Denmark West (MBA 1998), founding partner of Connectivity Ventures and Culture Shift partner and advisor (photo by Brian Ach)

It’s a common scenario: A company wants to increase diversity on its board or in its C-suite, and its high-ranking leaders reach out to a consulting company for help. When times are good, the numbers increase, a diversity officer may be appointed, and HR institutes sensitivity training. Denmark West (MBA 1998), an advisor, investor, and founding partner of Connectivity Ventures, points to the early 2000s as an example. Fortune 500 companies and influential nonprofits were asking important questions and making changes, and West saw companies taking initial steps to address diversity issues, including hiring diversity officers as senior executives. With a focus on diversity, the numbers began to show some signs of improvement.

But 2008 brought a recession and some serious belt tightening. Leaders of major companies looked around and had to make cuts based on keeping people and systems in place that were critical to the business. CFO? Have to have one of those. IT? Business can’t function without it. But the diversity office? Was diversity truly critical to business? “In the past, it seems like for many companies, the answer has been ‘no,’” says West.

West and other HBS grads believe that’s the wrong answer. With the help of Andrea Hoffman, the founder and CEO of Culture Shift Labs, they are looking at past approaches to increasing and retaining diversity at the executive and board levels, and changing the conversation by going beyond simply filling a pipeline with diverse applicants. Instead, Culture Shift is creating an ecosystem of people who have the power to make real change.

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Tyson Clark (MBA 2009), general partner at GV (formerly Google Ventures), Culture Shift Labs founder Andrea Hoffman, and Boeing executive Ted Colbert (photo by E. Lee White

Tyson Clark (MBA 2009), general partner at GV (formerly Google Ventures), Culture Shift Labs founder Andrea Hoffman, and Boeing executive Ted Colbert (photo by E. Lee White)

Hoffman learned years ago that the approach to inclusion in business was flawed. As a former marketing expert and growth strategist who helped clients find new business opportunities—largely in nonwhite, affluent markets—she was called in to create strategy for a client. In the pitch meeting, she delivered what she thought the client wanted and needed. Her case was strong, the data sound. But the executives didn’t bite. “I just remember presenting this incredible data that spoke directly to the very thing they hired me to do, the very thing that would help them increase market share—like, the next day if they actually put wheels in motion—and they didn’t jump up and down,” she says.

The experience stumped Hoffman, and as she began to have more similar encounters over the next few years, she began to see politics, as she puts it, get in the way of opportunity. This wasn’t just about wanting to make change, she thought; it was about putting people in positions who were willing to push beyond office politics and take action to make diversity and inclusion mission critical. So Hoffman started her own company, which would eventually become Culture Shift Labs—an organization dedicated to working toward diversity and inclusion at the highest levels of tech and venture capital. Diversity, she knew, was simply good business—for all of the social and cultural reasons, of course, but it also increased the bottom line. “Delivering through Diversity,” a 2018 report from McKinsey & Company, points to direct links between gender and ethnic diversity and profit, finding that “companies in the top quartile for gender diversity on their executive teams were 21 percent more likely to experience above-average profitability than companies in the fourth quartile.”

Culture Shift’s approach to boosting diversity and inclusion is what one might expect from a consultancy. The organization offers strategies, advises on diversity initiatives, and helps find and retain talent to fill the top seats. Yet experience shows that that isn’t always enough: strategy has to be activated through human connection. So, while many consultants can assess, advise, and strategize, Culture Shift goes further by capitalizing on the people they have brought together over the years through networking events. “I unintentionally built the nation’s largest database of black subject-matter experts and influencers, and didn’t know it, and didn’t know that that was one of our superpowers,” reflects Hoffman. “We realized that we just had this gold mine—several thousand people who were Harvard grads, Kellogg grads, major philanthropists, inventors, investors, executives, and entrepreneurs from mid- to senior level.”

