A year ago, I was invited to speak at a law school event in Miami. While there, I was introduced to the chancellor of Southern University Law Center, John Pierre, and he said: ‘We’re doing things differently here’. It sounded intriguing, so a colleague and I from NetApp went to visit, with the goal of meeting some of Southern’s students and potentially hiring an intern. It was a life-changing event. When we got there, we discovered that the students were recruited for ‘grit and gratitude’, and they were amazing – one after another, after another.

Their life experiences were different compared to what I typically see for a student attending one of the Bay Area law schools. They’re not generally going into big law – that’s one of the areas to which they don’t have access. Many of them have had jobs for a long period of time, so they have a sense of what it is to work, alongside a passion for what they are studying and why they are studying. There’s a true desire to make a real difference in their communities. There’s an aspiration to learn and be exposed to a multitude of experiences so that they can bring that back and uplift their communities. The school itself is in Baton Rouge, one of the poorest cities in the US, and the students simply have a different cultural background, work background, attitude, and a real sense of grit.

The chancellor didn’t just know everybody’s name. He knew every student’s background and the struggles that it took everyone to even get to law school. Many of them are first-generation college students, let alone law school students. He personally knows them; he personally called and recruited them. It’s a very difficult selection process and that’s how he ends up with students who possess such grit.

After discussing my experience at Southern with Matt Fawcett, NetApp’s general counsel, we decided we would definitely hire an intern from Southern and that we would invite some of our friends to hire interns from there as well. We contacted Walmart, Liberty Mutual, Juniper, Chronicle, Keesal Young & Logan and LexCheck, and those are now on the initial advisory board of CLI.

At the same time, I started talking with Southern and Chancellor John Pierre about offering a combined training program. I have a wide network, in part because of my time with and founding CLOC, so I started to make some phone calls to experts in the industry, and everybody was anxious to raise their hand and volunteer. So, we have designed a program for the summer of 2019. It consists of one-hour sessions every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday during June and July, and if you attend 80% of the 24 sessions, you will receive a certification in personal development from CLI and Southern University.

Then I thought, well heck, if we’re going to create a training program for 50, we may as well create it for 5,000. The speakers are so extraordinary that we thought we should open it up to our legal department and across the business. We have six legal interns, but NetApp itself has 140 interns, so we opened it up to all of them – whether they be in marketing, sales or engineering – because what the speakers are covering crosses the boundary of legal and dives into business and general career-based topics. We also opened it up to law firms.

Happily, CLI has expanded my existing network. John Pierre has a broad network of law schools himself, so I have been introduced to other deans of universities. One of them had a group of 60 law schools, primarily from the South, that had been meeting regularly. These schools often don’t have access for their students in regions that are outside of the community they are traditionally working in and with. As a result, we’ve been exposed to predominantly African-American communities, and to a well-organized group of students that have not had much access to Fortune 500 companies, and these companies have not had access to this group of students.

At the moment, we have about 1,000 attendees signed up for CLI, and the goal is 5,000 before the end of summer – so we want to get the word out. We are recording sessions and, for regions like Australia where the sessions take place in the middle of the night, you can download the recordings and play them at your leisure.

As we get the word out about CLI, the community is really starting to grow. Those on the board are keeping in touch with one another, working on joint projects and working together to build the CLI community. And the students are becoming connected to one another. If you’re on during the sessions, you can see them chatting – they are very engaged, passionate and enthusiastic about becoming connected with one another, and they’re literally all over the globe. During the school year, we may see it taken to the next level, when some of the students are together in person and they have had a common experience of interning and of participating in the CLI and receiving the certification.

At NetApp, the interns meet in a conference room together during each session, so there’s 30 at this location who convene in person for each one of the presentations. They’re completely building their own network and creating connections outside of their own speciality areas, which gives them a broad view of how an enterprise works. In the practice of law, this is very important, because those are our internal business clients, and any time when we get closer to them – whether it be through our interns or through our technology – we are able to provide better legal services.

One of the most important goals of CLI has been achieving a focus on diversity and inclusion. This has come directly from the interests, passion and commitment of the general counsel, and then, of course, across the department. In the case of this project specifically, the NetApp general counsel has endorsed this relationship from the start – he is an extraordinary leader and can identify when there’s an opportunity. He then empowers me and others to go out and explore.

But D&I is also a natural fit for legal operations. This community is well connected to one another and we are able to collaborate when we see good programming and good opportunity. In this case, there’s opportunity in terms of creating the next generation of attorneys who have a fundamental connection with one another and a focus on diversity and inclusion from before they graduate. It becomes part of their DNA prior to even completing their legal training – so who knows what that will look like in another ten years? Some of the impact is short term and some of the impact is much longer term. As these relationships develop and strengthen through the years, they will change, morph and evolve as these students find jobs and remain connected. As a result, we will have this thread of diversity and inclusion running through multiple different job experiences, geographies, law schools and employers.

But I think this is a topic that extends beyond legal. Inside NetApp, we have partnered with both our diversity, inclusion and belonging group, and also our university and recruiting group. So, connections have been established – not only across the industry and then the globe, but across NetApp.

It has been a bit of a surprise to me to discover there is already a diverse community existing that I didn’t know about. We’re not having to start from scratch in terms of creating a diverse and passionate community – we just have to be plugged into one another. NetApp is located in the San Francisco Bay Area, in the South Bay; there’s an infrastructure here, there’s an infrastructure there, and we just didn’t know about each other. So now, being able to take advantage of years of connecting in our own silos, we can expand two or three or four mature communities into one unified body, all at different ages and stages of our careers.

By putting together CLI, it’s been fantastic to find we have incredible people standing in line and raising their hands to volunteer their time, talent and commitment to help all these interns get started in their careers. Everybody has been enthusiastic when they have been approached to speak, and not only have they been donating their time, but also resources. For example, one speaker is offering online training at a discount for the students, taking away an economic barrier and therefore allowing students to more easily share in her gift and talent.

We’re making a difference in the lives of these students. It is so impacting.

There continues to be a heated battle for talent. The battle has been happening for a while, but I think it just continues to intensify as more and more leaders try to figure out what environment they can create, and what culture they can promote, that will attract the very best talent and allow it to thrive. Every law student and every early career person you talk to wants the opportunity to become the very best at what they can do – and that is the responsibility we have.

We’ve had a longstanding relationship with Street Law (which educates about law and government in schools and communities), because we recognize there is not enough diverse talent coming into the legal profession, and this allows us to reach students early and help them navigate through the legal path. We love the fact that Street Law is allowing us to connect with high school students that are interested in the legal profession. The Silicon Valley Urban Debate League has a similar program that is intended to get high school students interested in the law through a debate-like forum, and we continue to be active there, too.

We’ve gone so far as to hire directly on campus; we’re one of the few companies that do that and and have done so for almost ten years. This allows us to engage with a set of talent that, candidly, most corporate legal departments just aren’t seeing.

Diversity and inclusion is no longer a talking point or a buzz-phrase – you need to live it every day. If your work environment and your culture don’t continue to enforce that, you won’t attract diverse people, those you do attract you won’t retain and, ultimately, you will be playing with the second or third-best talent. That’s just not a recipe for success.

We have a strong belief that if you don’t have the right basic culture, no specific program is going to move the needle, so there is a lot of focus in the legal team on creating an overall culture – whether it’s around work-life balance, the amenities in the workplace, parental leave and the like – that we think is consistent with having a diverse and inclusive workforce.

The office of legal and administrative affairs has a very robust talent program that we call the ‘talent factory’, which is intended to bring talent in at the very early levels of the organization and promote them through thereafter. What that means is every manager understanding specifically where their employee stands, where they need to go next, and how they’re going to get there. It’s very personalized and it allows us to focus very much on diversity and inclusion.

It’s one thing to look at numbers and statistics, and they are important, but at the same time you really need to look at each individual, the role that they’re in, and their career path. I’m proud to say that seven of my 12 direct reports would be considered diverse by US standards. If you look throughout the organization, you see individuals who have come in at entry level and have been promoted through to more and more impactful positions. To me, that’s the key aspect of any D&I program – it’s those individual stories and that career progression.

We are in the midst of a rollout of our next inclusion program iteration across my team, using an outside vendor who brings an intellectually rigorous approach to inclusion, including talking about how the brain works. We all recognize that diverse and inclusive teams are more innovative and they’re more successful. Therefore, acknowledging our own built-in biases – which everyone has – and then understanding how to deal with them in a team environment is incredibly important.

Brian Tippens, our chief diversity and inclusion officer, is a lawyer by background and I convinced him to rotate into my organization and run what I call the ‘OLAA (office of legal and administrative affairs) employee experience’, focused on culture, inclusion and diversity. His task is to look at the experience of our employees end-to-end – to take a fresh look at what it means to be a member of our team and what kind of experience they are getting, and then design initiatives to continue pushing that experience forward. I’m excited to see Brian actually in the process of looking around and coming up with ideas and initiatives. It’s early days, and he is currently formulating his plan. I can’t wait to see what it is and start working for this next chapter of success.

