A Retrospective Analysis of Leadership, Awardees, and Member Gender Representation of the Canadian Society for Immunology

The Canadian Society for Immunology (CSI) was founded in 1966 (by Dr. Bernhard “Hardi” Cinader), and its central mission has been to “foster and support Immunology research and education throughout Canada.” To this end, the Society hosts annual meetings (the first of which took place in 1987, one year after Toronto hosted the International Congress of Immunology, chaired by Dr. Bernhard Cinader) that enable research exchange, collaboration, and trainee engagement, as well as recognize scientific excellence through a series of Society awards. CSI also plays important roles internationally, as a founding as well as current member of the International Union of Immunological Societies (IUIS), for which Dr. Cinader was the inaugural President in 1969. CSI also fosters collaborations with organizations including the American Association of Immunologists (AAI), the Federation of Clinical Immunology Societies (FOCIS), the British Society for Immunology (BSI), and the Australian and New Zealand Society for Immunology (ASI), among others.

The CSI leadership consists of a President, Vice-President, Secretary, Treasurer, and several councilors, all of whom are elected by the Society membership at large and who are responsible for guiding key decisions for the Society. These include oversight of the CSI annual meeting and subcommittees, distribution of funds, liaising with granting agencies, and wider outreach to the community. In 2020, the ad hoc CSI Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) Committee was founded and became a permanent Council- and membership-ratified committee in 2022 (1). Since its founding, the CSI-EDI Committee has participated regularly in the planning of EDI-focused workshops and outreach (2). Initially, the committee consisted of 6 members, but has since grown to 11 members, including trainees, recruited to the committee in mid-2022. The mandate of the CSI-EDI Committee is to 1) identify key EDI issues relevant to the CSI, 2) guide the development of strategies to improve EDI, and 3) permanently establish equity and belonging as a priority within the Society’s central mission. Our goal is for the CSI-EDI Committee to work alongside and serve as an example for other scientific societies in their mission to make science and research more accessible and inclusive to academic and nonacademic trainees (3, 4).

Fundamental to achieving these goals is the establishment of a baseline understanding of the composition of the CSI’s leadership and membership. That is, does the CSI leadership reflect the CSI membership and does the membership reflect the broader immunology community in Canada? Understanding these baseline compositions is essential to provide a benchmark for the Society’s success or failure with respect to EDI to date, and to help identify areas for improvement that will guide future CSI-EDI Committee programs. To this end, we gathered all available and public CSI historical records on binary gender distribution in the categories of membership, leadership, conference participants, and award winners. Owing to the lack of self-reported data, we opted to limit this initial analysis to this specific visible demographic group until such time that additional data are collected. Therefore, gender identification was based on self-reported publicly available self-identification and pronoun use (personal/laboratory Web sites, social media) and, if necessary, observable characteristics. Importantly, the available historical data were only adequate for evaluating gender as binary and categorical, “man” or “woman,” rather than considering the spectrum on which gender actually exists. This approach is similar to the one previously used by Fuji Johnson and Howsam (5), but to address its limitations, we supplemented our analyses with a survey to glean insights into the true gender representation of the community. We present the analyses of these data, which show a historical bias toward the representation of men in almost all categories evaluated, but with a welcomed trend toward equal representation in more recent years. We highlight possible underlying causes of these historical biases and a slate of means to address them.

Publicly available CSI historical records were accessed including names, affiliations, years, and roles served/involvement as part of the CSI community (members, leadership, annual meeting participants, award winners). Unfortunately, the enrollment date for CSI membership has not been recorded and, as a result, we can only conduct a comprehensive assessment of the membership distribution for the 2023 iteration of the records, rather than analyzing historical data (5). We used the “data triangulation method” first described by Smith and Bray (6) and described by Fuji Johnson and Howsam (5). Briefly, the method consists of analyzing publicly available materials such as personal and professional biographies/biographical sketches, first and last names, photographs, and, if available, self-identification (6–8). When assigning gender, we first consulted the results of our short survey (see below) that we launched to collect self-reported gender information from the CSI community. We recognize that self-reported gender information is the best approach to collecting gender identity information for our analysis. However, not every individual elected to fill out our survey (we had 103 participants), and in these cases Web-based self-reporting was used to find gender identity. Most often this consisted of finding pronouns in the biographies of social media profiles and finding gender pronouns on research and university Web sites. However, when the pronouns of an individual could not be found online, we then reached out to other manuscript authors to see if anyone had a personal connection to the individual. Finally, in rare cases, observable characteristics were used to avoid having to remove individuals from the dataset whose gender could not be identified using the other methods above.

