, ideas, or conversations?
- Do our digital spaces and services have features designed to make them more accessible and approachable in recognition of our participants’ and partners’ diverse backgrounds, learning styles, and needs?
DEI across Whole30
All departments across Whole30 are committed to our DEI values. Here’s how every team is showing up.
Content will continue to showcase a diverse slate of creators across all categories. We will also continue efforts to show up in the best way possible during important milestones on our DEI calendar. We are also committed to going beyond specific dates to feature more diversity, cultural recognition, and the cultural perspectives of our community all year long.
There’s work that can be done in broadening our understanding of our audience. But we commit to delivering content that resonates across the broadest possible spectrum. We will work to accomplish this through voice, tone, structure, topic selection, and accessibility of the content itself.
The Content team is also mindful of diversity in images and videos. People who come to the Whole30 should see themselves in the brand, no matter where they look.
We want our Whole30 community to trust that the Whole30 Approved, affiliate partners, and sponsorship partners facilitate our larger commitments to DEI and the impact on food, health, and wellness. We are committed to leveraging our current networks and proactively seeking out partners who help further our efforts. Those efforts include:
- Identifying and targeting Whole30 Approved partners with a variety of cultural backgrounds
- Ensuring our Whole30 Approved categories and products are inclusive, demonstrate respect for traditional foods, and are accessible for as many people as possible
- Offering opportunities to promote founders, products, or recipes for special DEI-related social campaigns
- Continuing to pursue equity by providing accommodations for certain contractual conditions to DEI partners
- Continually auditing our partner portfolio with respect to our DEI values
We’ve also created a cultural and social heritage survey for our new partners to complete, so we can evaluate the diversity within our Whole30 Approved partner program. This allows us to collaborate with partners in a culturally appreciative way, helping us create content around culturally significant holidays and bringing in the perspectives of the broad range of backgrounds that exist within our partner brands.
We are committed to showcasing a broad range of diversity in our creators. We do this by actively seeking creators of different cultures, gender expressions, sexual orientations, abilities, ages, body sizes, and religions.
We also have a Creator Hub where people can apply to be creators with Whole30. We publish the rates we offer for various creative endeavors to ensure equitable compensation. Our goal is to continue to broaden the diversity of our creators and contractors, especially when sourcing new graphic designers, copywriters, photographers, and videographers.
We work with our partners to ensure their offerings are as accessible as possible. We encourage all partnership deals to include a discount, and we highlight budget-friendly sales and opportunities whenever possible.
Our Product team started in 2023 and is constantly evolving our consumer offerings. Going forward, Product is committed to:
- Continuing to pursue underrepresented partners and companies in the tech, UI/UX space as we outsource and partner with external stakeholders
- When developing products, including those with diverse experiences and cultural contexts in our user testing and user psychographics
- When developing products, including culturally mindful and relevant features, content, and launches in the product itself, as well as any product marketing
Whole30’s People and Culture goals around DEI are focused on our internal team. Our efforts include:
- Routinely offering internal team training on DEI specific topics. Specifically, we commit to offering one training each quarter
- Ensuring our team culture is always in alignment with our DEI values and mission through team check-ins and by providing resources and tools for the team to access via our internal DEI Notion page
- Vetting and creating partnerships with HR organizations and resources who share similar DEI values
- Supporting the Content and Branded Content teams in sourcing diverse content creators
- When there are recruiting needs, ensuring HR is posting all jobs on diverse job boards, and providing leadership with a diverse slate of candidates for all roles
Leadership’s role is to ensure Whole30 is weaving our DEI principles into all decisions, from selecting a new banking partner to hiring the photographer for our next cookbook to ensuring our contractor teams are also diverse.
It is our job to ensure the team understands and has fully embraced our DEI goals and efforts, and that we provide ongoing training, discussions, and learnings to the internal team.
Finally, we must continue to share our efforts, accomplishments, and shortcomings transparently both internally and with the community, as a means of holding ourselves accountable and ensuring we continue to build our brand and offerings with the community.
