Debbie Dyson, Chief Executive Officer, OneTen Zakiya Carr Johnson, Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer, US State Department Johnny C. Taylor, Jr., SHRM-SCP, President and CEO, SHRM Moderator: Phil Wahba, Senior Writer, FORTUNE; Co-chair, Fortune Impact Initiative
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00:00So let's start with the pushback we've seen in the last few months on DEI and
00:06ESG initiatives. As a journalist it was starting to get a little hard to keep up
00:10with it, you know, tractor supply, then Lowe's, and Harley-Davidson, and then
00:15Toyota North America, etc. So I guess my first question to you all is
00:21why the pushback? And suddenly it almost felt like dominoes, so what's your sense,
00:27overall sense, and then we'll dig into that. Maybe we'll start with you, David,
00:30because you're looking at me. If that's how this is gonna work, I'll look over
00:37there. No, I mean, I think it's been interesting, obviously, over the last, you
00:42know, I don't want to say several weeks, or months, or what-have-you, you know,
00:45somewhat tongue-in-cheek. It's a little bit like word salad. I mean, we were
00:48talking a bit about this backstage on the letters, you know, the letters have
00:52sort of changed around, whether you take out an E, you change it to a B, you
00:57add an A, the same thing happens. It's like alphabet soup, and so I
01:01think, to me, at the end of the day, you know, for 110, as we represent, you know,
01:05about 60 to 65 Fortune 500 companies in our coalition, it's about the actions
01:10that are behind the letters, I would say. So not that I'm not, you know, focused on
01:15it, it's not that I don't think it's important, but I really would rather us
01:17have a conversation on what are we actually trying to do around opening up
01:21opportunities in a more balanced manner, you know, whether you, again, change the
01:26order of the letters, or again, mix them up differently. I really do think the
01:30conversation happens, has to be about opportunity, and making sure that we're
01:34more spread in terms of a balanced approach more than anything else.
01:38We'll get to that in a second, but I'm just wondering, like, you know, DEI has
01:43been called a lot of things in the past. I mean, I grew up in Canada, and I
01:47remember visible minorities was the way you reference people who were not
01:53Caucasian. I mean, it's a term that drove me crazy. But anyway, and I
01:59mean, why have so many efforts in this direction failed? Is it a question of
02:05how it's framed? Is it there's underlying, there's more, there's a lot of
02:10resistance? So what are your thoughts on why maybe we're still kind of striking
02:14out on this? I'd like to say that we're not striking out. I'd like to say that
02:19we're actually, in many cases, doubling down. And the vibration we hear outside
02:26of the spaces where we work often give us this vision that somehow we've got to
02:31react, and react against what we've been doing that has actually been working. I
02:37get to sit here on this panel and represent the US Department of State, and
02:41when I was appointed, that was actually a doubling down. We are looking at the
02:49human experience, and focusing on a modern workplace, and imagining what a
02:53modern workplace should really look like, feel like, and how it reflects American
02:58values. So what are American values? We love democracy. Is democracy hard to do?
03:04Absolutely. But so is diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility. And with
03:10more people sitting at the table, we make better foreign policy. Yeah, I mean, the
03:15US Foreign Service, US Diplomatic Corps, is part of your department, and I think
03:20the US has to represent what it really is abroad. So it's even, it's particularly
03:24important, I would argue, at the State Department. Absolutely. Any thoughts on
03:29this, Johnny? Yeah, I mean, the reality is, the question I think you asked right, first
03:33of all, it's about the work, not the words. And I think we have gotten caught
03:38up in the words, and that's created a lot of division.
03:42But the other issue here is, I think if we're being honest with ourselves, this
03:47is probably the only business imperative that we have, that we kind of have been
03:51resistant to change over decades. The reality is, when we designed the
03:56construct, and I'm a labor lawyer by training, and had done this work for a
03:59long time, it was for a far more binary world, where you were black, or you were
04:04white, you were male, or you were female, you were older, you were young. And the
04:08reality is, we've changed over 30 years. America is not the America from the
04:131970s and 80s. And so the practice has not caught up with how people actually
04:19live in the workforce. And we're hearing it. We represent 95% of the Fortune 500,
04:23Sherman's the world's largest HR association, planted 340,000 members in
04:28180 countries. And the reality is, if you were still doing what you did in the
04:321980s and 90s, it is not working anymore. And so there is some real pushback. And
04:39much of this isn't as much as people suggest it's coming from the media. It's
04:43the workplace. Our employees are telling us that we're, and I love this line,
04:47which they tell us, we're as diverse as we've ever been, yet as divided as we've
04:52ever been. So to be fair, we have to question, is it working? And if you
04:56continue doing it, should you expect a different result?
