Photo by Grant Lacouture

In June 2020, just three months after the pandemic forced Harvard Business School to rethink its entire way of teaching its students and operating its campus, the School acted quickly to address another critical challenge, one underscored by the murder of George Floyd and other highly publicized incidents of racial injustice in the United States: How does HBS create a culture and an environment where all members of its community can thrive?

“The country was on fire,” says Jan Hammond, the Jesse Philips Professor of Manufacturing. “You saw the strength of public response in the composition of the people who were protesting. They comprised a wide swath of American society: no one race, gender, or ethnicity. And they were unrelenting, demonstrating both the breadth and depth of the desire for change, as well as the tremendous frustration that has been building up over a long period of time.” In her role as senior associate dean for Culture and Community, Hammond is a member of the School’s leadership team responsible for implementing the Racial Equity Plan (REP), which was developed last summer by members of the Dean’s Anti-Racism Task Force and launched in September.

“There always have been people dedicated to diversity, equity, and inclusion at HBS, and the new processes and systems we’re putting in place will further these efforts,” notes Hammond, who, in the following conversation, talks about the School’s commitment to antiracism education and research, support for the Black and African American community at HBS, and opportunities to engage the broader business world.

How did the HBS community come together last summer with a greater sense of urgency and purpose in dealing with racial equity issues?
Dean Nitin Nohria wrote to our community about the School’s need to redouble its commitment to combat racism, and he asked Professor Jan Rivkin, faculty chair of the MBA Program; Ron Chandler, chief information officer; and me to head up the 70-plus-member Dean’s Anti-Racism Task Force. It represented a cross section of our community—MBA students (including the three African American Student Union copresidents), doctoral students, faculty, staff, and alumni (including leaders of the HBS African-American Alumni Association)—all of whom felt strongly that developing a Racial Equity Plan was the right thing to do. Because of our experience addressing the pandemic, the School had a proof of concept—the ability to collaborate virtually and innovate very quickly—which helped us move forward in developing the plan.

A key component of the REP is the hiring of a chief diversity and inclusion officer (CDIO) to advance many aspects of the plan. How is the search proceeding?
We’ve narrowed the field to several terrific candidates and will have the CDIO in place soon. That person will work with our associate director of Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging to transform HBS internally, nurture relationships with the University and our neighbors, and foster a shared vision for racial equity. The CDIO will have a key role in influencing the strategic direction of the School and will have the resources needed for the work to be done.

What are the steps the School is taking to further racial justice–related scholarship that will benefit HBS students and course participants, and the world at large?
We recently launched an important component of the plan, a Race & Equality Fellowship Program led by Professor Kathleen McGinn, senior associate dean for Faculty Strategy and Recruiting. A key goal of the program is to increase the amount and depth of research conducted at HBS on diversity, equity, and inclusion. We hope to attract to this two-year program outstanding scholars at all levels—junior and senior faculty, doctoral students, and postdoctoral fellows—who will collaborate on scholarship with us and with each other on these important topics. HBS will be calling for applications in the fall and will welcome the inaugural cohort of Fellows in July 2022.

A number of things are underway on the curricular front. HBS had already been working toward increasing the number of cases featuring Black and African American protagonists, and the plan reinforces that commitment. In the last year, faculty members have completed more than 70 cases with Black or African American protagonists or cases focused on matters of race in America, with an additional 50 in development. Faculty members also have completed more than 90 cases (plus 20 still in process) featuring protagonists who are Latinx/Hispanic, Asian or Asian American/Pacific Islander, or Native American or other Indigenous people [see related story]. To support this work, we have created new processes and systems that will enable us to track protagonist demographics for all of our new cases. The plan also includes developing courses exploring racial equity issues facing business and society, as well as convenings and community outreach related to these topics.

How will HBS meet one of the goals of the REP: to attract more Black and African American talent to campus, including faculty members, students, program participants, and staff?
In January 2020, we had 10 Black faculty members. This fall, we’ll have 15. It’s frustrating when people say that there’s no pipeline—that’s just not true. You may need to look harder, but very good people are there.

Over the years, the number of Black and African American students has increased in our MBA program and now represents 13 percent of our US students. More details about the racial/ethnic identities of our students over the past five years are available on our website. We’re working hard to find talented people from all backgrounds and encourage them to consider HBS. We recognize the importance of building relationships with Black and African American students before they even apply through our many events, outreach at fairs, office hours, blogs, and other digital channels. In addition, we’re working with groups such as Management Leadership for Tomorrow, an organization John Rice (MBA 1992) founded, which has an MBA prep program for college students, and reaching out to more Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) to forge connections and create ways to demystify the HBS experience.

See more from the online-only June Alumni Bulletin Impact section’s focus on how HBS faculty, students, staff, and alumni are addressing racism.