You never stop learning about yourself, you never stop learning about your team, and culture is always changing in some form or fashion, even though the core principles may stay the same. In the last couple of years, I do think we’ve seen a shift in balance between inclusion and diversity, versus just talking about diversity, and we have seen the conversation move to one where many of the inclusion presentations I now see talk much more about how we work as humans, how our brains function – so that we can actually work on strategies to be more inclusive.

We are all continuing on this journey, and I think that’s actually what makes this such a super interesting and exciting issue. In some regards, the way it’s sometimes been talked about in the past was as if we were trying to solve a problem. I don’t think this is solving a problem; I think this is inspiring your talent and building teams that are going to continue to be high-performing. That’s a never-ending opportunity – and what makes these jobs fun, especially when you see some successes, is knowing that you’ve got to continue to progress if you’re going to continue being successful.

We’re also always looking to make an impact in the marketplace with the organizations that we support, and we are very active with my own team in legal pro bono and community service, participating in the Leadership Council on Legal Diversity, the Law Foundation of Silicon Valley, and organizations like the National Center for Women and Information Technology and National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering. We’re constantly looking for that external feedback to make sure that what we’re doing falls into the category of best practice.

One of my personal favorites recently is the fact that we’ve worked with the Girl Scouts of the USA to create a cybersecurity badge, for young girls to get an interest at that early stage in a cybersecurity career. It’s based on a videogame, and other organizations are currently looking at how to try to leverage it for other types of things.

That community piece is also an inspiration inside the company for folks, whether they are in legal or not. We are always looking to make sure that our brand is associated with the inclusion and diversity work that we’re doing, whether it’s joining amicus briefs or signing on to certain compacts around diversity and inclusion. I’m super proud to be at a company that has really been at the forefront of these things since its founding. You don’t feel like you’re trying to push a rock uphill. More often than not, it feels like you’re on the downhill side and just trying to pedal fast enough to keep up with the momentum.

Diversity and inclusion has been a part of our RFP process going back to before I took over running the legal organization. Again, you’re looking for that team dynamic. I think the days of hiring law firms is long past; certainly it is for us. What’s happened is that you’re not even just hiring a lawyer at this point, you’re hiring a team. And if that team isn’t diverse and inclusive, you’re not going to end up with the outcomes you want, so just from a practical and pragmatic perspective, that’s important. It’s been an initiative across numerous companies to continue fostering the growth of diverse talent inside the law firms, and the power of the purse is important in that regard – we are certainly supportive in that way.

The legal department serves the business and other functions, so it’s a great opportunity to put diversity in front of them. Our clients may get very comfortable with one lawyer, or one type of lawyer, but we are really pushing – for example, ‘This person is the expert on this topic’, or ‘This is someone that we’d like you to work with’ – and making sure that we are providing our lawyers with good exposure.

At the end of the day, decisions are not only made by me – I don’t get to pick the next GC on my way out; it’s a decision the CEO is going to make, so they will need adequate exposure to a number of people. It will be a decision the rest of the executive team and board is going to weigh in on – so how am I ensuring that folks I think could be candidates, no matter what their developmental path, are getting the attention that they need?

We didn’t have much of a pipeline when I joined Peabody in 2015, so I began to work with recruiting firms that I know focus on diversity. I’ve always made sure I’m given a diverse and representative set of attorneys for an open position – women, men, diversity from an ethnic standpoint, international, LBGTQ, war veterans. I then make sure that whoever is interviewing candidates understands this is an important element of our recruiting.

We’ve got a good mentoring program that we’re building through our HR department, and I’ve made sure that several individuals on my team – both men and women, but with a focus on women – have been part of that, so they are developing the right skills for the next level. Sometimes they’re not even thinking about moving up, so it’s really getting them to think about and own their careers, and nurture them, alongside me.

Some level of sponsorship is important. There are unconscious biases that can come into play, like the halo effect – someone looks like you, so you may be more willing to sponsor them or almost overlook deficiencies. It’s important to me that everybody is given that level of sponsorship and I’m there advocating for people who others may not be advocating for. I want to make sure people are giving folks that may not fit their definition of someone that should be developed that opportunity too. It really is, I think, taking that broader chance on people, including those who may look and think different from you, but do deserve a seat at the table.

If you don’t measure something, how do you know it’s actually happening? We create data and measure it with our in-house lawyers and external law firms in terms of who they are putting up front for us to work with. We don’t yet tie metrics to people’s goals, and that is where I think it would be most effective. The companies where I’ve seen it take hold are the ones that start to tie it to individual goals and commitments, which then moves the company’s commitment. I also think it’s important that not only the management team hold each other accountable; it’s about holding peers and direct reports accountable too. ‘I see what you’re doing for person X, what about person Y?’ And if they don’t have a particular skill, ‘What are you doing to help them develop it?’

Furthermore, there have to be clear-cut development plans in writing that you can hold people accountable to. I’ve seen too many people recall discussions they’ve had regarding development, and three or four years later nothing has happened because no plan was put together. I have strongly pushed to get plans in writing, work with HR, and then have quarterly check-ins to make sure movement is happening. I think it’s like anything else in developing a business – it has to be a process where people are held accountable, all the way up to the CEO.

There are a lot of people coming at diversity with the best of intentions – including me – and I think that we’re now stepping back and focusing more on data, and looking at what works for other companies and other industries. There’s a lot more partnering going on to make sure that we’re sharing strategies and efforts that work – and maybe discarding, a little faster, things that really aren’t moving the needle. For a long time, there was a lot of talk about mentoring and now we’re realizing it’s really about sponsorship.

You can’t do things the same way as in the past. For example, when trying to get women on the board, you can’t insist that people have a CEO background, because you’re going to find maybe five women who fit that. You have to be willingly flexible on requirements. And then you need to have the answers to individuals who say, ‘You’re just setting quotas and lowering standards.’ You’ve got to be able to play back to the data that shows it works. Sometimes we do have to take a chance if we think people have got the innate skills and there are maybe just some other things we need to work through to build that.

When we put out the RFPs for our convergence panel, to get our 100+ firms down to 13, diversity was very much one of the criteria we used to measure the firms. And it wasn’t just a soft criteria, we made it clear that we were going to reach out every month and ask for data, and have a monthly call with the relationship partner to talk through what’s working and what isn’t working – including diversity and inclusion.

We’re also going out to firms individually to talk about the relationship, meet with their affinity groups and associates, and ask ‘What can my team do differently?’ What we’ve heard is: ‘We need work on the biggest matters, but we also want mentoring and the sponsorship.’ One of the things we heard from those associates was that they need us to send the message back to the firm, so the firm is hearing about their work.

As a result, we’ve stepped back and really thought through what can be done differently so people can get noticed at their firm. We do surveys and rate associates we have worked with on a one-to-five scale. If they get a five, we send a letter back to the committees that are making decisions about who gets promoted to partner. That direct, one-to-one dialogue with the very individuals we’re trying hard to impact is very important.

The vast majority of firms on our convergence panel have been supportive and understood what we’re trying to achieve. There have been one or two who have said, ‘Well, we’re in a location where it’s very hard to hire diversely’, and I’ve challenged them: ‘Is it really? You may need to change your outreach or approach, there are likely ways to attract people and reach in earlier, through colleges or otherwise, in order to identify those students.’

We’re not kicking people out of our convergence, we are working with them to challenge such approaches. We’re also recognizing it will take more time with some firms depending on location or sophistication and their journey on this diversity pathway. We’re here to influence, not criticize.

To me, the next success is getting this built into goals: setting clear metrics and pathways over multiple years. I think people are already seeing the business benefit, but there are ways for them to see even more clearly. I’m not going to feel successful until folks are truly on board in a way that we can measure and demonstrate change.

Here in the US, the legal profession is among the least diverse of comparable white-collar professions. It should be the most. The law is supposed to be about justice, equality and opportunity and I think lawyers are particularly attuned to those concepts. It’s in the nature of their training and the work that they do.

However, historically, the law as a whole has been very slow to change – not just in the area of diversity and inclusion. Lawyers and legal employers are often cautious by nature. They can be more tentative to embrace change and feel more comfortable with the status quo, and I think that’s reflected in where the law sits with diversity and inclusion. There are a lot of legacy barriers and impediments that have not yet been fully addressed or eradicated, which the profession as a whole needs to continue to work against. We’d often prefer to rely on precedent, both in our case law analysis and in how we lead, manage and operate.

We’re at a place where women represent about half of all law school graduates, but they represent only about 23% of law firm partners, 19% of equity partners, 30% of Fortune 500 general counsel and 30% or so of federal district court judges. The numbers just aren’t up there yet. The category of things that still require change are those like unconscious bias, not enough mentorship or sponsorship opportunities, less recognition than should be provided, and fewer leadership opportunities. These are all things that we are very conscious of, are working against, and trying to resolve.

I believe very strongly in diversity and inclusion, not least because our Law Division is very much a human capital function. We don’t have a product, all we have is great people delivering advice and counseling our clients – and to do that well we really need diverse talent to bring diverse perspectives to the work.

As the leader, it’s very important that I am personally invested in this subject, that I speak to it regularly, and that I am very engaged and involved in the work we are doing. Various studies have shown that one of the single biggest differentiating factors as to whether diversity and inclusion programs succeed is the amount of time spent by the leader – whether that is the CEO at corporate level, or the general counsel at legal department level. So I invest a lot of myself and my time in this work.

