This October marks two years of PRISM – Sumo Group’s internal inclusion and belonging community. What started in 2021 as a small and ambitious Diversity Focus Group has evolved into a safe and strong community space, full of impassioned people dedicated to creating meaningful change.
As PRISM hits this milestone anniversary, we wanted to celebrate its achievements, growth and evolution over the last 12 months, and the fantastic work of everyone involved helping to make Sumo a place which celebrates difference and encourages collective growth and education.
What is PRISM?
PRISM is Sumo Group’s internal Inclusion & Belonging community, created to better foster connectivity, increase psychological safety for our people – especially those from underrepresented and/or marginalised communities – and to enable and empower them to be a part of active change across Sumo’s global studios.
Since it launched, PRISM has been a driving force of change within Sumo Group and has proudly been somewhere that all our people can find community, resources and connection. By its very nature PRISM is always evolving, and this last year has seen it continue to grow in size and scale, introduce new and improved processes, and adapt to best fit the needs of our people.
PRISM is many things, but ultimately it helps Sumo foster an environment where everyone feels safe, welcome and represented.
PRISM and its Streams
We know that when it comes to our people and their equity at work, it isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach. When PRISM launched, it had five public streams and two private streams with Diversity Champions at the helm of each to carry the feedback and concerns of their communities up to leadership.
This year, we wanted to make these streams more accessible and we’ve seen them evolve to become: CHROMATIC (Underrepresented Ethnicities), IRIDIAN (LGBTQ+), ULTRAVIOLET (Marginalised Genders) and WAVELENGTH (Ability & Well-being). These communities, in addition to our two private streams, have all grown in shape and size over the last 12 months, and are now all proactively hosting events, delivering talks, webinars and more to their community members.
Meet the Diversity Champions
The Diversity Champions within PRISM are its heart and soul. The role of these passionate and insightful change-makers within PRISM is to carry the feedback and concerns of their communities to Sumo leadership, propose and host events, manage the community collaboratively and advocate for meaningful, lasting change.
Diversity Champions can be anyone from PRISM. In their role, the Diversity Champions host regular sessions with their stream, which include monthly meetings and anything from informal Lunch & Game sessions to Q&As with voices from around the games industry and cultural celebrations.
In addition, this year PRISM saw the addition of Senior Sponsors for each stream at director level to support and help amplify the voices of their stream. These can be found below:
- CHROMATIC: Darren Yeomans – Studio Director at Atomhawk
- IRIDIAN: Terry Goodwin – Studio Director at Lab42
- ULTRAVIOLET: Jess Gaskell – Director of PMO at Sumo Group
- WAVELENGTH: Scott Kirkland – Studio Director at Sumo Warrington
- PRISM Executive Sponsor: Andy Stewart – Chief Financial Officer at Sumo Group
Supporting our people
To support PRISM’s growth this year, Head of Inclusion & Belonging, Leon Killin, welcomed Alif Trevathan to the team in a new role which supports PRISM, drives community engagement and works with the Diversity Champions to deliver a wide range of change-making projects, initiatives and campaigns.
Alif and Leon have worked tirelessly to develop PRISMs policies, events and structure, and have launched new ways of working to best support the streams, their Diversity Champions and communities.
PRISM now hosts monthly ‘Kaleidoscopic Topics’ events where external speakers are invited to join a roundtable or panel discussion for everyone at Sumo Group to grow and learn together. They are also working to increase transparency so have launched quarterly ‘Refractions & Reflections’ sessions where the PRISM community can submit questions about DEI across Sumo Group to be addressed and answered.
When policies, guides and procedures are being worked on that directly impact one of PRISM's streams, people from that community play an instrumental role in contributing to it.
Evolving PRISM
Since joining Sumo Group earlier this year, Inclusion and Belonging Manager Alif Trevathan has been working to better support all of our people and the evolution of PRISM.
On its second anniversary, she said: “2023 has been a big year of change and progress for PRISM as we worked through its relaunch with revitalised streams, grew our team, gained presence within Sumo Group and are proud to now have over 350 people actively engaging with us across the Group.
“I’m proud to have been a part of its growth over the last 12 months and to see it continue to push for meaningful change, connection, shared resources and learning, and more. PRISM will always be evolving and this coming year promises more movement, further change and new opportunities that we can’t wait to share.
“A huge thank you to all of our people for their contributions to the community, and their continued commitment to cultivate a space that we can all rely on for support, resources and power.”
Happy birthday PRISM!