5 Things / 10 Things
This week marks four years of writing 5 Things (that’s 850+ stories!) – and just over a year of my podcast 5 Things in 15 Minutes. As I’m sure you can imagine, there are plenty of weeks when it’s hard to find stories worthy of “good vibes in DEI.” You might be able to tell when you read those weeks. 😉
Writing 5 Things keeps me in a growth mindset, and I love sharing what I learn – plus I just have so much fun in my conversations on the podcast.
Here Are Five of My Favorite Celebrations From the Past Four Years of 5 Things:
Private Equity Giant Carlyle Thinks It’s Found the Formula for Incentivizing Diversity Work
Carlyle Group is incentivizing diversity with DEI Awards. The event recognizes (and pays) employees who have contributed significantly to the company’s DEI efforts, where employees nominate their peers to earn the awards. In the program’s second year, the number of nominees and employee engagement scores went up, and DEI has become increasingly embedded in the company’s operations. The article details Caryle’s impressive process and results. This matters because we’ll take buy-in any way we can get it.
Mastercard Introduces Accessible Card for Blind and Partially Sighted People
Mastercard introduced the Touch Card which has special notches on the short ends to enable visually impaired and blind folks to more easily distinguish between debit, credit, and pre-paid cards. Not only that, but the company released an ad with visually impaired people in mind first. The card was vetted by several major organizations supporting those who are visually impaired. This matters to many who face this challenge out of the 2.2 billion visually impaired people around the world.
Mellody Hobson Has A Plan To Bring More Black Executives To The Top Of Corporate America
Project Black is a new fund created by Mellody Hobson, Co-CEO and President of Ariel Investments. The private equity fund invests in middle-market companies, installs Black and Latine executives if needed, helps them acquire smaller minority-run businesses, and positions the companies sell to large corporations. The ultimate goal is to satisfy big companies’ supply chain needs and diversity goals at the same time. This is a radical idea to help close the racial wealth gap, and it’s already working – read the article for a fascinating case study about their first investment. This matters because only 2% of corporate spending goes to minority-owned suppliers, and of the ~500 private companies in the U.S. with $1+ billion in sales annually, just five are Black-owned. That’s astonishing. Here’s an incredibly interesting interview with an update on the first investment.
How Tyler Perry Turned an Army Base Into a Major Studio
Tyler Perry opened a new film/tv studio in Atlanta, the largest in the country, and the only one owned by an African American. It’s situated on a former Confederate military base and the individual soundstages are named for Black icons like Oprah Winfrey and Harry Belafonte. The studio is creating countless jobs for African-Americans and the complex even has shelters and job training for homeless LGBTQ youth, victims of sex trafficking, and homeless women and girls. Equity in action.
The Most Featured Company on 5 Things... We Are Skipping Them and Talking About #2
While the prize for the most featured company on 5 Things in the past 4 years officially goes to Target, I’m a little mad at them now, so let’s talk about the #2, LinkedIn, instead. I’ve featured LinkedIn 11 times for inclusive and accessible features such as name pronunciations, auto-captions on videos, the ability to add a career-break or job titles like “stay at home dad” to your profile, the ability to add dyslexic thinking as a skill, and a number of features for recruiters to nudge for diverse candidates. Perhaps what I like the most, though, is that they pay their Employee Resource Group leaders. LinkedIn is doing great things and because they have such a powerful reach, their impact towards creating a more equitable world is significant.
Call to Action:
Monday is Juneteenth! In this LinkedIn article, former 5 in 15 guest Crystal Whiteaker shares 6 Meaningful Ways to Honor Juneteenth and Celebrate Black History.