Category: Interviews

For the first 12 or 13 years of my career, I was blissfully, painfully unaware of genuine issues on inclusion and diversity. I knew how to say the right things because I’d gone through all the training programs, but I didn’t really feel it in my heart of hearts. I’m a white male from the New York City area, so I was always part of the majority culture in whatever major law firm or major US corporation that I worked for.

Then I came to work for DSM, which is a Dutch-headquartered company, and I found myself travelling at least once a month to the Netherlands for internal meetings. It was all Dutch people, and they would speak in a language that I didn’t understand, they’d talk about sports teams that I didn’t follow, they’d eat food that I found very strange, they wouldn’t invite me to dinners or lunches or even just for coffee because I was the outsider in many respects. I would find myself flying home on the plane feeling depressed, angry and frustrated.

It finally dawned on me that, for the first time in my career, I wasn’t part of the majority culture in these environments, and it altered my behavior. It made me hesitant, it made me less likely to speak up, it made me much more aware and in tune with all the little gestures and words that were made in the room – and that was exhausting.

I was actually thinking of leaving and, after a few of those trips, I said to myself, if I feel like this when I go there, how do my female employees, my racial minority employees, how do they feel working in an environment that’s predominantly American white male? So I asked them, and they told me. That was my epiphany: how can we get the most out of any organization when such a significant portion of it is not bringing their whole selves to work every day (like I wasn’t when I went to the Netherlands)? And that was how we began to change the programs.

Now that I found myself to be awake and aware of these issues and the impact of not being part of the majority culture, I started to work hard to change things. I had a more junior female lawyer that I worked very closely with for a few years on mergers and acquisitions and, as a consequence, she would sometimes have to travel for two, three weeks at a time when we were doing due diligence at a location or in the midst of a transactional negotiation. She did a great job.

Over a period of two years, she had two small children, and so I said to myself, why don’t I take some of the pressure off of her and not give her these assignments anymore because they require her to be away from her family and two small children for such an extended period of time? What a great person I am!

And then I talked to my sister, who’s about the same age and a lawyer at a corporation in the US. With such pride I explained it all to her, and she looked at me and said, ‘You are a number one fool!’

And I said, ‘What are you talking about? Look how smart and progressive I am!’

She said, ‘No, you are a complete idiot. Who are you to decide for this person what they can and cannot do? Do you decide that for your male lawyers?’

So the next Monday, I went into the office, set up a meeting with this lawyer and said, ‘Look, I think I have really done you a disservice. I thought I was being a good guy by not assigning you these M&A projects that would have been high-profile, but would have required you to be away from your family, and it has been brought to my attention that maybe that wasn’t the smart thing to do.’

She actually started crying, and said, ‘I’ve been thinking of leaving the company, because I thought that since I’d had children you had lost faith in me.’

Going forward, I’ve been very keen on talking to all of our employees around, ‘Hey look, if you have an issue with the demands of different assignments because you can’t balance it with what you have going on at home or with elderly parents, tell me, and accommodations will be made and there will be no adverse consequences for you.’ But I don’t want to be in the position ever again where I’m making decisions for people without having that conversation with them.

Certainly we look to recruit and hire diverse talent, so we take a lot of different things into consideration when we’re looking to hire lawyers for the law department that go beyond just experience. We try to bring in diversity in terms of age, gender, national origin and race. They certainly can’t be determinative factors in hiring because that would be discriminatory, but they are definitely taken into consideration and we certainly put in place – not just for the law department but for all of DSM – different tools and processes to try to weed out unconscious bias in the hiring process.

We use a basic questionnaire that’s the same for everyone, so we can generate similar responses and ensure that there’s no bias in the questioning or interviewing process. We have a diverse team that looks at responses again to ensure we’re weeding out a little bit of the unconscious bias that creates an environment where folks tend to hire people that look like them, act like them and think like them. Then, our diverse team will have an opportunity to not only conduct interviews but be part of the decision-making process. As such, it’s not just me making a decision as to who we hire and who we don’t hire, but the team itself – I give a great deal of autonomy to make a decision as to whether or not a candidate will fit with the team from an inclusion perspective or not.

Once we bring lawyers on board, the inclusion part is where it gets difficult. You really have to spend a lot of time and energy and effort to ensure that when you bring folks together from different backgrounds and different experiences, that it is a very close team, communicative and collaborative – and that can only happen when you spend time ensuring that there’s complete transparency and authenticity, and giving everybody an opportunity to reach their full potential within the group.

