The E in Equity as a Saving Grace: Interview with Nikki Lanier, Corporate Racial Equity Strategist

A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to interview Nikki Lanier , a Corporate Racial Equity Strategist and the CEO of Harper Slade LLC. As with all interviews, I showed up prepared – and I’m glad I did, too. Nikki is as powerful speaking on the topic of diversity as she is addressing its economic impacts.?

Given her focus on racial equity, I wanted to understand her perspective on how the tendency of corporations to fold race into overall diversity (which also includes gender, disability, Veteran-status, sexual orientation, etc.) affects their ability to achieve the kind of change results she and many others are looking for.

I started by asking her to share her thoughts on the DEI (or Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) movement, and whether she thinks it helps or hinders the work of racial equity.

“DEI as you know, is the larger swath of anyone and everyone who experiences concerted and cumulative marginalization. I'm specifically focused in on people of color. I focus my work primarily, but not exclusively, on the economic arguments, the economic priorities associated with advancing equity across a number of the systems in which we experience inequity.”

I was interested in learning more about those economic arguments and positioning them in a way that allows all of us to find common ground. Here is what Nikki told me:

“What we can typically find universal agreement around is the idea that we want to advance and live in a country that has fairly robust and healthy economic viability. And given the browning of the country… You know, America's not getting whiter; it's getting blacker and browner. And so, by 2045, the majority of the workforce will be largely Hispanic and African American. We've never seen a world like that. We don't know what to do with it, we've never experienced that at all.

“I have chosen to start in the workplace and focus fairly acutely on amplifying and activating latent or underutilized talent of color in workplaces in order to assure that we are falling squarely within as many workplaces as possible.

“I want more Black and Brown people to be able to realize not just their professional career goals and dreams, but to move solidly and stay in middle class as much as possible, and then of course move up through higher income earning potential, but at least get into that strata. And the impediment oftentimes, in most workplaces, is the calcified, myopic systems that support - sometimes unknowingly - racism, bias, judgment, marginalization, professional muting, and stunting. All those kinds of things. That's what is really important to me.

I define racial equity as proportional fairness that takes into account the cultural and historical realities that have beset people of color as distinct from all other people and works to remedy the same.”

"I want more Black and Brown people to be able to realize not just their professional career goals and dreams, but to move solidly and stay in middle class as much as possible."

My follow up question to her was, how does she feel – given her focus on racial equity – about the growth of the broader supplier diversity movement?

I mentioned the explosion of new corporate supplier diversity programs founded since the events of 2020. During my LinkedIn Creator Accelerator project, I have had many conversations with representatives from the women-owned business community, the LGBTQ community, the disabled persons community, and the veteran community. I typically ask them, "Most of these new efforts have been driven by a focus on race, but is your community benefiting as well?"

And they all say yes.

Companies don’t implement minority-owned supplier programs, they found diversity programs. That involves many different groups and communities.

I asked Nikki the opposite question of what I ask the others. I asked, “Do you find that our conversations and advocacy around generalized diversity have a way of watering down or distracting from the work that could be done specifically around race?”

And just like the other groups, Nikki said yes.

“Before 2020, before what we saw happen happened in front of our faces and on our televisions, I was arguing for diversity statements. I think I posted something on LinkedIn at one point that said something like…

“My dream diversity statement from a company would read as follows: We at XYZ Corporation, in the name of advancing diversity and inclusion, recognize that we already have systems and thinking and policies in place that thwart exactly what we purport to support in this policy. And so therefore our policy statement will require that we spend time unearthing pockets of resistance and areas where diversity and inclusion are not embraced as fully as we expected. We will endeavor to articulate very clearly how we expect those ideals to be manifested in this workplace, and will hire, promote, and fire based on these variables.

“I don't know if that's verbatim, but that was kind of it. So yes, I've always resented watching companies, many of them companies that I had worked for, move through what I thought was just a pedestrian exercise of trying to interpret diversity as broadly as possible. Hours and hours, days and days and days, weeks were spent trying to figure out how broadly they could define it in the name of not offending, in the name of not leaving anyone out. In my opinion, the whole point of diversity, at least from a belief system standpoint, when it came onto the scene, was to be as narrow as possible, was to be remedial, was to focus on areas and departments and organizations that practice, sometimes unknowingly, this exclusion, and marginalization, and stunting, and muting of marginalized people.

“What we ended up with were diversity statements that included everybody: regional differences, difference in fingernail length, people who like big dogs versus small dogs, people who drive SUVs versus sports cars. It's ridiculous. And so, therefore, again, ineffectual. But it did indicate to me how, in a very sweeping way, most people, even senior leaders in organizations who were incredibly stalwart and brilliant and masterful, how even many of them don't want to deal...don't know how to deal with the realities of narrowly focusing their attention on communities that have been excluded.

"I've always resented watching companies, many of them companies that I had worked for, move through what I thought was just a pedestrian exercise of trying to interpret diversity as broadly as possible."

“So, I think the ‘E word’ really was the saving grace. A lot of organizations have been about their diversity and inclusion work for years. And then in 2020 ‘E,’ that ‘E,’ that racial equity word came out calling and folks started yanking that ‘E’ out of the sky and fixing it right next to diversity and inclusion.

“That requires that we squarely look at equity. I'm okay with that advancement, as long as we understand that we still are kind of lazy around the way that we think about DEI. We pretend as though it's one thing, as though diversity is not its own kind of ‘hard stop’ and its own strategic imperative in inclusion and equity alike.

“When you think about any kind of strategic priority that you see promulgated in companies, this is a painstaking process. Think about if sales were down and we needed to get sales up in one of our divisions. We'd be figuring out, ‘Okay, what vision do we need to articulate across the enterprise so that employees know that in this division, we have got to get sales up so that we can do these things?’ And then we'd allocate resources commensurate with that vision. And then we'd build capability individually and at the team level to further that vision. And then we'd check in with regularity and hold people accountable to execute against that vision.

“We see that in so many other constructs of the kind of American corporate way, but rarely do we see that kind of rigor and that kind of discipline with diversity. Hard stop. Inclusion. Hard stop. And certainly equity.

“I do want commitment over compliance, especially when it comes to DEI. And I know that's a tall order, and I know I'll probably never see it in my lifetime, and my children won't in theirs.”

I respect Nikki’s intellectual position, and I respect her passion. But most of all, I respect her willingness to be honest about the hard things, to share her perspective with conviction, and to back it all up with a desire for action.

Leading corporate supplier diversity programs isn’t an easy task now, and I worry what will happen if race, which is already folded into diversity, is folded into DEI and then DEI is folded into ESG. If Nikki is already seeing dilution of the vision and corresponding action, the challenge is only going to get larger as the scope gets broader.

Please join the conversation by sharing your opinion in the comments of this post.