Adesola Akindele and Jasmine Leflore

Introduction: Making Heads Count

Taryell Simmons: Happy New Year, and welcome to another episode of Rise Urban Nation. Today I have my Rise business partner, Adesola, better known as Sola, and our advisor Jasmine, and we're talking DEI and CSR strategies for 2022. Last year I attended SHRM's Inclusion Conference, and one quote is coming with me into the new year: diversity is about headcount, inclusion is about making heads count. The City of Austin trained people with felony records for public works, held job fairs in underserved communities, hired 600 people with same-day offers. Other companies did equity analysis: where are your gaps, and where is your culture?

Conscious Capitalism and Employee Goodwill

Adesola Akindele: I'm big on conscious capitalism, and it properly kicked in for me and our organization last year. Helping our community with hygiene tech was already in our fabric, but being conscious meant thinking about the consumer side too, and that connects us to Gen Z and millennials, who are driving the economy. CSR enhances public trust, makes a company more attractive to employees, leads to more engaged teams and can improve the bottom line. We've proven you can weave it into your company's DNA and business model, and it generates the right kind of profit.

Jasmine Leflore: Millennials are more motivated by goodwill and making a positive difference than by professional recognition. An article from my MBA class at Indiana University says employee well-being is still treated as a cost, but it should be a company's greatest investment. At my Fortune 50 company we get about 10 hours a year to charge to volunteer work. The easier a company makes it to volunteer, the more employees want to stay.

Who We Are

Taryell Simmons: I'm Taryell Simmons, host of Rise Urban Nation. We're more than a podcast: we're also a boutique that helps with equity, diversity and inclusion initiatives and CSR strategies. Before DEI became popular, I was doing it through workforce development, creating programs for underserved communities with the mayor's office in San Diego and the San Diego Workforce Partnership.

Jasmine Leflore: I'm Jasmine Leflore, and I've been a guest on this podcast before. I was born and raised in Flint, Michigan, and have been in San Diego for four years. My background is aerospace engineering, and I'm a principal project engineer in business development at Collins Aerospace, a business unit of Raytheon Technologies. In my six years in the industry, I started Greater Than Tech, a nonprofit that teaches girls of color the intersection of engineering and business.

Adesola Akindele: I'm Adesola Akindele, a global citizen: born in the UK, raised in Nigeria, educated in the UK, with businesses across three continents. I'm CEO of HyGear Technologies and a partner at Rise Urban Nation. My role is to help organizations build CSR into their business models as a pathway to profit, attracting conscious consumers, especially millennials and Gen Z.

Defining CSR, DEI and ESG

Jasmine Leflore: CSR is a company's commitment to affecting positive change, from disaster relief to food banks to serving underserved communities. Through Greater Than Tech I ran Girl Meets Drone at the Jackie Robinson YMCA in Southeast San Diego, introducing predominantly girls of color to drone technology. Collins sponsored it and my coworkers came as volunteers and mentors. As a kid, Delphi sponsored me for a summer STEM program at Kettering University, and I'll never forget that name. Those girls took drones home, and one day they'll remember Collins Aerospace.

Taryell Simmons: That exposure is so important. If nobody at home works in a field, kids don't know it exists. DEI stands for diversity, equity and inclusion: policies and programs that promote the representation and participation of people of different ages, races, abilities, genders, religions, cultures and sexual orientations. A good CSR strategy often includes DEI. Sola, what's ESG?

Adesola Akindele: Environmental, social and governance. It's an umbrella for sustainable and responsible finance and now a framework investors use to decide where money flows. Companies can lose funding for not taking ESG, DEI and CSR seriously. DEI is a big part of ESG, and it isn't about headcount or how your brand looks; it's about how included people feel. Since the 2020 social movement, it could even affect startups getting funding.

Diversity in the Boardroom and Venture Capital

Taryell Simmons: A CNBC article we discussed shows companies making big diversity promises with a long way to go. Companies that fail to promote inclusion risk losing talent, and we've seen investors walk away from deals with no diversity. S&P 500 companies now have at least one woman on the board, and if you don't, where have you been? At my first board training, a facilitator, a white man, described boardroom leadership as male, stale and pale. Sola, what does funding look like in VC?

Adesola Akindele: It doesn't stop at putting money into funds run by Black managers. Those funds are often smaller and write smaller checks to high-growth companies that need bigger ones, so the focus shifts from revenue to the next round. That isn't sustainable. LPs and VCs should set criteria for investing in startups with DEI in their fabric, like commitments on women, LGBTQ people or people with disabilities on the team, or 30 to 40 percent women on the board. Founders should make CSR and DEI part of the business model. FemTech is shooting up because women have long needed products built for them while the people holding the cash are mostly male. Diversity puts someone at the table who sees opportunities in an audience you've ignored.

Taryell Simmons: Studies show diversity brings a better bottom line, more innovation and more agile companies.

Jasmine Leflore: The triple bottom line: people, profit and the planet.

Untapped Potential and Multicultural Women

Jasmine Leflore: An MSNBC article looked at why 50 percent of multicultural women in corporate America intend to leave. They're 25 percent more likely than white women to aspire to senior roles, yet 63 percent of early-career multicultural women hope to reach the top versus 41 percent late in their careers. They have the drive but aren't heard, don't get credit for their ideas and don't see a path. If the boardroom and C-suite don't represent them, it becomes a perpetual cycle.