DSM is not unique – many companies have a lot of internal diversity and inclusion and unconscious bias training programs and things like that, which I find to be very nice but not impactful. So I try to create experiential learning opportunities for members of the team, because that’s how I came to my epiphany on these issues myself. I’m on the board of directors of the Tri-State Diversity Council and what I’ll try to do, for example, is find some white male attorneys and send them to events that are overwhelmingly attended by African American females. Putting people in an environment where, for the first time in many respects, they are part of the minority culture is an eye-opening experience for them, and those experiential learning opportunities create a need for reflection. That reflection allows for adaptation, not just in behaviors but point of view. The most important thing for me, is that those members of the legal team who are part of the majority culture have an opportunity to be confronted with the privilege that comes with that majority, and that changes their point of view. When I create these experiential learning opportunities at provocative inclusion and diversity conferences and experiences, the lawyers come back with their own evangelical bent on the issue and then become my ambassadors within the organization for change.

I’m working on a project for the whole company to completely rewrite our policies, procedures and norms to be a better fit for the future of work. I’m a strong believer that, in corporate America today, the current policies, procedures, benefits and practices were written 60 years ago by people who looked like me – and they are still working really well for people who look like me. If we want to drive change, we don’t make incremental changes to these policies, practices and procedures to adjust to changes in the law, we bring a diverse team together to rewrite them so that they work for everyone.

To me, it’s about adapting to the future of work. We’ll see much more flexible work time, much more use of technology for collaboration, more concierge services offered to employees so that they’re not wasting their time grocery shopping and picking up dry cleaning and things like that, much more of the forced sponsorship programs where diverse talent gets a traditional sponsor so that the next generation of leaders doesn’t look exactly like the previous generation of leaders. I’m completely convinced that, because of demographic changes, diversity is a given. If a company is not diverse going forward, it just means it’s forgotten a half-to-two-thirds of the population when looking for talent, and no company can survive that way. It’s those companies that create a culture, environment and infrastructure to foster inclusiveness that will be really successful going forward.

In the legal industry, we have a challenge with promoting diverse talent, particularly at the senior levels of the profession. We do pretty well with diverse representation at junior levels, in part because law schools – while not graduating totally representative classes – are graduating a high percentage of women who make up more than 50% of top law school graduates and around 40% of all law school graduates. People of color are also increasingly well represented in today’s graduating law school classes. As a result, many opportunities exist to get fairly representative junior classes of lawyers into firms.

What law firms are not good at is retaining and promoting this diverse talent. If firms – or in-house legal teams – want to address this challenge and effect real change through a diversity and inclusion (D&I) strategy, several things need to work in tandem.

First, the entire talent strategy needs to treat all the members of the organization as valuable people whose professional development is important. If you try to build a D&I strategy without an overarching talent strategy that takes into account the importance of all contributors, you run the risk of backlash against the D&I initiative because it is seen as supporting a subgroup while not taking care of the overall organization.

Second, there needs to be serious, focused attention on diversity in the talent acquisition model – and by that, I mean more than simply ensuring that you go through the formality of including diverse candidates in each panel of candidates. Rather, the organization needs to understand where it may be lacking in diversity. For example, in both legal organizations that I have led, we’ve had a majority female organization at the more junior levels and very low representation of people of color at all levels. As such, an explicit focus on the diversity gaps in the talent cohort is very important, and a clear understanding of the need to fill those gaps must be understood by everybody who is involved in the talent acquisition exercise.

To get a bit more granular, I think it’s very important to use techniques of interviewing that are designed to identify attributes that will help you find people with leadership competencies: people who have the ability to rise through the organization. We do that through an interview process designed to identify emotional intelligence – to put interviewees a little bit on their heels, make them understand that what we really want to find out about them is their ability to think on their feet, approach unexpected situations with confidence and exhibit authenticity and candor.

The third component of the D&I strategy is to create a diverse leadership pipeline. This involves creating a succession plan and making sure that you’re giving due regard to diversity in your talent-shaping agenda. The way that I did that at MetLife was by conducting an assessment of all of the non-officer talent – people who are below the manager level in the organization – and their leadership aptitude. To identify the leading non-officer candidates for future leadership, we assessed these individuals through a combination of survey techniques with clients, peers, managers, subordinates, and the senior leadership of the legal organization. The leading candidates – about 10% of the non-leaders – are invited to participate in a leadership academy that involves allocating stretch assignments and providing sponsors who are accountable for making sure that they get experiences, exposure and training to develop their leadership aptitude. It’s not an exercise that’s focused exclusively on diverse talent; in fact, it must be bias-blind. This is important because, in my experience, existing leaders usually tap future leaders on the shoulder, a model that allows unconscious bias to figure very significantly in the leadership development process.

