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02/01/2026
Creating Equitable Career Pathways - Practical Steps for Career Development Professionals
By Logann Todd
February is Black History Month, a time to reflect on legacies of resilience and innovation while also considering how career development professionals can build more equitable futures for the students and clients we serve. This means moving beyond awareness and into action, ensuring that every client or student has fair access to meaningful opportunities. However, creating equitable career pathways does not require sweeping overhauls; it starts with consistent, intentional actions in daily advising, programming, and employer partnerships. When career development professionals commit to small, equity-focused steps, the ripple effect can transform opportunities for students and clients across generations.
Listed below are six equity focus areas, with immediate strategies career development professionals can apply in their practice.
Culturally Responsive Career Development
- Take time to understand the unique values, experiences, and cultural influences that shape a client’s career decisions.
- Ask open-ended questions about family expectations, financial responsibilities, and/or community commitments that affect career choices.
Bias-Aware Resume Reviews
- When reviewing application materials, be mindful of unconscious bias.
- Encourage students to highlight skills and accomplishments that may come from nontraditional experiences (volunteering, community leadership, or caregiving).
- Ensure that standard resume language does not unintentionally erase the richness of diverse backgrounds.
Inclusive Job Search Preparation
- Provide resources that prepare individuals for workplace realities, such as how to assess a company’s DEI commitments, interpret inclusive benefits, or prepare for interviews where bias may surface.
- Help students develop both confidence and strategies to navigate these spaces.
Audit Job Boards and/or Employer Partners
- Encourage employers to be transparent about pay.
- Review listed employers to ensure an inclusive and diverse range of industries, levels, and access points are represented.
- Encourage employers to share data on overall retention and promotion of diverse hires and discuss how insights are used to improve policies, practices, and long-term equitable outcomes.
- Address systemic barriers by providing employers with targeted resources, best practices, and advancement-focused guidance.
Inclusive Event Planning Tips
- Review panel lineups to ensure representation across identities, industries, and career levels.
- Provide accessibility options (captioning, interpreters, physical access).
- Build in networking structures that support first-generation participants, or others with quieter personalities, who may feel excluded from unstructured mingling.
Resources to Support Equity in Career Development
The strategies outlined above provide a starting point for embedding equity into everyday practice. To help translate these ideas into action, the following resources offer practical tools, frameworks, and examples aligned with the six focus areas. Career development professionals can use these materials to deepen their understanding, strengthen advising approaches, and build partnerships that advance equitable career pathways.
|
Resource |
Overview |
How Practitioners Can |
|
Gaining Cultural Competence in Career Counseling (Evans & Sejuit, 2021)
|
This book from NCDA offers a deep dive into theories, ethics, assessments, and cross-cultural practice for career counseling. |
Use as foundational reading; during staff training discussions; pull out mini-lessons to share with clients. |
|
NCDA’s on-demand learning platform features courses covering a variety of topics, including Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), and opportunities to earn continuing education (CE) credits. |
Earn CEs while you learn; embed strategies into practice; discover new ways to integrate DEI into career development work; level up your career centers' professional development and training opportunities. |
|
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A curated set of articles, videos, books, and reports about culturally responsive practice for career professionals. |
Use this to keep up-to-date; share links in your newsletter or have staff pick a piece to present during a meeting. |
|
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Diversity and Inclusion Toolkit (University of Washington Career & Internship Center, n.d.) |
The toolkit focuses on equitable job/internship recruiting, hiring, and onboarding, as well as for staff/employer partners. |
Use the checklists/tools to foster employer relationships; adapt wording tips for job postings; make sure your partners/employers are aware of equity in their practices. |
|
