Diversity and Inclusion Matters. Jason R. Thompson

5. In February 2018, Jason Thompson was quoted in the Guardian in an article about the diversity in the Winter Olympic Games in PyeongChang, South Korea. Read the article: Benjamin Haas, “Meet the Winter Olympians making big strides for diversity,” The Guardian, February 16, 2018. Accessed on April 5, 2021 at https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2018/feb/17/winter-olympians-diversity-simidele-adeagbo-jazmine-fenlator-victorian.

      6 6. USA Today quotes Jason Thompson in its article about diversity on the US Winter Olympics team. Read the article: Martin Rogers, “United States seeing uptick in diversity for Winter Olympics team,” USA Today, February 5, 2018. Accessed on April 5, 2021 at https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/winter-olympics-2018/2018/02/05/united-states-seeing-uptick-diversity-winter-olympics-team/308775002/.

      7 7. A Fox News executive's comments about diversity on the US Olympic Team are called an embarrassment, and Jason Thompson's quotes from the Washington Post interview are explained and clarified. Read the article: Evan Grossman, “Fox News exec an American embarrassment for ripping idea of a more diverse Team USA at Winter Olympics,” New York Daily News, February 10, 2018. Accessed on April 5, 2021 at https://www.nydailynews.com/sports/more-sports/fox-news-exec-embarrassment-ripping-diverse-team-usa-article-1.3810206.

      8 8. CNN's Anderson Cooper quotes Jason Thompson in his Ridicu-List while blasting the Fox News exec who criticized USOC diversity initiatives. Watch the video here. Accessed on April 5, 2021 at https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2018/02/13/olympics-john-moody-fox-news-ridiculist-sot.cnn.

      9 9. In March 2019 Ellen McGirt wrote a piece in Fortune magazine that highlighted four reasons why diversity officers were set up for failure, including the newness of the role, the lack of power, data, and CEO support. Read the article: Ellen McGirt, “Chief Diversity Officers are set up to fail,” Fortune, March 4, 2019. Accessed on April 5, 2021 at https://fortune.com/2019/03/04/chief-diversity-officers-are-set-up-to-fail/.

Foreword

      Dear Reader:

      Covid-19. Amy Cooper. George Floyd. Police brutality. Black Lives Matter. The presidential election. The Capitol Riots. Social justice, systemic racism, equity – these are buzzwords from the past taking on new meaning, emphasis, importance, and scorn for a broader array of people. The United States is stepping into the global spotlight once again while casting a shadow that did not, and will not, serve its legacy well. Diversity and inclusion, for the first time, is becoming one of the most coveted roles in domestic and international corporations. The years 2020–2021 are years that have and continue to redefine how we view the world, how we view our neighbors, and how to have long overdue conversations within our communities and with corporations and governments. A roadmap for these conversations has never been more necessary or critical for the next generation.

      A roadmap created and generously shared by my friend and colleague Jason R. Thompson is what you have here. Jason and I met through our mutual love of sports, he at the United States Olympic Committee and I through Major League Baseball (MLB). After many iterations of practicing law, I had the good fortune of securing my first diversity and inclusion role at the United States Tennis Association (USTA) and have not looked back in eleven years. It was a discipline I was not particularly familiar with, especially in professional spaces (my entry point thoroughly predates the current norm of DE&I practitioners at every law firm and government agency). But once exposed, I quickly realized I was more than ready for this work and that, in essence, I had been a DE&I champion my entire professional and personal life. My USTA experience exposed me to the nuances of a corporate America with the layer of a nonprofit entity. It was a unique and serendipitous starting point to say the least, and it prompted me to go further by gaining experience in other industries that offered a global lens to the agenda. This led to my pivot into DE&I roles at some incredible brands across several industries that prepared me for leadership roles at companies such as Gucci, Major League Baseball, and Harry's. In addition, I lead a DE&I consultancy through my company VegaRobles Consulting, LLC.

I have had a fortunate journey in the DE&I space, but to this day the sports industry remains my first love. It is where I gained my most substantive experience as well as where I built, and have enjoyed, my best professional relationships, many of which have become lifelong friendships. I am proud to include Jason in that pool. I had the honor of meeting Jason in 2014 while I was the chief diversity officer (CDO) at Major League Baseball where I was responsible for developing and leading the D&I strategy for the entire league and its thirty club markets. It was my first CDO role, and I was completely stressed out about destroying the DE&I foundation built by my predecessor. It takes a village, as an adage goes that is worth its weight in gold, in the sports industry.

      Enter Jason, CDO of the USOC, and his brainchild, the Diversity and Inclusion Sports Consortium (DISC). Jason was one of the visionaries and co-founders of DISC, a coalition of DE&I leaders from every major sports organization in North America. This is no small feat, as you can imagine, And yet Jason was able to convince all of us of its need, utility, and the potential impact we could have on the industry. Jason was uniquely able to establish individual connections with all of us through his passion for the subject matter and his general unselfishness as he readily shared his unique approach to DE&I. Jason was deep-diving into data and metrics in DE&I well before they could be Googled. He created programs with detailed scorecards designed not only to hold himself accountable to his role but also to hold his organization accountable to the agenda. Jason's approach (one many of us DISC members riffed upon and leveraged) and DISC influenced many of our approaches to DE&I in sports, moving beyond the performative to the quantifiable impact. New developmental programs were established for existing and aspiring diverse professionals in sports, DE&I education became the norm, and social justice conversations became a bit less daunting (albeit they still remain challenging, but at least we have started).

There is no silver bullet, outlining a perfect way to strategize and deploy DE&I. First of all, every organization is different, and the culture and leadership are incredible influencers on DE&I's success at the company. Second, I know firsthand how difficult it is to find practical advice and guidance when starting a DE&I program. Much of the information out there is either overly aspirational without any real practical or tactical insight or overladen with a heavy dose of metrics/data that only skim the surface by overemphasizing hiring and representation without consideration of promotion, development, marketing, CSR investments, and so forth. Finally, even the good information out there is remarkably dense and (inadvertently) presupposes that DE&I departments are naturally the size of a small army à la Amazon, Google, or Starbucks. Spoiler alert: most are not.

      These challenges lend themselves to the beauty of this book. It provides a comprehensive roadmap for either the DE&I professional just starting out, the seasoned expert seeking a new prospective, or anyone in between. Jason has successfully broken down all the components of a successful DE&I program that lays the responsibility not only of the DE&I leader (as