In order to ensure a bias-blind approach, I stress the importance of going outside of the organization and asking the business partners who are actually receiving the advice and advocacy of lawyers to evaluate these emerging leaders on six-to-eight leadership attributes in a very simple survey instrument. In the past, we’ve tried to get at least 20 individual evaluations of each candidate so that you can measure trends about the various individuals in the organization. It’s not a precise science, but it does end up identifying some of the strongest candidates. It’s good to do it annually so the organization can continue refining and correcting its approach to identifying candidates for future leadership.

One of the things I learned at MetLife was to leave people in the leadership academy as long as they are growing and performing well. If you find that is not the case, release them from the leadership academy, have a thoughtful and constructive conversation with them about why they are being released, and discuss what they should do if they want to be readmitted. At the same time, continue to evaluate the population that wasn’t selected for the leadership academy, and consider bringing new people in.

It’s critical to make sure that this kind of initiative has a salutary effect on the organization as a whole and doesn’t end up producing the opposite effect by making individuals who have been excluded feel like their exclusion was unfair. Of course, communication is key, and you need to introduce thoughtfulness and flexibility into your strategy.

As part of the leadership development program at MetLife, I also created a stewardship initiative that involved one-on-one sponsorship relationships to cultivate future leaders. The sponsor and the protégé create a leadership development plan that includes specific objectives to achieve in a three-to-five-year timeframe, with milestones along the way. The plan could include experiences, training, exposure – any number of different things – and there is a timeline associated with each of the articulated objectives. You also measure the performance of both the protégé and the sponsor by looking at accomplishment or non-accomplishment of the stated objectives and milestones. If you are not successful, you figure out whether you have a weakness on the protégé side, on the sponsor side, or both.

At MetLife, we presented our stewardship initiative to our outside counsel. We showed them what we were doing to hold senior leadership accountable for the retention and promotion of our diverse talent and the obligation of all officers in the organization to sponsor a rising leader and be measured on their results as a sponsor.

As part of the discussion on sponsorship, we gave our outside counsel a deadline to put in place specific plans and strategies to hold their leadership team accountable for the retention and promotion of diverse talent in their organization. We promised to support them in this effort, but if we could not come to an agreement on an acceptable D&I sponsorship program within two years, we would exclude them from our approved counsel list. That proved very effective.

When we identify very strong candidates for advancement, we frequently find it difficult to hold on to those people, because they have so many opportunities put in front of them. You are often disappointed by having lost someone that you had in your mind’s eye as a key component of the future leadership of the organization. But those are just things that you have to manage – the ordinary challenges that come with running a corporate organization.

I look forward to implementing these initiatives in the legal division at Freddie Mac and I am very confident and optimistic that we’re going to have a very successful D&I strategy and execution. Freddie Mac’s human resources leadership is looking at our D&I strategy as a pilot that it’s considering implementing throughout the rest of the organization, so I’m very enthusiastic, flattered and encouraged by that.

My journey to the law, on paper, was pretty straightforward. School, high school, undergraduate degree, and then straight into law school. But my hand was forced, slightly, towards the legal profession.

My real interest in school, even through undergraduate study, was in science. But I have muscular dystrophy – I was diagnosed when I was around three or four, and it’s a progressive disability, so I knew from an early age that it would worsen as I got older. Law was a very good choice for me, because the only thing required to practice law was a mind and a mouth. Muscular dystrophy does not attack those, so it was something that I felt I could actually have a long career in – and it was a laudable profession to enter.

In some ways, I think that having muscular dystrophy taught me to be an advocate from a young age – to stand up for myself and try to speak and educate people. I also think that growing up with a disability made me a little bit more patient, and it definitely made me a better listener. Maybe the quick answer isn’t always the right answer. It never hurts to listen, hear something out, and do a little bit more research, to try and think, engage or get creative on a solution.

With disability, there are challenges in all aspects of your life. My wheelchair comes with me, so architectural barriers are just everywhere. There are issues in housing, transportation, education, and places of public accommodation, like stores and restaurants. I have witnessed great strides and many improvements in accessibility, but there’s still a long way to go.

However, more problematic than architectural issues are the attitudinal barriers that still haven’t fully been breached. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that, historically, people with disabilities have had the lowest representation in all aspects of life. Just me being in a room at a closing or in court, sitting across a table from an adversary or discussing things with clients – the importance of that is immeasurable. The best way to learn is by observing, and the best way for that is to have people with disabilities more visible in every facet of life.