Companies in Trouble: Reactive DEI

Adesola Akindele: Tesla was recently ordered to pay about $137 million in a racism case, and over a month later nothing has come from management on supporting the community. A CSR strategy with DEI pathways for people of color could prevent this.

Jasmine Leflore: On Arlan Hamilton's podcast Your First Million, a guest described how Google committed to hiring more women engineers and gave managers incentives to hire them, but the women weren't promoted.

Adesola Akindele: According to NBC News, California's civil rights regulator is now investigating Google's treatment of Black women workers. They supposedly had a fix, but it was just a bandage.

Taryell Simmons: It isn't only Google; tech has a very male, macho culture. That's why DEI and CSR are a marathon, not a sprint. Companies need mentorship at every level, from high schools and colleges to matching that leads to leadership. Otherwise people won't stay, and there's only so much money you can throw at a problem.

Jasmine Leflore: These are reactive examples. It's money better spent to be proactive and do what your company says it stands for.

Companies in the Business of Doing Good

Taryell Simmons: Band-Aid released bandages in different skin tones last year, after Tru-Colour launched first. On my flight home from the conference, a white gentleman told me he went to buy bandages, saw only darker tones and got upset. Then he realized he'd never thought twice about it in 40 years and talked with his kids about inclusion. Crayola worked with a MAC scientist on skin-tone crayons to be inclusive and then saw profit. Black spending power is $1.7 trillion, and companies that ignore it will lose business in five to ten years.

Adesola Akindele: Patagonia dedicates one percent of sales to environmental organizations, and $20 million has been donated through Patagonia Action Works. Warby Parker addresses the 15 percent of the world without access to glasses. Ben & Jerry's advocates for racial justice, refugees, fair trade, climate action and LGBTQ equality. Grove Collaborative, a B Corp now in Target, aims to plant a million trees with the Arbor Day Foundation. Bombas has donated 10 million pairs of socks, the top request in the homeless community. A B Corp is a social enterprise certified by the nonprofit B Lab for creating value for employees, community and environment.

Taryell Simmons: Target has a section highlighting Black authors. Target, you already had my business; now you've got my loyalty.

Adesola Akindele: They also run an accelerator that helps Black-owned brands become sustainable suppliers. Fenty made $570 million in 15 months as an inclusive brand. A 2018 Nielsen poll found 85 percent of millennials and 80 percent of Gen Z rank social and environmental causes high when choosing companies. You can make profit by doing the right thing. Even one percent of a hundred-million-dollar fund can do so much good, so show the receipts. If you don't know how, hire a diverse workforce that will tell you.

Jasmine Leflore: Apple can run their receipts. Through their $100 million racial equity initiative, they built the Apple Developer Academy in Detroit with Michigan State: a free 10-month program for ages 18 to 60, no experience needed. Detroit is over 75 percent Black, so they're building an ecosystem of Black innovators solving their community's problems.

Running the Receipts

Taryell Simmons: Around February 2022, RUN will launch the Run the Receipts program. It's been almost two years since George Floyd, and we want to see your commitments. If you're struggling, we're here to help with your CSR and EDI strategy.

Jasmine Leflore: One article said less than 15 percent of companies have done what they committed to. Apple is one of the few.

Adesola Akindele: CSR has been used as a PR stunt when it can help your bottom line and ESG goals. We want to hold companies accountable, and if you're stuck, contact us.

Success Stories from HyGear and Greater Than Tech

Taryell Simmons: A company came to me because their funding was at risk without DEI strategies, and they'd lost great candidates. Sola, share HyGear's story.

Adesola Akindele: We're a hygiene tech company focused on UVC technology, and getting products to people was hard. During the pandemic we started a sponsor-a-teacher campaign, running public fundraising so schools and organizations without budgets could get air quality products. That gave us a built-in social responsibility initiative and took us from pre-revenue to revenue.

Taryell Simmons: To start small, look at Tory Burch's Empowered Women campaign with Upworthy: nominated women receive $5,000 for a nonprofit of their choice through the Tory Burch Foundation. Partnering with a community organization like RUN gives you a pipeline to talent and innovation. Companies that fail to innovate fail to thrive.

Adesola Akindele: You don't need to be a million-dollar company to do CSR. Millennials buy based on what's behind the curtain. Feed a woman and you feed a generation, and that loyalty is PR you can't buy. Being authentic about my story with mental illness has helped me most, and at HyGear we support women in tech, which is why I connected with Jasmine. Jasmine, how does Greater Than Tech work for companies?

Jasmine Leflore: GTT is short for Greater Than Tech. We build hands-on programs around a company's technology, like Girl Meets Drone with Collins Aerospace as premier sponsor. We can do this for any tech company, including AI and SaaS, giving underserved students exposure while companies get social impact and brand visibility.

Final Calls to Action

Taryell Simmons: Inclusion is about making heads count. Have you done the equity analysis? Where are your gaps and your culture? We're a collaborative consultancy helping VCs invest in corporate consciousness and startups build social responsibility into revenue and DEI metrics from day one.

Adesola Akindele: If you didn't start on day one, build short, medium and long-term programs for your CSR goals with an emphasis on DEI, which will improve your ESG goals. Investors will soon require you to show your impact.

Jasmine Leflore: Employees want to do good. Millennials are the largest workforce, and CSR events keep them engaged, happy and motivated.

Taryell Simmons: Even a tech company is in the people business. Consumers can buy from companies that prioritize human rights, community and a healthy planet, and if you don't shift, it'll be too late. Doing good is good business. If it doesn't make dollars, it doesn't make sense. Happy New Year, everybody.