To Our Community

The mission of Arete is to create a supportive and enjoyable environment for intermediate and advanced female runners of all ages and backgrounds. In founding our team, we committed to supporting each other in running and beyond. We show up at workouts, races and social events for each other, and our friendships and support move beyond running.

For the last year, the Arete leaders have discussed how we can grow the diversity component on the team and in the running industry. Since the tragic murders of the Black community, most recently George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor, I have become urgently focused on learning what we, as a team, can do to help dismantle racism and create more equity in our running community. We will take concrete steps over the coming months and years to make Arete a more inclusive and diverse team for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color–a group not historically represented in the world of amateur running. Many of you have reached out to me recently and over the past year that this is also of vital importance to you. I hear you and I appreciate your commitment.

We don’t have to agree politically to agree that human rights matter to every single one of us. While we as a running organization may not have a broad impact on policy change, there is important work we can do within our running community to advance equity.

As allies for justice, we commit to working together with our teammates and other runners of color to create a more inclusive and equitable community. We, the allies, are not the heroes here. We commit to this journey with a sense of humility, perspective, and sustainability in our racial justice work.

We acknowledge that this work is a lifelong process and will not happen overnight. We commit to meeting the needs of our teammates we aim to help, which means listening to and valuing different voices; we commit to centering the voices of teammates of color in order to create the more inclusive and diverse community we desire.

Here are the sustainable immediate and long-term steps we are taking to create a more inclusive and diverse team:

1. Create an Arete Team Diversity Committee that centers voices of color.
2. Meet regularly with this committee to build and accomplish team diversity and inclusion goals; we  first meet in Oakland this month.
3. Commit to learning and engaging in hard work as allies, as we listen to the needs of women of color.

If you would like to be considered for the diversity advisory committee, please fill out this form. We welcome teammates of color and white allies. We will communicate everything with the team along the way.

Thank you all for listening and engaging in this hard work alongside us.

So glad you are on our team of fierce women!

Mary