Traditionally, a lot of people with disabilities have been employed in disability-related fields. That’s great, and it’s important, but that’s not the be-all and end-all of life experience for people. I think that the more you see individuals with disabilities in regular roles, like in the law department doing real estate work, the better. Frequently I’m the first person that non-disabled people have a professional experience with, and that takeaway is enormous, because these people go back to their firms, go back to their lives in business, and maybe there’s a conversation at the dinner table, or maybe their kids hear something about it. It’s not a formal type of experience where somebody takes a class, or a piece of legislation is enacted – it’s more real.

Disability runs the spectrum; there are lots of people with either invisible or less visible, not-so-obvious disabilities. But I haven’t had somebody else with a visible disability sitting on the opposite side of a conference room table from me, or appearing in court on the other side of a case. I’ve encountered many other diverse attorneys professionally, but I haven’t had the experience of having an attorney with a visible disability as an adversary. It would be odd for almost any other diverse attorney to have an experience where they have never encountered a similarly diverse attorney (as an adversary) in their professional lives.

In terms of the New York City Law Department, there are several other attorneys with disabilities, and frequently what happens is an introduction is made with newer attorneys with disabilities, even if it’s just a summer intern. I might be able to provide some advice to newer attorneys starting out, or somebody who might be thinking of the Law Department, and it’s always beneficial to have someone else who’s been through something similar to talk to. There are some unique challenges and issues that we face where the only other person who might be able to fully understand, or think of solutions, or just be a friendly ear, would be someone else who’s been through it too.

Several months ago, I was one of the presenters and planners for the first continuing legal education course given by the Law Department for City attorneys on disability rights. That was really a great thing to be involved with and it was also a real honor to be asked.

I serve on the Law Department’s Committee on Diversity Recruitment and Retention. I was the first attorney with a disability to serve on that committee. Through that committee, we became a signatory to the American Bar Association’s Disability Diversity in the Legal Profession Pledge for Change. The pledge recognizes that disability diversity is in the best interests of the legal profession, our clients, and our firms. Attorneys with disabilities are important constituents of legal practice, and you should take steps to be more inclusive, while also giving more recognition to these types of issues.

I was the chair of the disability mentoring day program that we run, where high school and college-age students with disabilities come here to the Law Department. They sit in lectures from attorneys who explain what we do, give them tours and that sort of thing. It’s to keep the interest of those students who may not necessarily think that law is a possibility for them, and explain to them it is not worth closing themselves off from work. It was really a wonderful program to be involved in.

Our people are really dedicated to making the Law Department and the practice of law in general more inclusive through training, hosting lectures where people from different diverse backgrounds come here, and hosting receptions welcoming new summer interns or new attorneys into the Law Department, where we can highlight that diversity is important. We represent the people of the city of New York in a way; New York City is one of the most diverse cities anywhere, the Law Department is one of the most diverse law offices anywhere, and it’s both an important and necessary thing for every law office and every employer to represent the communities that they work in.

Personally, I’ve been involved with several disability rights organizations, and one of them is Brooklyn Center for Independence of the Disabled (BCID). It’s in the living sector and its goals are to provide information, assistance and counseling for people with disabilities to navigate the bureaucracy of programs that might enable them to live and work, through advocacy; whether it’s going to local businesses and educating them in making their organization more wheelchair-friendly – for example, by installing ramps or training staff – or providing guidance to students who might be transitioning from high school or college and preparing them for career decisions. I’m vice president to the board of directors.

I’m also involved with an organization called NMD United, and that organization is founded by professional people with various forms of muscular dystrophy to assist fellow people with the condition, who can offer advice on aspects of living with a neuromuscular disability. That could be by finding personal attendants, discussing issues with housing, access or benefits, and we’re also involved in providing microgrants to help with certain disability-related expenses that might not necessarily be covered by insurance or other programs. Even for something simple like wheelchair repair, there might be bureaucratic hoops to jump through with insurers to get coverage. But if your wheelchair breaks, lots of people end up trapped at home, or even trapped in bed, just because of a relatively small repair.

If you have an attorney with a disability, or even a member of support staff with a disability, engage with them; ask what works for them, and for their advice on issues. There’s a wealth of knowledge on problems that could be tapped into. And, engage the community: invite schools over and have open house – like our disability mentoring day, or ‘bring your children to work day’. Little things like that are really important, because you want to teach people from a young age that there are options and choices – that inclusion works.

