Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson's potential impact on corporate America "cannot be overstated"

• Ketanji Brown Jackson was sworn into the Supreme Court in June and is now hearing cases.
• Jackson is the first Black woman to serve on the Supreme Court.

It's no secret that prestigious and powerful roles like a Supreme Court justice or a Fortune 500 CEO have historically been occupied by white men.

There are few exceptions who've defied the odds and ascended to the highest court — or corner offices — in the land. Former justices Thurgood Marshall and Sandra Day O'Connor broke barriers, as did current justice Sonia Sotomayor. There are high-profile CEOs like Jane Fraser, head of Citi, and Marvin Ellison, who is Black, and runs the hardware chain Lowe's. Thasunda Brown Duckett, a Black woman, heads TIAA, the insurance and investment company. Each of these leaders are history-makers in their own right.

But political and social tides could be changing: Ketanji Brown Jackson was sworn in as the first Black female Supreme Court justice in June, following Justice Stephen Breyer's retirement. In her first week hearing cases, Jackson drew approval from some observers for her reasoning. Legal experts called her a "force to be reckoned with."

Corporate consultants said Biden's Supreme Court decision was bold and direct, just like his decision to choose Kamala Harris, a Black woman, as his running mate. While Biden makes moves in the political sphere, corporate America, too, is trudging forward. CEOs are naming Black women as their successors. Others are promoting women of color to leadership roles. Jackson's work in the Supreme Court could inspire leaders in different sectors to further advance diversity, equity, and inclusion, sources said.

"I think the importance for society cannot be understated," Malia Lazu, a lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management, told Insider. "It's happening as America is wrestling with its history and current actions of white supremacy."

Despite an emphatic backlash, Biden's move signals a departure from the Supreme Court's 233-year history, and its implications reach far beyond the nation's capital. At a time when Americans are demanding equity in all aspects of life, CEOs will be pressured into making similar calls for equity in their own companies, diversity consultants said.

A new attitude

Consultants described Biden's move as similar to what they were seeing in corporate America: More leaders are starting to understand how racism and patriarchy have historically kept Black women out of spaces of power.

"I think George Floyd's murder raised consciousness in a lot of people," Tara Jaye Frank, a corporate consultant and author of "The Waymakers," told Insider. "It's no longer 'these Black people talking about it.' Business leaders had an opportunity to see it with their own eyes."

Surveys have suggested that America is asking CEOs to act on that new understanding.

"What I hope CEOs take away from this moment is that equity does not happen by accident," Frank said. "What's been happening for years is companies say, 'We're going to hire the most qualified people,' but what ends up happening is their affinity bias takes over."

Workplace experts define affinity bias as the phenomenon of people associating, recruiting, and hiring people who remind them most of themselves. It's been pervasive in corporate culture and in America's courts, Frank said. Some business leaders, she said, have recently started to grasp this.

"This is about representation in its purest form. Every American deserves to have their needs, interests, concerns represented by someone who shares their lived experience and cares about it intuitively," Frank said. "You don't get there without being intentional."

Tina Opie, a Fortune 500 strategist and an associate professor of management at Babson College, is hopeful about the future of corporate America. More white male CEOs, she said, are calling her for guidance on how to be deliberate in advancing diversity. They are having complicated and uncomfortable conversations with their communities, she added.

For example, Opie said she was encouraging CEOs to question the backlash to Biden's decision.

"Why is it so unfair to declare the nominee will be a Black woman?" Opie said. "You all were completely fine with white men representing over 90% of justices for decades. But we even say a Black woman, all of a sudden you start talking about quality and qualifications."

Positioning Black women for success

Experts said Biden's decisions to choose Harris as his vice president and a Black woman as his Supreme Court nominee were a testament to white male allyship.

"Biden's leadership here is a real example of not only allyship but co-conspiratorship," Lazu said. "It's not enough that you're not racist, that you put up a Black Lives Matter sign. It's what are you doing with the power you have to move the needle on equity and inclusion?"

Piper-Simone Casey, a law student at the University of Pennsylvania, said that while Biden's allyship was admirable, the business community needed to push itself further.

"I think it is time that corporate America stops questioning Black women and their merit just because they want to uphold spaces that are dominated by white men," Casey said. "Not only are Black women capable of working in these spaces, but they are likely to impart a great deal of wisdom and creativity while doing so."

The journey forward will be bumpy, Opie said, but CEOs are on a promising trajectory.

"I would encourage CEOs to approach their constituents and say something like: 'Look at the prior CEOs of our organization since its inception. What do you notice? It's largely homogenous. We have been having affirmative action for white people, and today that stops. My next successor will be a Black woman,'" she said.

This article was originally published on February 2022.