Coming Together Tomorrow

Earlier this week, I shared a note that Janet Foutty, chair of the board for Deloitte US, and I sent to our people to commit to drive meaningful and lasting change in our communities. I am sharing a follow-up message that was sent today addressing how Deloitte is working to create actionable change, including a Day of Engagement we are hosting tomorrow.

Colleagues,

Since our note on Saturday, we have heard from many of you—sharing your personal experiences with systematic racism and bias, feedback on our firm’s culture, including ideas on how we can improve racial injustice and bias especially with the black community, and suggestions on calls to action for Deloitte to lead the changes in society that we all want to see. As the leaders of our firm, we are not only actively listening, we are committed to action.

Tomorrow (Friday June 5th), we will come together as a Deloitte community to honor the victims of racial injustice, and to learn, listen, and start exploring and defining ideas of concrete actions we can take as an organization to positively impact change. We know that we do not have all the answers, which is why we seek your direct input and engagement.

• Moments of Reflection: We’ll be hosting two national webcast sessions (morning and afternoon ET) to take a pause—a moment of reflection—to honor the victims of racism and racial injustice in our country and to acknowledge and commit to the transformation of society that must occur.
• Safe Place for Dialogue: To allow for opportunities for your voice to be heard in a more informal setting, leaders will host small group conversations over the next several weeks with the first few of these occurring tomorrow. During these sessions, you’ll have the opportunity to share your experiences, raise your concerns and ideas, hear each other’s stories, or just simply listen and learn. In addition to these sessions, we are meeting with our black PPMDs tomorrow to hear their perspectives and counsel.

Education and Resources for All of Us

This is not only an organizational journey; this is a call to action for each of us individually. The Deloitte Inclusion team has created a website which includes a number of resources that you can leverage to learn more about how you can take definitive actions to support our black community, promote equality, root out bias, speak up against racial injustice, and serve as allies. We will continue to add to this list as we continue to receive many recommendations. We have read (and listened to) a number of these resources, and both of us highly recommend the following:

• Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy
• Ava DuVernay’s 13th
• Dr. Brittney Cooper’s Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower
• Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
• Ijeoma Oluo’s So You Want to Talk About Race
• Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism
• Dr. Ibram X. Kendi’s How to Be An Antiracist
• 1619 podcast (New York Times)

Investing Deloitte’s Resources to Rebuild our Communities

Deloitte has a long history of supporting our communities, including donating our dollars as well as the time of our people to organizations doing important work, but we must do even more. We will start ramping up our substantial investments, including an additional $5 million dollars of contributions and pro bono commitments, to a number of organizations that are fighting for social justice, tackling employment and wealth inequality, and creating educational opportunities for underserved communities. We will expand well beyond some of the organizations we have historically supported, and we want you to be engaged in the decision of where we direct our monetary contributions and pro bono efforts. Be on the lookout tomorrow for a link that will allow you to provide your input on organizations you’d like us to consider supporting.

Taking Care of Yourselves and Each Other

We ask that you take care of your own well-being and be there to support each other. We recognize that this traumatic time is even more difficult as we cannot support one another in person. We encourage you to take the time to take care of yourself, reflect, grieve, and connect with family and friends. And, please be there for your colleagues—exercise empathy, embody allyship, and join one of the Moments of Reflection sessions on Friday to listen and open your heart to understanding.

You have our unwavering commitment that our intense focus will not fade as the news cycle shifts—Deloitte is in it for the long term, and we will do the hard work to change the unacceptable status quo. To that end, we are in the process of organizing a group of internal and external advisors to help us architect and execute the long-term strategy and plans to sustain real change who will report directly to the two of us—more to follow on this. We look forward to sharing more with you and listening to your ideas and feedback.

In solidarity,

Joe Ucuzoglu and Janet Foutty