Legislation is wonderful, and regulation is wonderful, but you also need the community to really embrace issues and to be accommodating. Changing an attitudinal barrier costs nothing. If you’re going to put together training programs, have one (or many) that can cover multiple facets of inclusion. Be inclusive in training: recognize there are issues that need to be addressed and the best way of doing it is by encouraging further dialogue, and engaging with those who know best in order to try and address those issues.

At NBCUniversal, like many institutions, we recognize that diversity is a business imperative. As our viewers and customers become more diverse, we need to make sure that we are reflecting diversity both in front of and behind the camera, as well as throughout the organization.

At NBCUniversal we have an annual talent review process, where every senior executive reports to the CEO about their teams. One goal of the review process is succession planning, and our CEO has mandated that the talent review include a specific discussion about diverse talent. This has encouraged all senior executives to think about their teams with diversity top of mind, and ensures we’re considering the broadest possible pool of up-and-coming leaders for the company.

I have a similar discussion with all of my senior leaders in order to prepare me to talk to the CEO, and it has a cascading effect. Our legal function is incredibly diverse, both along gender and ethnicity lines, and we aim to lead by example. The conversations that I have with my team are about not only identifying diverse talent, but planning the concrete steps that we are going to take to develop them into future leaders. We are focused on being mindful about the development of our diverse talent and making sure they are getting the right skill development and the right opportunities to make them successful candidates for future leadership roles. With the help of our fantastic HR team, we make sure we’re following up on these goals. While aggregate workforce statistics are important to monitor, I think it’s even more important to focus on the individual development of diverse talent. It takes more energy, but it’s something we have to be committed to if we want to see more diverse lawyers at senior levels.

Turning to recruitment efforts, we have spent time considering the best ways to engage future NBCUniversal lawyers. We have a diversity committee for the legal function, led by one of my senior leaders and comprised of lawyers and professional staff from across our business units and locations at a range of seniority levels. Among the activities our diversity committee focuses on are pipeline initiatives. We speak to high school and law school students to talk to them about a career in entertainment and media law. We hope these efforts will encourage diverse students to choose our field for a career so that our applicant pool becomes even more diverse over time.

We also hold receptions in New York and Los Angeles for diverse lawyers in the industry and those interested in transitioning to media and entertainment law. Our goal for these receptions is to introduce the company and hopefully spark an interest in a career at NBCUniversal, in part by showcasing the wide range of legal careers available at NBCUniversal but also by emphasizing our commitment to diversity. These receptions also help us identify talented lawyers that we may want to recruit for open roles.

Additionally, NBCUniversal sponsors a multitude of diverse bar associations. We send representatives from our team to the annual conferences and use these events as professional development opportunities for up-and-coming diverse talent. The NBCU lawyers chosen as representatives of the company get the opportunity to network with other lawyers in the industry or in the particular affinity group, and often participate on panels. Through these networking opportunities, we also hope to find other lawyers we may want to bring into the company, or outside counsel we may want to hire. We also work with diverse bar associations to post our open job opportunities.

Another priority is ensuring the diversity of our external counsel. For a number of years, we focused our outside counsel diversity efforts on hiring minority- and women-owned firms. We made great progress in that area, but we realized that the majority of our external spend was going to majority-owned firms. As a result, more recently, we have focused on making progress on diversity with the majority-owned firms that we hire. Our outside counsel guidelines express our strong commitment to diversity and our expectation that our matters will be staffed with diverse attorneys. But we now go beyond that statement of our commitment by using metrics to regularly monitor the diversity of the teams and the partners that are working on our cases. We are trying to focus on the accountability that metrics provide, so we use them to prompt dialogue with the firms – praising those that are doing well and developing proactive plans with those that need to increase the diversity of the lawyers who are working on NBCUniversal matters.

We track the diversity of the outside counsel who are working on our matters every six months, not only in terms of hours but also in terms of spend. We want to make sure that firms are not only staffing our matters with diverse junior lawyers, but also providing meaningful opportunities on our matters for more senior diverse lawyers, in an effort to better position them for partnership. Tracking in this way helps to encourage not only the firms themselves, but also our senior in-house lawyers – we need to understand how we are doing in order to take responsibility for the diversity of our outside counsel. It’s a double layer of accountability. Monitoring through metrics also helps avoid any troubling trends and ensures that our diversity commitments have an impact, both internally and externally. It’s very easy to express a commitment but, without careful observation, commitments run the risk of not resulting in meaningful change.

We also encourage diverse outside counsel to provide CLEs for our team, as a way for them to meet the senior lawyers on the NBCUniversal legal team who are making hiring decisions. It’s often difficult for diverse lawyers at firms to get that foot in the door, so this is just one step to encourage additional exposure.