04:59Yeah, I guess the skeptical journalist in me, which is most of me, it's not in
05:06me, it's me, but is, you know, when one by one, the company's sort of backed off
05:11of it, I was wondering, well, you know, after hearing for two years, some of
05:15these companies saying very pious things about diversity and, you know, and then
05:19so like, were they really deeply held convictions that they had? Or did they
05:24just say, well, we don't want to fight with our investors. So I'm just
05:28wondering, is it a question of show, don't tell, which is also an expression
05:32journalists love, which is more just do it. And it's not so much about the
05:36terminology and the acronyms, and it's do it, and it's getting done, or it's not
05:41the word.
05:42Yeah, I have to, I'm going to push back on that. And I'm going to push back on it
05:45because when we talk about things making good sense, or common sense, that term is
05:53not universal. What is common sense to you is not particularly common sense to
05:57me. And so I've found that by actually defining what this is, diversity, equity,
06:03inclusion, and accessibility for us, we're linking this to a human experience. It
06:07may not impact you today, it may not impact you, it may be impacting someone
06:12you love, your parents, your children, your spouse. But at some point, if we live
06:19long enough, it will come for every single one of us. And how do we create
06:23spaces, workplaces that are more inclusive for us all, where we all belong,
06:28and not shy away from the fact that we're all different, absolutely different.
06:33I appreciate, by the way, that you mentioned the letter A, D-E-I-A, for
06:37accessibility, because there are a lot of people whose talents are societies at the
06:43table, neurodivergent people, and people with all kinds of disabilities. So, you
06:48know, we were talking about, oh, there's a lot of letters in these things, but I
06:52think the A is worth adding, in this case.
06:55And some argue that the B is worth adding. I mean, it can go because D-E-I-B-A.
06:59In fact, I received a letter from someone shortly after we announced our
07:02direction. It says, where's the B? I thought the one was going to attack me on
07:05the E. She said, no, no, I don't know damn about that. What happened to the B? So
07:08it depends. I will say that the issue is, some of it is, we don't have a common
07:13understanding of equity. It means different things to different people.
07:17There's equal opportunity, there's equal outcome, and there's a legitimate debate
07:21to be had about that. More importantly, what's fair to you may not be fair to me.
07:26And we saw that in the Harvard case. We saw that the affirmative action case was
07:29not white people saying black people would be in the name of equity being in
07:33scholarships. It was Asians saying that black people were in the name of equity.
07:38So this is a very different world. Our entire landscape has changed. And I think
07:43we have to acknowledge that this is a different America. And again, when you
07:46see people who are intersectional, do they more identify with their gender or
07:50their race or this or that? We just, we, I think we are, it's overdue time for us
07:57to be thoughtful about maybe we revisit this, reset it, rethink it. And that isn't
08:01abandoning it. It is being honest about revisiting, did this work? And can we make
08:06tweaks?
08:07I'm glad you raised the question about E because you guys made some headlines
08:12earlier this year when, yeah, took out the E for DNI. And I mean, you guys had
08:18reasonable people can agree or disagree, but can you tell us a little bit more
08:22about your thinking?
08:25So we also, and that was interesting, the headline said, you dropped the E. No, no,
08:29we said we were going to focus on the D and the I from an HR practitioner
08:33standpoint. And that is we know what HR practitioners can do. We can work to
08:37influence, influence largely the diversity of an organization. And to that
08:43point, you don't get the advantages of your diversity if everyone doesn't feel
08:47included. So it's pointless to have a diverse workforce if no, if people don't
08:50feel seen or valued. And everyone, not just people who are historically
08:55underrepresented, everyone has to feel included in the workforce. So we said
09:00equity matters. In fact, we, in our statement said steadfast commitment to
09:04equity. Unfortunately, the headlines were, they don't think equity matters. I'm
09:08like, I didn't say that. What we're saying is focus on inclusion and diversity
09:13from an HR perspective. There's healthcare equity, there's educational
09:16equity. There are all sorts of forms of equity. What we were saying is in the
09:20context of the workforce and the workplace, we are going to lead with
09:24inclusion.
