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One of the primary benefits of re focusing spending onto small local and diverse businesses is that it strengthens local economies. When larger organizations purchase goods and services from small local and diverse businesses, they're keeping money within the communities that support the physical operational locations of their business.
Set the tone at the top: Put simply, senior leadership must make DEI a stated priority. CEOs and their executive teams must set real targets, fund initiatives and appoint management to lead programs with clear accountability. And the C-suite leaders must walk the talk by modeling these new expectations.
Mandate culture change: Develop or evolve your company’s culture and values going forward and connect them to your organizational purpose. Communicate the change enterprise-wide to explain the rationale and lay out expected behaviors and people practices, including hiring and promotion. Build a culture not just about rules but also to create an atmosphere where open, honest conversation is welcome and everyone can be their authentic selves, speak up and challenge the norms. Include all employees at all levels in the journey and embed strategies to measure and recognize the adoption of these values and behaviors.
Listen to diversity groups: Form and empower internal diversity groups as safe spaces for employees to connect, share and contribute to organizational culture change. You can partner with respected external community groups with expertise, networks and credibility. Then, listen to these groups and involve them in DEI plans.
Get better insights from data: Intensify your use of data & analytics to understand and respond to DEI challenges. Collect and analyze richer workforce data, both internal and external, to understand current workforce and market attitudes, needs and issues. Then, track granular performance and progress in reaching D&I targets.
Reimagine workplace programs: With a DEI lens, review existing workplace programs for alignment, from hiring to promotion, to benefits and wellness supports and introduce relevant new employee-centric offerings. Ensure performance management programs recognize and address potential issues and challenges faced by diverse groups.
From the Boston Globe:
A new report adds much more detail on how little Boston spends in businesses run by people of color
By Shirley Leung Globe Columnist
Sheldon Lloyd, chief executive of City Fresh Foods in Roxbury, said he could do much more business if big contracts were broken into smaller jobs so a local player like him could compete against a bigger corporation.JONATHAN WIGGS/GLOBE STAFF
Black- and Latino-owned firms landed just 1.2 percent of the $2.1 billion in contracts for construction and professional goods and services that the City of Boston awarded during the first term of the Walsh administration, according to a new report the city commissioned.
The study — aimed at uncovering disparities in the way the city spends its dollars — analyzed 47,801 contracts from 2014 to 2019 and found that businesses owned by white women and people of color were considerably underrepresented, according to a 703-page report obtained by the Globe.
For example, the city spent $185 million, or 8.5 percent of its contract and procurement dollars, with businesses owned by white women. With businesses owned by people of color, the city spent $53 million, or around 2.5 percent.
Black-owned businesses were awarded only $9.4 million, or 0.4 percent of total spending, while Latino-owned businesses garnered $18.2 million, or 0.8 percent. Asian-American-owned businesses received $22.7 million, or 1.1 percent of city contract dollars.
The study also analyzed the potential population of firms owned by women and people of color that could have done business with the city and found that hundreds more could have been available for these contracts. Black-owned businesses experienced the starkest gap, with the study finding that Boston could have steered 3.6 percent of its contract and procurement dollars to them.
“We should never use lack of capacity as an excuse as to why we’re not building wealth in communities of color in Boston,” said City Councilor and mayoral candidate Michelle Wu, who cosponsored a 2017 ordinance requiring the city to collect more data on these contracts. “The numbers clearly back up we are well below where we could be.”
The pending release of the report comes as Mayor Martin J. Walsh, who took office in 2014, is about to leave. He is expected to be confirmed as labor secretary by the Senate and could depart City Hall by the end of February.
It also emerges amid a renewed focus on systemic racism, in light of nationwide protests over the police killing of George Floyd last year.
The new report confirms in much greater detail, and for over a longer period of time, what previous analyses of city contracts have found. Walsh has previously issued executive orders to create a more equitable contracting process, but the city continues to lag its peers.
In a statement, Walsh spokesman Nicholas Martin said the mayor plans “actionable items” in the coming days to get “to the root of the issues around disparities in city contracting.”
