Our 2024 Update on ATA’s Justice, Equity, Diversity & Inclusion Work
Each year, ATA employees diligently set goals aimed at enhancing our workplace, programs, and the fields of travel and international education to become more just, equitable, diverse, and inclusive—what we call JEDI. This year followed suit, and we convened in January for our annual review to discuss our progress. Here is a summary of the key highlights and achievements from our efforts:
What We Accomplished In 2024
Actions to Transform our Workplace
- We created an annual JEDI budget to enhance the professional development of our JEDI Coordinator.
- Each Executive Team member enrolled in and completed at least one external JEDI focused educational session this year.
- We created guidelines for vendor vetting through a JEDI lens. We ensured vendors aligned with ATA’s JEDI practices, evaluating their effectiveness, social responsibility, and capacity to address their employees’ diverse needs.
Actions to Transform our Programs
- Ed Travel Programs continued building a tour portfolio that incorporates JEDI themes and principles to appeal to a wider audience.
- Ed Travel Marketing continued to build a diverse and authentic collection of photos to promote trips; this year they reduced their use of non-stock photos from 25% to 45%.
- CET collected 10 new Perspective Pieces from study abroad students.
- CET Student Services improved professional development through attending conferences and presentations at the Global Disruption Summit, the Global Inclusion Conference in DC, and the NAFSA conference in New Orleans.
- CET Programs created, implemented, and supported multiple JEDI trainings for on-site staff around the world.
Actions to Transform our Fields (Travel and International Education)
- We continued to prioritize FEA (The Fund for Education Abroad) as our main philanthropic priority by covering approximately $250,000 in FEA overhead expenses.
- We launched a permanent volunteering opportunity with FEA to increase ATA staff support of FEA’s mission of diversifying the field of study abroad.
- We invested in Tourism Cares’ initiatives, including the 2024 Meaningful Summit in Willamette Valley, Oregon and the Diversity in Tourism Fund.
- We supported The National Tour Association’s DE&I Advisory Committee to its Board of Directors.
Planning for 2025
Here are some initiatives and goals we are working on in 2025.
Actions to Transform our Workplace
- Increase ATA staff participation in support of FEA in 2025; exceed 240 hours of volunteering in 2025.
- Survey staff regarding their current engagement with JEDI topics in Q1 of 2025.
- Our Executive Team continues to commit to one external JEDI-focused education session or activity in 2025.
Actions to Transform our Programs
- Continuing to improve website accessibility to increase compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act and Web Consortium Accessibility Group guidelines.
- Increase accessibility knowledge with courses and training to establish a baseline checklist to standardize our own minimum accessibility requirements across all platforms (print, web, email, socials), for marketing purposes.
- Explore accessibility tools for speech-to-text, translation, and overall ease of communication across language barriers.
Actions to Transform our Fields (Travel and International Education)
- Continue to Support FEA’s Overhead at approximately $250,000 in 2025.
- Continue to support Tourism Cares with a $5,000 Donation.
- Continue to support the National Tour Association’s DE&I Advisory Committee.
If you’re interested in a full summary of our work, please email us.
2024 Metrics
In total, ATA set 34 goals for our JEDI work in 2024.
The table below summarizes the total number of goals originally set in January 2024, the status of the goals as reported in December 2024 by each team, and the total number of new goals for 2025.
All ATA Teams’ Goals:
- Not Achieved: 2 | 6%
- Beginning Stages: 3 | 9%
- Significant Progress Made: 7 | 20.5%
- Achieved: 21 | 62%
- Cancelled/Re-imagined: 1 | 3%
- Total 2024 Goals: 34 | 100%
ATA teams use several different metrics to measure the success of their goals. Some of those metrics include employee satisfaction surveys, attendance at JEDI learning opportunities, the total number of philanthropy hours logged by employees, and various team-specific metrics. Efforts have been made to standardize certain metrics across teams, such as vendor vetting rubrics; however, team needs vary, making standardization challenging. The process is ongoing, but we are pleased to have made significant progress and/or fully achieved 82.5% of the goals we set for 2024 and look forward to making more progress in 2025.
