Working to End Systemic Racism and Bias: Starting with Ourselves

WORKING TO END SYSTEMIC RACISM AND BIAS: STARTING WITH OURSELVES

‍

We took a hard look at the diversity and inclusiveness of our agency two years ago. We took an even harder look two weeks ago.

Over the past two years, we’ve made some small, but meaningful progress in diversifying our teams. Women now make up 60% of our director and group director leadership team, 20% of our last 20 hires have been non-white and 30% of our last 10 hires have been non-white. And we created more structure for compensation across all levels. However, we recognize this progress is just a start.

Over the past two weeks, we’ve spent time listening and learning from people inside our walls, in our city and in our industry. We’ve had honest conversations with our colleagues. These efforts have allowed us to outline and begin taking new actions as an agency to effect greater change for our team, our city and our industry. To make sure we continue to act and that our actions continue to reflect our values, we’ve formed a diversity and inclusion board with input from our team to drive our priorities, programs, funding, transparency and accountability going forward.

We’re committed to the work of diversity, inclusion, equality and equity. Today, we have the understanding that we have much more to do. If you’re an agency leader, we hope you’ll do the same. We’re all inextricably tied together in ending systemic racism and bias in our cities, our country and our industry. And, importantly, that includes the work that needs to be done within our own walls.

‍