Call yourself an ally? Now it’s time to act
This is Working Together, a weekly series on the changing face of U.S. business. Join me LIVE at 12ET from the LinkedIn News page for a discussion with LandIt Founder Lisa Skeete Tatum on career pivots during the pandemic. I’m on vacation next week, so see you back here on September 16th. Let’s dive right in.
When Laurel Richie's parents returned from the March on Washington in 1963, they were so inspired by Martin Luther King Jr.’s words that they were compelled to take action. They wanted to start by integrating the neighborhood they lived in with their first-grade daughter in Shaker Heights, Ohio. There was only one problem: No one would sell them a property because they were Black.
A white friend of theirs bought the property on their behalf and sold it to them at cost. Richie — who would go on to be the first Black person to lead a major U.S. professional sports league as president of the Women’s National Basketball Association — lived in the house they built there until she graduated from high school.
“I look back on that and say, that's allyship,” she told me last week in a panel discussion organized by Ellevate Network. “That is somebody joining with you, sharing your belief system, taking action and fully engaging.”
More than 50 years later, Richie's comments come against the backdrop of her alma mater — the WNBA —taking a big action. The league postponed its first three games in protest against the shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wis. Once games resumed, every player walked on the court with Breonna Taylor's name on the back of their jersey. Taylor was shot and killed by police while she was asleep in her bed in Louisville, Ky. earlier this year.
“It’s a lot deeper than just the jersey,” Las Vegas Aces' player Angel McCoughtry, who organized the movement, told The New York Times. “But I think that’s a great start.”
Protests against police violence and systemic racism are shining a light on how white people in corporate America can take action to promote change. While more than 80% of white employees see themselves as allies, less than half of Black women feel they have strong allies and only 10% say their strongest allies are white, according to research from LeanIn.
For Richie — who now sits on the boards of Bright Horizons and Synchrony Financial — allyship from white men was essential to her success early on in her career. When she was an associate at the marketing firm Ogilvy, her client at the time went to the head of the agency and told him he thought Richie was ready to lead her team. He didn’t ask her how she felt about it, he just stepped up.
“Allyship is not just expressing to an individual how you feel,” she said. “It is taking action beside them and on behalf of them. That’s really what makes the difference.”
Despite an increase in discussion around allyship in the workplace, there is still confusion on what it looks like in practice. Sandra Phillips Rogers, the chief legal officer and chief diversity officer at Toyota Motor North America, said on the same panel that many believe allyship simply means asking someone who looks different than you to coffee. But it goes much deeper than that, she said. “You've got to also be down there in the trenches. You've got to advocate for them, you've got to stand up for them, and you've got to help make sure that they succeed to every extent that you possibly can.”
Before taking action, Airbnb director Janaye Ingram says it’s important for white people to understand the position of privilege they hold. That starts with having daring discussions — as she calls them — around race and gender and how certain people show up with advantages in the workplace.
A co-founder of the Women’s March, Ingram said she has watched this year as these conversations have accelerated across corporate America. Now it’s time for companies to introduce more diversity to their teams, she added. “This is a moment where things are going to be required that go beyond the comfort level that I think many companies have been used to in the past.”
The WNBA’s Richie is encouraged by the willingness of many to discuss race at work, but she has one concern: Allyship efforts tend to portray the Black community as a single, monolithic group. For true progress to be made, it will be critical to recognize the diversity within the community.
“Given that we have different experiences and different backgrounds… don't fall into the trap of stereotyping all Black people as an identical or monolithic group with all shared views,” she said.
What’s Working
Women win on tech. U.S. mutual funds with at least one-third of management positions held by women outperform all-male managed funds by one percentage point. Why? Women-led funds tend to invest more in tech stocks whereas all-male managed funds prefer finance companies. All-female fund manager team’s are rare: Only 3% are structured that way. [Bloomberg]
Black-led banks. City First Bank and Broadway Federal Bank are merging their more than $1 billion in assets to become the nation’s largest minority-owned bank. [CNN]
What’s Not
3x more likely. While more than a third of men with children at home during this pandemic said they received a promotion while working remotely, less than 10 percent of women with children at home said the same thing, according to a survey from Working Mother. The finding is the latest in a slew of data points that show that women — particularly Millennial women who have young children at home — are bearing the brunt of this crisis. [Working Mother]
‘Equality for all,’ but not employees. Three former employees of fintech startup Carta are suing the company for wrongful termination amid allegations from dozens of former employees that the culture was not conducive to women. One woman said she was fired after speaking up in a meeting. Another said she was fired for voicing regulatory concerns. [NYTimes]
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