Geoscientists Encouraging Openness & Diversity in the Earth Sciences (GEODES) was formed with the mission of building community, providing professional development opportunities, and raising awareness of diversity issues in our field. This is accomplished with workshops, lunches, networking events and interactive discussions for faculty, researchers, graduate students and undergraduates in the Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences at the University of California Santa Cruz. We founded GEODES in the spring of 2015, and it was awarded the UCSC Chancellor's Achievement Award for Diversity in 2016.