We have a diversity and inclusion council that helps guide our efforts: a cross-functional group of professionals from across the legal department that looks at various issues and makes recommendations, and shares our work both inside our company and outside. We also have an individual diversity champion, who acts as a liaison between the legal department and bank-wide diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. We have a mentorship program that we are expanding and that is focused, initially, on professionals of color.

We’ve developed a ‘Spotlight on Talent’ program, which gives early-career women and diverse lawyers from outside law firms the opportunity to learn more about U.S. Bank, meet with us and present educational content to our entire legal department. We can then see first-hand how capable they are and begin to develop relationships to help sustain them for growth and development in their careers. We invite law firms to bid on this opportunity, and have conducted five sessions, with a sixth planned for this fall. The program has been very successful, to the extent that one law firm asked if they could recommend it to other clients. We, of course, readily agreed.

We look at demographic data that relates to our department to show how we are doing against our goals and objectives. Candidly, we have historically over-performed on gender diversity, but are not yet where we’d like to be with professionals of color, so that’s been a big emphasis and area of focus for us. Several elements of our diversity and inclusion initiatives have goals, so we look at those regularly and try to measure ourselves against what we set out to do. We also try to benchmark ourselves against what is going on in the broader profession and also, importantly, with other corporate legal departments. We’re involved in a number of groups and organizations that talk about this topic very regularly, and we compare notes and share ideas.

We approach diversity and inclusion work from the perspective that there is not necessarily an end goal; we are never going to be completely done with it as a constant work in progress. We’re always trying to do better to improve, achieve and accomplish our overall objectives, so we have to be eternally vigilant about the subject. It’s unlike the more traditional financial measurements or other data we might look at. There’s not some day out there in the future, whether it’s a month, a year or three years from now, where I’m going to say ‘We’re all done with this topic, and we can move on to something else.’

We are continually learning and trying to add new things, or get rid of elements we don’t think are working for us. One example would be related to recruiting. We have some specific recruitment guidelines that we use, so there is a lot of emphasis on diversity as we recruit. But previously, we were not always disciplined about a process for recruiting new lawyers, and relied significantly on word of mouth, referrals and people we knew. Not surprisingly, that approach didn’t produce sufficiently diverse candidate pools for us. We’ve since stopped that, and now have a more disciplined approach. For example, we created recruiting guidelines and require at least one diverse candidate for each open position, encourage searches outside of traditional geographies, and require panel interviews and consistent interview questions. We also work closely with affinity bar organizations for sourcing candidates.

There is both tension and collaboration between the in-house and law firm world, and people have different views on the degree to which in-house departments should be trying to drive diversity with our law firm partners and providers. I feel strongly that we have a unique opportunity to do so, and we use it to the benefit of the broader profession. We are very focused on the Mansfield Rule, which requires organizations to commit to considering diverse candidates in recruiting, developing and promoting people into leadership. The first version of Mansfield focused on law firms, which could voluntarily commit to the program and ultimately become certified. The in-house version just rolled out, and we were one of the first companies to agree and sign on – we’re very proud to be on the leading edge of that. We’ve since taken things a step further, and have actually asked about 40 of our leading law firms to formally commit to the Mansfield Rule. We’ve really challenged them to take this journey with us; in no small part because we view our law firms very much as an extension of our own in-house legal department.

At this moment in time, financial services is undergoing a dramatic transformation in terms of what types of products and services it provides, and how customers can access those. There is a lot happening with technology and innovation in banking and financial services – probably the best example is mobile banking. Our company, like a lot of companies and banks, is investing heavily in technology and innovation, while working hard to figure out what the future looks like and how to create that future.

To me, diversity is critically important to innovation. In many respects, I think it can help unlock innovation, and so although it’s important and critical to what we do, it’s that much more important in this broader environment of innovation that we’re operating in. We’re in something of a unique moment in time: while historically the law has been slow to change, globalization and technology are ascending, which is driving disruption and innovation in how legal services are provided. This change brings opportunity; the law has a tremendous chance now, in this moment, to rededicate itself and leverage the diverse talent we already have and focus anew on retention, development and promotion into leadership. The problem is not with diverse lawyers, it’s with the legacy structures, systems and behaviors that have made their path in the law uniquely difficult, and stood in the way of full equality.

It bothered me that we didn’t have any kind of support for women, so we started in 2012 by holding a summit in Chicago for the top 125 women at the company – not just lawyers – and we brought in high-profile speakers like the attorney general of Illinois who, at the time, was a female. We had a great program, and it kicked off a three-pronged women’s leadership approach: annual summits – which also included regional summits where we got deeper into the organization with more junior women – a women’s mentoring program, and a women’s employee resource group.

As I started working with women on those programs, one of my close friends became the President of the American Bar Association, and she asked me to participate in the Commission on Women in the Profession. It was through my involvement in that that I actually started to really understand the various ways to manage outside counsel and inside counsel in a way that advances diversity.

When we started this women’s leadership program, of course, I tried to get as many of the women within my department involved, although there was competition with women from throughout the whole company. But within the department, I really tried to make it clear that a person’s diversity of any sort should not in any way impede their ability to influence or participate in activities – and so it was really about leadership and sending the right message from the top.

At the same time, I looked at our outside firms and recognized that there is ‘power of the purse strings’. That being able to choose comes with the ability to ask for things that maybe firms wouldn’t otherwise do. So every year we assess our preferred provider program, and we evaluate business-related aspects of their performance. I started adding in (and this was something that I’d learned through the Commission on Women in the Profession) factors related to diversity – so we would ask the firms every year to provide us diversity statistics for the firm as a whole and for the team that supported us, and I also ask about succession planning: when the relationship partner is retired, who are you training to take over for this business? I make sure that, to the extent possible, client service teams for every matter are diverse.

One thing that I’ve always known is, if you ask people for this kind of information, they are really going to focus on it, and if you don’t ask, then they don’t think about it. So we collect this data, put it in a table every year, and plot it over multiple years. And when the leadership of the client service team, the relationship manager, comes in every year to visit during our annual review, these firms are concerned if their numbers didn’t improve firm-wide and client service team-wide.

It’s funny – the smallest firm in our preferred provider program, which is an 11-person firm, takes it the most seriously, and that was interesting to me. We have lots of conversations with the firms about what we expect, and I see that there is a greater effort to bring women into the teams. I actually even ask questions about compensation and who is getting billing credits – so it goes all the way down; it is a complete discussion. I think it creates a clear expectation on my part and it creates some good conversations, and I think it makes people make changes in how they do things.

The women’s leadership program evolved into a broader diversity program – including ethnic diversity. The CEO asked me to be the executive inclusion and diversity champion for the company – which was great, because I was excited about being able to do more.

Being able to take that role enabled me to push some issues. We expanded the program; we have so many more employee resource groups now than we ever did before – we have Women, Hispanics, African Americans, Veterans, Multi-generational, and Pan-Asian groups. And the last one we created, which I’m really proud about, and of which l’m the executive sponsor, is NiPride – our LGBTQ employee resource group. That was a really big deal.

I think being a woman is what influenced my work in this area. I don’t think being a lawyer is what matters; I think it’s being in a senior leadership role that gives you gravitas and authority, and people listen. You don’t realize how much people listen until you talk about difficult issues, and you get people to listen, and then to follow. People care a lot, but there’s also an element of having the courage to pursue it. It’s really easy to have a passion; it’s also easy to say ‘Well, they said I couldn’t do it’, or ‘They told me no’. You’ve got to have the courage to challenge pre-existing ideas and to move forward, even when it’s not necessarily the popular approach.

One of the biggest mistakes that I made in the beginning was not recognizing that in order to have an effective inclusion and diversity program, you cannot exclude the men – you have got to include women, men, everybody, because otherwise you’re talking to yourself and to the people who already get it. You need to be talking to everybody about the issues, because women alone can’t solve the problem. It’s got to be a conversation with everybody.

One of the things we found when we had the women’s leadership program, was that the men thought we were just going out and having fun, or drinking tea. We had serious, business-focused programming to develop the women based on various issues that they were concerned about at the time – but the men don’t know unless we tell them, right? And that’s the whole point: to let everybody know about the things that are of concern and work together on those issues. We want men to be mentors as well as women. Where does the power lie? The power lies in the people that are at the top and the numbers show that most of them are not women. So if you limit it to just women mentors, then you’d basically be diminishing the value of the program from the outset. It’s about being open and talking about it from the executive level down – and that includes both men and women talking about the issues and supporting what we’re doing.

We have to look outside – if we don’t, we’ll always be getting the same answer. I think it’s important to know what’s going on outside of our company, otherwise we will never make a change, or we might not make the best change. I think it is helpful to have consultants – you bring in outside firms for legal work when they have specialty areas that you don’t have in-house. Even though we have a small inclusion and diversity team at the company, obviously they can’t be up on everything, so I think it is important to have outside help, to know what’s going on and to really understand everything before we make changes – and to understand what changes we should make.