To address the limitation of the lack of self-reported data, we distributed a voluntary survey to the entire current CSI community (2023 iteration). The survey included six questions and could be answered anonymously but also included the option to identify by name. This was intended to supplement the assumptions made regarding gender based on public pronoun usage and, if needed, observable characteristics. If a member chose to provide a name as well as a chosen gender, we used this information to verify our assignment. The second and third questions were close-ended and inquired about sex assigned at birth and chosen gender, respectively. Questions four to six requested information on roles and terms served in their participation in the CSI. Although limited by the number of survey responses (10%: 103 of 992 who received the e-mail invitation), this was intended to act as a validation survey to confirm whether the overall trends and biases in various categories we detected in our preliminary evaluation could be supported retrospectively with supplementary self-reported data.

Bar graphs and pie charts were created using Microsoft Office Excel, Keynote on MAC OS, and GraphPad Prism version 8. Data were first analyzed for normality using a D’Agostino–Pearson omnibus normality test, Shapiro–Wilk normality test, and Kolmogorov–Smirnov normality test. Statistical analysis was performed using Pearson correlation analysis and Spearman correlation analysis. The Pearson correlation was reported when any of the normality tests were statistically significant (p < 0.05). GraphPad Prism version 8 was used for statistical analyses.

In this study, we retrospectively analyzed gender representation in the CSI community using public CSI historical records to establish a baseline understanding of the composition of the CSI’s leadership and membership that can be used to evaluate CSI’s current standing and areas in need of improvement with regard to EDI. We began by assessing CSI membership in terms of gender representation using inferred data. The CSI offers five types of memberships: full, associate, emeritus, student, and honorary. All members can choose to be recorded in a publicly available database that includes their name, type of membership, and affiliation (www.csi-sci.ca/cgi/page.cgi/member_directory). The 2023 iteration of this database includes a total of 509 members who acquired or held a CSI membership and chose to be recorded at some point during the last two decades. Unfortunately, in previous years accurate annual records of membership were not recorded, and therefore changes in trajectory over time cannot be gleaned from these records. Nevertheless, we found that in 2023 the gender distribution among all members was close to parity with 47% men and 53% women (Fig. 1A). The two most common membership types held within the community were full (only available to educational faculty and professionals) (41%) and student (47%), while the remaining members either hold an associate (11%) or emeritus (0.8%) membership (Fig. 1B). Honorary members could not be identified in the 2023 database records. Because only full members qualify for nomination to CSI leadership positions, we also assessed the gender distribution within this pool of potential candidates. Among full members (a total of 210), 59% are men and 41% are women, indicating that the acquisition of a full membership shows a bias toward men (Fig. 1C). Interestingly, the composition of the student membership shows a bias toward women, with 33% men and 67% women student members (Fig. 1D).

To assess the gender representation of CSI leadership, we began by analyzing the binary gender distribution for the CSI Presidents. This role is typically held for two consecutive years, and data were available for years 1969–2025 (Fig. 2A). Out of all Presidents who served during that time, 72% were men and 28% were women (Fig. 2B). Although the first woman President was elected in 1983, Presidents were predominantly men until 2006. Between 2006 and 2022, there was a striking shift toward more equal representation with four men and five women Presidents elected. To date, all CSI Presidents have been selected from the pool of full members, and all Presidents have been academically affiliated full professors.

