60 companies including Adobe, Best Buy, and Ralph Lauren commit to interviewing at least one BIPOC candidate for every senior level job
Jul 23, 2020, 00:36 IST
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- More than 60 companies have signed a pledge to interview at least one BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, person of color) for roles at the VP level or higher.
- Signatories include Adobe, Best Buy, Ralph Lauren, Amerisource Bergen, Survey Monkey, and Ancestry of Ancestry.com.
- The pledge comes amid a corporate reckoning over the lack of diversity and inclusion across sectors. More employees and consumers are holding CEOs accountable for change.
- The initiative was created by Parity.org, a nonprofit organization that was first created to encourage companies to interview women for executive positions. Signatories of the original pledge around gender include Amex, Nasdaq, Cisco, and Lyft.
- "What [we] have found with the pledge in support of women is that companies that make a public commitment are more likely to follow through to action and be intentional than those that made only an internal commitment," Cathrin Stickney, Parity CEO and founder, told Business Insider.
- There is no deadline or accountability measures included in the pledge. However, Stickney said in part, "public commitments equate to increased accountability."
- Diversity researchers at the University of Colorado's Leeds School of Business found in a 2016 study that in order to make a statistical change in hiring a BIPOC or female professional, there needs to be two or more BIPOC or female candidates to adequately increase the chances.
- Stickney founded Parity.org in 2017 after she read The World Economic Forum's prediction that it would take more than 200 years to reach gender parity at the executive and board levels.