How to Lose a Chief Diversity Officer in 6 Months
Optimizing performative inclusion for maximum (Wall)Street cred
In order to avoid corporate Blackwashing after the Antiracist summer of 2020, your company decided to hire a Chief Diversity Officer (CDO). Marketing was thrilled to plaster their brown face all over social media as part of the corporate wokeness media campaign. The CDO salary was more than you wanted to pay, but leadership insisted that since everyone else was hiring diversity leadership, you should, too.
Hiring a person of color for a diversity leadership position is a great idea. I know some highly qualified CDOs who can’t get hired because they are too white for business’ Linkedin check-out-our-new-BIPOC-executive campaign. It’s important to be insufficiently prepared for your new CDO hire if you want to get them in and out fast. Be sure to ignore any concern for their personal well-being because the role of Chief Diversity Officer was always hard. It just became infinitely more complicated when antiracism became the topic du jour. This is great news for folks looking for some quick-and-easy performative inclusion.
Asking someone to help an organization optimize inclusion during the ‘before times’ was challenging enough. Expecting a person of color to navigate a conversation that humanity has been…