Excluding the CSI President, the CSI Council consists of 9–11 members: Vice-President, Past President, Secretary/Treasurer (this role was separated into two positions as of 2023, Secretary and Treasurer), and six to seven additional Council members (traditionally, the CSI Council includes six Councilors; however; for the years 2023–2024 the CSI leadership includes seven Councilors as the Society transitions to a new election format whereby three Councilors are replaced every two years in contrast to the previous format where between two and four Councilors were replaced each election). Historically, leadership was tasked with reaching out to members of the community to secure new individuals to serve in a leadership role. Because this approach lacked transparency, leadership is now selected through a call to the CSI community to nominate/self-nominate. The slate of nominees is then evaluated for diversity (originally the focus was mostly on geographic diversity, e.g., East Coast, West Coast), but now the focus is also on career stage, gender, background, and other factors. When the slate of nominees is not diverse enough, a second call goes out to the community and individuals are approached directly as well. Lists of nominees are voted on by full members of the CSI. For all Council members, public data were available for the years 1989–2025 (projected) and Council members served two consecutive years with the option to be re-elected for a second two-year term (Fig. 2C). The transition of Council members to other leadership positions is a common practice within CSI leadership (e.g., after two years, the President transitions to the role of Past President and the Vice-President stands for election to the role of President), which often results in a total Council membership duration of four or more years and up to 10 years in some cases. While this trend provides important stability in the form of experienced leadership, it also has the unintended consequence of slow-moving turnover and a limited number of entirely new and diverse Council members. Additionally, during the last decade, only two people, both men, have held the position of Treasurer; importantly, however, note that there was no volunteer to take on this position. In evaluating all members of Council, we found that, overall, 62% were men and 38% were women since 2006 (Fig. 2D), which, proportionally, reflects the bias toward men in the available pool of candidates who hold a full membership (i.e., those able to stand for election and those able to vote on nominees). In most years, the Council was predominantly composed of men with the exceptions of the 2010–2011 and 2012–2013 terms where the Council consisted of an equal number of men and women, as well as 2023–2024, where it consisted of a woman majority. Considering all years, a positive correlation can be observed between the percentage of women in leadership positions and time (Fig. 2E, r = 0.5882).

The CSI annual meeting is a cherished event in the community and has been recognized as a particularly welcoming platform for trainee engagement and networking. The location of each meeting typically alternates between western and eastern Canada and, therefore, each meeting is organized by a different local organizing committee (LOC) that shoulders responsibility for securing venues, drafting the meeting schedules, and hosting attendees. At the CSI annual meeting, theme-focused symposia are a major component of each meeting day, and these serve as a platform for both established and early-career immunologists to share their latest research. Suggestions for future thematic symposium topics and prospective speakers are typically solicited from the CSI community at large (all membership categories) shortly after each annual meeting. These are then evaluated for relevance and novelty (i.e., themes and speakers prescreened to ensure that they are current and have not been used in recent years and prioritized for the upcoming annual meeting). Once themes and chairs have been selected by Council, the symposia chairs (often individuals who have suggested a selected theme) extend invitations to speakers for the upcoming CSI annual meeting. Historical records of symposium presenters were available between the years 2003 and 2023 (Fig. 3A). During this time, the overall average number of symposium presenters per year did not significantly change; 64% of all presenters were men and 36% were women (Fig. 3B). Up until 2017, most symposium presenters were men, and in 2008 the presenter cohort was composed exclusively of men. Since 2018, a shift can be observed toward more equal representation of men and women speakers with either equal or slightly more women selected as symposium presenters between the years 2018 and 2023. This noticeable shift is largely due to increasing efforts to be sensitive to and improve EDI (such as the installment of a CSI-EDI Committee), but this is anecdotal (confirmed by multiple past session chairs), and no formal Society bylaws mandate this. Collectively this progress reflects overall changes in the immunology community in recent years and is not due to direct, formal guidelines. In more recent years, conscious goals have been stated for symposia organizers to ensure gender parity, but these goals are not yet formally reflected in Society bylaws. Records of individuals who chaired the symposia were also available for the years 2003–2023 (Fig. 3C). These showed an overall distribution of 57% men and 43% women, a ratio that reflects the broader Society membership and no discernible change in the pattern of gender distribution over time (Fig. 3D, 3G). It is noteworthy that in the years 2008 and 2012, symposium chairs were entirely devoid of women.

In addition to the symposia, the CSI annual meeting also includes several immunology-themed workshops that provide a platform for trainees to share their research findings. These workshops are also chaired by a selected group of experts (faculty and postdoctoral fellows), and public records of the gender distribution in this category were available between the years 2005 and 2023 (Fig. 3E). During this period, 64% of workshop chairs were men and 36% were women (Fig. 3F). However, comparable to the category of symposium presenters, a shift can be observed toward equal representation, with equal numbers of men and women chosen as workshop chairs in the years 2018–2021 and, for the first time, more women chosen as chairs in the year 2022.

Considering all years, the percentage of women included in the categories of symposium presenters and workshop chairs shows a positive correlation with time (r = 0.5210 and 0.5302 respectively), whereas no such trend can be observed for the category of symposium chairs (Fig. 3G, r = 0.1294).