09:25Yeah. I mean, so I'm not going to take a different view for you, but I think this
09:29is why I get back to my original point is we're now, however long we've been
09:33already chatting, we're still having the same discussion on the letters. We're
09:36still talking about whether you put the E or it was a B or is an A. And again, I
09:41just want to continue to emphasize whether you left it in or not. It was
09:44really just more of the reaction to the loss of something and perhaps maybe the
09:50lack of understanding because everybody is coming at it from a different place. I
09:53mean, we remember, I don't know, was it 10, 15 years ago, the E actually wasn't
09:57equity. It was equality. And before it was just D and I even back 10, 15 years
10:02ago. So we've continued to have this conversation and I think we continue to
10:06lose sight of what are we actually trying to do and the why are we trying to do it
10:11is because again, the opportunities that we're talking about aren't equally
10:15spread. So therefore we've had to slap a label on it. You know, we talked about
10:19LGBTQ, AI plus whatever, I get them all, whatever the order happened. It's the
10:24same thing. We have a reaction to something and the way we fix it, add a
10:28letter. Oh, that'll take care of it or take a letter out. Does that make you
10:31feel better? Cosmetic. Exactly. It's cosmetic. And again, it wasn't cosmetic
10:35when we were adding it. Absolutely. Well, it's cosmetic when you take it when you
10:38take it away. Well, is it intentional in the first place? Correct. And if you had
10:41the right intention, then the outcome will be what you expect. Exactly. So to
10:46stay on the point, Debbie, you know, your organization also switched a bit its
10:52focus and you're zeroing in on skills, which is great because, you
10:58know, people need skills to be employable and to be desired by employers. So walk
11:02us through a little bit about why, you know, a few years ago when the
11:07organization was started, the whole idea was, you know, you wanted to get a certain
11:10number of black employees. Right. But you flipped more to focus on making
11:16sure those people have the skills. So can you walk us quickly through the
11:19rationale for that? Yeah. I mean, again, if you're familiar with 110 or
11:22not, it was four years ago. So it was, you know, unfortunately, during the murder of
11:26George Floyd, this organization was founded to identify one million black
11:31talent into opportunities, family sustaining opportunities for those
11:35without a four-year degree, using skills first as the vehicle to make that happen.
11:39You know, unfortunately, as we fast-forwarded, when the affirmative
11:43action SCOTUS ruling came out, we were in a position to ensure that we weren't
11:47seen as being exclusive. So we were, I don't wanna say cute, but we ended up
11:52adding, well, black talent in others. Like, does that, you know, say, does that make you
11:55feel better, so to speak. But we're now in a place that we're saying, look, this is
11:59for everybody. This is an opportunity where you have 66% of Americans that do
12:04not have a four-year degree, but yet 60% of the jobs require you to have one. And
12:09so we are shutting out opportunities for talent as a whole. It happens to be that
12:1476% are African-American, 82% are Latino. So people of color, just by proxy, have,
12:20do not have a four-year degree. So our efforts naturally would help more people
12:25of color than perhaps others. But when you look at what we've been doing, it's
12:29120-something thousand jobs that we've been able to find. It is a diverse range
12:35of black, brown, white, everything else in between that we've been able to assist.
12:39So putting the skills first first, in terms of how we're thinking about it, is
12:45ensuring that you're thinking about the skills required for the job first before
12:51you think about everything else. So if you think about what does this job need
12:54in terms of, you know, the technical capabilities, it's X, Y, and Z. Then
13:00layering everything else that may be required. Maybe that job does need a
13:03degree. Perhaps it needs to be in a certain location. Perhaps it needs this
13:07amount of experience. But talk about the skills, because then you open up the pool,
13:12I think, of opportunity. And, you know, just from the job report just recently,
13:16we have a labor shortage. And unless we actually think about opening up the
13:20aperture for more individuals, we're going to keep chasing this. And so that's
13:24why the skills first, I think, not only just 110, but other organizations are
13:28leaning into this much heavier to really focus on that as the first.
13:32I think more and more people are finding that these university degrees, just, it's
13:36outrageous. I mean, that's another, that's a shoe that's going to drop, not for
13:39today's discussion. But I do remember GM was one of the first companies to
13:44announce that. And are there any, have any companies reported back to you on how
13:49that's worked out for them? Whether they've still been able to, you know,
13:52offer the career paths that they want without requiring?
13:54Yeah, I mean, I think, again, the beauty of what's been happening is we started,
13:58you know, again, we have 65 companies, and it's a very resilient organization. So
14:01beyond GM, which I saw, obviously, Mary was just recognized, who's been a great
14:06partner. But you have Delta, you have United, you have Cisco, you have Amgen. I
14:10mean, the list goes on and on. But these are resilient organizations that are
14:13really trying to put, again, this framework in place to help them evolve
14:17and get the best talent possible and give them the pathways into, again, these
14:22are family sustaining wages. So, yeah, pretty exciting.
