Luzilda Arciniega is currently an independent scholar and consultant on diversity, equity, and inclusion. She co-founded a comprehensive DEI company that focuses on culture-change and challenging organizational whiteness, Willing Observers LLC. She was formerly Visiting Assistant Professor of Business and Organizational Anthropology in the Department of Anthropology at Wayne State University. She is currently writing her book manuscript entitled, Diversity Politics: Liberal Antiracism, the Neoliberal Corporation, and Racial Capitalism. The book examines how after the systemic dismantlement of affirmative action programs, management professionals of color and white women institutionalize diversity by integrating concerns with racism, sexism, and discrimination in the workplace and society with an organization’s economic and managerial business priorities. Dr. Arciniega is also an applied anthropologist, diversity consultant, and public scholar, having held a regular column, “Diversity in the Workplace,” in Anthropology News, the main newsletter of the American Anthropologist Association, from 2017-2019, and later the position of contributing editor for the Association for Political and Legal Anthropology section, from 2018-2020.

As an applied anthropologist and diversity consultant, Dr. Arciniega is driven by a deep commitment to help disentangle the meaning of the word “business” from “capitalism,” as historical research has shown that these words have not always been inter-changeable, and that corporations (i.e. organizations of people) once served to fulfill significant social needs. To these ends, she has created and facilitated trainings, workshops, and lectures for academic, non-profit, and for-profit organizations on a number of diversity issues, including on implicit bias and systemic racism. She also currently oversees and manages the implementation of the NDC Index, the National Diversity Council’s 200+ question survey on corporate diversity and inclusion practices.

Luzilda Arciniega received her Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of California, Irvine in 2018. During the pandemic, she is spending quality time with her family, partner, and three cats, Billy, Chicho, and Mochi in Los Angeles, California.