Postscript to “The Diversity Fraud

TRANSCRIPT of “Postscript to “The Diversity Fraud”

A postscript to my last essay, “The Diversity Fraud,” in which I argued that the asset management industry has utterly failed to achieve even a modest standard of demographic diversity in three critical areas: the workplace, on boards of directors, and in hiring women or minority asset managers.

Let me add another failure to this list: conference speakers.

A recent analysis by Bizzabo revealed, “Men made up 68 percent of the speakers at conferences, trade shows, marketing events and other gatherings this year, a scant improvement from 70 percent two years ago… Those [gatherings] centered on telecom and venture capital had fewer than 20 percent female speakers.”

This has to change.

Given the investment industry’s insularity of thought and homogenous demography, we would benefit from having new and different voices in the conversation.

Here’s a simple way to ensure more such inclusion: asset managers, asset allocators, and consultants should put in place a policy that permits all of  their employees and board members to accept outside speaking engagements only if joined by a woman or person of color as a participant (not a moderator).  

Conference organizers need to be part of the solution as well and should formally commit to diversity on every panel. A few news and conference organizations already have adopted such a policy. (And a tip of the hat to Institutional Investor, which at its October Roundtable for Consultants and Institutional Investors had a woman on every panel.)

As I showed in the Diversity Fraud, there are few such direct fixes to the perennial and persistent problem of the lack of demographic diversity in our industry. Candidly, we need a win, even this admittedly modest win because it is at least one step forward on the path to equality.