Davianne Harris on Dynamic DE&I Consulting

Since America's 'reckoning with race,' as Davianne Harris labeled to the past year, 75% of organizations believe they have enhanced DEI efforts since 2020, but the big question remains: what does success look like? Davianne Harris, Chief Client Officer and DE&I lead at sparks & honey led an expert panel with DE&I Leaders Tony Hobley at Omnicom Precision Marketing Group, Jason Rosario from BBDO Worldwide, Jennifer Brown (she/her/hers) and Jonathan Jackson, both from the sparks & honey Advisory Board, and Benjamin Grinspan of sparks and honey, on the nuanced responsibility advertisers must lean into for DE&I to shine from internal values and practices to external audiences. 

Jonathan Jackson answers with what DE&I sounds like: “So much talent is silenced in corporate cultures where minority stakeholders do not feel welcome to contribute to businesses beyond existing within their walls. The environment was not designed for their voice to be heard." The decibels of DE&I extend to senior leaders who have always been empowered to have their voices heard yet don't always speak up. Our EoC, Moral Responsibility, is concerned with the basics of the human moral code. "Not saying anything because you're too afraid is no longer acceptable … The work, like our creative output, is iterative. The more you engage, the more you work with it, the more mistakes you will make, no doubt, but then you will take those learnings and re-invest them in the process," added Rosario. 

In an industry where measuring success is traditionally dependent on counting impressions, views, and sales, advertisers and consultancies need to internalize why that is the wrong way to analyze progress in the DE&I space. Hiring quotas don't lead to more diverse workplaces. Tony Hobley channeled our Element of Culture, Perceptual Diversity, when he spoke about quantifiable growth and DE&I in modern organizations. "We need to fundamentally change from a financial conversation that measures numbers every quarter that drives a risk-and-compliance-oriented culture.. to a narrative we want to set and live up to … And then numbers prove progress instead of that we live and die inside them every quarter." With Davianne Harris at the helm of sparks & honey’s client operations integrating DE&I practices in all of our work, the perceived gap between quarterly growth and DE&I progress is shrinking smaller than ever.  

Watch the Full Culture Briefing below:

Watch live Culture Briefings every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday at 12 pm ET on the sparks & honey LinkedIn page.