A framework for identifying, understanding, and addressing inequities in opportunities and outcomes — the research behind it, interactive tools, and what it looks like applied.
I originated the Equity Analytics framework (allocation and valuation as separable mechanisms, crossed against differential treatment and disparate impact) and set it out with my collaborator Ray Reagans in Achieving Diversity Through Equity Analytics (AACSB Insights, 2022).
Four papers apply the framework directly. Full summaries, scholarly contributions, and practical relevance notes for each are on the Research page.
Browser-based tools apply the framework, from the 2×2 itself to case-specific simulators. Nothing to install — each runs in a tab.
Inequality is generated through two mechanisms: allocations — access to opportunity — and valuations — assessment of worth. Students learn to separate privilege from merit using data from the NFL, Glassdoor, Airbnb, Hollywood, and U.S. venture capital.
Pro bono equity-analytics advisory to the leadership of major sport and social organizations, where the research informed policy and practice.
The NFL work is the most visible application of this framework — the analysis informed the Fritz Pollard Alliance’s advocacy for the 2019 extension of the Rooney Rule and was later published in the American Journal of Sociology — but it's one instance, not the argument. The same allocation/valuation logic runs across the interactive tools above: workforce reductions, college admissions, algorithmic classification, consumer pricing, and lending, alongside the NFL's coaching pipeline. What generalizes is the mechanism, not the industry. The same diagnostic questions apply wherever opportunity or reward gets distributed unevenly.
Three entry questions for a leadership team:
Talks on the framework and its applications, for conferences and leadership offsites. See Speaking on Work With Me for confirmed titles, or watch the SSAC 2022 talk.
For leaders and teams: appreciate the disparity-generating processes at work in their own organization, diagnose where the gaps sit, and design more equitable practices, policies, and structures in response.
Applying the allocation/valuation diagnostic to an organization's own data. Prior work of this kind has included equity assessments for the National Basketball Coaches Association and USA Gymnastics.
Ongoing relationships that typically grow out of an initial workshop or assessment. See Advisory relationships on Work With Me.
Teaching an organization's own HR and DEI professionals to conduct equity analytics themselves — building internal capacity for the diagnostic work, not delivering it as a one-time report.
The aim is not to extract value from people who have been overlooked. It is to help organizations recognize capability more accurately, give people real opportunity to contribute, and share the resulting gains through authority, reward, advancement, and dignity.