Forty years ago, business leaders couldn’t imagine entire career paths in diversity management, let alone schools offering diversity and inclusion majors.
But now, diversity chiefs at Facebook, Google and other high-profile companies are taking a deeper look at how companies hire, promote and welcome employees from all backgrounds.
The business world is finally paying attention — and so are aspiring leaders.
But what does it take to succeed in this growing field?
Know the psychology
“I definitely didn’t grow up thinking, ‘I’m going to be the head of diversity at a company somewhere,'” says Candice Morgan, head of inclusion and diversity at Pinterest. “I didn’t know it was a career.”
In college, Morgan studied psychology and business, where she fell in love with courses like “Business Across Cultures.” In her psychology classes, she learned more about how cultural and ethnic differences affect the ways we interact. In her business classes, she focused on how companies can help prepare employees for these interactions.
At Pinterest, Morgan collaborates with colleagues across the HR and recruiting teams. It even collaborated on a new product feature launched last year, allowing users to filter their search results based on skin tone.
He also spends a lot of time talking to employees about their experiences and career dreams. Enabling them, she says, is key to her work.
“I divided the onboarding work into three areas: are people showing up? Are they growing? And are they moving into leadership positions?” she says. “It’s all part of the measurements or production.”
Know the business
Rosanna Durruthy, global head of diversity, inclusion and engagement at LinkedIn, says she also spends a lot of time thinking about relationships at work.
“There are still businesses or industries where the [lack of] Representation creates ‘uniqueness,’ as I describe it,” he says. “They might be the only ones representing their demographic: the only woman or the only person of color.”
But as he tells future diversity leaders, you also need to know the business. What does it take to be successful in this organization? What goals are important to leaders? Are these goals accessible to all employees?
These questions, says Durruthy, are important to understanding the work of a diversity and inclusion officer. They help recreate the culture of the company, not just the appearance of its workforce.
Get to know the people
Two years ago, Tufts University launched the Diversity and Inclusion Leadership Program, an interdisciplinary program aimed at preparing students for diversity roles in all industries. The idea, says Robert Cook, dean of the graduate school of arts and sciences at Tufts, is that students in the program learn from a variety of different fields, which can be combined to prepare them for a position that is becoming increasingly popular.
“Increasingly, it’s a profession. Increasingly, it’s getting more attention from all kinds of institutions,” he says. “What we want to do is give people the leadership skills to understand how organizations work, as well as the analytical skills so they can be effective in their jobs.”
Ciara Trinidad, Inclusion and Diversity Program Manager at Netflix, says he learned to appreciate how all these different pieces fit together. From there, he says, good diversity and inclusion leaders need to make sure the message permeates all levels of the organization, beyond the hiring team or the executive team.
“Companies are like, ‘We care so much about diversity and inclusion, but if you went and asked a lower-level manager, ‘Why do you care about diversity and inclusion?’ they would have no idea,” he says. “This is the problem.”
Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated Ciara Trinidad’s Netflix title.
CNNMoney (New York) First published August 22, 2018: 12:03 PM ET
