Can business leaders learn social justice?: The disruptive role of Critical Race Theory-informed social justice pedagogy in executive education.

Critical Race Theory (CRT) is a scholarly framework used to raise awareness about the systemic nature of racism and its ubiquitous influence in social systems (Ledesma & Calderon, 2015). As such, CRT has the power to transform racial and social justice in business school education because it provides a scaffolding for conversations about antiracism, and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in organizations and society at large. This workshop explores the disruptive potential of an executive education program that utilizes CRT-informed social justice tools and frameworks to inform the development of DEI competencies. In this workshop, we will review the findings of an exploratory qualitative descriptive study (Billups, 2019) designed to understand how participants make sense of what they learned from a CRT-informed Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Champion certificate program that invites learners to decenter tendencies to assume whiteness as superior, challenge the systemic and accepted denigration of Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC), and grapple with their own experiences of race as a social construction (Ladson-Billings, 1998).