I think most law firms have the best intentions when it comes to diversity and they generally do a good job attracting diverse classes of summer associates and new lawyers. That is not translating to more diversity at senior ranks and in partnerships, however. I think the problem is a lack of mindfulness and realizing that extra effort and attention is needed to make sure that diverse talent is getting the opportunities that will lead to promotion. Law firms need to identify their talented mid-tier diverse associates and put thoughtful effort behind their development. It’s not enough simply to bring them into the building – you have to focus on making sure that they continue to develop and advance.

As a woman of color myself, I think it is also important to recognize that women of color face unique challenges in the workplace and need particular focus. If you think about women of color as simply ‘people of color’ or ‘women’, you miss some of the unique challenges that they face.

One of our broader corporate initiatives at Comcast is to make sure we are particularly conscious of candidates from the military community. Veterans, for example, often have non-traditional experience that can be very valuable in a corporate setting. We need to think about relevant experience in a much broader way – identifying skills that we need that might be expressed in a less familiar way. Ultimately, this kind of broader thinking will benefit lots of candidates that may have non-traditional backgrounds. We also plan to enhance our outreach and support of lawyers from the LGTBQ community and lawyers with disabilities. We have excellent LGTBQ representation in the legal function at NBCU and continue to evaluate ways to increase our diversity across the board.

I had the benefit of that broader, more flexible thinking – I had no experience in the entertainment industry when I was hired as general counsel of NBCUniversal, but the CEO took a risk on hiring somebody with a different background. That broader thinking gave me an opportunity I wouldn’t otherwise have had, and, in turn, I added a different perspective to the executive ranks at NBCUniversal.

We’ve always had a lot of diversity in the workplace. We worked to bring people into our headquarters from Peru, Mexico, Argentina, Chile and Brazil to ensure that we were getting great insight into what was happening in our marketplaces, but also to ensure that our management and operating team in the US was diverse and appropriately represented our company.

Marketing, in particular, was very clear that when it comes to selling products in another country, it’s really important that you have people on board and working on the marketing campaigns that understand how things are going to be perceived. So the business teams would come to legal and HR and say, ‘We are expanding into this area and we think it would be important to make sure that we have representation of these groups – can you help us to make that happen?’

A few years ago, it was pretty easy to bring people from our markets to the US for a period of time on specific types of visas, and they would bring their families. The company would sponsor them; these are people that were going to be contributing to our company and to our society, and the US was very open to doing this. Now there have been some changes that are making these visas more difficult.

There have been some recent discussions where some of these doors will be opened again, but it hasn’t happened yet, so we have run into some barriers. Now what we’re doing is working with people in the market in Brazil, without them coming and living in the US. It has become too expensive and difficult right now for us to continue to do this the same way that we used to. Companies are challenging the visa issue, particularly tech companies, because they rely on people from all over the world – it’s going to be a major issue.

We have a joint venture with a group that has operations in a number of countries, and English is our business language. You may be speaking English to each other, but there may not be a meeting of the minds just because of cultural differences. Those differences can be based in how people view the world, and that can happen on the legal side very easily, because law is something where we are so grounded in how our country views and uses a legal system and looks at regulations and the courts. All that comes together as we draft contracts and agreements, and when you don’t view things the same way it can be difficult to ensure parties are having a meeting of the minds – so everyone is shaking their heads in the affirmative, as though there is a common understanding, yet there isn’t. We’ve figured out that we need to have full discussions and then follow up in writing so that people can have an opportunity to think about it, and then raise their hand if they think there may be an issue.

The other issue, of course, is when you have people working in their second or third language. Technical terms, and in particular foreign legal terms, are not what you learn in school – they can be very difficult, and we have done a better job over the years of ensuring that we provide clear definitions and resources. You have to have people who are willing to put in a little more work on these things, and it’s worth it, it definitely pays off, but it does take a little more work.

Some of these things we have gotten from meetings and consulting with some of the Big Four, outside legal teams, large business consulting firms and investment bankers. We watch how these multinational advisory firms bring together people from all over the world and put them in a room and how they work together on things, and we have learned some lessons. For example, if there’s going to be a meeting where you have people from a number of different countries coming to the table, it’s very helpful for people to receive materials ahead of time so that they have an opportunity to review them. You just can’t throw up the slide presentation at the meeting and expect that everyone is going to clearly understand what you’re talking through.