This can never be about just work-life balance issues. If you start doing programs that are founded on addressing those kinds of issues, they’re going to be viewed as trite, as not substantive and not helping the business. You’ve got to show that what you’re doing is going to help meet the business goals and achieve our business objectives. That’s why I’ve always insisted on having really substantive, meaty, development- and business-focused topics for any of the programming we do, and for any of the support that we provide. For example, there was a point maybe eight, nine or ten years ago where the big focus of the company was execution – that was the mantra of the CEO at the time. So our programming was about how to execute. We had speakers on execution for women, how women have challenges in executing compared to men, and so it was about tying the programming to the goals and the needs of the business at the time. You need to have it clear to everybody that it’s all about meeting the needs of the business, it’s not about benefitting women just for women’s sake.

At Kellogg Company, I serve on the executive diversity and inclusion council, the global legal and compliance department’s leadership team and I also lead the global ethics and compliance function. I serve as the head of the people team within the legal and compliance function, advising on global D&I issues, and am also the former executive sponsor of K Pride and Allies – Kellogg’s business/employee resource group (B/ERG) dedicated to LGBTQIA employees and their allies.

In the wider profession, I collaborate with external law firms that are passionate about diversity and inclusion. I serve on the board for the LGBT Bar Association and the board of trustees for the National Judicial College, which educates and inspires the judiciary on topics including diversity and inclusion.

At Kellogg, we know that people are our competitive advantage and we know we must nurture a diverse, inclusive environment in which all our people are empowered to bring their authentic ‘whole selves’ to work and achieve their full potential. Our focus on diversity enables us to build a culture where all employees are inspired to share their passion, talents and ideas. They become part of a team that works to better serve the needs of our diverse consumers by delivering fresh thinking, product innovations and quality brands.

Our legal and compliance team helps to advise the company on how to create a diverse and inclusive environment, so it’s essential that we’re leaders and role models in supporting, developing and growing diverse talent. It’s a competency that demands time, attention and leadership. The team is a testament to our ability to lead, as we are incredibly diverse – our leadership team is roughly 60% male and 40% female, and 50% of the team is a racial minority. We are also inclusive of other dimensions of diversity, including LGBTQIA people and persons with disabilities.

We are very intentional about developing and supporting an environment that fosters inclusion and a sense of belonging for all. We want to be a high-performing team, and that starts with trust. Trust is about confidence in your team members, assuming positive intent, and being open to being vulnerable and learning together. To me, it makes a personal difference to be able to bring my whole self to work, so I strive to ensure that others can do the same. We are very intentional about varying facets of diversity and factor this in as we aim to ensure everyone has the chance to speak and be heard.

We have a variety of companywide diversity and inclusion initiatives. For example, our Kellogg executive diversity and inclusion council (EDIC) is chaired and actively led by our chairman and CEO, Steve Cahillane. The council meets at least quarterly to review workforce data including representation, hiring, promotions and turnover data, by gender, race/ethnicity, people with disabilities and veterans. EDIC is comprised of all global function heads, ensuring that diversity and inclusion considerations filter into each functional area.

We also have eight B/ERGs, three of which have global chapters. Each B/ERG is dedicated to fostering a diverse and inclusive workforce within the context of our company’s mission, values and business objectives. These help to create an environment of inclusion and belonging, enabling our employees to bring their authentic selves to work and achieve their full potential. The B/ERGs also work in innovative ways to share their valuable insights to positively and strategically achieve our business goals and objectives.

The company provides training around the topics of unconscious bias, gender speak and microaggression to help ensure our leaders are aware of how their personal experiences can impact talent decisions.

At Kellogg, our legal team leads and influences the diversity and inclusion strategy, but is only one voice in this space. It all starts with us modeling diversity and inclusion in our department and advising on what has worked for us. One of the initiatives of which we’re very proud is our collaboration with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Law Fellow program. During this summer program – in partnership with the NAACP – students travel to Kellogg headquarters for an immersion in Kellogg’s culture and legal practices, and for exposure and interaction with many of our executive leaders.

I think it’s absolutely critical for outside legal service providers to be diverse and inclusive. If I’m receiving advice on how to manage employment and diversity issues, I want to be assured that it’s effective advice, and I want to see the providers demonstrate that they believe in their counsel.

At Kellogg, accountability for diversity and inclusion starts at the top. Annually, we provide an update for our board of directors that includes our workforce metrics, movement and qualitative efforts to drive improvement, and our board is actively engaged in our diversity and inclusion agenda.

At the B/ERG level, success is measured through our global opinion survey, which is administered to all employees, as well as through key performance indicators such as community service contributions and business impact.

Within the legal department, we monitor our strategies to see if they are working – we have an expert in data analytics who measures our work within the company and our own department to determine success and impact. We also benchmark ourselves against other companies. And, while we continue to do well in this space, we always strive to do better.

We find value in benchmarking best practices among competitors, as well as companies with world-class D&I programs. This helps us to stay at the forefront of the diversity and inclusion conversation. When reviewing these best practices, we discuss what works and how we can make it even better. Innovation is a core competency at Kellogg and we carry it into everything we do, including determining innovative ways to integrate diversity and inclusion practices throughout our organization.

Throughout our journey, we’ve learned that providing training on diversity topics is not enough. We need to focus on creating an environment where employees feel included, can develop a true sense of belonging and feel comfortable bringing their authentic selves to work. We understand that this can only be achieved by creating a culture of trust, driven by leaders who are visible champions of inclusion. Employees have confidence in leaders who take the time to know them as individuals.

The Rooney Rule is used in the football arena to make sure that when NFL teams are hiring professional staff supporting sports teams, they have some diversity options. An organization called Diversity Lab has developed something called the Mansfield Rule – a spin-off from the Rooney Rule – which is a framework to make sure that as you’re considering new talent to promote or to attract laterally, you ensure the people being considered represent the population as a whole, or represent a significant level of diversity. The format that takes is to make sure that 30% of the candidates you are screening, and 30% of the candidates that you’re bringing in to interview are diverse. We use the Mansfield Rule very heavily for recruiting, retention and promotion, including recruitment of outside counsel.

We participate in local initiatives – we’re part of the Law in Technology Diversity Collaborative, which is a collaborative of seven companies in the Bay Area that recruit diverse summer interns. These are people who law firms, for whatever reason, have not recruited from law schools but who are incredible superstars. Each company partners with a law firm. We host the intern for five weeks each, with the idea that they then have both technology company and big-name law firm experience. The hope is that they can get an offer from the law firm at the end of the summer, which is a real jump-start to their career, particularly for diverse and exceptional students who have been left on the outside by law firms in the campus recruitment process.

In the legal team, we are very focused on our own initiatives. The Law in Technology Diversity Collaborative is a legal-only collaborative, and so is the Mansfield Rule. Where we lean on the company-wide initiatives are in elimination of bias training, mentorship opportunities, affinity group memberships and meetings – we have a women’s internal network that meets fairly often and finds initiatives, so it’s a nice pairing. We hold hands with the company-wide initiatives, but we are very focused in our own group on making things happen just for the lawyers and legal staff.

As a general matter, we rely very heavily on internal elimination of bias training, to make sure that people are aware of their own biases. Unfortunately, people tend to interview for people who look like them or remind them of themselves, so we try to raise awareness of that fact in a way where people don’t feel defensive, but have some awareness of their own contours.

Honestly, it’s a really fine balance between token diversity and looking around and understanding if we’ve been successful, because we all have a unique upbringing and story, and we don’t want to discount people’s humanity. But we also want to advance and promote traditional diversity here; finding, promoting and retaining women leaders is one of our top corporate goals and so we have company-wide and group-based metrics where we look at the percentage of women in each position, the percentage of fallout year over year from each level, and people in the pipeline. We have internal development programs that we send high-performing women and other diverse talent to, and we have an equal pay study going on. We look at the numbers, we understand who is at what level by ethnicity and gender and where we have gaps, and then we try and fill those gaps based on precise outreach.

D&I efforts are such important, complex initiatives. Of course, ‘diversity and inclusion’ is easy to say out loud, but each person is a complex set of circumstances. I have two young kids, and I’m very aware that when you have a young kid, it’s a tough thing to figure out how you do your work and pick them up from school. Figuring out how to accommodate different life stages and demands in order to make the workplace welcoming and accommodating to all forms of talent is critical. The learning curve is steep, and that’s one of the reasons I’m very appreciative of the support of Diversity Lab and others to help us climb that curve. Diversity Lab certifies outside counsel as Mansfield-compliant – which means that the outside law firms are considering 30% diverse candidates for partners, track and for lateral hires, etc. If you get the certification, then you get to come to a conference with in-house counsel. And it means that we can rely on that certification to know that, in hiring, we’re promoting and living our own corporate and personal values.

Diversity Lab creates many forums for senior lawyers to get together and share tips and tricks. For example, if you have pumping rooms at work with hospital-grade pumps, that is something that tends to promote women returning to work – and staying once they have returned. Having some flexibility in job scheduling, job sharing, extended maternity leave, Milk Stork – these are things that support moms.

You can promote diversity in outside counsel through either financial incentives or financial penalties, or through simply asking a lot of questions to determine how credit is allocated at the firm and who is financially rewarded for bringing in and/or doing your work. Promoting diversity and inclusion outside our organization is as much of a concern for us, so we ask a lot of questions when trying to hire for our matters; asking about matter credits is a sign that you care about where your money goes and that its path reflects your values.