ADVANCING RACIAL EQUITY

See more from the online-only March Alumni Bulletin Impact section’s focus on how HBS faculty, students, staff, and alumni are addressing racism.

ADVANCING RACIAL EQUITY

HBS’s long-running Summer Venture into Management Program also continues to attract students from backgrounds underrepresented in business, and we saw the numbers increase during the pivot to a virtual experience because of COVID-19. The REP accelerates these efforts through programs such as a need-based application fee waiver and a new fellowship, RISE (Recognize Individuals Seeking Equity), which will support students with financial need who have demonstrated an exemplary commitment to serving Black and African American, Latinx, and other marginalized communities of color prior to enrolling at HBS.

The School’s Doctoral Programs is committed to build a diverse pipeline of prospective students. PRIMO (Program for Research in Markets & Organizations) brings undergraduates to HBS for 10 weeks to conduct research with faculty who, with current doctoral students, offer mentoring. In addition, we work closely with the PhD Project, an organization that advances the diversity of business school faculty. HBS also supports current doctoral students by hosting the Annual Rising Scholar Conference at which PhD students from diverse backgrounds present their work to faculty and learn from diverse academic leaders across business academia. And for Executive Education, we will be offering programs focusing on women of color, diversifying boards, and leveraging diversity in organizations, as well as one called Thrive, which is designed to encourage career advancement for underrepresented minorities with 5 to 7 years of experience (with an emphasis on Black and Latinx professionals) who work at large organizations committed to diversifying their workforce.

Supporting staff members is another important part of the REP. Unconscious-bias training is being offered across departments to help promote racial equity, and those who are responsible for hiring are going through additional training to better identify and attract Black and African American and other diverse talent. You have to have everybody trying to learn and grow as much as they can in this regard.

In attracting Black and African American faculty, students, and staff to campus, how do you ensure these members of our community feel valued and included?
That’s an important question. We’re not naïve to think that if we just bring people in everything’s going to get better. There are cultural issues our students, our faculty, and our staff need to understand better. This past year, we invited some fabulous speakers to discuss racial equity as part of our Managing Diversity Speaker Series. For students, we are providing more content in the MBA Program around diversity, equity, and inclusion. We’re creating pre-matriculation materials for incoming MBA students and will introduce a new Required Curriculum course this coming year called Managing Inclusion. In all of our efforts around diversity and inclusion, we regularly solicit input from the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Council (DEI), a group that student leaders of five marginalized communities in the MBA Program created three years ago. The DEI Council has been instrumental in helping faculty understand, for example, how students might experience cases dealing with race and gender issues.

In what ways is HBS drawing on the expertise and resources of the alumni community to help inform and advance the REP?
Our alumni are experienced leaders who are dealing with these issues themselves in a wide set of domains. We’ve been working with them, many of whom are members of the African-American Alumni Association, and with HBS’s Racial Equity Advisory Board, using their knowledge, their connections, and their mentorship. We want alumni to be an integral part of this culture change and would like to have these business leaders help us educate students, either in person or by Zooming into the classroom.

We also hope that in addition to providing their advice and expertise, alumni will want to support the REP. While the School has committed $25 million over 10 years to the effort, alumni who contribute to the HBS Fund will help us sustain the plan and will amplify what we can accomplish.

As the REP evolves, how will the lessons learned be applied to other marginalized communities at HBS so that our campus can be a place where everyone can be their best self?
We felt that it was important to focus first on our Black and African American community because of the persistent inequities they face, but ultimately, this work will be helpful for all underrepresented and marginalized communities. What we’re trying to do is make HBS a place that is inclusive for everybody, where all can thrive and meet their full potential. And I want to emphasize that our new Dean, Srikant Datar, is deeply committed to these efforts. He made this clear in his first comments to the community on the day his deanship was announced, saying, “We must act with speed and urgency to advance racial equity and diversity at HBS and in the world.”

If you look at our action plan, it begins with a clear position: “Harvard Business School rejects racism in all its forms, and anti-Black racism in particular, as wrong and fundamentally inconsistent with our mission and values.” We need to be educating students to work in complex environments with people of different races, genders, ethnicities, religions, and political views to make the most of these differences. This learning is evident in our classrooms, where a student shares something about his or her lived experience and others sit back and say, “I never understood it that way before. Now I really get it.” The diversity of the students and the personal experiences they bring to HBS are a critical determinant of the level at which our students—and all members of our community—learn from one another and grow as leaders.

MORE STORIES ABOUT IMPACT:

Advancing
Racial
Equity

The Value of Difficult Conversations

Alumni Work to Reverse Bias Through Philanthropy

Diversifying HBS's Case Collection

Post a Comment