Some of the nation’s biggest and most well-known companies, institutions and organizations have signed onto a Silicon Valley-born initiative to boost diversity in their leadership to 25% by the year 2025.
“Nowhere in corporate America have I seen these metrics or an initiative with these types of metrics,” said SVLG CEO Ahmad Thomas in an interview with MarketWatch before the announcement of the initiative. “This isn’t window dressing. It’s not a feel-good letter that everyone can sign onto, then go back out on the golf course. There’s a reason why we haven’t seen anything like this: It’s a feat.”
Some of these companies have been disclosing their diversity numbers for a while. With some prodding over the past several years, the tech industry has largely made its workplace demographics public, and other companies have followed. Thomas said he hopes that on this initiative, too, “as Silicon Valley goes, so goes the nation.
As it asked others to sign the pledge, SVLG cited studies from McKinsey that have found companies with ethnically diverse executive teams are 36% more likely to achieve above average profitability, with that number being 25% for executive teams with gender diversity. Another study, by Boston Consulting Group, found diverse management teams have 19% higher revenues.
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