If you have the right culture in legal, then it tends to be a group of people that are listened to within a company. Legal teams are in a position of strength to lead by example, because people do listen and I think it can have significant weight – so using that for good, and to express strong corporate values is really worthwhile. So, talking about it, but also leading by example, is important, and also offering easy ways to do it. The Mansfield Rule makes it really easy: you just don’t bring candidates onsite for interviews until 30% of the pool (or more) is diverse. The hiring manager has to be disciplined enough to say, ‘We’re not ready to bring people onsite; these are the metrics that we are trying to meet in diversity, we are not yet ready to take action in hiring because we haven’t been able to consider the things we are committed to considering.’ Essentially, you have to commit to not letting the urgent overwhelm the important. Hiring is always urgent but doing it to reflect your values is critical.

Fintech tends to be very dominated by men at the executive leadership level. In my case, I didn’t think about it; I followed my nose to what was interesting. When I left my law firm, I joined a fintech start-up that was run by two women, and then my next general counsel was a woman, so I think I’ve had a little bit of an anomaly of an experience where I’ve had women around me in an otherwise male-dominated industry.

I think that there are a lot of people that are incredibly focused on this and think it is a really urgent issue. I also look around and notice, particularly in fintech, that there are very few senior female lawyers by percentage, so something is being lost between A and B. But,in my experience, people think this is an urgent issue.

I think you see a desire to have more women in senior roles in legal and also across the board in fintech, and what I’ve come to realize is that in legal – like finance, like marketing, like engineering – the need is to prepare and promote women to leadership. And because legal is a service function, there has to be a business need for a leader, so the business has to recognize women as those leaders. And you can generate a bit of inertia: because women may show the same biases that we’ve been talking about, in that they tend to recognize talent that reminds them of themselves, one of the good things is that if you have more women senior leaders, you get more women senior leaders. If you have more diverse senior leaders, you get more diverse senior leaders – because they can and do recognize talent that might otherwise go unnoticed.

My goal has been to lift while we climb: essentially, to help other women who are really successful, smart, leaders and make sure that they, in their groups, are having opportunities. To advocate for them and point out – in meetings, at events, in emails, everywhere – how great their work is and what an impact they are having on a project or a team or the company or culture – to make sure that people are seeing them as senior leaders.

I often try to go to women-owned staffing businesses when we’re sourcing contractors. Any time you’re spending money, you can spend it in accordance with your values, and I keep that in mind with individual people and with service providers. There’s plenty out there that can satisfy what you’re looking for, and I think a rising tide floats all boats.

SoundCloud’s mission is to give people the power to share and connect through music. The platform’s community of creators and listeners are a young and an incredibly diverse group, and we work hard to ensure our employees reflect this diversity as well. SoundCloud approaches diversity as fundamental to our business strategy, not a secondary part of our HR function, because a diverse workforce enriches and adds real business value in terms of our company and the platform.

As general counsel, I proactively recruit and work to retain a diverse business and legal affairs team. The team works hard every day to make SoundCloud great, and they do this because not only are they hard workers, but they are each represented, valued and – in turn – vested in our collective successes. That’s diversity in action.

SoundCloud is unique, as it sits across multiple industries. For example, the music industry overall still has work to do in advancing diversity and inclusion commitments that truly reflect the breadth of the music community. The tech industry, on the other hand, has a steeper climb because of the lack of representation across women, people of color and LGBTQ. I was on a panel several years ago with other openly gay black men in tech, and everything I heard there confirmed the need for the tech space to do better at all levels, from hiring and cultural processes, to supporting STEM diversity. The good news is that people, from the CEO down, see the problems, which is the first step in creating change. I’m proud to work at SoundCloud knowing almost half our board of directors, and three quarters of our lead board members are people of color. It’s important for me to continually work and build on this achievement, while leading by example.

When it comes to improving diversity, as a leader, you need to first and foremost focus on visibility, because optics are everything. I present at as many external events and panels as possible. I say yes to as many networking opportunities for students and young lawyers as I can accommodate. I’m always willing to share my story – the good, the bad and the ugly! I also actively look for ways to raise the visibility of my team at all levels of the organization and sing their praises. We succeed when everyone gets an opportunity to shine, and I want to celebrate the good things and spread the love.

Recruitment is clearly the critical place to drive diversity and inclusion, and I focus on this area in my efforts at SoundCloud. First, it’s important to go to where the talent is, and ensure job postings end up on sites that draw diverse audiences. I then alert and activate my personal network, which helps funnel young and diverse talent that would benefit my department and SoundCloud as a whole.

It’s also important to have patience in the recruiting process to ensure we identify and interview diverse candidates. SoundCloud uses interview panels, which include multiple stakeholders with different viewpoints to help candidates get a strong sense for individual departments, such as my business and legal affairs team, and SoundCloud as a company.

SoundCloud also offers diversity resource groups (DRGs), which help to recruit talent and forge connections while building community. I personally encourage participation in these groups, because it’s not just enough to bring someone in the door, you want them to stay and contribute. Part of being able to do so is feeling comfortable, and DRGs provide an opportunity for people to find that comfort level, make connections, and feel empowered to bring their whole selves to work. For those who are not DRG members, these groups can provide a platform and an opportunity to learn about the backgrounds, culture and experiences of people who are unlike themselves. If we’re going to talk about our product road map or what’s next in music, but have gaps in understanding between our organization and our creator community, then there is a disconnect and a missed business opportunity. DRGs provide a concrete structure for bringing insight and connectivity to SoundCloud.

I serve as the executive sponsor of one of our DRGs, Clouds of Color. This means I have to truly show up, be available to the employees, champion and advocate for them and their ideas, and represent their interests. It’s a role I take as seriously as being general counsel.

Diversity should also be a topic of discussion with external partners. I ask law firms that are pitching us their services how they approach diversity in their ranks and, specifically, whether diverse lawyers will be covering my matters. What connects law firms and in-house departments is the relationship and level of comfort you have. Fundamental to building this up is simply the ability to have a conversation about these issues. It’s important to constantly nurture that comfort level for the relationship to grow. It’s important to me, my team members who interact with outside counsel, and to our company, that the firms we work with reflect SoundCloud values, and it’s my hope that the firms we work with hold us to an equally high standard. The more that companies engage in dialogue with potential clients, the better for everyone, both for the industries being served by law firms and also for the legal industry.

Looking to the future, SoundCloud needs to continually seek out ways to diversify our ranks, promote more diverse employees into leadership positions and foster a culture of inclusiveness. Going above and beyond is what SoundCloud does really well for the 20 million plus creators on the platform and our listeners who come to SoundCloud to discover what’s new and next. I always want to bring that same energy and thinking to our diversity and inclusion strategy, and watch it thrive.

In the legal industry, we have a challenge with promoting diverse talent, particularly at the senior levels of the profession. We do pretty well with diverse representation at junior levels, in part because law schools – while not graduating totally representative classes – are graduating a high percentage of women who make up more than 50% of top law school graduates and around 40% of all law school graduates. People of color are also increasingly well represented in today’s graduating law school classes. As a result, many opportunities exist to get fairly representative junior classes of lawyers into firms.

What law firms are not good at is retaining and promoting this diverse talent. If firms – or in-house legal teams – want to address this challenge and effect real change through a diversity and inclusion (D&I) strategy, several things need to work in tandem.

First, the entire talent strategy needs to treat all the members of the organization as valuable people whose professional development is important. If you try to build a D&I strategy without an overarching talent strategy that takes into account the importance of all contributors, you run the risk of backlash against the D&I initiative because it is seen as supporting a subgroup while not taking care of the overall organization.

Second, there needs to be serious, focused attention on diversity in the talent acquisition model – and by that, I mean more than simply ensuring that you go through the formality of including diverse candidates in each panel of candidates. Rather, the organization needs to understand where it may be lacking in diversity. For example, in both legal organizations that I have led, we’ve had a majority female organization at the more junior levels and very low representation of people of color at all levels. As such, an explicit focus on the diversity gaps in the talent cohort is very important, and a clear understanding of the need to fill those gaps must be understood by everybody who is involved in the talent acquisition exercise.

To get a bit more granular, I think it’s very important to use techniques of interviewing that are designed to identify attributes that will help you find people with leadership competencies: people who have the ability to rise through the organization. We do that through an interview process designed to identify emotional intelligence – to put interviewees a little bit on their heels, make them understand that what we really want to find out about them is their ability to think on their feet, approach unexpected situations with confidence and exhibit authenticity and candor.

The third component of the D&I strategy is to create a diverse leadership pipeline. This involves creating a succession plan and making sure that you’re giving due regard to diversity in your talent-shaping agenda. The way that I did that at MetLife was by conducting an assessment of all of the non-officer talent – people who are below the manager level in the organization – and their leadership aptitude. To identify the leading non-officer candidates for future leadership, we assessed these individuals through a combination of survey techniques with clients, peers, managers, subordinates, and the senior leadership of the legal organization. The leading candidates – about 10% of the non-leaders – are invited to participate in a leadership academy that involves allocating stretch assignments and providing sponsors who are accountable for making sure that they get experiences, exposure and training to develop their leadership aptitude. It’s not an exercise that’s focused exclusively on diverse talent; in fact, it must be bias-blind. This is important because, in my experience, existing leaders usually tap future leaders on the shoulder, a model that allows unconscious bias to figure very significantly in the leadership development process.