“While the results of this study are not surprising, they reaffirm our belief that more work needs to be done to institutionalize these practices into the everyday business of city government, and reaffirm our commitment to getting the work done,” Martin said.
The new study indicates that Boston spent about $238 million, or 11 percent of its contracting dollars, on firms owned by white women and people of color. That overall figure is higher than previously reported.
Even so, Boston remains well behind other cities on the participation rates of diverse contractors: New York (19 percent), the Chicago area (29 percent), and Philadelphia (31 percent), according to an analysis done in 2019 by a coalition of activist groups, including Lawyers for Civil Rights, Massachusetts Minority Contractors Association, and the Greater Boston Latino Network.
The Boston study recommended a series of improvements including: setting participation goals, unbundling large contracts, expanding advertising and outreach, and increasing the minimum number of quotes for purchase orders. The study also highlighted how the city could hire more staff in its procurement office, create programs to further build capacity of diverse suppliers, and collect comprehensive data on subcontracts.
The city does not have race- or gender-conscious measures to help steer contracts to diverse suppliers because of legal concerns they would not hold up to a court challenge. The disparity study, which Walsh launched in 2018, was seen as a way to provide data and analysis to create new contracting policies that could stand legal challenge.
Segun Idowu, executive director of the Black Economic Council of Massachusetts, said he is not surprised by the dismal findings. Idowu, however, criticized Walsh for not doing more sooner to make the contracting process welcoming to people of color.
“The unfortunate thing to me is we have been waiting for this disparity study to act,” said Idowu.
Idowu called on Walsh to address the problems before he departs and not leave it to City Council president Kim Janey, who will become acting mayor, to handle. “This happened under his watch,” Idowu added. “I hope we see some action before he heads out to DC.”
Walsh, according to a person briefed on the matter, is drafting an executive order based on recommendations from the study.
Sheldon Lloyd, chief executive of City Fresh Foods in Roxbury, who has city contracts to provide to schools and senior centers, said he could do much more business if big contracts were broken into smaller jobs so a local player like him could compete against a bigger corporation.
Lloyd, who is Black, said refining the procurement process can help Boston businesses of color grow, an effort that ultimately is about “keeping jobs and money in the city.”
“The gap is getting wider, the city of Boston is changing, and communities of color are getting pushed out of the process,” said Lloyd.
From The Harvard Gazette:
She was to be first woman president; he the first Black VP.
This year’s riven, pandemic-complicated election has been unusual on many fronts and undeniably historic, marking the first time a woman of color has been nominated for vice president by a major political party. But there have been other surprising contests in the nation’s history.
American saw its first woman presidential nominee and its first Black vice presidential pick in 1872, just seven years after the end of the Civil War. All of it was owing in large part to the women’s suffrage movement and radical feminist Victoria Woodhull, who ran for president against the incumbent, Ulysses S. Grant, as the nominee of the Equal Rights Party and chose (without his knowledge or consent) abolitionist Frederick Douglass as her running mate. For Woodhull, a polarizing political activist who was considered an eccentric by many, it would be the latest of many firsts — a self-declared clairvoyant, she had already been the first woman in the country to own a brokerage firm and to start a weekly newspaper.
“She was a fascinating celebrity and well-known character,” said Susan Ware, an independent scholar who is helping curate an upcoming exhibit at Radcliffe’s Schlesinger Library on women and office-holding in the U.S. “I’m sure that women as well as men were following her career with interest and excitement and sometimes horror, but she definitely was very good at getting her name out there.”
It was Woodhull’s support of “free love” — the idea that women and men should be able to freely choose their sexual partners without interference from the state — that many found most controversial. But those beliefs were in keeping with her support for women’s rights more broadly, and her run for the presidency was more than a publicity stunt, said Ware.
“I’m sure that women as well as men were following [Victoria Woodhull’s] career with interest and excitement and sometimes horror,” said Susan Ware. Photo by Tony Rinaldo
Woodhull’s candidacy was designed to highlight the argument made by suffragists that women already had the right to cast a ballot thanks to the recent passage of the 14th and 15th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, which affirmed that everyone born in the country was a citizen and that no citizen should be denied the right to vote. But government authorities rarely agreed with that interpretation. After Susan B. Anthony cast a vote in Rochester, N.Y., for Grant that November, she was arrested, tried, found guilty, and issued a fine that she refused to pay. (Earlier this year President Trump pardoned Anthony, a move that angered many women who argued that the famous social reformer would have wanted her conviction to stand as a symbol of women’s rights.)