14:25And just a little digression here. I mean, when you look at how things work in
14:28Northern Europe, people aren't as fixated on university degrees as we are
14:31here. They have technical schools, you know, and there's no stigma to not having
14:36gone to college. So it's, anyway, hopefully we'll get there. But enough
14:40with me yapping on that. I'm going to yap about something else now. So, one, I've,
14:47you know, I speak to a lot of CEOs and other executives and companies, and this
14:51has come up too, like, how come you're not making progress on your diversity
14:57efforts, or are you? And a lot of times they say, we don't have the pipeline and
15:01we don't have this. And my feeling when I look back at this rush in 2020, 2021 of,
15:07you know, all these efforts and naming a chief diversity officer, you know, when
15:12that person was never actually reporting straight to the CEO, it was like up to
15:16the HR, CHRO. But, and so I'm just wondering, was there a rush post 2020 in
15:25Black Lives Matter and all that, and companies just felt the pressure to
15:30appear to be doing something? And is society asking corporate America to fix
15:34problems that are too complex for it? And that are, you know, that transcend what a
15:39couple, you know, a few efforts? I'm just, I'm just wondering if, you know, we're
15:43sort of maybe, God, I can't believe I'm going to ask this, were we expecting too
15:47much of corporate America when in fact, these problems are very complex?
15:56I work for government. So what I would say is there's a business case for
16:04everything. And in this case, we actually have seen some forward movement. My fear
16:12is that we don't continue to sustain that effort, that we somehow all end up in a
16:18world where we're saying, are you doing it? Am I doing it? Are you doing it? Okay,
16:22let's not do it. Let's do it and be consistent about it. What we did in the
16:27eighties is not what we did in the nineties is not what we're doing now. We
16:31know new words, we're able to understand things and complexities, we didn't
16:34understand them before. We know intersectionality, and we're looking at
16:39the margins. And every single day I use evidence to formulate policy. I don't
16:45speculate or pull things from the sky. I truly look at data. And we've been trying
16:51to utilize that data to be more transparent about what we're doing so
16:55that we can be accountable, accountable to our workforce, and accountable to the
17:00American public. I report to Congress, and I report directly to the Secretary
17:05of State. So my view is that it's not something I can do alone. It's something
17:10my entire agency has to be bought in and doing. And there will be individuals who
17:15feel resistant. But the overall trend is we're seeing change happen. It's
17:21going to be incremental. 80,000 people, 270 missions around the world. I don't
17:28know how many languages we all speak and what cultural context we all
17:32represent. But we are dealing with existential challenges that require us
17:38to be competent across a whole host of important talents that you need to
17:43combat and confront those things, and take advantage of opportunities.
17:48I should mention we have somebody who's going to run around with the microphone.
17:52So if anybody here has a question, we'll come to you. Just raise your hand. So
18:00how do we get the workforce we need? I mean, the United States is an extremely
18:04diverse country. I mean, these are the facts, and you just have to go out into
18:10society and see it. And so, and C-suites have to reflect that. Diplomatic Corps
18:15has to reflect that. Middle management at companies has to reflect that. So how do
18:20we get there with all this pushback? Is it just a question of doing and not
18:27saying it so much? And just, you know, like, what's the way forward?
18:31You know, to be fair, some of the pushback comes from people who really
18:35want to see this work be done. Just because someone challenges something
18:39doesn't mean they're not committed to the end goal. It's like any other business
18:43imperative. Sometimes you look at it and say, that's not working the way we
18:46intended it for it to work, and therefore, let's make some adjustments to it. So I
18:50don't assume that people who push back, maybe it's the lawyer in me that says,
18:54just because you push back doesn't mean you're saying I'm bad, or I hold you in
18:57contempt. People should be able to disagree. The governor of Utah famously
19:01says, we need to learn to disagree better. The idea that we won't disagree, to me,
19:06is the opposite of diversity, right? Because diversity includes more than
19:09just the civil rights categories of race, gender, national origin, etc. There's
19:13diversity of perspective in it, too. I'm never bothered when someone challenges
19:17some of this work, because if it can withstand the challenge, it may make us
19:22better. So I'm going to start with that. What you've addressed is a really big
19:25issue, and I remember I read the Thurgood Marshall College Fund. Those who don't
19:28know, the Indian Negro College Fund represents historically black colleges
19:32and universities that are private. I represented the public, so the state
19:36institutions, for seven and a half years. And I remember sitting in a meeting with
19:39the CEO who, to your point, said, I want my engineering staff to mirror America.
