Professional Coaching, Consulting & Inclusion Practice

Only 79 Fortune 500 companies about 1 in 6 (16%) have a DEI Statement and publish annual DEI reports marking their progress. By archiving their activities in print or PDF form, they hold themselves out for comparison across time as well as within their industry.

Also, hrdive.com reported in 2019 that about 98% of companies have a diversity program, but a quarter of workers in diverse groups – women, people of color and people who identify as LGBTQ – aren't confirming any benefits from these programs, according to a new Boston Consulting Group (BCG) report, Fixing the Flawed Approach to Diversity.

Women represent 58.4% of the US workforce as of September 2022 but only held 35% of senior leadership positions.  8.8% represents Fortune 500 CEOs who are women and less than 1% of these are women of color.  One research study from Zippia.com indicated/found that the two biggest challenges keeping women from leadership positions are that women are held to higher standards (43%) and many businesses aren’t “ready” to hire women for top executive positions (43%).   

While Asian-American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) workers are well-represented in corporate America, they are largely absent in leadership roles.  Just 38 of 682 executives, or less than 6 percent, identified as Asian or Indian in a 2020 analysis of C-suites by recruiting firm Crist Kolder Associates. They are also the group least likely to be promoted to management positions, according to a Harvard Business Review analysis of U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission data.

Of all chief executives in the U.S. are Black per the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  According to McKinsey & Company, although Black employees comprise 14% of all US employees, the Black workforce at the managerial level is just half of that at 7% and only 5% - 4% at the senior manager levels of VP and SVP. 

Investopedia stated that the history of LGBTQ+ worker protections or lack thereof in the U.S. is both brief and mostly dismal.  During the 1950s, anyone who was brave enough to identified as an LGBTQ+ employees were rooted out of federal government and intelligence jobs in what was called the Lavender Scare.  In 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed an executive order that banned this action until it was revoked in 2017.

Currently today, LGBTQ+ employees make up 5.9% of the U.S. workforce.

IBM released research in 2020 that indicated Hispanics represent 19 % of the US population, but only 4% of the executive ranks. 

SHRM in 2022 shared the need to close the gap on Hispanic representation in C-Suites and corporate boardrooms.  In addition, 4 % of large U.S. companies' most senior executives in 2021, were Hispanic.