Dear Ad Club Members,

A friend of mine is a financial genius with a laser-like ability to pinpoint a fiduciary strategy with alacrity and efficiency. She’s a dab hand at putting together high-functioning teams and has worked tirelessly to mentor and guide the next generation. She also happens to be a woman of colour…and that seems to be the only asset that the multinational company for whom she works can see. While she is praised endlessly for her work on DEI committees, she can’t help but chafe at the fact that that participation does not lead to promotion. Isn’t it galling to realize that in trying to make room at the table for our BIPOC brethren, we’re actually marginalizing them once again?

In the wake of Black Lives Matter and the deaths of George Floyd, Trayvon Martin, and Breonna Taylor, companies across the world rushed to put together Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives and often chose employees of colour to lead them. However, those employees are usually paid nothing more for their extra work and receive no consideration for the heavy emotional toll that such participation takes. According to a recent BBC article that addressed the issue, “It amounts to asking that person to relive his or her lived trauma over and over again” (Rosalind Chou, Associate Professor of Organizational Behaviour and Theory at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business).

There is a better way. Advises Dion Bullock, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging Strategy Lead at Bravely, an online employee platform, “The programs that have been most successful are those that create processes that make everyone accountable for implementing the work; balance the program work and responsibility with an employee’s main role; and compensate or recognize the work for advancement opportunities.”

It is not the responsibility of the BIPOC community to teach us how to learn about their struggle. We need to do the work!

Amanda

President, Advertising Club of Toronto