Industry Leader Discusses 2022 Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Strategies
Cynthia Owyoung is the author of All Are Welcome and the VP of Inclusion, Equity, & Belonging at Robinhood. Cynthia has established and led diversity and inclusion initiatives for nearly 20 years at organizations both large and small, including Charles Schwab, GitHub, Yahoo!, and Intuit.
ModelExpand sat down with Cynthia to discuss her career experience and insights on building a diversity, equity, and inclusion strategies for the new year.
A CAREER IN DEIB
Having 20+ years of experience as a Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging Leader, have you experienced a different shift in the corporate culture and dynamic the last 5 years versus the other 15?
Yes, there’s definitely been a shift in recent years, even before the murder of George Floyd in 2020. After Google released their internal demographic numbers back in 2014, it launched a wave of companies being much more transparent about their diversity numbers and goals. And along with the higher transparency, there was a greater sense of accountability to make progress within these companies because customers, shareholders and employees now had something tangible to hold leaders accountable to. The other significant shift has been the rise in shareholder and employee activism in driving more diversity, equity and inclusion as well as the more vocal backlash there has been against such initiatives. Shareholders and employees have realized they have the power to affect change and are now much more demanding of companies to demonstrate real progress. The political climate and COVID has also contributed to a rise in violence against certain minorities, which has prompted many to stand up for social justice and take action in ways that they never would have before.
What inspired you to get into this work and ultimately get into this work and ultimately write“All Are Welcome: How to Build a Real Workplace Culture of Inclusion That Delivers Results”?
After I had spent ten years in advertising, I decided to go to graduate school so I could start a nonprofit focused on supporting adults with developmental disabilities in the Asian community. This is because I have a brother with a disability and in Asian families like mine, disability is often looked upon with shame and I wanted to change that. But while I was in grad school, my brother got laid off from the job he’d held for over a decade and I had an incredibly difficult time finding him another job. And I realized that I could either knock on company doors asking for help, or I could be on the other side and open them instead, so that’s what I decided to do. I ended up delaying my nonprofit plans and got a job as a diversity program manager inside a software company instead. Now, twenty years later, I’ve been fortunate enough to work in companies as varied as Yahoo and Charles Schwab, driving inclusion, culture and change initiatives.
“..Along with the higher transparency, there was a greater sense of accountability to make progress within these companies because customers, shareholders and employees now had something tangible to hold leaders accountable to.”
I wrote the book because I want to scale my impact. I am only one person with a limited amount of time to spend on any one company or client. And the need for diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging (DEIB) work in organizations far exceeds my ability to address it all personally. So that means I needed to figure out how to get my expertise and lessons learned into the hands of more people in a scalable way. Writing was the only reasonable alternative. I was also fortunate enough that a book editor reached out to me asking if I’d be interested in writing something about DEIB as an author of color. And while there are a lot of books out there on the topic of DEIB in organizations, there were none written from an insider's perspective. I felt like my perspective as an internal corporate practitioner was unique to the marketplace and could help people avoid the pitfalls in this work and actually make progress.
Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, & BELONGING
What are three top habits to break in the workplace to progress in DEIB efforts?
Blaming the lack of talent pipeline. This is the most convenient excuse for maintaining the status quo. We have been saying this for the 20 years I’ve been in DEIB. I think that’s sufficient enough time to develop the pipeline if you’re truly committed to it. But we haven’t made those kinds of investments. And yet we continue to believe that our illusion of maintaining “high standards” in hiring is the reason we can’t hire more diverse talent into our companies. When the real reason is that we aren’t investing to develop people from underrepresented groups with the skills we are looking for and we can’t get past our own biases around our so-called “bar” for quality hires.
“Blaming the lack of talent pipeline. This is the most convenient excuse for maintaining the status quo. We have been saying this for the 20 years I’ve been in DEIB. I think that’s sufficient enough time to develop the pipeline if you’re truly committed to it.”
