Lalitha Subramanian

Lalitha Subramanian (she/her) is a Program Management Director managing a suite of professional programs. Apart from this role, she serves as a DEI conduit for her unit where she is fully engaged in stepping up the accessibility-awareness across all student experiences & touch-points in non-credit certificates space. She has succeeded in implementing accessibility mandates that have transformed all certificates in her extensive portfolio to be accessible for students along with accessibility focused upgrades for internal stakeholders within the unit.

Over the past years, she has succeeded in implementing accessibility mandates that have transformed all certificates in her extensive portfolio to be accessible (>85% Ally scores across 13 instances pf programs) for students along with accessibility focused upgrades for internal stakeholders within the unit. With the success of this ‘pilot’ on improving the courses, she has continued to create a pathway for all the educational offerings in the unit to remain accessible. To this end, she has participated in the opportunities that will not only inform the ‘how’ of a process but will provide important insights to the ‘why’ of the process.

Tell us why you are nominating this individual

Lalitha Subramanian has led a few initiatives in Continuum College which is a self-sustaining arm of the University of Washington. I have highlighted a few strategic achievements of the nominee below that speak to her experience in leading teams within and outside our unit within the University of Washington.

Lalitha spearheaded the university’s first entrance into the digital microcredentials space by launching an ‘enhanced’ collaboration digital badge that could attest for an important soft skill that is highly regarded in IT settings. She initiated the proposal and won the award to participate in a digital badging pilot program (via Education Design Labs in 2019). These digital badges were designed and launched four choice certificate programs in her portfolio. These digital badges are portable, accessible, and platform-agnostic (UW Continuum College plans to scale the micro badges program 5x in two years) In addition, she has been appointed to the University of Washington’s diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) council for two 2-year term (2021- 25), which promotes inclusion and accessibility in all student experiences, certification/degree programs, and university programs.

She is an active contributor in key committees that supports, guides and sustains DEI practices in various units of the University including UW Seed Grant Adjudication committee and DEI policies & resources committees. She led and managed two grants from the Office of Minority Affairs and Diversity at the University whose mandate is to provide nontraditional educational pathways for the underserved minorities. Apart from this, Lalitha serves as the accessibility ambassador from our unit. As an accessibility ambassador, she is tasked with ensuring that we are accessibility complaint in accordance with the University guidelines.

What makes this nominee worthy of the DSA?

The impact of the nominee’s work as a part of the DEI Accessibility team has resulted in the following metrics:

1. More than 85% our units websites are fully accessible.
2. Our vendor management unit has pro-actively incorporated necessary accessibility language in contracts.
3. Our internal knowledge base is 98% accessible to the employees in UWC2 among many other accessibility improvements.
4. We maintain a median accessibility of 73% in all our canvas courses.

These major strides in accessibility have become very visible in the University of Washington which has made the work of the committee a template for further adoption in the various units/departments within the University. The nominee has collaborated and worked with various yet unique stakeholder groups that are equipped with different levels of expertise in executing policies and procedures around accessibility, awareness, and innovation.

Was there anything else?

In her role, she has demonstrated experience designing, developing, and delivering large-scale learning and development strategies and certification programs that empower people to build the right strengths, skills, and behaviors for organizational success and career progression. Additionally, the certificates in her portfolio have been recognized for their excellence in helping professional audience achieve the learning outcomes outlined in the program. She has proven success coaching industry experts, university instructors, and private company leaders to evolve educational offerings, who have adopted new technologies with accessibility standards, and designed learner-driven digital education offerings that generate revenue and meet the needs of a dynamic global marketplace. She has expertise in educational pedagogical practices for both in-class and virtual/online environments gained through 20 years of experience in education.

Darya Anoshei
Admissions & Outreach Supervisor
Continuum College