Anthony’s effort was “part of a larger strategy of the suffrage movement to basically say, ‘Women already have the right to vote. We just need to seize it,’” said Ware. “Woodhull is part of that … and what better way to make that point than to run for president?” (In a twist that seems oddly predictable, Woodhull wasn’t able to vote for herself on Election Day, having been jailed for publishing obscene material in her newspaper: a feature on the adulterous affair of influential clergyman, social reformer, and Congregational minister Henry Ward Beecher.)
But while Woodhull was clear about her presidential intentions, she never informed her running mate, Douglass, who never even acknowledged he had been nominated. Many have speculated that Douglass didn’t want to recognize the nomination for fear of being associated with Woodhull, who was seen as “a loose cannon and controversial even among radical feminists and abolitionists,” said Harvard historian John Stauffer.
“For Douglass, so much was about the specific context. ‘What can I accomplish?’ He was a prudent revolutionary. If he decided to do something, he always analyzed what potential progress” could be made, said Stauffer, Harvard professor of English and African and African American studies and author of two books on Douglass. “That’s probably the best way to describe his refusal to attend Woodhull’s convention or even respond, because the potential good or progress he could gain from acknowledging and participating in this vice presidential [bid] is basically nil, and possibly it might have had negative effects.”
“Douglass’ influence, and frankly, his brilliance is that he understood the difference between being a radical activist and being a politician with access to the seats of power,” said John Stauffer. Kris Snibbe/Harvard file photo
While Douglass may have harbored higher political aspirations, he never officially held an elected office, though he would go on to became federal marshal for the District of Columbia, recorder of deeds, and minister resident and consul general to the Republic of Haiti, as well as an influential presidential adviser.
“Douglass’ influence, and frankly, his brilliance is that he understood the difference between being a radical activist and being a politician with access to the seats of power,” said Stauffer. “He advises every president from Lincoln until his death and 1895. So, he has access to these levers of power.”
Douglass also likely didn’t recognize the vice presidential nomination in 1872 because he was already supporting a different presidential candidate, said Kenneth Mack, a historian and Lawrence D. Biele Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. A loyal Republican, Douglass had backed Grant’s run for a second term. During his first four years in the White House, Grant had proven himself a champion of the rights of freed African Americans, having supported several Civil Rights acts in 1870 and 1871, including one designed to the end Ku Klux Klan’s reign of terror against Black people in the former confederate states. “And President Grant had supported sending in the Union army to protect the lives and the votes of Black people in the south. So, for Douglass, there was no real choice other than to support Grant.”
“President Grant had supported sending in the Union army to protect the lives and the votes of Black people in the south. So, for Douglass, there was no real choice other than to support Grant,” said Ken Mack. Lorin Granger/Harvard Law School
Douglass was a lifelong supporter of women’s suffrage despite splitting with activists in his support of the 15th Amendment, which gave Black men the vote but left women disenfranchised. “Thousands of Black people were being murdered across the South. And Douglass gave his famous speech saying, ‘This is a matter of life and death,’ and he really meant life and death,” said Mack.
The rift highlights another driving force in the woman’s suffrage movement involving Black women whose efforts to help women secure the right to vote have long been overlooked. As a recent piece in the New York Times noted, Black women’s rights and access to power have continued to lag behind those of other groups.
What would Douglass have thought of the country’s recent elections? “It’s impossible to translate from the 19th century to today … but certainly the principle that Douglass stood for, that the most vulnerable people in our society should have access to the ballot in order to protect their interests, that ballot access should be expanded rather than contracted, was his position all the way through. And he supported women’s suffrage because he thought that women needed the ability to look out for their own interests rather than to supposedly have men look out for them,” said Mack.
He sees Woodhull as a 19th-century version of a “kind of radical libertarian reformer who believes that people deserve autonomy and the ability to look out for their own interests.”
