Meet Simma Lieberman, "The Inclusionist" — Bringing People Together Across Difference for Over Four Decades

Simma Lieberman, consultant, speaker, and podcast host known as "The Inclusionist," joins the NCDD network with more than four decades of experience facilitating dialogue and building inclusive cultures across communities and organizations. Through Simma Lieberman Associates and her nonprofit podcast Everyday Conversations on Race, she advances an approach to cross-difference engagement grounded in curiosity, relational trust, and the belief that inclusion must be embedded in systems — not added as an afterthought. Her facilitation work spans some of the most challenging divides in civic life, offering practitioners concrete models for creating conditions where genuine dialogue can take root. Lieberman's membership strengthens the NCDD community with a seasoned voice committed to the equity, inclusion, and dialogue values that define the field.

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Simma Lieberman, internationally recognized consultant, speaker, and podcast host known as "The Inclusionist," has joined the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation as a new member. Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, Lieberman brings more than four decades of experience helping individuals, organizations, and communities move across lines of difference — not by erasing those differences, but by building the curiosity, openness, and relational trust that make genuine dialogue possible. Her path into this work began in the Bronx, where personal encounters with antisemitism led her not toward division but toward deliberate friendship-building across cultural and racial lines. That early experience shaped a career rooted in the belief that fear and assumption are the primary barriers to connection — and that both can be dismantled through direct, honest, and human conversation.

Through Simma Lieberman Associates, her Berkeley-based consulting practice, Lieberman has spent more than thirty years partnering with corporations, government agencies, and nonprofits to build workplace cultures where diversity is treated as a strategic asset and inclusion is embedded into organizational systems rather than confined to one-time training events. Her approach centers on surfacing the hidden commonalities that people across differences often share but rarely discover without structured support. She has facilitated dialogues across some of the most difficult divides in civic life — including Jewish and Palestinian communities, Black and white Americans, and people of different generations and faiths — with a consistent focus on helping participants move from defensiveness and assumption toward curiosity and genuine engagement. A recipient of the Global Diversity and Inclusion Leadership Award from the World HRD Congress, Lieberman is also the author of multiple books on diversity and inclusion practice.
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Lieberman's commitment to dialogue extends beyond the consulting room through her nonprofit podcast, Everyday Conversations on Race, now in its sixth year with more than 160 episodes and a ranking in the Goodpods Top 100 for Diversity, Racism, Equity, and Inclusion. The podcast creates accessible, cross-race dialogue on race and difference for everyday listeners — offering the kind of honest, humanizing conversation that the broader civic field urgently needs. As a new NCDD member, Lieberman brings both deep practitioner experience and a clear commitment to the values that animate the dialogue and deliberation community: equity, inclusion, curiosity across difference, and the conviction that real change begins with real conversation. NCDD members are encouraged to connect with her directly and to explore her podcast at https://raceconvo.com