Announcing Our New Course: Five Questions to Ask to Be a More Inclusive Leader
By Michael Gregor and Viva Asmelash
We're excited to announce the launch of our newest online course!
Five Questions to Ask to Be a More Inclusive Leader is now live on Coursera as part of the Human-Centered Leadership Specialization.
Now more than ever, it’s critical we finally reconsider the term "inclusive leadership" as a soft skill. It's the values alignment and competitive edge that can determine whether your team reaches its full potential or leaves valuable perspectives on the table. Too often, leaders are handed values without tools. They're told to build belonging, to lead equitably, to make sure everyone has a seat at the table, then left to figure out what that actually looks like in practice during a Tuesday afternoon one-on-one.
This course draws on over 15 years of Viva Asmelash's work in people operations, inclusion strategy, and instructional design, distilling the topic into three focused modules built around a deceptively simple premise: better leadership starts with better questions.
Why We Built This
Viva created this course because more leaders deserve practical, actionable tools rather than abstract mandates. Every leader directly influences the experience of the people they lead. The trick is knowing how to design it intentionally—and being willing to look honestly at yourself first.
It's foundational professional development and leadership training. (Not “diversity training.”)
Viva’s expertise comes not only from her professional experience, but from somewhere more personal and specific. As a first-generation Eritrean-American, Viva has spent a lifetime navigating complex systems as an advocate for her own family and in her former role on the Sacramento County Mental Health Board. She knows what it costs when institutions aren't built with everyone in mind, and what it takes to change them. That perspective on race, gender, culture, belonging, privilege, and educational access runs through every module of this course.
It's the same lens behind her viral Harvard Business Review article, Creating Psychological Safety for Black Women at Your Company, and her course How to Stop Giving Vague Feedback, which brought cultural humility to practical feedback frameworks.
The five questions at the center of this course do that same work. They move leaders from good intentions to intentional practice.
What You'll Learn
Across three modules, you'll build the cultural competence and practical tools to lead every member of your team with intention and equity. Specifically, you'll:
Deepen your self-awareness around identity and power. Understand how your own identity, positional authority, and blind spots shape the environment you create.
Build intentional relationships across your team. Shift beyond surface-level rapport to genuine, customized connection with each person you lead.
Foster psychological safety for all. Create the conditions where people can take risks, disagree, and bring their full perspective without fear of penalty.
Invest equally in everyone's growth. Recognize where sponsorship, stretch opportunities, and development are distributed unevenly, and change course.
Hold yourself and others accountable to meaningful change. Build the follow-through that turns a one-time commitment into sustained practice.
By the end, you'll have a concrete, actionable set of inclusive leadership practices you can put to work immediately to elevate every person on your team. When you enroll in this course, you'll also be enrolled in the Human-Centered Leadership Specialization.
Join us for a free virtual coffee chat
Soon, Liberation Labs will also be hosting a free, live virtual coffee chat to go deeper on the core concepts from the course. It's an open, conversational space to ask questions, work through what these practices look like in your specific context, and connect with other leaders doing similar work.
Details and registration coming soon—keep an eye on this space and our newsletter so you don't miss it.
This is all in service of what Viva's work has always been pointed toward: planting seeds for collective liberation and joy.
