Project 23’s Elaine dela Cruz on creating DE&I programmes in media

Host: Chris Sutcliffe
January 2, 2024

On this episode of the podcast Elaine dela Cruz, co-founder of DE&I consultancy firm Project 23, tells us about what is creating positive change for diversity and inclusion in the industry. We’re also joined by guest co-host Joanna Cummings, Editorial Director of The Grub Street Journal and author of the DE&I chapter of this year’s Media Moments report.

Elaine takes us through why she co-founded the organisation, how the DE&I landscape has changed over the past five years, and why ‘resilience’ is such a dangerous word. We also discuss how the best media companies are measuring the success of their DE&I efforts.

A selected highlight from the episode:

How DE&I has changed over the past five years…

“The fact that DE&I is now genuinely workplace vernacular, it means it’s out there. When we started five years ago, we knew that there was so much room for change, not just in media, but across society, across so many industries, of course, dominated often – I mean, the media industry is dominated by often male, middle class, middle aged cisgender men – and that’s the systems and processes that we all then operate within.

As people who didn’t fit into that mould, we knew that there was so much talent that industries are missing out on. We knew that success, productivity, efficiency, creativity, could be so much better. But I felt like back then we were really selling that idea more than we are today.

I think people today have a better understanding of why DE&I is crucial to their organisations or their business success. Whether they’re doing something about it or not, is a whole other ballgame. But I think most organisations know that this is going to help us and is going to drive our organisation further. So that’s one big change, we’re selling it less as a concept.

In the middle though, I think what has happened, in 2020, George Floyd was murdered and people who do what I do, have done what I do for a much longer period of time than I have, we all experienced a rush of clients, individuals, businesses approaching us wanting to do this work for the first time. So globally we see a huge movement driven by Black Lives Matter to put DE&I – and for the first time actually specifically racism and anti-racism – within the workplace. So this is now becoming a real conversation, and a real want to change.

So you see a rush to do more work, a rush of investment, hirings of Chief Diversity Officers, Chief Diversity Managers, etc., set ups of impact employee resource groups and networks. However, the news cycle has changed, unfortunately. And in 2022 and this year, particularly, we’ve started to see that investment slowdown or even be cut all together as other macroeconomic factors and challenges have come into play for businesses.

There’s been a real shift, I think, in the fact that this is something that organisations really know they need to deliver on. But there is still there is still a huge challenge and a huge barrier to sticking with this work and committing to this work, when you know, “other bigger priorities” come along. So I think that really challenges the whole piece.”

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