Inclusion makes everybody comfortable, which can lead to a much more effective business environment. People are able to raise their hands when there’s an issue and speak up, because they feel like they are part of a group that accepts them and is willing and able to work with them on concerns. And that’s not just for looking at cultural and ethnic diversity, but also gender diversity and all forms of diversity. Religious diversity, for example, doesn’t come up as often at work, but there are situations that arise where people need time off for religious reasons and it’s certainly easier to raise those issues when you feel that you are part of a group that is properly and fairly represented.

As the head of legal, and as a woman, I do what I can to ensure that any time we have a large project with a big law firm there are women on the account, and that I would really like a female partner to be a part of the group that’s providing service to us. In the US, a lot of women go to law school, but law firms are not doing a great job of retaining women through partnership, and there’s a variety of reasons for that. I believe the law firms are working on this, but I feel that, as a company, I can help to ensure that law firms do what they can to support their female associates by requiring, in order to get our business, a female partner for this job. It’s actually been interesting and fulfilling to watch law firms work to meet these requests, and they have – and that’s wonderful.

The legal team is also in charge of drafting and updating our ethics and compliance guidelines and training and, through those, we set an example and provide principles on how the company should be thinking about diversity. And then when it comes to actually trying to think about diversity in hiring, it is really important that legal be involved in that as well – because while diversity is a factor that can and should be considered, it can’t be a reason that we select one person who is not as qualified over someone who is qualified. It’s a balancing act, and I think it’s important that the legal team remains involved, and it has to be something that the legal team cares about for it to really work effectively at a company.

One area that’s a little bit concerning to me right now, not just in the US but also in Europe, is this idea of requiring a certain number of women on boards. It’s a great idea, but I am a little concerned about how boards meet those requirements and ensure that the right people are given the seat. Boards often want to appoint new members that have board experience, and when there’s a small group of people that have that experience, what you’re doing is just appointing the same group to all of the boards. So I think it is about people working to expand their skillsets, and boards also being advised by the legal team – both outside counsel and inside counsel – that they need to consider diversity and the importance of having fresh perspectives. That means providing opportunities to people who don’t have board seats already on their résumé.

I think it’s making sure that people are being given the opportunity to stretch their wings, and allowing people potentially to stumble a little bit, because you learn a lot when things don’t work out exactly the way you want them to. It’s about saying to senior leaders, boards and executives, ‘Make sure that you give people opportunities, and that you are there for them and available as they try to work through these projects.’

Diversity is particularly important in the legal profession, because the charge of the attorney is to zealously represent their clients, most of whom are from a diverse background. Part and parcel of representing any client is to understand their frame of mind, experience and thinking, so you can empathize with and better represent them.

On the corporate side, diversity is important because companies are essentially building and shipping products, and the buyers of those products are everyday people – people from different racial and ethnic backgrounds, sexual orientations and genders. Building a game-changing product requires creativity and I believe that diversity is a necessary element of creativity. And from a pure business standpoint, any company would want to understand and effectively sell to the broadest swathe of people they could possibly reach, so it’s important to have a diverse group around you determining the go-to-market plan.

Diversity also makes sense from a social equity standpoint. There is no such thing as a level playing field – some people start off two steps ahead, some people start off three steps behind. We need to provide every qualified person an opportunity to practice in the upper echelons of law; if we pay forward our good fortune, they will too. That’s how institutional change happens. As legal professionals, we ought to be mindful of and intentional about ensuring that our respective organizations are diverse.

My approach isn’t very mysterious, nor is it complex. While I think issues of race, gender, sexual orientation and inequality are complex subject matters that often result in uncomfortable, but absolutely necessary conversations, my approach is straightforward. As a general counsel, I have the ability to hire in-house and retain outside counsel, and so I need to be intentional about diversity and leverage my influence to build a diverse organization, both internally and externally.

In my mind, advancing diversity isn’t completely about quotas or explicit affirmative action, it’s about setting aside internal biases and prejudices when interviewing a candidate. Look beyond their credentials and determine how they will uniquely enrich your organization’s business and culture. Check at the door your preconceived notions of what a ‘perfect candidate’ looks like – select the best and brightest diverse candidates.

