Inclusion, Diversity & Female Empowerment

—  Not all that long ago, I had the pleasure of moderating a dinner panel in Dallas, Texas, on behalf of a tech company trying to increase its visibility among local corporate leaders. Some 40 people were there, from high up on the food chain in a wide range of industries, and when the discussion started, it became very clear that the folks in the room were obsessed with marketing to Millennials (for good reason, given the demographics at play). Just as clearly, their efforts were not going particularly well. At one point, I stopped the proceedings and asked for a show of hands: How many of you are Millennials yourselves? One hand went up. No wonder they were struggling. White, black, Asian, male, female, undoubtedly straight, probably L, G and B, if not T and Q+, the group was reasonably well diversified and included, as it were. But were there age disparities? Not so much. You can read all the Psychology Today profiles you want, it’s still really hard to get into the heads of people unlike you.

Diversity and inclusion (D&I) come hard in the corporate world, we all know that. (Even in Themyscira, I’d wager.) The ignorance and/or obstinance make zero sense on a business-case basis (see above), and even less on a moral one. And yet these self-inflicted obstacles to D&I persist. Laura Jordan-Bambach is doing what she can to change this, and that’s a lot. She runs Mr. President, a London-based creative agency with a global purview that made D&I a founding principle. In her “spare” time, she is co-head of SheSays (along with Alessandra Lariu, whose OPEN Topics interviews you can read here and here), an organization that educates and advocates for women creatives, and she’s an active participant in a host of other, similar, activities. On June 21st, during Pride month, Laura hosted our “Is OUT(side) the new IN” panel focused on D&I at Cannes Lions. The panel, an extraordinary partnership between Creative by Collective, Rare by Google and SheSays, had image support provided by Stocksy; all four organizations have D&I in their DNA. We talked about that experience, what led her to that moment, and where she, and the movement, hope to go from here.