HBS Racial Equity Action Plan
Earlier this year, HBS Dean Nitin Nohria acknowledged that
HBS can and should do more in the fight against racial injustice and inequality
especially against Black Americans. In June, he launched the
Dean’s Anti-Racism Taskforce, comprised of students, staff, faculty, and
alumni, and tasked this group with developing an institutional action plan. The
full plan was released on September 23, 2020, and I encourage you to take time
to read the full Racial Equity Action
Plan.
As one of the members of the taskforce workstreams, the past few months have
left me feeling humbled and grateful to be a part of developing our
institution’s Racial Equity Plan. Specifically, in the Students and
Participants workstream, we were tasked with addressing the following key
questions: “How do we attract more Black and African American students to our
educational programs, and how do we ensure everyone can thrive at Harvard Business
School?” I admit that at times I felt daunted by the enormity of what we were
up against—including centuries of racism in this country—and yet time and again
I was buoyed up by the collective commitment of others within my workstream and
members of the broader taskforce as we worked toward tangible action steps and
change.
As outlined in the Racial
Equity Plan in the MBA program, we have committed to expanding our
current outreach, programming and partnership efforts focused on communities of
color. We have also released additional detail on the racial/ethnic identities
of our students in our 2022 Class Profile along with five years of
comparable data for recent HBS Classes in the Racial Equity Action
Plan.
As an HBS community, we are deeply committed to promoting racial equity both
within our institution and—through the leadership of our students and alumni
making a difference—in the world.
