In 2020, following a tumultuous summer that witnessed the senseless and tragic deaths of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor, WTIA made a conscious decision to lead the tech industry in taking a stand to eradicate racial injustice by launching the Anti-Racism in Tech Pact and the Diversity Equity and Inclusion Center of Excellence. 

We did not act alone.

• The initial Pact meeting brought together more than 150 CEOs to discuss a critical goal: ending systemic racism in technology companies within five years.
• Fifty CEOs signed onto the Pact immediately, declaring their commitment to creating lasting change in their organizations.
• Today, more than 70 companies have signed the Pact.

The Pact’s primary commitment is to: “Work diligently to ensure that within five years from signing this Pact, our company fully reflects the populations in which we operate, including the board of directors, management, and all of our employees.” For example, in King County today this would mean approximately 6% Black and 9% Latinx, and nationally, this would mean 18% Black and 14% Latinx.  

The Pact was not the beginning of our efforts. WTIA has a long-standing commitment to DEI: 

• In 2013, the WTIA board was composed of 90% white males over the age of 45. Today, we have a highly diverse group of people who help shape the strategic direction for the three main companies that make up the WTIA. 
• Our DEI work then extended to events and learning opportunities, ensuring that speakers and attendees included a wide array of gender, race, ethnicity, age, and other diverse identities.
• Apprenti was launched in 2017 and was our first successful foray into helping other companies gain access to more diverse talent.

Leaders must commit to DEI first

Recently, we surveyed Pact signatories, which found that many of those companies are making advances in DEI by following the recommendations in the Anti-Racism in Tech Pact Roadmap, a guide that outlines proactive steps companies can take to articulate and deliver on their DEI goals and measure their progress along the way. Survey respondents noted that they’re focused on keeping top leaders engaged in DEI efforts amid many competing priorities stemming from the pandemic and related operational and economic challenges.

Rightly so. Without an unwavering commitment from leadership, DEI initiatives cannot succeed. If leadership doesn’t see diversity as a competitive advantage, or essential to the company’s success, and their core values aren’t aligned with those beliefs, even the most well-intentioned DEI strategies will falter.

It isn’t enough for leaders to be held accountable for meeting DEI metrics or mastering competencies. The tech industry has spent billions of dollars on diversity initiatives in the last couple of years, and the workforce demographics haven’t changed. There’s still the same percentage of women and people of color, and the numbers are leaner among management ranks. Recruiting has improved somewhat, but retention has not. So companies can recruit women and people of color, but they don’t stay because those groups don’t feel accepted or included.

For company leaders, this commitment starts with the self. Do you truly believe in DEI, and that it is essential in creating better teams and a better, more competitive company? DEI isn’t about being magnanimous or doing what’s morally right for social justice. It’s about personal accountability and enlightened self-interest, and it starts with the leaders at the top.

If you have the courage as a leader to champion DEI, and your commitment is genuine rather than performative, then you can put in place systemic accountability where leadership holds itself, staff, and partners to a standard of excellence regarding what diversity means and how it contributes to a company’s success—only then do you have an opportunity to engineer real change.

This matters because a monumental shift in the workforce is coming. By 2035, the U.S. workforce demographics will be made up of a majority of non-white workers. Tech companies that understand and embrace that a sea change is coming, and take radical action to build organizations that can recruit, retain and develop diverse teams will win. Those that don’t will likely fail.

How our DEI strategy is taking shape

WTIA is modeling the work of systemic change within an organization through our own internal DEI strategy:

• Throughout the past nearly 10 years, we have successfully shifted the makeup of our Board from mostly white males to a group that is both personally and professionally diverse.
• We also retooled our events, including the topics, speakers, and panelists to make sure they appealed to and attracted a more diverse audience.
• Finally, we focused on staffing, especially on our senior leadership team. In a group of nine leaders, we have two men and seven women, and there are five people of color.
• We also articulated our core values and made sure they were tied to the organization’s mission and vision of the organization.

How we can help

We’re not just talking about diversity; we’re making it happen. And that’s our vision for our partners—to help them do the same. The benefit of having done the work ourselves is we have firsthand experience to share with those who choose to go on this journey with us. We can credibly point them in the right direction, and connect them with the programs, consultants, and experts who can help them reach their DEI goals.

The DEI Center of Excellence and The Diversity Way-MakerTM provide leadership coaching and training to guide senior leadership teams through a process of self-assessment and discovery so they can uncover their biases and promote anti-racism throughout their organizations. Leaders also learn how to use that information to define their company’s mission statement around diversity and how it fits into their values. A team of expert consultants with collective decades of experience in human resources and DEI can provide education for the entire staff and improve diversity, equity, and inclusion at every level and function of a company. In this way, organizations can learn to fully embrace and harness the competitive power of diversity, which is critical to their survival—today and tomorrow. 

Learn more about the WTIA DEI Center of Excellence and Diversity Way-MakerTM and how we can help you harness the power of a diverse workforce to cultivate a culture of inclusion within your organization and gain a competitive advantage.