6 DEI leaders just left senior roles in Hollywood and media—it’s part of a larger problem: ‘It’s absolutely alarming’
Hollywood has seen an exodus in recent weeks of senior-level Black women leaving their jobs, and it could feed into a wider problem for diversity, equity and inclusion across the industry.
Many of the women led DEI initiatives at their company, including Karen Horne, senior vice president of North America DEI at Warner Bros. Discovery; Jeanell English, executive vice president of impact and inclusion at the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences; Vernā Myers, Netflix's first head of inclusion; and LaTondra Newton, Disney's chief diversity officer and senior vice president.
Additionally, Terra Potts, executive VP of worldwide marketing at Warner Bros., is leaving the studio after 13 years and previously headed up its multicultural marketing and publicity, where she played a key role in reaching a more diverse and broader audience. On the news side of things, Joanna Abeyie, the BBC's creative diversity director, is leaving after a year and a half with the broadcast company. Her replacement will be the third creative diversity executive in two years at the BBC.
And the list could grow: Industry sources have told Variety that more Black, Indigenous and executives of color are expected to leave or be let go in the coming weeks.
While some instances, like Horne's, are due to company restructuring, most of the other women are leaving on their own, with some like Myers and Abeyie saying they plan to focus on their own businesses.
The news is a one-two punch that shows Corporate America is failing to live up to its diversity commitments, and that it continues to fail Black women in leadership, experts say.
"It's absolutely alarming," says Rachel Thomas, co-founder and CEO of LeanIn.org. "We need as many strong leaders of all identities running DEI in organizations, so the fact that we're seeing so many prominent Black women overseeing DEI stepping away should be a wake-up call that whoever is in those positions get the support and investments they need from senior leadership."
The DEI fatigue problem
Diversity work in Corporate America can itself be a recipe for burnout: Oftentimes, marginalized workers are the ones who are most invested in making workplaces more equitable, and so they're tasked with addressing discrimination and biases that have long been built into their environments.
These efforts aren't always prioritized or well-funded, and pressures have only gotten worse in recent years.
"DEI leaders are facing extreme fatigue and burnout," says Chandra Robinson, vice president in the Gartner HR practice. Many organizations had the "best of intentions" to prioritize diversity efforts in 2020, Robinson says, following the social justice protests that erupted after the killing of George Floyd.
"Unfortunately," she says, "with so much attention paid to DEI, undue pressures are put on DEI leaders to make progress" quickly. As a result, many business leaders don't recognize that meaningful diversity work takes time, "just like any other strategy."
Half of DEI leaders say their biggest challenge is when other leaders fail to take ownership for driving diversity outcomes, and one-third say they have limited power to effectively drive change, according to a 2022 Gartner survey of 181 DEI leaders.
It's driven up quitting rates: Some 60% of chief diversity officers at S&P 500 companies left their jobs between 2018 and 2021, according to data from executive search firm Russell Reynolds, and the average tenure of chief diversity officers decreased from 3.1 to 1.8 years in 2021.
Diversity efforts among the first to be cut during a downturn
It also doesn't help that diversity efforts are some of the first to be cut at signs of an economic downturn.
"Often, women of color are the loudest champions of diversity, equity and inclusion in organizations," Thomas says, "so if they're leaving, the concern may be their organization is taking their foot off the gas in DEI when we want to see the exact opposite."
Research from Glassdoor shows DEI efforts stalled in 2022. Experts say this move can have a chilling effect on young workers, Black women and people of color collectively who were most likely to say DEI is important to them.
Companies can show their commitment to DEI effort by ensuring diversity heads have a direct reporting line to the CEO, Thomas says. DEI leaders should also have ample support and investment to make long-term progress, otherwise many face a "glass cliff" of being put into positions where they're set up to fail.
Robinson adds that DEI leaders can "communicate progress in an iterative manner, with mid- and long-term outcomes." Short-term benchmarks by quarter or even years can help keep programs on track, but meaningful and systemic outcomes are years in the making.
"It takes time," Robinson says, "but we're making progress."
Black women aren't supported in senior leadership
Meaningful and lasting progress won't come until workplaces adequately support women, and Black women in particular, to succeed in positions of leadership.
Black women are more likely than women overall to aspire to executive roles, according to the joint Lean In and McKinsey "Women in the Workplace" report. Many report not only wanting to drive business results, but also to make the workplace better for everyone, Thomas says.
But they also face more barriers to advance in their career: Black women leaders are more likely to be undermined at work, and 1 in 3 Black women leaders says they've been denied or passed over for opportunities because of personal characteristics, including their race and gender.
Many Black women are choosing to leave. Some 71% of Black women say they'd quit for a new job in order to get a pay raise or promotion, according to a 2022 survey from the consulting firm Every Level Leadership.
They're fueling a trend that shows women leaders overall are leaving their organizations at the highest rate ever, widening the quitting gap between women and men in senior roles, according to Lean In and McKinsey.
The pattern has the potential to unwind decades of progress toward gender equity and increased female leadership in the workplace. Roughly 1 in 4 C-suite leaders is a woman, and just 1 in 20 is a woman of color.
"Any Black woman who leaves is a wake-up call that we need to do more and we need to do better," Thomas says.
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