NCDA’s online social justice resource page (curated by the Diversity Initiatives and Cultural Inclusion Committee) offers resources, statements, and actions that support diversity, equity, inclusion, and advocacy within the field. Resources include ongoing DEI initiatives, books, calendars, articles, training, and webinars to help practitioners engage in allyship, anti-racism work, and culturally responsive service delivery. |
Pull examples for your newsletter; use benchmarks to compare or audit your own services; consider integrating strategies into your own practices. |
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A practical toolkit for employers, including assessment tools, glossaries, examples of inclusive recruiting, etc. |
Use this when advising employer partners; give to students to help them evaluate prospective employers; adapt employer-facing tips. |
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Multicultural Career Counseling: Ten Essentials for Training (Flores & Heppner, 2002) |
An academic article that presents essential skills and mindsets for counselors working with diverse populations. |
Map your current advising training against the essentials to see gaps; form a study group or book club. |
|
Understanding Students’ Racialized Experiences with Career Services (Buford, 2024) |
Explores how Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) students experience career centers, and what practitioners might be overlooking. |
Useful for reflecting on your own practices; helps identify adjustments in outreach, rapport building, messaging; use quotes/anecdotes to humanize in your training or newsletter. |
|
Centers for Educational Equity and Excellence (UC Berkeley Division of Equity & Inclusion, n.d.) |
Offers strengths-based & culturally responsive career counseling; mentorship & branding workshops; accessible pipelines to external equity-minded organizations. |
A great model to emulate; compare what your organization offers versus what they do. |
Shaping Tomorrow Through Inclusive Practices
As higher education continues to serve as a powerful gateway to opportunity, career development professionals are uniquely positioned to close equity gaps and expand access to meaningful futures. Embedding culturally responsive advising techniques and maintaining accountability through equity-minded practices strengthens the support provided to students today and influences the systems they will navigate tomorrow. Affirming the role of higher education as a catalyst for equitable career pathways benefits individuals, communities, and the broader workforce.
References
Buford, M. (2024, August 22). Understanding students’ racialized experiences with career services. National Association of Colleges and Employers.
https://www.naceweb.org/diversity-equity-and-inclusion/trends-and-predictions/understanding-students-racialized-experiences-with-career-services
Evans, K. M., & Sejuit, A. L. (2021). Gaining cultural competence in career counseling (2nd ed.). National Career Development Association.
https://www.ncda.org/aws/NCDA/pt/sd/product/20574/_BLANK/layout_products/false
Flores, L. Y., & Heppner, M. J. (2002). Multicultural career counseling: Ten essentials for training. Journal of Career Development, 28(3), 181–202. https://doi.org/10.1177/089484530202800304
NCDA. (2023). Learning hub. https://www.ncda.org/aws/NCDA/pt/sp/learning_hub
NCDA. (n.d.). Social justice. https://www.ncda.org/aws/NCDA/pt/sp/social_justice
Rozal, K. (2024, June 25). Cultural awareness in career counselling. CareerWise.
https://careerwise.ceric.ca/2024/06/25/cultural-awareness-in-career-counselling/
Suffolk University Career Center. (n.d.). Employer diversity, equity, and inclusion toolkit.
https://www.suffolk.edu/career-center/information-for/employers-partners/dei-toolkit
University of California, Berkeley, Centers for Educational Equity and Excellence. (n.d.). CE3.
https://ce3.berkeley.edu/
University of Washington Career & Internship Center. (n.d.). Diversity and inclusion toolkit.
https://careers.uw.edu/channels/diversity-inclusion-toolkit/
Logann Todd is a Certified Career Services Provider (CCSP), Certified MBTI Practitioner, Global Career Development Facilitator (GCDF), and has an MBA from Binghamton University, specializing in Business Analytics and Leadership & Consulting. Logann has spent the last 10+ years using creative strategies to support and promote various business operations for Universities and Companies. Currently, she works remotely out of Ann Arbor, Michigan, for United States University as their Director for Career Services & Alumni Engagement, providing resources and support virtually to students and recent graduates. She is the President-Elect for the Michigan Career Development Association, a member of the NCDA International Student Services Committee, co-chair of the NCDA AI Taskforce, and a recipient of the 2025 NCDA Presidential Recognition Award. Logann may be reached at logann.todd@usuniversity.edu.
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