Chief Opportunity Officer Of Guild Sheds Light On DEI Employment Practices Needed For Growth
Guild, now titled 'Guild Education' is an employee training and education provider to corporate employers. Guild also offers marketing education services. Guild Education was founded in June 2015 by Rachel Romer Carlson and Brittany Stich. Some of Guild's major corporate clients include: Walmart, Target, and Macy's.
Terrance Cummings, Chief Opportunity Officer of Guild Education, joins 'Forbes Talks' with Ali Jackson-Jolley to discuss the DEI industry and possible changes ahead to the industry.
0:00 Introduction
1:26 Guild Education And How It Addresses Diversity In Opportunities?
3:15 How Do We Build Cultures Of Opportunity?
3:53 How Will Social Mobility Be Influential For A Diverse Workplace?
6:05 What Is Terrance's Biggest Challenge?
7:13 How Do Employers And Industry Leaders Play A Role?
7:38 Driving Positive DEI Outcomes
8:54 How Will Diversity Change In Workplaces In 2024?
Terrance Cummings, Chief Opportunity Officer of Guild Education, joins 'Forbes Talks' with Ali Jackson-Jolley to discuss the DEI industry and possible changes ahead to the industry.
0:00 Introduction
1:26 Guild Education And How It Addresses Diversity In Opportunities?
3:15 How Do We Build Cultures Of Opportunity?
3:53 How Will Social Mobility Be Influential For A Diverse Workplace?
6:05 What Is Terrance's Biggest Challenge?
7:13 How Do Employers And Industry Leaders Play A Role?
7:38 Driving Positive DEI Outcomes
8:54 How Will Diversity Change In Workplaces In 2024?
Transcript
00:00 Hi, I'm Allie Jackson Jolly.
00:05 I'm here with Terrence Cummings, who is the Chief Opportunity Officer for GILD.
00:10 Terrence, thanks for being with us.
00:12 Yeah, it's a pleasure. Thank you.
00:14 Yeah, so I should start by saying, for those who aren't familiar,
00:17 GILD is a career opportunities platform, and you are relatively new to your role.
00:27 It is a role that was created nine months ago when you took over that role.
00:33 And so I guess first I just want to hear, you know, why was that necessary?
00:40 Opportunity has been something since we started eight years ago that has been core to what GILD does.
00:46 And it's looking at the individuals across this country that don't have a fair shot
00:51 at the same types of opportunities other people do.
00:54 How do we help them to build that, primarily through learning and education?
00:57 And something that I say a lot is that if you want to understand something, you measure it.
01:03 If you want to improve it, you focus on it.
01:06 And we'd seen that this is a time in our existence that focusing deeply on how do we build cultures of opportunity,
01:13 both inside of our company as well as across corporations in America, like we have to go deep there.
01:18 So that's why we created the role, to have someone who day in and day out, that's someone being me,
01:23 is thinking about how do we build opportunity.
01:25 Yeah. So and it's not lost on me that it's called an opportunity officer versus a DEI officer.
01:33 You know, right now, diversity initiatives are sort of under fire, right?
01:39 We watched this past week as the congressional hearings around anti-Semitism on campus spoke with a few,
01:50 specifically three presidents from universities.
01:54 But beyond just talking about, you know, the anti-Semitism on campus and what they could have done differently,
02:00 it felt like diversity was also under fire with different members talking about defunding diversity.
02:10 You know, that's on the higher ed level, of course.
02:13 But, you know, I would say industry across industries, what I've been hearing is some of this talk,
02:20 some of this chatter of is our diversity offices going to come under fire?
02:24 So tell me, with that context, tell me why you're an opportunity officer, not a diversity officer, and what's the difference?
02:35 We ask the question of what is the outcome that we're looking to achieve?
02:39 And the outcome that we want to achieve is opportunity for people, and the means to do that is by driving diversity, equity, and inclusion.
02:46 Like, that's one of the inputs, a very important input, into driving the ultimate outcome.
02:51 And no one is going to come under fire with trying to drive opportunity.
02:54 Like, that's not something that's being attacked.
02:57 Right?
02:58 What people, I think, are saying, the narrative, which I hope that the narrative gets pushed down, to be very clear,
03:02 the narrative is around whether diversity for the sake of diversity is something that we should try and achieve.
03:09 And so that's the distinction between the two, is we see that as a valuable input, but not the ultimate outcome.
03:15 Yeah, and so do you, based on that narrative, the context, do you think that this model is the model that's going to develop across industry and university, maybe even?
03:29 Yes. This is one variation that I think would be a very powerful variation of what DEI and evolution of DEI that could take place in the future.
03:38 And I do believe that asking the question of what are the ultimate outcomes we're trying to drive
03:43 and how do we make sure that we're shaping organizations to be able to drive that outcome is key.
