Price on Tracking Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Progress

compiling and tracking demographic demographic data for companies. It's also pulling in together data on employees, executive leadership, and governing boards. Her company works with the likes of Young Brands and even Marcus and the Dallas Mavericks, among others, and many joins us on the phone in Dallas. Mandy, Welcome to Bloomberg. Hi Carol, how are you. I'm doing well. I'm doing well. Um, tell us a little bit more about your company and what you are doing and really what you've set out

to do. I'm curious how you got there in the first place. Yeah, sure so. Um. As a woman of color, I had challenges in the workplace like many represented employees space, but I have to also unique perspective and experience of helping to drive my organization's diversity initiatives. So I designed UM my law firm. Before Canaries, I was a practicing attorney and UH as far as with the Women's Task Force, the Hiring Committee, and and also leading up the Black

of r G group. So I knew the unique challenges that organizations had really trying to movies initiative sports and knew that there needed to be away for organizations to really measure and track their progress. What we see is that a lot of organizations are measuring diversity in tracking that, but we have to go beyond that. We have to really be able to have a measurement tool for equity and inclusion and ensure that we're creating that workplace where

everyone's arrived. How do you measure that? So we do all kinds of assessments. We do assus that's not only with respect to the employees, but also assessments with respect to the company UH policies, practices, the way the organization

is operating. We know that the systems we put in place to perpetuate in equity and so that's one of the first things we do when we're working with a client is sit down and really looking at not only their talent acquisition, the performance management, the way their pay structures are set up, to ensure that we're putting in research best practices, to ensure we are reducing those in equities that are with within the workplace. Well, because it's

interesting and I am curious in your own personal experience. Um, when you're working at the law firm and then you know, maybe putting your company together raising money. I mean, what are the structural problems that you see that currently exists in our system that that really prevent equality and diversity and inclusion to its fullest extent. Carol, will be your

aug day? Yeah, there's an easy question. Well, but but I love talking to leaders like you because I get a better on understanding, especially if you see something firsthand, like because we've been you listen, you know this better than I do. Mandy. We've been talking about this four decades, and I do hope that things are changing in the past year. That it's not just about talking, it's about actions, being deliberate, being intentional, so that the systems changed and

that we do create a much more equal society. You know, your your spot on and I think what we're starting to see if that organizations understand that you have to have a system based approach, because for so long, what we heard and what the organization's focus was was on increasing the pipeline. They felt that, you know, the the entire issue is really around the pipe on the talent acquisition system. But that's just one uh piece of the pie.

And so what we need to do and what research has shown, right when we look at McKenzie in Sport every year they've been doing it for five I believe it's going to be the sixth year, they see that only a handful of the organizations have the systems and structures in place to you actually reduce the inequities that

we see from an organizational standpoint. So I think the fact that we're starting to think about this from an organizational intervention perspective as opposed to rely on only on those individual interventions, which we have typically seen instance of um UH some type of unconscious biased training or other d I compliance training is really based off reducing discrimination, which really doesn't get to the heart of the issue

as far as our systems and our policies. Now, Carol, I'm going to highlight just a couple of things, Like I said that organizations can do from a structural standpoint. So, Mandy, I kind of asked you a loaded question and a big question, And as you said, we could probably talk for hours about it, uh in terms of how do we really get two changes when it comes to D and I UH and equities within the workplace? And you said you had some some points that you wanted to make,

so let me let me toss it back to you. Yeah, So some of these things we do when we're working with our client, right because, UM, what you hit on exactly the problem that a lot of organizations and leaders have, which is where do I even start right? How do we even start thinking about this from a systems and organizational perspective? And so some of the things we do

is help them with that diagnosis. So we're looking at things like, UM, when we when we look at your pay practices, are you by seeing UH pay in someone's salary, are you looking at prior salary history to determine their current salaries or are you looking at just the job

