Introduction

Sitting at a sleek white conference table at Google's equally gleaming Silicon Valley headquarters, surrounded by some of the most credentialed HR executives in the world, a humming laptop in front of me and a free chai latte from one of the ubiquitous Google cafés in my hand … I’d felt as if I'd finally arrived. I was hired specifically into a newly created global diversity recruitment role—a role that was elevated to an executive level to recruit me specifically—with an ambitious charge to “hire the most diverse talent.” As a Dominican Puerto Rican woman in a leadership position at arguably the world's most powerful company, here was my moment to achieve the type of change I'd dreamed of since growing up in Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic.

My team's mission was to build a workforce that better represented our world and users by increasing the hiring rates of female, Black, and Latinx Googlers. We enthusiastically set out to redesign how to find, cultivate and convert a robust and steady stream of female, Black, and Latinx candidates. We based our recommendations on detailed analysis of the experience of Black and Latinx software engineers. These included solutions for reducing bias in job descriptions and the interview process and expanding our talent markets beyond traditional target schools and companies largely lacking in racial and ethnic representation.

Minutes before I unveiled my biggest, boldest diversity hiring initiative yet, I paused to think about the experiences, experiments, wins, and losses that led me to this moment. This has been my life's work for nearly two decades. I was ready for this. But what happened next shattered my natural optimism. Our plan was quickly thwarted when the big bets we presented—such as expanding our offices in communities rich in Black and Latinx talent—were perceived as impractical and unimaginative. This was 2016, and upper management wasn't ready to take bold action.

I was presenting to a room of mostly white men and women. The team leader, who was of Indian descent, and my own manager, a white man, dominated the conversation, and clearly signaled to the rest of the team whose opinion mattered. After what seemed like hours of an intellectual debate over the root cause of our inability to hire more Black and Hispanic software engineers at scale, dismissing the changes I was proposing as not scalable or tractable enough, I nearly lost my mind when I was asked, “What's the root cause?” for what seemed like the millionth time and finally blurted out, “RACISM … The root cause is racism. Our recruitment process was designed with a racist lens, and we need to reexamine and rebuild every stage of the hiring journey with an anti-racist lens in order to achieve different outcomes.”

The room went qui-eeeet. The discomfort was palpable. It was the truth that no one wanted to hear. But it was the truth. Up until that moment, I didn't dare to speak my whole truth because I was afraid of being misjudged or penalized, like many underrepresented and marginalized employees feel every day, regardless of their place in the pecking order. I shared the truth that causes even good people to become defensive and dismissive. And they did.

Many well-intended and brilliant Googlers before me had designed a highly efficient recruitment process to hire the brightest minds. Many also had advocated for changes to enhance the company's overall people systems and culture. While the company doubled in size and saw increases in hiring and representation for women globally, and Black and Latinx employees in the US, turnover rates for underrepresented employees of color remained just as high, if not higher. Clearly, the culture at Google needed to change if the company wanted to retain gender- and racially diverse talent. But the tolerance for behavioral and operational change is low, even in organizations that brazenly set out to “change the world.”

During a brainstorming session that we coined “reimagining the hiring process,” a group of experienced engineers, staffing team members, analysts, and other colleagues came together to share and reconsider their long-held innovative ideas. Despite many of these ideas being discussed or experimented with for years, few executives were open to truly listening or acknowledging the underlying reasons why our current practices had barely moved the needle in achieving compositional diversity. And suppose you're one of a handful of employees with limited seniority daring to propose changes that could potentially incur significant financial costs and discomfort for white executives. Under such circumstances, gaining leadership's attention, let alone their commitment to action, is intellectually and emotionally arduous.

This resistance is even more challenging when confronted with the adversities of an economic downturn, political turmoil, and social instability. As we've seen repeatedly, the easiest path is ignorance or resistance during such moments of uncertainty and upheaval. However, I urge you to rise above the challenges and push for change.

One place we can all start is taking a close look at our workplaces.

Everyone has a relationship to work. It is how we get paid and are able to put food in our children's bellies. Work is where we spend the majority of our days outside of the time spent with our families and loved ones. Over the years, I've worked for managers and leaders who emboldened my sense of what's possible. They went beyond saying, “I want you to be successful” to “I am going to ensure that you are successful.” They said: “I see you. I value you. You matter. You make a difference.” You can never hear “I believe in you” too often. But I've also had managers and peers who have set up roadblocks for my success and questioned my value on a daily basis. Even as I fought to bring more seats to the table, I have had to fight to earn and keep my own while watching white colleagues face far fewer hurdles.

Inequity in the workplace is a problem you can solve. I want you to be the people manager who shines a light on others, not the one who dims it. The leader who uses their power to combat stigma, promote accountability, and acknowledge the shared humanity within their teams; the leader who embraces allyship, minimizes implicit bias, dismantles systemic exclusion, and fosters healthy and meaningful connections among your employees; the leader who creates platforms for nuanced discussions about identity, power, and restorative justice; the leader who models and shows the power of recognizing our commonality.

Despite the progress made since the summer of 2020, when corporate America and the philanthropic sector pledged substantial financial resources to combat racial injustice and address historical harm inflicted on Black people, the United States is now witnessing a resurgence of efforts aimed at undermining the rights, opportunities, and freedoms of historically underrepresented communities. While there are many progressive measures such as appointing chief diversity officers; implementing anti-racism and belonging training; hosting listening series and educational forums; providing talking points, guides, and other resources; diversifying talent pools; and establishing supplier diversity programs, many of these advancements have regressed. Book-banning attempts to erase our history, disproportionate voting restrictions targeting BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) individuals, legislation diminishing hard fought-for LGBTQIA+ rights and women's bodily autonomy—especially women of color—and outlawing of affirmative action in public colleges and universities by the Supreme Court, coupled with the reversal of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives across various organizations, pose significant challenges. These circumstances are a powerful reminder that the ongoing work for equality across every sector requires unwavering vigilance. In the face of these obstacles, how can we seize these cyclical moments as opportunities rather than succumbing to threats?

Revolutionizing workplaces goes beyond superficial one-and-done approaches that provide temporary comfort to those content with maintaining the status quo. The evolving world of work requires managers and leaders to adapt and transform their approaches. This includes reimagining how work is done, reevaluating the environments in which work occurs, and reconsidering the individuals prioritized, accommodated, and harmed in these spaces. This transformative journey must align with the dynamic changes in work relationships, practices, and expectations.

Employees now hold employers accountable to higher fairness, vision, courage, safety, purpose, and autonomy standards. The nature of their work, creation, and contribution has shifted, requiring new, radical, inclusive approaches to leadership and management. This calls for a fundamental change in mindset, approach, and practice.

Good intentions can fall short. Merely ticking off the checkboxes and appearing to prioritize diversity, equity, and inclusion doesn't exempt companies from making decisions that inflict massive harm on marginalized communities. Moreover, as companies face resistance and criticism of their DEI efforts from right-wing groups and a decline in executive support for DEI initiatives, leaders and managers must grapple with the shifting agency within their workforces. Workers everywhere, especially those from Black and Brown communities,...