In order to ensure a bias-blind approach, I stress the importance of going outside of the organization and asking the business partners who are actually receiving the advice and advocacy of lawyers to evaluate these emerging leaders on six-to-eight leadership attributes in a very simple survey instrument. In the past, we’ve tried to get at least 20 individual evaluations of each candidate so that you can measure trends about the various individuals in the organization. It’s not a precise science, but it does end up identifying some of the strongest candidates. It’s good to do it annually so the organization can continue refining and correcting its approach to identifying candidates for future leadership.

One of the things I learned at MetLife was to leave people in the leadership academy as long as they are growing and performing well. If you find that is not the case, release them from the leadership academy, have a thoughtful and constructive conversation with them about why they are being released, and discuss what they should do if they want to be readmitted. At the same time, continue to evaluate the population that wasn’t selected for the leadership academy, and consider bringing new people in.

It’s critical to make sure that this kind of initiative has a salutary effect on the organization as a whole and doesn’t end up producing the opposite effect by making individuals who have been excluded feel like their exclusion was unfair. Of course, communication is key, and you need to introduce thoughtfulness and flexibility into your strategy.

As part of the leadership development program at MetLife, I also created a stewardship initiative that involved one-on-one sponsorship relationships to cultivate future leaders. The sponsor and the protégé create a leadership development plan that includes specific objectives to achieve in a three-to-five-year timeframe, with milestones along the way. The plan could include experiences, training, exposure – any number of different things – and there is a timeline associated with each of the articulated objectives. You also measure the performance of both the protégé and the sponsor by looking at accomplishment or non-accomplishment of the stated objectives and milestones. If you are not successful, you figure out whether you have a weakness on the protégé side, on the sponsor side, or both.

At MetLife, we presented our stewardship initiative to our outside counsel. We showed them what we were doing to hold senior leadership accountable for the retention and promotion of our diverse talent and the obligation of all officers in the organization to sponsor a rising leader and be measured on their results as a sponsor.

As part of the discussion on sponsorship, we gave our outside counsel a deadline to put in place specific plans and strategies to hold their leadership team accountable for the retention and promotion of diverse talent in their organization. We promised to support them in this effort, but if we could not come to an agreement on an acceptable D&I sponsorship program within two years, we would exclude them from our approved counsel list. That proved very effective.

When we identify very strong candidates for advancement, we frequently find it difficult to hold on to those people, because they have so many opportunities put in front of them. You are often disappointed by having lost someone that you had in your mind’s eye as a key component of the future leadership of the organization. But those are just things that you have to manage – the ordinary challenges that come with running a corporate organization.

I look forward to implementing these initiatives in the legal division at Freddie Mac and I am very confident and optimistic that we’re going to have a very successful D&I strategy and execution. Freddie Mac’s human resources leadership is looking at our D&I strategy as a pilot that it’s considering implementing throughout the rest of the organization, so I’m very enthusiastic, flattered and encouraged by that.

At NBCUniversal, like many institutions, we recognize that diversity is a business imperative. As our viewers and customers become more diverse, we need to make sure that we are reflecting diversity both in front of and behind the camera, as well as throughout the organization.

At NBCUniversal we have an annual talent review process, where every senior executive reports to the CEO about their teams. One goal of the review process is succession planning, and our CEO has mandated that the talent review include a specific discussion about diverse talent. This has encouraged all senior executives to think about their teams with diversity top of mind, and ensures we’re considering the broadest possible pool of up-and-coming leaders for the company.

I have a similar discussion with all of my senior leaders in order to prepare me to talk to the CEO, and it has a cascading effect. Our legal function is incredibly diverse, both along gender and ethnicity lines, and we aim to lead by example. The conversations that I have with my team are about not only identifying diverse talent, but planning the concrete steps that we are going to take to develop them into future leaders. We are focused on being mindful about the development of our diverse talent and making sure they are getting the right skill development and the right opportunities to make them successful candidates for future leadership roles. With the help of our fantastic HR team, we make sure we’re following up on these goals. While aggregate workforce statistics are important to monitor, I think it’s even more important to focus on the individual development of diverse talent. It takes more energy, but it’s something we have to be committed to if we want to see more diverse lawyers at senior levels.

Turning to recruitment efforts, we have spent time considering the best ways to engage future NBCUniversal lawyers. We have a diversity committee for the legal function, led by one of my senior leaders and comprised of lawyers and professional staff from across our business units and locations at a range of seniority levels. Among the activities our diversity committee focuses on are pipeline initiatives. We speak to high school and law school students to talk to them about a career in entertainment and media law. We hope these efforts will encourage diverse students to choose our field for a career so that our applicant pool becomes even more diverse over time.

We also hold receptions in New York and Los Angeles for diverse lawyers in the industry and those interested in transitioning to media and entertainment law. Our goal for these receptions is to introduce the company and hopefully spark an interest in a career at NBCUniversal, in part by showcasing the wide range of legal careers available at NBCUniversal but also by emphasizing our commitment to diversity. These receptions also help us identify talented lawyers that we may want to recruit for open roles.

Additionally, NBCUniversal sponsors a multitude of diverse bar associations. We send representatives from our team to the annual conferences and use these events as professional development opportunities for up-and-coming diverse talent. The NBCU lawyers chosen as representatives of the company get the opportunity to network with other lawyers in the industry or in the particular affinity group, and often participate on panels. Through these networking opportunities, we also hope to find other lawyers we may want to bring into the company, or outside counsel we may want to hire. We also work with diverse bar associations to post our open job opportunities.

Another priority is ensuring the diversity of our external counsel. For a number of years, we focused our outside counsel diversity efforts on hiring minority- and women-owned firms. We made great progress in that area, but we realized that the majority of our external spend was going to majority-owned firms. As a result, more recently, we have focused on making progress on diversity with the majority-owned firms that we hire. Our outside counsel guidelines express our strong commitment to diversity and our expectation that our matters will be staffed with diverse attorneys. But we now go beyond that statement of our commitment by using metrics to regularly monitor the diversity of the teams and the partners that are working on our cases. We are trying to focus on the accountability that metrics provide, so we use them to prompt dialogue with the firms – praising those that are doing well and developing proactive plans with those that need to increase the diversity of the lawyers who are working on NBCUniversal matters.

We track the diversity of the outside counsel who are working on our matters every six months, not only in terms of hours but also in terms of spend. We want to make sure that firms are not only staffing our matters with diverse junior lawyers, but also providing meaningful opportunities on our matters for more senior diverse lawyers, in an effort to better position them for partnership. Tracking in this way helps to encourage not only the firms themselves, but also our senior in-house lawyers – we need to understand how we are doing in order to take responsibility for the diversity of our outside counsel. It’s a double layer of accountability. Monitoring through metrics also helps avoid any troubling trends and ensures that our diversity commitments have an impact, both internally and externally. It’s very easy to express a commitment but, without careful observation, commitments run the risk of not resulting in meaningful change.

We also encourage diverse outside counsel to provide CLEs for our team, as a way for them to meet the senior lawyers on the NBCUniversal legal team who are making hiring decisions. It’s often difficult for diverse lawyers at firms to get that foot in the door, so this is just one step to encourage additional exposure.

I think most law firms have the best intentions when it comes to diversity and they generally do a good job attracting diverse classes of summer associates and new lawyers. That is not translating to more diversity at senior ranks and in partnerships, however. I think the problem is a lack of mindfulness and realizing that extra effort and attention is needed to make sure that diverse talent is getting the opportunities that will lead to promotion. Law firms need to identify their talented mid-tier diverse associates and put thoughtful effort behind their development. It’s not enough simply to bring them into the building – you have to focus on making sure that they continue to develop and advance.

As a woman of color myself, I think it is also important to recognize that women of color face unique challenges in the workplace and need particular focus. If you think about women of color as simply ‘people of color’ or ‘women’, you miss some of the unique challenges that they face.

One of our broader corporate initiatives at Comcast is to make sure we are particularly conscious of candidates from the military community. Veterans, for example, often have non-traditional experience that can be very valuable in a corporate setting. We need to think about relevant experience in a much broader way – identifying skills that we need that might be expressed in a less familiar way. Ultimately, this kind of broader thinking will benefit lots of candidates that may have non-traditional backgrounds. We also plan to enhance our outreach and support of lawyers from the LGTBQ community and lawyers with disabilities. We have excellent LGTBQ representation in the legal function at NBCU and continue to evaluate ways to increase our diversity across the board.

I had the benefit of that broader, more flexible thinking – I had no experience in the entertainment industry when I was hired as general counsel of NBCUniversal, but the CEO took a risk on hiring somebody with a different background. That broader thinking gave me an opportunity I wouldn’t otherwise have had, and, in turn, I added a different perspective to the executive ranks at NBCUniversal.

Diversity is particularly important in the legal profession, because the charge of the attorney is to zealously represent their clients, most of whom are from a diverse background. Part and parcel of representing any client is to understand their frame of mind, experience and thinking, so you can empathize with and better represent them.

