Disruptive diversity and inclusion within the investments sector

The investment’s industry is so far behind with diversity and inclusion progress in general.  In fact, for most (if not all) investment management firms, the furthest they are on ‘their journey’ is to consider achieving some sort of gender balance delivered through a target.

The point is that whilst having a work force which is representative of the population is the ‘right thing to do’ and we acknowledge the importance of, Identity Diversity we also support the concept of Cognitive Diversity and how it can be brought into the mix.

So I wanted to highlight a case study from Apple.  Denise Young Smith, Apple’s Vice President of Inclusion and Diversity, has said that, “a group of ‘white, blue-eyed men’ can be considered diverse”. This may come as a sop to the majority of white men in the investments sector! 

Denise Young Smith was speaking on a panel at the One Young World Summit, in Bogotá, Colombia, which was moderated by Quartz. Apple, alongside other major tech companies such as Google and Microsoft, are trying to improve diversity and inclusion within their companies. According to statistics, Apple’s workforce is 68 per cent male, but it is even less diverse in its tech division, where 77 per cent of employees are male.

Within Silicon Valley, research shows that women hold only 11 per cent of executive positions at Silicon Valley companies, while Google is currently fighting controversy over anti-diversity memos and battling sexism claims in court. I do not have a quarrel with Young Smith if she is referring to cognitive diversity and the process for hiring includes some measure for testing cognitive diversity but that is not what she said or explained:

Young Smith said, “I get a little bit frustrated when diversity or the term diversity is tagged to people of colour, or the women, or the LGBT. There can be 12 white, blue-eyed, blonde men in a room and they’re going to be diverse too because they’re going to bring a different life experience and life perspective to the conversation.” That Young Smith is not nuanced enough to persuade me of your diversity practice. Nor does the email apology you issued after the event demonstrate authenticity of intent.

Let us not make the argument for diversity so shallow that it dissipates completely.