19:44And I said, you want 13% black engineers? Well, there's a bigger problem. There's no
19:50pipeline for that. If tomorrow you said you wanted it, we could not deliver
19:55that for you. And so I said, there's some data, there's some facts that really
20:00belie our problem, and these will take time. This is not going to be resolved in
20:04the four years since George Floyd, any more than, and while talking about George
20:08Floyd, there was Rodney King. We've seen this movie before, right? And so this is
20:13a long, these are really, you used the word incremental, these are
20:17challenging, complicated, and complex issues that are not going to be resolved
20:22in four years. Anyone who thought they were going to resolve our talent and
20:24talent diversity problems in four years was naive.
20:28We have a question from the audience.
20:32This is Khwaja Sheikh. As I walked into this floor, I felt very happy when I saw
20:38Mary Barra on the Fortune cover. Mary Barra is very big on making sure CHRO is
20:44on every board meeting so that the talent discussions are discussed at the
20:49top. Johnny, from your perspective, based on SHRM, how many companies are
20:56implementing that philosophy of making sure CHRO is at every board meeting? Are
21:02we at very early innings, or what are your thoughts?
21:05It's early, but it's happening. We're seeing significant strides. In the past,
21:08coming through the CHRO space was no, there was no way to become a CEO from
21:12the CHRO spot. That's changing. Mary, Lena Nair, who was the global head of HR
21:20for Unilever, is now the global CEO of Chanel. I mean, we can point to
21:24individuals who are coming directly from HR, and they were classically trained HR
21:29executives who are now finding their way. I think that's in part because there's
21:32an acknowledgment that we are now in a knowledge economy. People matter. It's
21:36not just the technical side of making sure you pay people on time, you don't
21:40harass them in the workplace, but that if you can optimize talent, you will
21:44actually dictate whether your company wins or loses. CHROs are absolutely, for
21:49the first time in my 30 years at this work, seeing themselves move into serious
21:54strategy and business roles.
21:57So, is there a reason to be optimistic? I mean, I think, you know, reasonable
22:06people can disagree with getting to the goal, but I think majority of people,
22:10majority of business people agree with the goal that the workforce has to
22:14reflect the society. I mean, especially like in retail, they're like, well, we
22:18have to, you know, reflect our customer base. And although it's kind of
22:23incredible that for years you'd never had women CEOs at retail, even though,
22:27you know, women are doing 80% of the shopping. But, so, I mean, is, and
22:33there's, you know, there's a lot of hot air from politics, but are you guys
22:37optimistic? I am. We're gonna get there eventually? I'm really optimistic. Back in
22:40the day, my grandmother would say, I'd say, Grandma, they're talking about me, and
22:44she'd say, worry when they stop talking about you. So, the fact that we're
22:47actually having these conversations and meetings like this, and not just to be
22:51compliant, legal compliance, but we're doing it because we believe that
22:54diversity is our strength as a country. I haven't met a CEO, and we convene, we
22:59own the CEO Academy, which is a business that seems to train new CEOs. They're
23:04very, very committed to diversity. What they're doing is looking to us to say,
23:08how do we achieve the inclusion? How do we get the benefit or the
23:14return on the investment in the diversity? What scares me is that you
23:17could have an incredibly diverse workforce, but still not have inclusion.
23:21That worries me, and so they want us to solve for that, and inclusion for all.
23:26Everyone there. We need every man, woman, child. We need everyone working to make
23:31it, to make it all come together. Yeah, we sometimes have that discussion in my
23:35industry. You know, it's, is it really diverse if everybody's gone to
23:40Columbia Journalism School? Fair enough. What about, what about a white guy who
23:45grew up in a poor part of Ohio, then went into the military, and then comes
23:49out? Like, he's bringing a lot of diversity, more than, you know, another
23:54upper-middle-class kid from Jersey who just crossed the Hudson to go to Columbia.
23:58That's another 45 minutes. Yeah. Anyway, mea culpa up here, but anyway. So, how about you?
24:05Yeah, I mean, I, yeah, very optimistic. I mean, I sit here as a, I guess, an optimistic
24:10failed retiree, and I say that because I retired, you know, 34, after 34 years in
24:16in the private sector, and I optimistically sit here, and I wouldn't
24:21have come out of retirement if I didn't believe, you know. And so, as I think I
24:24was saying earlier, every day is a positive story of a life that we're
24:28changing, of an individual that didn't think they had an opportunity because,
24:32you know, career said, you need a four-year degree in order to sit at the
24:36table, and now we have table upon table upon table. So, it just starts small. These
24:41are resilient organizations. You mentioned something about Corporate
24:44America. They have resources, they have opportunity, and they have, they have a
24:47strength. So, I'm just gonna say, a friend of mine who's, who's just hit 80 said,
24:53never retire. It's bad for you. So, I think you, the best way not to be a failed
24:58retiree is not to retire at all. Anyway, on that note, join me in thanking our
25:01panel. Thank you.