uh and and the experience required for the job. Because we know that these pay disparities and equities exist within our society so when we do that common practice that most organizations do, which is using salary history and the interviewing hiring process process, what we see is that organizations have these disparities that are coming into their own workplace that they didn't intend just because of the disparity that

existence in society. And so those are the types of analysis and and reviews that we do to ensure that we're having a sound structure and policy within our organization to reduce an eliminate even equities as much as possible. Now, I have to say in planning for this interview, um our producer Donnie who was involved in it, and he said, you know what's interesting too, is they've got this platform

that basically let's you know, various employees. From what I understand is, you know, if they want to post something on their employer, they can do it anonymously. And that is I think even on your is pretty fairly prominent on your website. Talk to us about why this is such an important ability to be able to do. Yeah, it's critical because unless employees have a safe way to provide feedback, organizations don't know the and opportunities that exist

within their workplace. That safe mechanism to allow employees to provide that feedback so that organizations can make the need to change. One of the things that also uh really uh we've had our our systems set up is because Talent says that looking for an employee that value diversity, equity inclusion is one of the most important things for

a potential employer. So we have a lot of potential applicants that come to our platforms looking companies diversity equity inclusion initiatives, which we all track on our platform as well to really learn what are the employers of choice in the companies that values really reflect their own values,

you know. One of the other things, and I am curious when you start working with the company is like, what is the first thing that you want to look at and what is the kind of most common problem that you find when it comes to these issues at a company. So the most common problem that we see is that organizations haven't been measuring and tracking this at all. Um, we measure diversity, but they're not measuring equity and inclusion.

Are looking at their systems from this kind of equity and inclusion lens and so uh, which is really baffling, right, UM and they're different, right, they're different. Yeah, they're different. You know, when we think about diversity, diversity is you know, individual's identity, that's gender, that's raised, that's you know, your religious background. Those are all diversity factors. When we think about inclusion, that is, I feel like I belong in

this workplace no matter what my identity is. And then when we think about equity, that is, I have the same access and opportunities no matter what my identity is either. And so it's important for organizations to not only look at, uh, diversity and to have that measurement around diversity, but to really make sure that they're measuring inclusion and equity within the organization as well. Okay, one of the things I wanted to ask you your own experience in creating a

company raising funding for that company? What was it like? How hard was it as as a black a woman? So it was difficult. I mean when we look at the funding disparities that exist for women and then also women of color, Um, it's fast. You know. Uh, we women of color only received point six percent of venture capital funding, so not even one and um, when you look at the amount of funding received, it's at much

lower rate. So um, you know, we we encountered a lot of challenges and one of the things just why you know, diversity so important in the corporate perspective studying is to ensure that we're getting that diversity of opinion and perspectives and experiences. But what we've seen in venture capital is the same, is that there's not a lot of diversity with respect to venture capitalists, and so it's hard sometimes to see the opportunity that exists within various markets.

So I know, when we first started Canaries, it was three years ago. It was before the emphasis that we're seeing now on corporate diversity equally inclusion initiatives, and we had a lot of venture capitalists that couldn't see the potential in the company and didn't really uh understand the market potential. And so I think that's why it's so key and critical that we have diversity, not with only within a corporate study, but within every ecosystem, including the

venture capital ecosystem. Right, I feel like from all the conversations I've had, it's gonna be you know, we talked about pipelines, but it's going to be everywhere and and getting entrepreneurs certainly into the investment world and having the ability to bring especially minority and entrepreneurs to bring their ideas out is really really key. Um quickly twenty seconds. A piece of advice for entrepreneurs who are looking to to fund who might be coming up against closed doors,

I would say to never give up. You have to be tenacious to be an entrepreneur. You got to have a lot of grid and you gotta believe in yourself. So uh, that would be my My key word of advice is to keep going. Yeah, it's a good one. It's a simple one, but it's a good one, no doubt about it. Many thank you so much, and I hope we can check in again down the road. She's co founder and chief executive officer of Canaries. On a phone from Dallas, Texas.