On the corporate side, diversity is important because companies are essentially building and shipping products, and the buyers of those products are everyday people – people from different racial and ethnic backgrounds, sexual orientations and genders. Building a game-changing product requires creativity and I believe that diversity is a necessary element of creativity. And from a pure business standpoint, any company would want to understand and effectively sell to the broadest swathe of people they could possibly reach, so it’s important to have a diverse group around you determining the go-to-market plan.

Diversity also makes sense from a social equity standpoint. There is no such thing as a level playing field – some people start off two steps ahead, some people start off three steps behind. We need to provide every qualified person an opportunity to practice in the upper echelons of law; if we pay forward our good fortune, they will too. That’s how institutional change happens. As legal professionals, we ought to be mindful of and intentional about ensuring that our respective organizations are diverse.

My approach isn’t very mysterious, nor is it complex. While I think issues of race, gender, sexual orientation and inequality are complex subject matters that often result in uncomfortable, but absolutely necessary conversations, my approach is straightforward. As a general counsel, I have the ability to hire in-house and retain outside counsel, and so I need to be intentional about diversity and leverage my influence to build a diverse organization, both internally and externally.

In my mind, advancing diversity isn’t completely about quotas or explicit affirmative action, it’s about setting aside internal biases and prejudices when interviewing a candidate. Look beyond their credentials and determine how they will uniquely enrich your organization’s business and culture. Check at the door your preconceived notions of what a ‘perfect candidate’ looks like – select the best and brightest diverse candidates.

Let’s say you are hiring for in-house legal counsel and you especially appreciate pedigree and work experience. When it comes to pedigree, there are going to be far more non-diverse candidates coming out of the top-tier law schools than there are diverse candidates coming out of those same schools. The same goes for experience; there are going to be many more non-diverse lawyers at a top law firm, a top-tier corporation or coming out of a prestigious judicial clerkship than there are diverse lawyers. So hiring is about much more than simply checking boxes and seeing which candidate looks like the safest bet. The more intentional path is to determine whether someone has the core competencies to do the work and whether they have demonstrated other attributes that signal they would be a constructive contributor to your organization. Those other attributes could be intellectual curiosity, integrity, drive, empathy, grit, passion or demonstrating they have overcome hardship. These are qualities that aren’t reflected on a LinkedIn profile, but are absolutely critical if you’re trying to build a legal department reflective of a company culture that cares very much about diversity. At Ironclad, we have teammates from Yale, Berkeley and Harvard law schools working side by side with non-college graduates, all of whom bring diverse talent with technical, design, legal backgrounds, and more.

Externally, there are times when I make an express request to outside counsel for a diverse attorney not only to be assigned to the matter, but also to take on substantive work and to be afforded the opportunity to assume significant responsibility, if not a leadership role. I also make sure that we maintain a roster of diverse outside counsel. I participate in minority bar associations and, having been part of a community of diverse lawyers for quite some time, I have been fortunate enough to build long-term relationships with tremendous lawyers who also happen to be lawyers of color. When there’s an opportunity to hire those lawyers, that’s who I go to first, not only because they’re diverse, but because I can trust them, and I know the work they do is of the highest quality.

What’s incredibly powerful about Ironclad is that we have built and are growing a community of general counsel throughout the United States who can come together at Ironclad-hosted dinners and leadership roundtable sessions. When that happens, a lot of issues are discussed, including diversity, so we are able to advance the cause not only by discussing the issue explicitly, but by bringing people together and allowing them to connect and foster and further relationships.

I do not think diversity is rocket science, I think it’s relatively straightforward. We all have the power to diversify our respective legal teams, and we all have the power to ensure that our outside counsel look like and have had similar experiences to a broader cross-section of America.

At Ironclad, we are incredibly proud of our people – we were recently recognized as one of the most diverse start-ups in Silicon Valley, and I think we received that recognition because we’re intentional about each individual who joins our rapidly growing team. About half of our company are women and the vast majority of our executive team are affiliated with a minority group or groups. Diversity is something that we think is mission critical. But it’s also something we don’t talk a lot about. While I think that shedding light on the topic of diversity is necessary, it’s not sufficient. You can’t just talk the talk, you need to walk the walk. As the old adage goes ‘actions speak louder than words’. Here, action means being intentional about and executing on a diversity plan. As we continue to scale our organization at Ironclad, people and culture are the most important, North-Star elements to us. Friends refer friends; folks want to work with diverse people and have conversations at work and outside with peers who have had a different experience than they’ve had.

I’m a black male who has mostly grown up in a predominantly white profession. I live and breathe diversity every day – I’m the subject of it – and when I came to Silicon Valley for the first time four years ago, I was unpleasantly surprised by the lack of diversity. It really became obvious when I started sitting in the boardroom and going to start-up- and tech-related events. I think one of the major issues is that there is a lack of incentive on the part of many Silicon Valley leaders to intentionally diversify their respective companies. Until the conversation shifts from ‘diversity is a great thing’ – which many of us believe and know to be true – to ‘it makes business sense and here’s why’, I’m not sure we’re going to see significant, near-term change.

While meaningful progress has been made by individuals and groups to address the dearth of diversity in Silicon Valley, we haven’t seen much in the way of progress vis-à-vis the diversity reports released by the larger tech companies in the Bay Area. When I see that, often as the only person of color or underrepresented minority in the room, it poses a personal challenge and sense of duty to leverage my influence to effect the change that I want to see in the world – but on the micro level. A lot of people think that if you can’t effect wide-reaching change, then your efforts are for naught. But I actually believe that we can all make little bits of change on our own – and the most logical place to start is at our own companies and in our own legal departments. If we collectively do that, I suspect we will finally start to see the needle move on diversity.

Looking to the future, I think it would behoove leaders in the legal profession to not only hire, nurture and grow diverse attorneys and ensure that outside counsel are diverse, but to invest in aspiring law students and young attorneys of color; help an aspiring law student prepare for the LSAT and apply for law school; take a chance on a young, law firm attorney and let them manage one of your legal matters; hire someone who might not check all the boxes, but who you know has the raw talent to have an outsized impact. I’m a firm believer in investing in individuals and that if all of us invest in an individual or two early on in their career, that’s the type of work that results in long-term change.

At the end of the day, it’s really about opportunity, plain and simple. I think that the best we can all do in order to advance diversity is to give diverse lawyers an opportunity, and then help them recognize and make the most of those opportunities.

Much is spoken in diversity and inclusion circles about the importance of ‘tone at the top’, and several of our participating senior in-house counsel shared their lived experience of the impact CEOs can have when they not only support, but advocate, for change.


‘We have found that when the CEO and the leadership team is consistently visible and vocal on D&I issues – where they’re showing up and speaking up at diversity events, including it in their employee town halls and talking about it whenever they can – it’s one of the engines that propels D&I forward within the company,’ says Wesley Bizzell, senior assistant GC at Altria Client Services Inc.


The in-house legal team may not necessarily be the first port of call for those looking to promote a D&I agenda, but most of the counsel we spoke to felt that inclusion and the general counsel’s office can be natural bedfellows. 


In fact, Hugh Welsh, general counsel at DSM North America, believes that in-house departments can turn any cognitive dissonance arising from a lawyer raising issues to their advantage in furthering diversity and inclusion. 


‘Typically, law departments are very risk averse. You may have law departments that are very actively involved in sexual harassment training, hostile workplace training and things like that, but from a corporate defensive position – essentially to afford the company an affirmative defense,’ he explains.


‘At a superficial level, there’s an appearance of a conflict but I think that when you have lawyers who are willing to speak emotionally and meaningfully about the importance of these issues, you move beyond compliance. Compliance and new rules and new processes are in many respects the worst way to drive that change. To make meaningful change, you have to change the culture and so to have the lawyers out in front on many of these issues goes a long way to changing the culture, because what they are about to say is so unexpected.’


In his own organisation, Welsh has played a role in bringing certain inclusion issues into the corporate context.


‘What I had experienced was that conversations around those very emotional but very topical issues stopped the moment you crossed the threshold of the corporate door. So we held a meeting at our New Jersey headquarters called an “authentic leadership summit”, specifically focused on creating a safe environment to have conversations in a corporation around #MeToo, Time’s Up and Black Lives Matter, in partnership with the Tri-State Diversity Council, and I can say it was an immensely provocative, deeply emotional and very effective meeting. The panel answered one question and then three hours later we were done – because of the audience participation.’”


The notion of corporate culture in itself can be inherently nebulous, but nearly all of those we spoke to as part of the research for this report felt that in-house legal teams are well positioned to be agents for change inside their respective businesses. 


‘Legal teams are in a position of strength to lead by example, because people do listen and I think it can have significant weight – so using that for good, and to express strong corporate values is really worthwhile,’ says Kate Karas, formerly senior associate general counsel at Lending Club.


One example of how legal departments can be well placed to lead on societal diversity can be seen at Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s legal team, which worked with the Girl Scouts of the USA to create a cybersecurity badge, to encourage young girls’ interest in a cybersecurity career. 


But the variety of ideas and activities showcased in the pages of this report points to there being no blueprint for a successful initiative – instead, what is key is an intentional and sustained commitment to furthering inclusion and diversity.


