0331 Bertina Ceccarelli

for Diversity. Lessons from top companies achieving business success through inclusivity. Now, Bertina, I know you've been on a mission to advance racial and gender equity in the tech industry and disrupt the status quo to build a more inclusive workplace. Tell us more about your new book. Oh, thank you so much. Justin Shott tonight to be back on the show. The book, which is co authored with Susayan Tadrick. We took a look at companies that are smart about applying principles of

innovation to improving their efforts around diversity. We know what, it's well proven, more diverse teams help companies activate their innovation and achieve business performance. But what's left talked about is how you can flip that on its head and use innovation to think very differently in creatively about how to make DEI work within a company, and we profile great companies that are doing just that. Does diversity in

the payoff for a company? Since we're so focused on the bottom line here, without doubt, it has been improven that companies who achieve diversity among their employee ranks, their leaders, their board outperform on a measure of financial performance rankings, as well as better improvement or better metrics around employee retention, all of which have a direct impact to the bottom line. But if not just the business case for diversity that's important.

If we only focus on that, it becomes a very transactional conversation, and we think that there is both a

social and moral imperative to EMBRACINGDEI as well. Britina, what are some of the biggest issues that you found in the tech industry specifically, So you know, one of the things that we've found in the tech industry, interestingly, which I think applies to a number of companies more broadly, is that the very tactics that they are applying towards innovation and their products and services are lacking when they think about their efforts to do something very important again

for their business, which is creating inclusive and diverse cultures. And so what we find is that rather than truly innovating for that, we see off the shelf standard approaches the light include a lot of activities like employee resource groups or unconscious bias training. All of those activities alone are okay, but if they're not backed up by a real strategy to create change, then they're just that a series of disconnected activities without real innovation. It gets to

the core problem a company is trying to solve. Do we get to this because it is the right thing to do, or do we need to be prompted by regulation and legislation. You know, my opinion is the smart companies are going to do this because it's good for their business. When we see a CEO with an unwavering commitment to creating diverse and inclusive cultures, that CEO, his or her leaders, the board has a better opportunity of

tracting great talent. And especially when we think about this generation, Generation Z, which is the most diverse generation in the history of the country, as they wend their way into the workplace, having a jud start on what it means to have an inclusive culture is going to help those good companies in the war for talent, who's doing it right?

You know some of the companies we profiles that I think are doing outstanding work, companies like City Bank, Gorporate Grumming, Accenture Tesco, even small companies like an outset out of New Orleans Online Optimism, which is a small advertising agency. It just demonstrates that really good d EI practices can be embraced by companies of all sizes. Why is it that some corporate programs from DI practices end up failing?

So I think I think the answer to that question is for the same reason that their attempts at innovation fail. For example, we know that successful new ideas are rarely the purview of a chief innovation officer, So how can you expect a chief diversity officer alone to sometimes and do decades of fixed practices. But we just got to have the support of the CEO and piers HR and middle managers. Second, we rarely expect innovative through products to

just brought up overnight. They require research and market intelligence, planning commitment. Similarly, any new DI approaches the benefit of input from those underrepresentative employees requires piloting, iteration, and support if where real change can happen. Yeah, as we sit here in the studio, it's funny we watched the tour groups go by a lot of young kids, especially here at Bloomberg. So I'm going to do a shout out

for my own company. How much of this mentoring that sort of thing is How does that figure into this? How important is that? So we find that any one of these strategies like mentoring or creative employment practices like apprenticeships can be really powerful ideas, particularly when they're thought about in a way that specifically addresses a core problem

a company is looking to to address. So, for example, City was looking to bring in more veteran talent, those who had served our country in the military, and they found that by launching a very different kind of an apprenticeship program that really targeted veterans who had some baseline technology skills where they could spend six months to a year at the company, really refining and learning that particular tech stack at City that they found over a ninety

percent conversion rate and opened up a whole new opportunity for talent growth and again a very hot market where they were seeking to bring people in outside of Dallas. What about Target, because you were writing about how it

did succeed in retaining more diverse talent as well. Target is such a good example of a company that's really embraced mentorship and you know, not just as an idea to connect people to have conversations, but really to do it in a sustained way and really creating the kind of environment and culture that allowed for authentic interactions to happen and to help particularly underrepresented individuals within the company learn what it would take to advance in their career.

So it was mentoring with a real purpose to help advance talent up the rights the companies I think you do actually mention a small company. I'm sorry I've forgot the name. But is this just a big company or can small companies? I mean, is it important for them this diversity push? Can they do it? Do they have

the resources? Well, we know that over ninety percent of Americans work for small businesses, and so we think our point of view is it small businesses are missing the boat if they early on in their founding think about

how to create inclusive cultures. And I think that's exactly what Online Optimism to small advertising agency who we spoke to their founder recognized early on that to be responsive to the needs of their advertising clients, it would benefit them to be able to drop from a broad mix of ideas, backgrounds, experiences to bring all that goodness to bear on the campaigns for their clients acrost the nation and they've been profoundly successful. Do you have the resources

of it? I mean, can they contact you for you know, because there's so few resources available I feel for a lot of small businesses absolutely. In fact, Innovating for Diversity dot com is a website where you can contact myself, my co author Suzanne Tadrick would certainly be happy to discuss this issue if anybody interested in improving their TOYEI practicers and creating a better role for everybody. And what's

your finals big takeaway from your book? I would say the unwavering support of the CEO is necessary, but not sufficient. Now we've heard in the past couple of years a lot of big claims for how companies are going to make dramatic progress in diversifying their workforce, and without the commitment of HR and all the way through middle managers,

those kind of proclamations fall flat. So really operationalizing all the tools and systems require to bring the EI deep into an organization and making it a part of the everyday culture is what works. Bertina, that was a pleasure. Appreciate it. Very interesting. Bertina Chicarelli, the chief executive officer and power joining us from good old Brooklyn.