Why I've Been Quiet About DEI — Until Now

Описание: I've deliberately avoided this topic since the controversy began. That's unusual for me.

But I spent a decade leading Spencer Stuart's global diversity practice and another chapter at Google building systems for identifying and developing talent. I've lived this from multiple angles — as someone who faced discrimination despite credentials, and as someone who helped organizations think strategically about inclusion. When I talk about diversity initiatives, I'm speaking from experience.

This video traces a 60-year arc: from legal workplace segregation, to the Civil Rights Act, to the AT&T consent decree that birthed modern corporate diversity programs, to the billions spent on DEI, to the executive order that dismantled it all in weeks. The speed of that reversal tells us something uncomfortable about whether these initiatives were ever deeply embedded — or just responses to external pressure.

In this episode:

➔ Why AT&T's 1973 discrimination lawsuit created the template every corporation followed
➔ The original intent of affirmative action versus how it evolved
➔ What "merit-based" systems actually measure (hint: often not merit)
➔ Why DEI programs addressed symptoms rather than causes
➔ The opportunity hidden in this disruption for leaders willing to do the real work

Here's the uncomfortable truth: we've spent 60 years debating "diversity versus merit" when the real question was whether our systems ever measured competence at all. Unstructured interviews, "cultural fit," "executive presence" — these produced homogeneous workforces not through intentional discrimination, but through how human decision-making actually works.

If you're a leader who believes in meritocracy, this is your moment to prove it. Implement genuinely objective evaluation systems. Make criteria transparent. Remove subjective judgment from high-stakes decisions. Then watch what happens to representation when competence actually determines success.

Is this moment an opportunity to finally build systems that reward competence — or will it return us to the biased status quo with a new justification?

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