McGarrah Jessee

For over a decade, we’ve been involved in E4 Youth, an organization that opens up career pathways for underserved youth. It’s been our desire to introduce more diverse talent to the many creative pursuits available as prosperous livelihoods.

Internally, we’ve been scrutinizing our own access and perspectives. We overhauled our internship program, created an unbound hiring practice which openly seeks diverse talent anywhere, instituted companywide unconscious bias training, created an educational program around significant annual holidays and celebrations, offered employees 8 hours per month in paid time to volunteer, rolled out free independent professional coaching and personal wellness therapy for all employees, and hired a dedicated Director of Diversity & Culture to keep us uncomfortably challenged (thanks, Krischanna).

We are on our journey personally and collectively, working on our 10,000 hours and evolving our organization. We’re running monthly all-agency (un)learning seminars, regular breakout lunch and discuss sessions, new hire diversity onboarding, monthly DEIB leadership coaching, quarterly moderated leadership alignment meetings and ongoing client education and conflict management where needed. We have a detailed road map, and we’re doing the messy work.

This journey is actionable. Candid, confident relationships create change faster than anything. We seek more diverse talent and clients in an empowered and rewarding culture. We seek culture adds, not fits. We’re being intentional with our data collection and analysis around hiring, retention, sentiment, agency makeup. And we’re using that data via regular climate surveys, support systems, one-on-ones and mentor sessions to trample bias wherever it lives and trial new behaviors to experience real change.