‘I have a sign that hangs above my computer that asks, “What good shall I do this day?” That’s really how I look at it: what can I do to advance the issue in both big and small ways on a daily basis,’ says Bizzell.


While a positive – albeit broad – North Star, Bizzell does however highlight some essential elements for inclusion, particularly for LGBTQ individuals: namely inclusive policies that clearly protect all diverse individuals – for example, clear anti-discrimination policies for sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression – parity in benefits, and an expanded talent pool.


‘[Diversity and inclusion] is a complex issue and we need to address it like a complex issue, in a multi-dimensional way, throughout the career trajectory of an attorney from the law school and recruiting stage to the executive committee decisions,’ he says. 


The pipeline


The earlier inclusion starts the better, and school can also be a powerful tool to recruit members of diverse communities into the legal profession. Connie Brenton recalls her ‘life-changing’ visit to Southern University Law Center, where students are recruited for ‘grit and gratitude’:


‘Many of them have had jobs for a long period of time, so they have a sense of what it is to work, alongside a passion for what they are studying and why they are studying. There’s a true desire to make a real difference in their communities. There’s an aspiration to learn and be exposed to a multitude of experiences so that they can bring that back and uplift their communities,’ she says.


The experience sparked the ‘Community of Legal Interns’ – a scheme to provide free online training to interns across the globe, thereby circumventing many issues that diverse students face when accessing high-quality training and opportunities, and investing in the future profession.


‘There’s opportunity in terms of creating the next generation of attorneys who have a fundamental connection with one another and a focus on diversity and inclusion from before they graduate. It becomes part of their DNA prior to even completing their legal training – so who knows what that will look like in another ten years?’ she reflects.


As diverse students and interns complete their education and enter the world of recruitment and employment, opportunities abound for law firms and legal departments to continue leveling the playing field in term of inclusion and diversity. 


To combat the universal human temptation to recruit and promote in our own image, Diversity Lab created the Mansfield Rule, inspired by the NFL’s Rooney Rule, which mandates that 30% of internal and external candidates considered by law firms for senior roles must be diverse. The Mansfield Rule for law firms has proved popular and effective, with 100 firms piloting its newest iteration and recently published results showing notable increases in the diversity of candidate populations and the composition of leadership ranks. Diversity Lab recently launched the Mansfield Rule: Legal Department Edition with 20 legal departments that are applying the Rule’s framework to their recruitment, retention and promotion processes, including hiring outside counsel.


‘We are very focused on the Mansfield Rule, which requires organizations to commit to considering diverse candidates in recruiting, developing and promoting people into leadership,’ explains James Chosy, general counsel at U.S. Bank.


‘Our in-house version just rolled out, and we were one of the first companies to agree and sign on – we’re very proud to be on the leading edge of that. We’ve since taken things a step further, and have actually asked about 40 of our leading law firms to formally commit to the Mansfield Rule.’


Conscious of the unconscious


The major thread in D&I approaches is that of unconscious bias training, in recognition of the fact that everyone has biases that affect their decision-making, often to the detriment of a diverse and inclusive working environment. But is it effective?


Not in isolation, says Caren Ulrich Stacy, founder and CEO of Diversity Lab.


‘You don’t walk into a room for an hour-long training and walk out unbiased. If it took 40 years to create the biases that you hold, there’s no chance that in one hour, or two hours or even five hours, you’re going to eliminate or even minimize those biases,’ she says.


‘Research shows that when you go to unconscious bias training, most people see something they could do different or better, they see that there is bias, but they think it’s much worse in everybody else than them. They leave and they say, “Wow, my colleagues are really biased, I have this little thing I have to work on but everybody in this group is really biased!”’ 


When undertaking any form of diversity training, in particular with unconscious bias, a key consideration is to ensure that individuals aren’t made to feel isolated or blamed. 


‘Sometimes bias training portrays that, which is problematic, because it makes them feel alienated as opposed to making them feel like allies,’ says Ulrich Stacy.


‘If you reinforce training with rewards and some of those things we know change behaviors, then it can have an effect, but not many law firms and legal departments tend to take that next step.’


The leading GCs we spoke to were aware that unconscious bias comes into play not just in the recruitment process, but in the day-to-day decisions taken by leaders that impact on the career progression of diverse individuals. To combat this, for example, Verona Dorch, chief legal officer at Peabody Energy, is intentional about nurturing the career progression of her team-members, even if they have not yet considered it themselves.


‘There are unconscious biases that can come into play, like the halo effect – someone looks like you, so you may be more willing to sponsor them or almost overlook deficiencies. It’s important to me that everybody is given that level of sponsorship and that I’m there advocating for people who others may not be advocating for,’ she says.


‘I want to make sure people are giving folks that may not fit their definition of someone that should be developed that opportunity too. It really is, I think, taking that broader chance on people, including those who may look and think different from you, but do deserve a seat at the table.’


The supply chain


As well as forming key partners, law firms are frequently a training ground for future in-house attorneys. In-house teams have for some time now been leading the charge in driving inclusion and diversity across the profession, enriching the profession with some creditable results. Law firms are often subject to much finger wagging by in-house teams, but the best supplier diversity schemes attempt to get under the skin when understanding a law firm’s culture, rather than simply relying on a set of numbers.


‘I want to talk to some of the female or minority associates and partners. I’m very keenly interested in what happens when fifth- or sixth-year female associates decide to have children. What does the firm do to bridge that time so that talented associate is not set back on the partnership track? I find that, more often than not, they do nothing, which to me is an indication of what the culture in the organization might be,’ says Welsh.


‘I would love to see them have a senior partner at the firm assigned to them as a sponsor so that they have the sense of security that there is a senior partner at the firm who’s looking out for them, and they’re not going to get sidetracked or derailed, or put in a position where they feel like they have to opt out because they don’t have the protection that maybe a male lawyer in the law department would feel they have. Somebody to share with them what’s going on day to day, even if they can’t be there every day, so they continue to feel connected both emotionally as well as factually as to what’s going on at the firm, and that they continue to get choice assignments and choice client contact.’


Chris Young, general counsel at Ironclad, Inc, takes a similarly thoughtful and long-term approach when considering the external counsel he uses for staffing matters.


‘Externally, there are times when I make an express request to outside counsel for a diverse attorney not only to be assigned to the matter, but also to take on substantive work and to be afforded the opportunity to assume significant responsibility, if not a leadership role,’ he says.


‘I also make sure that we maintain a roster of diverse outside counsel. I participate in minority bar associations and, having been part of a community of diverse lawyers for quite some time, I have been fortunate enough to build long-term relationships with tremendous lawyers who also happen to be lawyers of color. When there’s an opportunity to hire those lawyers, that’s who I go to first, not only because they’re diverse, but because I can trust them, and I know the work they do is of the highest quality.’


At CBS Corporation, data tracking is taken to a particularly granular level, providing nuanced detail which can then be used to understand and drive impact. Naomi Waltman, associate GC for litigation, explains the team’s system of tracking the diversity of law firms through billing software, ensuring a detailed understanding of who is working on CBS matters and, by extension, tracking the team’s own contribution to the diversity space. 


‘I do my best to ensure that all our matters for which we retain outside counsel are staffed with diverse teams, and that our outside counsel guidelines reflect our commitment to diversity and our expectations that law firms assign diverse teams to our matters,’ she explains.


‘We’ve instituted a system where we can track the diversity of law firm timekeepers working on each of our matters through our billing software. That allows us to hold firms accountable and also to measure how we are doing as a department on diversity. In addition, our outside counsel guidelines state that we expect firms to staff our matters with diverse teams. When law firms come in for a pitch, we reiterate that expectation.’


Measuring progress


Many of the in-house counsel we spoke to for this report underlined the importance of data in tracking diversity performance – particularly with regard to the selection of outside counsel – but some were keen to point out that metrics can say little about inclusion and the career progress of individuals, and must be carefully interpreted to take account of the incremental nature of change. 


‘One of the things I always fear is if you get too strict on measures, it takes such a long time to make change that I’m afraid to throw out the baby with the bath water, as they say. We’re so worried about showing improvement that if we don’t, we’re going to fear that it’s not working and stop tracking the diversity data and focusing on the metrics,’ says Carrie Hightman, chief legal officer, NiSource Inc.


‘But, in fact, it takes time to make change and so a lot of the work that we focus on at the company is how do you know that you’re making progress and making sure that measures are not just backwards-looking but forwards-looking. The last thing you want to do is presume you’ve failed and then stop the program when, in fact, change is very gradual.’ 


Many agreed on the importance of some measure of qualitative assessment to complement the quantitative, especially when investigating the complexities of building an inclusive environment among both external and internal colleagues.


‘I think most law firms have the best intentions when it comes to diversity and they generally do a good job attracting diverse classes of summer associates and new lawyers. That is not translating to more diversity at senior ranks and in partnerships, however. I think the problem is a lack of mindfulness and realizing that extra effort and attention is needed to make sure that diverse talent is getting the opportunities that will lead to promotion,’ explains Kimberley Harris, general counsel of NBCUniversal.


‘Law firms need to identify their talented mid-tier diverse associates and put thoughtful effort behind their development. It’s not enough simply to bring them into the building – you have to focus on making sure that they continue to develop and advance.’