Let’s say you are hiring for in-house legal counsel and you especially appreciate pedigree and work experience. When it comes to pedigree, there are going to be far more non-diverse candidates coming out of the top-tier law schools than there are diverse candidates coming out of those same schools. The same goes for experience; there are going to be many more non-diverse lawyers at a top law firm, a top-tier corporation or coming out of a prestigious judicial clerkship than there are diverse lawyers. So hiring is about much more than simply checking boxes and seeing which candidate looks like the safest bet. The more intentional path is to determine whether someone has the core competencies to do the work and whether they have demonstrated other attributes that signal they would be a constructive contributor to your organization. Those other attributes could be intellectual curiosity, integrity, drive, empathy, grit, passion or demonstrating they have overcome hardship. These are qualities that aren’t reflected on a LinkedIn profile, but are absolutely critical if you’re trying to build a legal department reflective of a company culture that cares very much about diversity. At Ironclad, we have teammates from Yale, Berkeley and Harvard law schools working side by side with non-college graduates, all of whom bring diverse talent with technical, design, legal backgrounds, and more.

Externally, there are times when I make an express request to outside counsel for a diverse attorney not only to be assigned to the matter, but also to take on substantive work and to be afforded the opportunity to assume significant responsibility, if not a leadership role. I also make sure that we maintain a roster of diverse outside counsel. I participate in minority bar associations and, having been part of a community of diverse lawyers for quite some time, I have been fortunate enough to build long-term relationships with tremendous lawyers who also happen to be lawyers of color. When there’s an opportunity to hire those lawyers, that’s who I go to first, not only because they’re diverse, but because I can trust them, and I know the work they do is of the highest quality.

What’s incredibly powerful about Ironclad is that we have built and are growing a community of general counsel throughout the United States who can come together at Ironclad-hosted dinners and leadership roundtable sessions. When that happens, a lot of issues are discussed, including diversity, so we are able to advance the cause not only by discussing the issue explicitly, but by bringing people together and allowing them to connect and foster and further relationships.

I do not think diversity is rocket science, I think it’s relatively straightforward. We all have the power to diversify our respective legal teams, and we all have the power to ensure that our outside counsel look like and have had similar experiences to a broader cross-section of America.

At Ironclad, we are incredibly proud of our people – we were recently recognized as one of the most diverse start-ups in Silicon Valley, and I think we received that recognition because we’re intentional about each individual who joins our rapidly growing team. About half of our company are women and the vast majority of our executive team are affiliated with a minority group or groups. Diversity is something that we think is mission critical. But it’s also something we don’t talk a lot about. While I think that shedding light on the topic of diversity is necessary, it’s not sufficient. You can’t just talk the talk, you need to walk the walk. As the old adage goes ‘actions speak louder than words’. Here, action means being intentional about and executing on a diversity plan. As we continue to scale our organization at Ironclad, people and culture are the most important, North-Star elements to us. Friends refer friends; folks want to work with diverse people and have conversations at work and outside with peers who have had a different experience than they’ve had.

I’m a black male who has mostly grown up in a predominantly white profession. I live and breathe diversity every day – I’m the subject of it – and when I came to Silicon Valley for the first time four years ago, I was unpleasantly surprised by the lack of diversity. It really became obvious when I started sitting in the boardroom and going to start-up- and tech-related events. I think one of the major issues is that there is a lack of incentive on the part of many Silicon Valley leaders to intentionally diversify their respective companies. Until the conversation shifts from ‘diversity is a great thing’ – which many of us believe and know to be true – to ‘it makes business sense and here’s why’, I’m not sure we’re going to see significant, near-term change.

While meaningful progress has been made by individuals and groups to address the dearth of diversity in Silicon Valley, we haven’t seen much in the way of progress vis-à-vis the diversity reports released by the larger tech companies in the Bay Area. When I see that, often as the only person of color or underrepresented minority in the room, it poses a personal challenge and sense of duty to leverage my influence to effect the change that I want to see in the world – but on the micro level. A lot of people think that if you can’t effect wide-reaching change, then your efforts are for naught. But I actually believe that we can all make little bits of change on our own – and the most logical place to start is at our own companies and in our own legal departments. If we collectively do that, I suspect we will finally start to see the needle move on diversity.

Looking to the future, I think it would behoove leaders in the legal profession to not only hire, nurture and grow diverse attorneys and ensure that outside counsel are diverse, but to invest in aspiring law students and young attorneys of color; help an aspiring law student prepare for the LSAT and apply for law school; take a chance on a young, law firm attorney and let them manage one of your legal matters; hire someone who might not check all the boxes, but who you know has the raw talent to have an outsized impact. I’m a firm believer in investing in individuals and that if all of us invest in an individual or two early on in their career, that’s the type of work that results in long-term change.

At the end of the day, it’s really about opportunity, plain and simple. I think that the best we can all do in order to advance diversity is to give diverse lawyers an opportunity, and then help them recognize and make the most of those opportunities.