Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion 101
As seen in Harvard Business Review on January 6, 2021
DOUG MELVILLE: Diversity is like an operating system. Everyone’s brain is their hard drive, but we have a new patch update. And in this example, it’s the language of diversity, so people are comfortable speaking and communicating about it. Because that’s the big barrier is, where people can see it and know it and be able to talk and communicate about it at the office and not be worried that someone’s going to jump up and go, “Oh, you said the wrong thing. Oh my gosh.”
PORTER BRASWELL: From HBR Presents, this is Race at Work, the show where we explore how race affects our careers and lives. I’m Porter Braswell. I left a Wall Street career to start a company called Jopwell because I wanted to help corporate America build a more diverse workforce. Each week, we talk to a different leader about their journey with race, equity, and inclusion. These are the conversations we don’t usually have at work. But this show is a safe place to share and learn from each other.
PORTER BRASWELL: Do you know the difference between the term “Hispanic” and “Latinx” or “Latinx”? Or what BIPOC actually means? What about diversity – is it still OK to use that word? In this episode, we’ll get into D-E-I 101 – answering questions you might not be comfortable asking about diversity, equity, and inclusion. We’ll break down the terms that we hear so often and uncover some common misconceptions about how diversity and inclusion play out at work. Here to guide this conversation is Doug Melville, a longtime diversity leader and a good friend of mine. Doug is the Head of Diversity and Inclusion at Richemont, a holding company of luxury brands. Before that, Doug was the Chief Diversity Officer of TBWA, a top global ad agency. One of the things I most admire about Doug is that he does the work to push the narrative and make real change.
PORTER BRASWELL: So, Doug, when you were at TBWA, you played a large role in retiring the Aunt Jemima brand. Can you talk a little bit more about that?
DOUG MELVILLE: At the time we were PepsiCo’s overall creative partners, and one of the brands that we didn’t work on at all, but I knew was in the PepsiCo portfolio, was the brand of Aunt Jemima. And it was something that I brought up to a group of executives about, “Is there anything I could do behind the scenes” to help push the conversation forward to see if we could eliminate the woman, Aunt Jemima, from the packaging?. And it was a long process. Other people were involved as well, but it started the narrative through, “Let’s look at the history of Aunt Jemima.” Not everybody knew the full history of the origin story. And I think that’s some of the things that happen over generations is stories get Disney-fied or decalcified and you don’t necessarily know, but ultimately you have to start the process somewhere.
PORTER BRASWELL: That’s awesome, Doug. That’s going to be a part of the American history moving forward. Congratulations on that.
DOUG MELVILLE: Thank you so much.
PORTER BRASWELL: Why don’t you describe the work that you do and why you’re passionate about it.
DOUG MELVILLE: I’ve been working as a chief diversity officer for 10 years. I’m a fifth-generation diversity champion. My dad, he was in law. He was a judge, one of the first black judges in Connecticut. He really wanted me to go into law. He was raised by General Benjamin O. Davis Jr. and Sr., who were the only two black officers in the military at the start of World War II. Senior, he helped draft Executive Order 9981 with President Truman to integrate the army. And Junior, was the first Black graduate this century of West Point and was the creator and commander of the Tuskegee Airmen. I’ve been really working more across the FAME industries, is what I refer to them as – fashion, advertising, music, and entertainment. It’s funny, because when I first started, people would say, “Why do you want to head up a diversity department? Why don’t you want to be a president? Or why don’t you want to be a head of business development or chief marketing officer?” And I was like, “Yeah, that’s great.” But a diversity officer, for me, that was the best that I felt I could give to a company and also provided a new platform for people that were coming up to help evolve these institutions.
PORTER BRASWELL: So this past summer, we saw a flurry of new chief diversity officers be in the spotlight and get hired at corporations across America. And we saw attention get placed on chief diversity officers with the spotlight that we’ve never seen before. Do you think that’s a good thing or a bad thing?
DOUG MELVILLE: I think it was a good thing because it brought awareness to the subject, but I think the challenge is, do you have the tools to execute against the play? The way I looked at it was, it was really like a sport’s moment. It was this summer, a lot of companies looked at the chief diversity officer and go, “This is your play.” And a lot of chief diversity officers looked at the sidelines and their coaches and said, “I’m going to run the ball.” But the difference was, did they run the play towards the chief diversity officer? Some companies were like, “I know it’s your play, but hold on a second, we have to go over here and we have to fix this. And we don’t want anybody to see this.” Or some said, “You know what? I’m going to trust you.” And at that time, I’m at TBWA in the ad industry and they let me run with the play. And what we were able to do from that was really integrate in every aspect of our organization, diversity and inclusion, across all of our creative industries, across all of our hiring, across all of our belonging, matching community donations. And the biggest turning point for me was in #OscarsSoWhite in 2015. Because what that was, is you needed cultural moments to drive the overall narrative because companies are really a by-product of society. When that happened, the awareness level was unstoppable. No one could say they didn’t know what was going on. And now we have George Floyd who, when you talk to a lot of executives or a lot of diversity officers, they’ll tell you that that may be in some sense our Emmett Till moment. Not to compare the moments, but to say, when we saw the photos of Emmett Till, people had heard the stories, but they didn’t have a visual. And when we saw that video of George Floyd, everyone was home for the pandemic. So the awareness was there. Now, is the education part. Now that we have awareness, how do we have effective education that people can talk about the subject matter freely and openly without always being concerned that they’re saying the wrong thing?
PORTER BRASWELL: Okay. So to that point, how do you, as a chief diversity officer, advise CEOs and other senior leaders to allow that conversation to take place at work?
DOUG MELVILLE: Diversity is like an operating system. Everyone’s brain is their hard drive, but we have a new patch update. And in this example, it’s the language of diversity, or how do we increase the diversity IQ of leadership and of all the people in the company so people are comfortable speaking and communicating about it? Because that’s the big barrier is, let’s explain how this affects the company. Now let’s transition that into something actionable where people can see it and know it and be able to talk and communicate about it at the office and not be worried that someone’s going to jump up and go, “Oh, you said the wrong thing. Oh my gosh.” We don’t want to do that. We don’t want to criticize, we want to teach. So that’s the first step in really bridging that conversation.
