BK has a long-standing commitment to advancing Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice in organizations, beginning with our very first DEIJ title: “Cultural Diversity in Organizations,” by Taylor Cox, published in 1993.
More recently, our hearts have been buoyed by readers’ enthusiasm for titles like Mary-Frances Winters’ “Black Fatigue,” Tiffany Jana’s and Michael Baran’s “Subtle Acts of Exclusion,” and Jennifer Brown’s “How to Be an Inclusive Leader.”
While our determined efforts to diversify our author base have yielded encouraging advances, it isn't enough to increase representation in our author base. We must also work to make our organization more culturally sensitive, inclusive, and supportive toward those authors. For example, marginalized authors are more likely to be targeted for online harassment; as a consequence, we've invested in trainings to help us respond to this type of threat. Moreover, our own titles have helped us see that we at BK have work to do to transform BK’s own internal practices.
In 2020, we re-formed a long-standing working group to advance DEIJ at the company. This group was charged with executing a close examination of our HR policies and practices and our accountability metrics. In the past two years, this group’s work has focused on improving recruitment, retention, development, and advancement of BIPOC employees, and employees from communities and identity groups who have been historically underrepresented in publishing. And this year, BK is making a major financial investment in DEIJ by hiring consultant Renato Almanzor to help us design a long-term action plan to ensure we stay accountable over the long term.
We recognize that DEIJ is a process, not a destination. We will always have more to learn, and there will always be room to improve. We are grateful to so many of our own authors for guiding our path on this journey.
Please see links below for details on our internal surveys, our engagement goals with Renato, and our catalog stories addressing DEIJ at BK.
Johanna Vondeling, President and Publisher,
April, 2022
The State of DEIJ at BK (Summer, 2022)
Global Diversity and Inclusion Benchmarks (Fall, 2020)
The State of DEIJ at Berrett-Koehler” (Spring, 2021)
