The Worthwhile Chase of Everything that Cannot be.

After coming back from a career break, I did what most of us do when we’re trying to get back into the rhythm of work: I read everything I could get my hands on from people in the field. One line from Sarah Cordivano stuck with me more than anything else. She wrote that "in many ways, a DEI job is an impossible job [...because...] it is impossible to achieve all the things you want in your DEI work”. That sentence has been echoing in my head ever since, mostly because as much as my first instinct was to deny it, it’s true. This, however, does not mean that trying to do the impossible is not worthwhile. 

One of the biggest challenges is the sheer backlog you inherit the moment you step into a DEI role. Years of unresolved complaints, ignored concerns, and abandoned ideas land on your desk on day one. People come to you carrying frustration, disappointment, or exhaustion, and you’re expected to help them make sense of it, and you often must do all this without the authority or resources to fix the underlying issues. 

Then there’s the expectation that you’ll deliver visible change without the budget to match the ambition. You’re handed responsibility without the tools, urgency without support, and a long list of hopes that far exceed what one person or one small team can realistically deliver. It’s a strange position to be in: everyone wants progress, but very few want to be part of the work themselves. 

The emotional side of the work is just as heavy. DEI isn’t abstract. People come to you with experiences of discrimination, unequal pay, harassment, or the slow, grinding loneliness of being the only one in the room. When an organisation fails someone, they often arrive at your door at the moment it becomes too much. You end up holding space for their pain while also trying to navigate the system that caused it. None of this is in the job description, but it’s the reality of the role. 

And because the work can be so reactive, it’s easy to fall into the trap of constant in crisis‑management mode. But you can’t fix every issue one by one, especially not sustainably.  

There are ways to make the work feel less impossible. The first is clarity: clarity about whether your role is internal or external, clarity about the resources you actually have, and clarity about what is within your control. Without that, the job expands endlessly until it becomes unmanageable. 

The second is strategy. At some point, you have to step back and build a strategy that actually moves things forward: this is at the heart of succeeding in diversity & inclusion. That means prioritising, setting boundaries, and aligning the interests of people who don’t always agree with each other. A DEI strategy isn’t a nice‑to‑have, but rather the only way to stop drowning in individual issues. It helps you decide what gets attention now, what has to wait, and what simply isn’t feasible yet. 

And finally, there’s the pressure we put on ourselves. Many of us come into this field because we care deeply about the issues. But no one can meet every expectation placed on them. The work is too broad, the systems too complex, and the needs too varied. Letting go of the idea that you must fix everything is not giving up, but rather it’s how you stay in the field long enough to make a difference. 

DEI feels impossible not because we’re failing, but because the work sits at the crossroads of structural problems, institutional hesitation, and human emotion. Naming that reality doesn’t make the work easier.

However, it does make it more honest, and honesty is a much better starting point than pretending the job is something it isn’t.