Black History Month Communications

Black History Month in the US is an important opportunity to take stock in what actions we have taken over the past six months, understand what impact we have made, and orient ourselves towards what more we can continue to do for DE&I and to be allies for Black executives for today, and particularly for tomorrow.

I would like to thank the Black professionals of RRA for their openness, candor and commitment to helping us shape a more diverse and more equitable RRA. We called on you, when you were already encumbered by so much, to open our eyes to your experiences and to where we as a firm could be a stronger ally for Black progress. Through listening to your stories and heeding your suggestions, together we have achieved so much in such a short amount of time.

I would like to share a little bit about what we have started – not for self-satisfaction, as we know we have much more work to do – but as a way of sharing, inspiring and encouraging other companies to join the movement for racial justice. We focused our actions to impact DE&I around four pillars: colleagues, clients, candidates and community.

For our colleagues, we set out to ensure that our ears and eyes are open to the changes that we as a firm need to address. We have held numerous open and candid discussions across teams and offices to broaden our awareness of the challenges faced by the Black community, both within our walls and outside of them. Every bit of awareness we have gained lends itself to approaching each other with more empathy and building more equity into our ways.

For our clients, we seek to continue to bring more diversity to every search assignment – increasingly diversifying the candidates in our network so that our clients can in turn diversify their teams. We have developed a set of equitable search practices which focus on enhancing DE&I outcomes by debiasing critical steps in the search process and partnering with our clients to think strategically and act deliberately to increase diversity in the candidate pool and, ultimately, their organizations. In order to foster even more meaningful relationships with established diverse executives and future leaders, we are actively partnering with diversity networks and advocacy organizations such as Toigo, Valence and our long-time partner, the Black Corporate Directors Conference, to ensure that we contribute to supporting Black executives with counselling and mentoring as they progress through their careers.

To impact our local communities, our offices in the US and around the world have some new and long-standing partnerships with community-based organizations that are working to improve opportunities for Black individuals and those from underrepresented backgrounds. Each organization was chosen locally so that our employees can directly contribute to supporting their local communities. Many of our offices are supporting students from vulnerable backgrounds in tangibly impactful ways like preparing for college and professional careers, providing donations of technology and supplies to support learning from a distance, and supporting the professional development of teachers. 

Looking ahead, we will continue to drive meaningful change in diversity at this accelerated pace and strongly believe consistency in our actions will speak louder than our words. We will continue to have frank discussions to listen and learn. We will let those discussions define our goals and hold ourselves accountable for meeting them. We will make sure our colleagues’ challenges are heard and addressed. We will evolve our practices while bringing our clients on that journey with us, and we will give our time and donate to organizations combating racial injustice.

Connect with us as we mark this Black History Month by celebrating the stories and successes of Black changemakers in our organization and share crucial career lessons and insights from Black leaders in our network.