Working against anti-Black racism at the CEO level

written by Maha

On Thursday, October 21, 2021, the BlackNorth Initiative hosted a peer-to-peer advisory group hosted by Unika Hypolite, Managing Director at CINTA & Co. The stage was set by explaining peer-to-peer advisory group program goals and guiding principles, such as creating a supportive network of like-minded professionals who were facing similar workplace challenges, creating opportunities for participants to discover new approaches while learning new ideas, and creating a safe space in which new ideas can be tested comfortably.

These are bound by guiding principles such as every idea being valuable and everyone’s input being valuable, all individuals will listen and be heard, no political correctness, and seeking to replace judgment with curiosity. Because this is a safe space, it is agreed that what is said in the room stays in the room to maintain confidentiality and comfort.

The objective of this workshop is to “bring a corporate solution to a social problem”. In other words, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) have become more important than ever in today’s Canadian workplace and the overall marketplace. Therefore, the Canadian Council of Business Leaders Against Anti-Black Systemic Racism was created to remove anti-Black systemic barriers negatively affecting the lives of Black Canadians.

In short, we challenged senior leaders from Canadian companies and organizations nationwide to sign a CEO pledge committing their employers to specific actions and targets to end anti-Black systemic racism and create opportunities for all of those in the underrepresented BIPOC community. We expect Corporate Canada to face the challenge of anti-Black systemic racism in the same manner they did when addressing gender diversity in Canadian boardrooms. To date, over 400 organizations have signed the CEO pledge.

Through the power of camaraderie and shared rapport established amongst the participants, everyone agreed with the CEO commitments made through the pledge. These being:

• Creating a trusting and safe work environment where difficult conversations around systemic racism can be spoken about openly.

• Expanding our knowledge around unconscious bias and anti-racism by working through the BlackNorth Initiative.

• Sharing best and unsuccessful practices

• Creating diversity and inclusion strategies with members of the Black community

• Engaging with Canada’s corporate governance framework

• Creating conditions for success for all underrepresented BIPOC people.

To address the ongoing issue of systemic anti-Black racism in Canadian workplaces along with catalyzing high-performing diverse teams in the Greater Toronto Area and nationwide in Canada is TWINING, a nascent and growing organization. It is a social innovation movement that embraces the strategy of empowering the community from the ground up while also facilitating leadership opportunities and advocating for real impact.

TWINING came as a result of corporate DEI peer-to-peer workshop series that evolved into a citizen-led social innovation program specific to the Greater Toronto Area. Together with founder organizations CINTA & Co. and HueMax Recruitment, TWINING is engaging and mobilizing activists and leaders from all backgrounds and walks of life.

One of TWINING’s organizational objectives is to fully embrace the true virtues of DEI and help foster a diverse workplace in which underrepresented BIPOC employees can thrive within a stronger business ecosystem, improve the social capital of their racialized communities, and improve the economic well-being of job-seeking members from said communities.