From its 1974 beginning, Fielding Graduate University was founded on a strong commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). With the university’s focus of providing doctoral education to mid-career adults, we offered graduate experiences specifically designed for people who had been left out of traditional education.  At that time, graduate education was primarily for the younger, relatively inexperienced male adult, usually white, who was able to forego full-time employment and to relocate his family, if he had one, for several years to pursue a PhD. In contrast, Fielding’s distributed model built on students’ professional expertise, allowing them to remain in their communities and work settings. We hired scholar-practitioner faculty who lived and worked in the communities where our students were located.