To recognize outstanding scientific contributions and service to the CSI community, awards are presented annually at the CSI annual meeting and include the Bernhard Cinader Award, the CSI Investigator Award, the CSI New Investigator Award, and the John D. Reynolds Service Award. For all awards, a call is sent out to the CSI community at large to nominate individuals who have served the community in a manner that fits with the respective award criteria. A committee then assesses the nominations in terms of eligibility. Although we have data related to the award winners, the relative ratio of male and female nominees is unknown. The Bernhard Cinader Award is “given to a Canadian scientist who exemplifies distinguished scientific leadership and accomplishments in Immunology.” Records of recipients were available for the years 1987–2023 (Fig. 4A). During this time, 82% of recipients were men and 18% were women (Fig. 4B). Until 2010, almost all recipients were men; however, since 2011, a slight shift toward more female awardees can be observed with five women Bernhard Cinader Award winners between 2011 and 2023. However, in the last three years, the winners were all men, so it would be relevant to remain attentive to the future trend for this category to ensure that this journey toward equality continues. The CSI Investigator Award is presented to a member of the CSI “for excellence in research and mentorship over their career.” Records date back to 2006 (Fig. 4C) and show an overall distribution of 41% men and 59% women recipients (Fig. 4D). Thus, this is one of the only categories that has favored women awardees, and no discernible change in this pattern is observed during the recorded time. The CSI New Investigator Award is presented to a CSI member who is within six years of the start of a first independent position and who demonstrates “excellence or potential excellence in research.” This award can be given to members of “any sector (academic, industry).” Records of recipients are available for the years 2006–2023 (Fig. 4E) during which 72% of awardees were men and 28% were women (Fig. 4F). A potential shift toward equal selection can be observed starting in 2018. Finally, the John D. Reynolds Award “is given for a long-term member of the CSI for their exceptional service to CSI.” This award was established in 2010 and is only conferred when a deserving recipient is nominated and the awards committee assesses that the nominee has made a long-term, tangible, and impactful contribution in the form of service to the Society, which may not be every year (Fig. 4G). Since then, 36% of recipients were men and 64% were women (Fig. 4H). Thus, other than membership and the CSI Investigator Award, this is the only other category that showed equality or a plurality of women.

Considering all years and all awards combined, there is no correlation between the percentage of women award winners and time (Fig. 4I, r = 0.1249).

One way in which CSI participates on the international stage is by hosting symposia that are part of other international immunology meetings, such as those sponsored by AAI and FOCIS. The purpose of having a symposium organized by guest societies such as the CSI is “to bring unique perspectives on basic research and clinical issues influencing and advancing the field.” As above, topics and speakers are gathered from the CSI community and voted on by Council (typically, the top three topics will be part of the CSI annual meeting while the fourth and fifth most popular topics will be the subject of either AAI or FOCIS symposia). The individuals who proposed the topics will become the chairs and are responsible for selecting speakers. We assessed the gender representation among speakers and chairs of the CSI guest symposia at both international immunology meetings, starting with the AAI meetings, at which CSI symposia have been held since 2004. We found an overall gender distribution of 65% men and 35% women speakers and 76% men and 24% women chairs (Fig. 5A, 5B). Thus, both categories show a significant male bias. Of note, several years are entirely devoid of women, primarily in the chair category. We then proceeded to assess the gender representation among speakers and chairs of the CSI guest symposia at FOCIS, which have been held since 2016. We found an overall gender distribution of 48% men and 52% women speakers and 58% men and 42% women chairs (Fig. 5C, 5D). Overall, representation is closer to parity; however, we do note that there still is a bias in the category of chairs, and the year 2020 was entirely devoid of women selected as chairs or speakers.