03:48 And for us, it's opportunity. And I believe for a lot of companies, it should be opportunity.
03:51 A lot of organizations, it should also be opportunity.
03:53 Okay, that's interesting.
03:55 So talk to me about social mobility and individuals from historically marginalized communities.
04:06 That was one of the things that we talked about a little bit off camera,
04:09 is that you're sort of laser focused on thinking about opportunities for social mobility.
04:16 What do you mean by that?
04:18 So I said the phrase culture of opportunity before.
04:21 That phrase is very important, and I'll talk about it from a couple different lenses.
04:25 The first lens is as a company, how do you build a culture of opportunity?
04:29 So what are the systems that you have to put in place?
04:31 There are five pillars that we view behind that system.
04:34 The first is design for the marginalized.
04:36 So this gets to your original question.
04:38 It's the first step that you have to put together to say how do we build our entire employee experience?
04:43 How do we craft that such that DEIB is at the center?
04:46 That's step one.
04:48 Number two is secure the foundation.
04:50 So what that means is how do we make sure that people have the money, right, your paycheck,
04:55 and the benefits, all of the baseline to be able to think about growth?
04:59 Three is unlock learning.
05:00 That's do you have equitable and accessible and affordable opportunities to learn and develop?
05:04 Cultivate connections is the fourth.
05:06 So you have the professional capital, right, to be able to grow.
05:08 And the last is pave the pathways.
05:10 This is how do you get from step A to -- or point A to point B, thinking about resumes,
05:15 thinking about interview prep, all that work.
05:17 And we see a lot of organizations that often jump to the fifth step.
05:20 But if you don't have the psychological safety, right, and baseline at the beginning, if you can't have the time to think about your growth,
05:26 if you don't have the learning, professional capital, then it becomes a false promise just to jump to the fifth step.
05:30 And so that's the foundation that we see that companies need to take, like to put into place in order to be able to drive opportunity.
05:37 And on the other side, the individual side, people want opportunity.
05:41 I know that that might seem obvious, but it's overwhelming.
05:44 If you look at specifically in the black population, we've seen the front-line workforce, over 80% of people want to advance.
05:52 And only about 60% of them believe that that's possible.
05:55 That distinction is pretty large.
05:58 And then when you look at what actually happens, it's only about 35% of people that end up getting promoted.
06:05 >> Yeah.
06:06 So what is your -- like what's your largest challenge?
06:10 I think maybe that's one of them.
06:12 Those are daunting numbers.
06:14 But, you know, you're, again, brand new to this role.
06:17 You're looking at DEI in a way that really transcends DEI.
06:23 It's larger than what may have been done a year ago.
06:28 So what are you -- like what's your biggest challenge?
06:31 What do you see as the largest mountain that you're going to have to climb?
06:35 >> A lot of it is mindset.
06:38 Going back to answering the last question that you had when I mentioned the narrative, most of what's happening right now is a narrative.
06:45 I believe it's a false narrative that I would like to push down.
06:48 But it's a mindset shift for folks.
06:50 And many times I think that people, they see it as daunting to have to figure out how do we help people of color, people of different gender identities, et cetera.
07:02 How do we help them to be mobile?
07:04 It's like a daunting exercise for folks.
07:06 I say we don't have to get that creative.
07:08 We know how to do it.
07:10 Just do it for folks that generally have been oppressed.
07:13 >> Yeah, so it's interesting because you said mindset.
07:16 And you answered my question.
07:18 I was going to ask you, do you mean mindset from the industry, employers, business leaders or from the individuals?
07:24 But, you know, is mindset shift also something that needs to happen within historically marginalized communities who don't believe there's opportunity for them?
07:36 >> Yeah, it's both.
07:38 >> And how do you -- do you do any work or do you give any thinking to how on the individual level you work with folks and make them believe that there is opportunity, shift their mindset so they do see themselves?
07:53 As an employee who's able to climb the corporate ladder.
07:58 >> Yeah, so I on my team, I have a team of coaches.
08:01 And those coaches work with individuals in order to build confidence to help them see the art of the possible.
08:07 What coaches don't do in this world is they don't help people be saviors.
08:13 Let me say that.
08:14 They're not saviors, right?
08:16 You don't come in and you give opportunity to people.
08:18 But they help to unlock it within.
08:20 It's like what do you have within yourself?
08:22 How do you see clearly what the future could be and how do you build that confidence to be able to achieve that?
08:26 So coaching is a big way that we do it.
08:29 We do coaching both for what we call our members and learners, so those are the employees that come through our platform, and for our own employees as well.
08:36 And so as we continue to develop that program, more and more people we believe will be able to see what's possible in their future and then also be able to achieve it.
08:44 But what you said is right.
08:46 It is both the systems.
08:48 It's the systems that are there, and it's the systems that are there to help people.
08:53 So I think that's a big part of what we do.
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