• 1. Please introduce yourself, what you do for work, and what you enjoy for fun.

-I serve as Vice President for Social Impact at Padilla. I run our social impact consultancy where we focus on DEI communications, corporate social responsibility, community engagement and sustainability. Previously, I served as Vice President for Workplace Culture, DEI, and Chief of Staff for Padilla.

And for fun, I'm very involved in the arts community. I'm here in Richmond; I'm vice chair of the Visual Arts Center of Richmond. A lot of art galleries, going to shows and events. We had a big event over the past weekend. I attend a lot of theater. So yeah, I'm in my spare time; you'll see me doing things within the art community.

• 2. How do you self-define, and what aspects of your (cultural) identity are most significant to you? 

-As an African-American male. Another aspect of my identity is that I grew up in rural South Carolina. In many ways, this has had a big impact on my career, outlook, and perspective on life. The reason I say that particularly, being an African-American male in communication, specifically PR, when I first started in the business 30+ years ago, very often I would go to networking events, and I would be the only African-American male there. That really started to cement for me why representation and identity were really important. At the time, I didn't think it was a fully formulated idea or concept, but even then, I said, “You know what? There should be more of us in the room having these conversations and being represented.”

• 3. Why are you most passionate about working in PR and Communications? What drives your interest in this field?

-Throughout my career in PR and communications, I've gravitated more towards work in corporate social responsibility and grassroots marketing. I've worked with clients and brands, but even a lot of the work that I've done with clients and brands, they typically have involved some aspects of community engagement, community relationships. More recently, I've worked with hospitals and health systems, specifically working on health equity. Throughout my career it's been a thread, really being involved in the community, giving back to the community individually, but also with the kind of work that I've been involved with and the kind of clients that I've chosen to work with.

• 4. What specific initiatives or changes would you recommend to create a more inclusive work environment? What inclusivity and equity initiatives have you implemented within your organization that you are most proud of? 

-When I was Vice President for Workplace Culture at DEI and Chief of Staff, I began the work on developing a plan for the agency related to DEI. Even though I'm now leading our social impact consultancy group, I still have corporate social responsibility for the agency. I'm just really proud of the work we've done over the past four or five years. It has been a fully comprehensive plan that is focused on DEI recruitment and retention, inclusivity training, and content, and that's training for our employees and content we create for ourselves that has led to the client work, as I talked about, leading to our social impact team. Also community engagement, how we show up in the communities with philanthropy and pro bono work in the cities where we have been. I've been extremely proud of the work that we've done; that's been really comprehensive. We do a monthly speaker series called The Bubble Break, where we bring in communicators, branding experts, authors, musicians, and community activists to just talk about some different aspects of DEI. We've also brought in outside trainers to help us with training our employees about everything from unconscious bias to what it means to be an ally to topics of impact versus intent. I'm just really proud that we've been consistent with how things have changed over the past several years since a lot of companies are pulling away from DEI. We have continued to lean in on it. I'm most proud of that.

• 5. What are your thoughts on the state of DEI in PR and the politics around it? How do you perceive its impact on both individuals and organizations?

-There's not a day that goes by when I've not read some news stories about corporations pulling back on DEI. For graduate school, I went to the University of Georgia; they just announced that they were pulling back on DEI. It can be really disheartening if you really think about it. From my standpoint, in a lot of the work we've done lately, the work continues. It may now have a different label to it, but it's now being done under the banners of social impact or inclusion, or people are going back to doing a lot of this DEI work under corporate social responsibility again. So I don't think it has completely disappeared. It might have rattled some, but I think that there are too many people who are passionate about this work for it to disappear completely. I think about organizations like the Diversity Action Alliance and your event you had with all of the GEMS, see all of these dynamic, smart, creative individuals from all over the country who were really passionate about DEI really inspired me and gave me hope that this work will continue and will continue to flourish and thrive.

• 6. Reflecting on your journey, what advice would you give to your younger self and early career professionals who are starting their careers? How can they navigate their professional paths while staying true to their identities and overcoming potential challenges?

-The advice I would have for my younger self is to find more mentors. That's such a big thing now. I do a lot of mentoring, and I taught at the college level. I used to run our internship programs involving several other organizations. When I was coming along, they weren't all the opportunities that they have now. So I would have kind of encouraged myself to go out and be more active in finding mentors, finding people who share your interests, who look like you, and have your perspective. But I also will say this: some of the mentors that I have had did not look like me, but they were people who took an interest in me, people who I found inspiring. One of my former bosses and actually a wonderful mentor, Patrice Tanaka, was one of your legends this year. Patrice is just so inspiring in so many different ways and her whole mantra about joy and Joyful Planet. She really is an inspiration and inspires me to do more with younger individuals coming into our industry.

• 7. What’s the next biggest project you can share regarding DEI you’re working on?

-For 2025, as an organization, we're looking to redefine some of the things we're leaning in more on the inclusion aspects of DEI. The speakers and trainers that we're going to be bringing in will more likely focus more on the inclusion aspect of it. All topics of diversity, equity, and belonging are important, but we’re going to lean in on inclusion. A lot of our clients who are still doing this kind of work, inclusion seems to be the area where they are leaning and coalescing around as well.

Interview conducted and hosted by Jenny H.