Just focusing on training. The first knee-jerk reaction by many company leaders embarking on their first diversity initiative is to roll out some kind of diversity-focused training, usually around unconscious bias. Now, don’t get me wrong, I fully support doing training. It’s a great way to get everyone on the same baseline level of awareness and knowledge. But more often than not, diversity training is often done in a vacuum, disconnected from any broader diversity strategy for the firm. And when that is the case, it’s pretty much a waste of time. People have to be expected to change behaviors after training, take different actions and truly follow through in driving systemic changes for diversity training to have any impact.
Not rewarding Employee Resource Groups. Employee Resource Groups are employee-driven communities around a shared identity or characteristic that is usually underrepresented or challenging in some way and formed to provide support and foster belonging. They are underutilized levers in driving progress in DEIB because they are often disconnected from the business and not rewarded for their efforts. We have to start recognizing these groups for what they contribute to attracting, developing and retaining talent as well as how they can support product development, market expansion and customer service. And the employees who are doing the work as their second or third day jobs need to be rewarded in tangible ways for their impact.
How do you engage leaders in this work? What are 1-2 essential ways to get leaders involved?
Ask. Most of the time, leaders don’t engage because they just don’t know what to do. So I really try to give them a short list of things they can do immediately in the short term to support DEIB, and one or two things they can support in the long term. And the key to engaging them to follow through is to make sure these actions are simple and integrated into their current priorities. For example, if they need to hire some experienced talent quickly, I might ask them to speak at a career development event hosted by one of our diversity focused partners.
“Leverage analytics and demand accountability”
Connect them to the work emotionally. I’ve found that many leaders who are in the white, male majority don’t believe DEIB work is for them. So it’s important to get them connected to the work on a deeper level so that it motivates action. The closer a person is to a problem, the more likely they will want to solve it. So I might have a leader mentor someone who is very different from themselves or do a volunteer project in a community that is unfamiliar to them. These experiences can open their eyes to DEIB issues in a way that they wouldn’t be able to internalize otherwise.
Are there any management tips or philosophies that you use to ensure equity and belonging within your experience at various companies like Robinhood, Charles Schwab, and Yahoo?
Leverage analytics and demand accountability. The only way to determine whether you truly have inclusive processes is to ensure you have equitable outcomes. Collecting and analyzing your hiring, promotion, attrition and even customer service data for equity will help you pinpoint what you need to address. And making sure someone is accountable for equity in those processes will help you make the changes necessary to reach that outcome.
“Connect [leaders] to the work emotionally. I’ve found that many leaders who are in the white, male majority don’t believe DEIB work is for them. So I might have a leader mentor someone who is very different from themselves or do a volunteer project in a community that is unfamiliar to them. These experiences can open their eyes to DEIB issues..”
How do you measure your progress in equity and belonging with qualitative and quantitative data?
Representation of different dimensions of diversity, like race, gender, disability status or LGBTQ+ identity, and comparing that to available talent pools is necessary to identify any gaps and measure progress in hiring, promotion and retention. Employee surveys asking about inclusion and belonging sentiment will also give you good information on the current state of your culture and what you need to focus on. Any quantitative data should be supplemented with qualitative data gathered via interviews, focus groups or other feedback channels to tell the story behind the data. I always schedule time to chat with various people across the organization to maintain a pulse on how they’re feeling regarding our diversity and inclusion efforts.
Have you faced any challenges in developing and implementing this work? If so, how do you overcome them?
I think the biggest challenge to DEIB progress is when you have a leadership team that really doesn’t see this as a priority for the business. They either see it as a risk mitigation tactic or a compliance exercise, and therefore will only do the bare minimum required without actually paying attention to the results. When I encounter these situations, I do my best to understand what experiences they’ve had that are shaping their actions, or lack of, and do my best to create new experiences that can help shift their thinking. But I also try to focus my time and efforts on the DEIB champions and influencers whom I know will drive change across the organization because I believe the biggest motivator for others is seeing progress and success.
ModelExpand is a diversity, equity and inclusion consulting firm focused on radically accelerating the presence of historically underrepresented people in the workforce. ModelExpand’s work has been featured in Harvard Business Review, Forbes and CultureAmp. Need support embedding Diversity, Equity and Inclusion within your organization? Contact us below.
