Cecily Joseph, Board Director of MercyCorps: Policy & Systematic Racial Inequality 01/13/22 (1/3)

On January 13, 2022, we spoke with Cecily Josephy, board director of MercyCorps and former Chief Diversity Officer at Symantec to explore “Addressing Structural Inequity: The Need for Policy Thought Leadership at the Board Level.”

As companies take the challenges of systemic inequity more seriously, Boards and managers are working to improve how they engage talent, build cultures of respect, and integrate equity into their value chains with customers, suppliers and communities. Yet systemic barriers, such as wealth and education gaps, are affected by historical and current policy positions – which few leaders have yet integrated into their strategies.

In this module, we explore:

• What are “5 buckets” or systemic aspects of racial inequality that go beyond cultural norms and push us to broaden our thinking about solutions?
• Will companies that made big commitments to address racial inequality make efforts to address these 5 buckets? 

The Corporate Political Responsibility Taskforce (CPRT)’s Expert Dialogues are in-depth, recorded conversations with academic experts, stakeholder advocates and business practitioners to provide our members and other CPR champions with the expertise and context they need to develop principled, proactive CPR strategies. Specifically crafted as conversation-starters for business students, government affairs officers, sustainability executives, diversity, equity and inclusion leaders, investors, academic experts, and stakeholder advocates, each module is designed to spark constructive, non-partisan, principles-based dialogue without “being political.”

The full transcript for this module is available here. 

KEYWORDS: #CorporatePoliticalResponsibility #ESG #CivicEngagement #SystemicRisk #CPR_Trends #Injustice #Inequality