Because we recognized the limitations linked to assigning gender based on self-identifying pronouns found on public Web pages and social media and especially the limitations of using observable characteristics, we sought to ameliorate this by distributing a short survey to the CSI community. This survey inquired about sex assigned at birth and current gender identification as well as the number and types of CSI roles held by each respondent. Out of 992 members who received the e-mail invitation, the survey received a total of 103 responses, which allowed us to glean insights into the overall gender distribution within the community as well as assess whether the overall gender distribution and biases presented above can be further confirmed with self-reported data. The responses showed an equal split (49.5% each) of respondents with female and male sex assigned at birth and 1% of respondents who preferred not to answer (Fig. 6A). In terms of gender, 48.5% of respondents identified as men and 49.5% as women (Fig. 6A). One percent of respondents indicated that they are not cisgender, which means that their gender identity does not correspond to their assigned sex at birth. Importantly, only a fraction (10%) of CSI members responded to the survey. Therefore, these results may not be truly representative of the whole community, especially considering that marginalized groups may be more reticent to report such personal information. This important caveat aside, overall, the survey responses collected aligned with our provisional total membership gender assignments based on publicly available self-identifying pronouns and observable characteristics, which showed 47% men and 53% women members. Although this is only a supplemental survey and clearly lacks case-level data on all members of the Society, these results suggest that gender assignment in this study likely approximates the gender distribution and biases within the CSI. This was further confirmed when we assessed the responses with regard to individual roles that each respondent had held as part of the CSI. The roles assessed included general member, President, Council member, award winners, and annual meeting participant (presenter/symposium chair/workshop chair). We assessed the male/female distribution for each role and compared these to the male/female distribution based on publicly reported pronouns and observable characteristics (Fig. 6B–D). We found that, except for one category (the Cinader Award recipients), the distribution of men and women within each category, as reported by the survey respondents, closely matched the distributions observed based on our gender assumptions. The Cinader Award category did not match our previous finding, but only 4 out of 33 Cinader Award winners (4/103) responded to the survey, which is not enough to make any definitive conclusions.

The survey allowed us to obtain gender distribution for two additional categories that we were not able to assess based on the available historical data and gender assignment. These included the number of roles held by each member as well as the gender distribution of total attendees at the annual CSI meeting. We found that, out of the respondents who served more than one role (41% of total), 59% were men and 41% were women (Fig. 6E). This indicates that men are more likely to serve multiple roles within the CSI community. A bias toward men (62%) could also be observed with regard to the total number of annual CSI meeting attendees, which may indicate that women are less able to attend conferences (perhaps due to increased family responsibilities) or that men receive increased encouragement/support to attend conferences. Thus, while this survey is only a snapshot of a subset of the community, it confirmed most observations and provided further information on persistent biases within the community.

In summary, by assessing the gender distribution within various CSI roles, we observed an overall bias toward men. In some instances, this bias persists to the present day while for others a shift toward more equal selection can be observed beginning around 2010.

In this study, binary gender representation of the CSI community (based on self-identification and observable characteristics; supplemented through survey responses) was evaluated. The categories of the CSI’s membership, leadership, award recipients and conference chairs/presenters were analyzed to determine how representation and composition have changed over time. These analyses highlight that, except for current total membership records and a distinct subset of awards, most categories have a bias toward men, particularly prior to 2010. In the categories of leadership (with regard to the position of President), symposium presenters, and workshop chairs, a shift toward greater parity in selection of men and women was observed, especially in the years after 2017. This trend may reflect the general increase in women among the community, but it may also reflect the targeted efforts to embrace EDI within the CSI and a general increase of inclusive EDI practices in the wider scientific community during the last decade. However, the analyses of binary gender biases within the CSI leadership for both the President and Council members suggest that some biases persist. To date, the position of President has been held by full professors, which, Canada-wide, is still a title carried primarily by men. Thus, the bias for this leadership position may be fueled by the nation-wide lack of women in senior positions, which consistently lags in the parity achieved in the earlier stages of the immunology community (9). It may also reflect the bias we observed for the status of full CSI membership, which can only be acquired by educational faculty and professionals. Awareness of inequalities at the level of leadership is essential to address the inequalities in the broader community. However, it is noteworthy that most Council members are elected based on self-nomination, or less frequently by nominations from the community, and many annual meeting decisions are made by the LOC, not the Council. Thus, biases may also stem from how nominations are put forward and from the LOC, which are areas of further investigation. Strategies to overcome these biases may include active recruitment of women to Council and the LOC as well as encouragement of women to participate in self-nomination more actively or in the nomination of their peers. It is also noteworthy that all CSI roles are accepted on a volunteer basis. Thus, due to the frequent pressure on women to accept multiple leadership roles within their home university academic units together with possible maternity considerations, they may lack the necessary support to take on these substantial, additional, voluntary, and unpaid responsibilities.