Long-standing systemic health and social inequities have put many people from racial and ethnic minority groups at increased risk of getting sick and dying from COVID-19. The term “racial and ethnic minority groups” includes people of color with a wide variety of backgrounds and experiences. But some experiences are common to many people within these groups, and social determinants of health have historically prevented them from having fair opportunities for economic, physical, and emotional health. [1]
There is increasing evidence that some racial and ethnic minority groups are being disproportionately affected by COVID-19. [2], [3], [4], [5], [6] Inequities in the social determinants of health, such as poverty and healthcare access, affecting these groups are interrelated and influence a wide range of health and quality-of-life outcomes and risks.[1] To achieve health equity, barriers must be removed so that everyone has a fair opportunity to be as healthy as possible.
To achieve economic equity, barriers must be removed so that Diverse/minority-owned (MWBE, SVDOB, DBE) and/or Local businesses get access to economic on public projects. COVID has further exposed the need to adopt a community-forward intentionality to help save small, diverse businesses and combat the systemic inequity that has been laid bare by the economic fallout from the Pandemic.
Only with intentionality will public and private sector customers increase the number of contracts being awarded to Diverse businesses.
Supporting entrepreneurs of color is essential to creating economic inclusion and opportunity. All people should be able to participate in the economy, and benefit from economic growth and prosperity. Thank you to the Stanford Social Innovation Review for putting the spotlight on the powerful work and investment coming out of the Surdna Foundation.
Sobering data out this week from the City of Boston on the lack of participation by diverse businesses in the tax-payer funded public contracting. $654 Million in annual spend is a powerful engine for the CIty’s diverse and a powerful opportunity to create jobs and economic opportunity for minority, women, disadvantaged, veteran-owned, lgbt, and other diverse businesses. Unlocking access to the City’s government contracting market for these diverse businesses will be an inflectional point in the City’s history.
Despite Mayor Martin J. Walsh’s promises to use more women and minority vendors, and to diversify city construction contracts, Boston awarded less than 1 percent of $664 million in government work to such companies in 2018 — the first year the city was required to report such data under a new ordinance. That amount is far below what other big cities have awarded to businesses owned by women and minorities.
Released in early May, the statistic shocked many in the business community and may force City Hall to reassess the efforts that Walsh has championed since early in his first term.
“People knew it was a low number; they just didn’t know how low it was,” said Segun Idowu, executive director of the Black Economic Council of Massachusetts, who has since met with city officials to brainstorm new ways to diversify city contracting.
PWC’s 2019 Women in Work Index is out with the business case for Inclusion. There is a huge prize at stake from accelerating progress: Improving female participation in work across the OECD could boost OECD GDP by US$6 trillion, while closing the gender pay gap could boost GDP by US$2 trillion.
Working women everywhere are increasingly asserting their right to be respected and treated fairly at work. However, women in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) still face significant challenges and inequalities in the workplace. The pay gap persists and women are still under-represented in corporate leadership, with women accounting for only one-in-five of board seats in the largest publicly-listed companies in the OECD. Clearly, there is still a long way to go before we can achieve a gender-equal workplace.
VeraCloud is a mission-driven social enterprise working to unlock economic opportunity for diverse entrepreneurs and supports the great work of CEO Action for Diversity & Inclusion™
Kansas City’s Kaufmann Foundation has researched entrepreneurship in the US for decades. This year’s State of Entrepreneurship details the stark realities of the systemic inequalities that exist for diverse entrepreneurs in the US.
This year, the Kauffman Institute is turning their thought leadership into action with the launch of Zero Barriers to Startup , a new, collaborative, nationwide effort to ID and address barriers to entrepreneurship faced by many diverse communities.
Says Kauffman Foundation President and CEO Wendy Guillies:
At VeraCloud we also recognize these issues, and join in with leaders like the Kaufman Foundation who work with great purpose and intent to resolve these systemic inequalities at whatever scale is needed. At VeraCloud we also believe that fostering and enabling entrepreneurship throughout all of America’s diverse communities is the key to our long term collective economic, social, and cultural success.