Ted Colbert, Carla Harris (MBA 1987) of Morgan Stanley, and Reggie Van Lee (MBA 1984) of the Carlyle Group (photo by E. Lee White)

Ted Colbert, Carla Harris (MBA 1987) of Morgan Stanley, and Reggie Van Lee (MBA 1984) of the Carlyle Group (photo by E. Lee White)

So Hoffman, West (who by that time had joined as a formal advisor), and board members Tyson Clark (MBA 2009), general partner at GV (formerly Google Ventures), Guy Primus (MBA 2000), CEO and cofounder of the Virtual Reality Company, and Reggie Van Lee (MBA 1984), a retired executive vice president with Booz Allen Hamilton who is now chief transformation officer at the Carlyle Group, began work to put all those influencers together in what they called Culture Shifting Weekends, held annually in Silicon Valley and New York City. The idea was to celebrate Culture Shifters and allow them to make their own connections, get deals done, and expand their own ecosystems. They formalized the network in a database called Katapult Talent, which today holds 8,000 names—something Hoffman touts as an invaluable problem-solving tool.

Culture Shift’s focus on building connections is about opening doors, observes Van Lee. It’s about getting people access to capital and networks that, historically, they couldn’t access. Many communities have mentors, advocates, and professional development opportunities built into their ecosystems, he says, but not always. “Minority communities don’t have that,” Van Lee notes. “It’s not just that they don’t have access to counsel; they also don't have access to people who can give them advice, share insights, or give them substantive mentoring that is relevant to what they’re trying to do.” By simply bringing people together with a specific focus on outcomes, he says, Culture Shift is creating that environment.

Anddria Clack-Rogers Varnado (MBA 2014)

Anddria Clack-Rogers Varnado (MBA 2014)

Anddria Clack-Rogers Varnado (MBA 2014) was honored as a Culture Shifter in 2018, shortly after securing Williams-Sonoma Inc.’s largest-ever acquisition (also the company’s first acquisition of a technology company) in her role as global head of Strategy and Business Development. Varnado has been actively involved with Culture Shift since then, also serving on the event’s advisory committee. The events and programs are not diversity events for diversity’s sake, Varnado notes; rather, they are cultivated, targeted events that bring the right people together to enhance their respective communities and solve real problems. “Everyone in the room is successful in their own right,” says Varnado, “but their titles might not relay the true magnitude of their work.” At Culture Shift Weekends, people like Varnado can come together, honor each other’s successes, learn from other executives who are shaping new paths, and make connections to improve the advancement of women and people of color. But the most important aspects for Varnado are the authentic discussions that take place throughout events such as roundtables, workshops, awards, and fireside chats. Culture Shift aims to solve relevant problems in diversity, like how tech can improve health outcomes or financial disparities with the input of diverse leaders across industries. During this process, inspiring connections and authentic mentorship opportunities are realized. Culture Shift delivers a way to work together beyond the confines of business structures, she says, to see what’s working and to brainstorm new ways, not only to approach inclusivity but also to better the VC and tech fields at large.

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When Jacqueline Jones (MBA 1997), head of Strategic Partnerships, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging at LinkedIn, began working with Culture Shift Labs, she loved how closely its mission aligned with what she works to accomplish at LinkedIn. “Our mission and vision circulates around creating economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce,” says Jones. “This is something we live and breathe.” When she attended her first Culture Shift event, she was struck by the ways in which the organization was shining light on the work and talent of black and Latino executives, bringing them into the network and honoring them.

Over the years Jones watched as Culture Shift honored people like Peter Lewis (MBA 1985), managing partner at Wentworth Partners; Chris Young (MBA 2003), CEO of McAfee; Stacy Brown-Philpot, CEO at TaskRabbit; and, most recently, Deidre Findlay, CMO of Stitch Fix, a styling company that delivers clothes to your door. “She’s a black woman from Jamaica, with Jamaican roots,” says Jones. “I’m also Jamaican, so I was excited to see her. She had an amazing career at Google. We’re literally in the same field, in the same city, and I didn’t know her.” Just knowing names like Findlay’s is a big deal, notes Jones, because she and others looking to advance their careers just don’t hear much about these high-level executives of color, otherwise. “Convening like this provides an opportunity for people to be featured and prominently spoken about,” she says, “because you can’t be what you can’t see.”

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