The analyses of equality within the award recipient category showed a strong bias toward the selection of women for two out of the four awards. It is noteworthy that one of these is awarded based on exceptional “service to the CSI,” which could potentially reflect a stereotypical acceptance of women with roles in service (10). This award was only founded in 2010, and thus the bias toward women may also reflect new awards garnering higher scrutiny for adherence to EDI within the last decade. Interestingly, the New Investigator Award, which is specifically geared toward early career investigators, favored the selection of men by 72%. Unlike the awards to more senior and likely tenured PIs, which could potentially reflect a historical bias toward men in senior positions, there is greater parity between the representation of men and women at the earlier independent career stages, including the assistant professor level. Thus, one would expect the pool of available candidates for the New Investigator Award to be representative of this greater equality. The bias toward the selection of men instead suggests a selection bias as opposed to a lack of available women candidates. Because these awards are solicited through a nomination process, this, much like the nominations of leadership, may reflect a deep-rooted trend for nominators to suggest men for these awards. This is an important consideration that warrants further investigation and greater attention to the way nominations for these awards are solicited among the CSI membership. Maternity considerations may also, again, lead to this bias because of shortened active years of research for women during the earliest segment of their first independent position and, thus, a lower likelihood to be considered for this type of early career award. Although early career windows have been extended to account for maternity and other leaves that may interrupt research activity, it is not entirely clear whether Society members are aware of these options and may not consider these accommodations when nominating candidates. Additionally, accommodations that correspond to time taken away from a research program for leaves rarely account for the total impact on research productivity and success resulting from these disruptions. Importantly, also note that the criteria of this award, as currently stated, may inadvertently limit the pool of applicants. The description stipulates that the award may be presented to members of any sector, yet only academia and industry are listed. This excludes other important areas such as clinicians, health policy, science communication, or service in nonprofit organizations. This may prevent the selection committee from evaluating deserving candidates within those emerging sectors, which have seen greater advances toward parity in the employment of men and women. Another possible reason for this bias may also be the use of the words “investigator” and “appointment,” which typically refer to an academic faculty position. More inclusive wording of the criteria such as “New CSI Scientist/Member” and “within six years of their first independent position in their field” may encourage more diverse choices as well as a more diverse set of applications and nominations for this award.

Taken together, the analyses of the available historical CSI records have uncovered evidence of past, and potentially lingering, biases that deserve focused attention. These findings are similar to trends observed for other academic societies (3, 5). Importantly, positive changes toward a more inclusive space can already be observed, and it is of great importance to continue this trend and build on these findings and successes. Toward that goal, the establishment of a Council-approved EDI committee and the permanent addition of an EDI training component to the CSI annual meeting is an excellent first step on how to best navigate this space. We are hopeful that with the presentation of these data as a historical baseline, we can demonstrate that we have come a long way forward but that further work still needs to be done.

This study was limited by the availability and types of historical and public records. First, there is a notable lack of data on all categories such as sex, gender, racialized minorities, indigeneity, disabilities, and sexual/gender identification and orientation minorities. Second, historical records were not accessible to gather the overall gender distribution with regard to all members of the CSI, including principal investigators, researchers, industry representatives, and trainees. Because this pool of members from which the leaders, meeting participants, and award winners are frequently chosen may be biased toward men, especially in earlier years of the Society, this could reflect the principal reason for some of the observed trends. Without this information, it cannot be determined whether the gender distribution presented in this study is entirely based on barriers faced in leadership selection or inequality in the pool of available candidates.

First, the CSI Council has now approved a self-identification survey as part of the membership registration that, moving forward, will provide a comprehensive dataset including the distribution of sex, gender, sexual orientation, racial identity, indigeneity, and people with disabilities within the CSI community. The data gathered will provide an understanding of the true composition of our Society, a higher degree of accuracy with regard to these EDI categories, and will avoid the need to infer this information from name and online records. We recommend continuing this practice under condition of privacy compliance under secure storage and anonymized access for purposes of future analyses such as the ones presented in this manuscript.

Second, we recommend the addition of EDI as an essential component of all annual meetings to foster belonging within the Society.

Third, we recommend a strategic, long-term vision that focuses on creating a more inclusive Society. This vision may involve 1) restructuring award criteria as well as nomination and selection procedures, 2) creating affinity group subcommittees, 3) broader as well as targeted outreach and collaborations, 4) more frequent communication about community organization, events, opportunities, and issues within CSI leadership and membership, and 5) activities beyond the annual meeting that foster a community year-round, such as immunology-themed courses, workshops, as well as trainee-oriented seminars.

The authors have no financial conflicts of interest.

We thank all members of the CSI-EDI committee, the CSI Council (past and present), as well as Lori Coulthurst, CSI administrator, for supporting us in obtaining the data presented in this study. We also thank the CSI leadership for their participation in commissioning and reviewing this manuscript. Finally, we thank Michelle Letarte for providing feedback for this manuscript and valuable insights into the history of the Society. We acknowledge that the land on which this work was conducted is the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the xwməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam) people.