Brian Kenny: On September 23, 2020 Harvard Business School unveiled the action plan for racial equity, an ambitious plan to advance racial equity, both within and beyond the School. The plan was drafted by the Dean's anti-racism task force, a group of 25 members of the community who engaged a much broader swath of students, alumni, faculty, and staff, to shape the ideas and goals of the plan. At its core, the plan seeks to advance anti-racism education and research, support the Black community at HBS and beyond, engage the broader business community, and change the School's culture and organization. Today, we'll hear how things have gone over the past year and what's in store for the year ahead. I'm Brian Kenny, the chief marketing and communications officer for Harvard Business School. And I'm joined here by Dean Srikant Datar; senior associate Dean for culture and community, and also one of the chairs of the Dean's anti-racism task force, Professor Jan Hammond; and Terrill Drake, who is on day two in his new job as Harvard Business School's first chief diversity and inclusion officer, and he is clearly wasting no time getting started. Thank you all for joining me today.

Srikant Datar: Great to be with you, Brian.

Terrill Drake: Thanks for having us.

Jan Hammond: Thanks, Brian.

Brian Kenny:Terrill, you win the good sport award for being here to talk about this, but I think we've got some questions that you definitely would have a good perspective on. We'll be bringing those up a little bit later in the conversation. We were all really excited about a year ago this time to be ready to launch this plan. A lot of people worked really hard over it over the summer last year. I think we realized when we launched it, that that was really just the beginning and that the work had to start after that. So why don't we just dive right in. Jan, I'm actually going to start with you, because you were involved with this directly from the beginning. So I'd like you to just think about if you look back over the last 12 months, how have things unfolded? Are we ahead of schedule? Are we behind schedule? Or are we right where we should be? What are your thoughts on that?

Jan Hammond: Well, thanks Brian. That's a great question. So I'd say that we're ahead of schedule on a few things and we're probably behind schedule on a couple of other things, but that in general, I think we're making very good progress. One of the most important things that we wanted to do was to establish what we called enduring structures that would continue to propel the work that we started this year. And specifically we didn't want racial equity to be some kind of one-year effort that relied on ad hoc processes. Our commitment and enthusiasm allowed us to make some significant changes this year, but we knew that without these enduring structures, our efforts could flag or be diverted. That makes me particularly happy to have Terrill Drake here today, as our chief diversity and inclusion officer, because setting up a person in that role and setting up an office to support him was one of those key enduring structures that we think will make a difference in the long run.

Brian Kenny: You mentioned that we're behind maybe in a couple of areas. Do you want to maybe give an example of where you think we might not have made as much progress as we would like to?

Jan Hammond: We had, in our initial plan, the idea of setting up a racial equity initiative at HBS that would focus on research on racial equity and various issues related to that. This is still on the drawing board. We started to roll it out last year, but then we had a fabulous opportunity. So I think we replaced one opportunity with another, and specifically the OneTen project, which aims to create over ten years, one million family-sustaining jobs for Black Americans without four year degrees. We are very fortunate to be a research partner with the OneTen project, and believe that that context will provide us with ample opportunities for research of various kinds. So in a sense, it's a jump start on some of our research. But I'd still like to see the racial equity initiative, which would involve having visiting faculty, visiting postdocs, visiting doctoral students come to HBS and really bring race scholars to HBS and increase the size of the community and the knowledge of the community and our knowledge base at HBS in those areas.

Brian Kenny: Yeah. Srikant, let me turn to you for a minute. We call this the action plan because there were very specific things that we set out to do and to accomplish. You've stepped into your role halfway through the year in the month of January, but you were clearly very much involved and aware of what was going on prior to that. As you look at this past 12 months, how do you think we're doing? What are the areas that you think we've done well and where we need to focus more?

Srikant Datar: Thank you again, Brian, and great to have this conversation almost a year since the plan, this anti-racism task force report was launched. I would say I am proud of the progress we have made and how our community has embraced what we needed to do. I always, in these cases, go back to the mission. The mission of the Harvard Business School is to educate leaders who make a difference in the world. And as the diversity statement, which was another very important effort as the plan was unfolding, as that diversity statement that we approved earlier this year makes clear, fulfilling that mission requires a diverse student body. Varied in perspective, background, and experience. Indeed, as we say in that statement, we deem it impossible to achieve our institutional aims without such diversity and without a diverse student body, our distinctive and well-proven pedagogical means would be severely impaired. In short, we would fail to prepare the leaders the world needs. And diversity is crucial across our faculty and staff too We strive to be a model of the types of organizations our students eventually will lead. I say on many of those counts as Jan just described, we have done very well this year. You ask about areas where we might've come up short, and I agree again with what Jan said, but I'd preface that by saying that the members of our community hold us rightly to a very high standard. The challenges of racial equity are centuries old, and people are, again, rightly eager to see progress. I think invariably, we will be seen as not moving quickly enough on some dimensions. And I think as Jan pointed out, the fellowships to attract scholars and practitioners to HBS is one area where we will, in the coming year, have more faculty and scholars come to HBS. That is one area where, relative to the plan, we didn't make as much progress as we would have liked. And then I just want to say that even as we focus on racial equity, we want to be sure that other members of our community feel seen and heard, too. And I'm thinking here of Latinx, API, and Native American groups. As we make progress on diversity, we can't lose sight of the broader goal of inclusion, to make sure that every person in our community can be the best that they can be. We are focused on this goal, but here too, we have work to do. And then just to complete that thought, Brian, as Jan said, we excelled in unleashing the creativity of our faculty, staff, students, and alumni. The racial equity plan laid out a series of aspirations and potential activities. Jan has already alluded to the enduring structures, and Terrill being with us today is absolutely fabulous. And creating this new DEI office and continuing to attract a lot of talent. I'm sure we'll later on discuss the cases we have written and the OneTen initiative. But what pleases us I think even more is the countless examples of efforts that individuals, teams, and groups have launched on their own. So affinity groups for staff, the THRIVE program in Executive Education, work by an alum in Brooklyn to help entrepreneurs gain access to capital. And faculty members like Mihir Desai doing just an amazing job in writing a case about the Tulsa Massacre a century later. Lots to be proud of as Jan said, and then areas where we will continue to work hard. This is a long road and a lot more work to do.

Brian Kenny: Those are great points. And that gets to a question I want to dive into a little bit later about sustaining momentum because we know there was a great deal of passion and energy around this last year that led to the development of the plan. It seems to have really held over the past 12 months. And I want to get your thoughts on what we need to do to make sure that that continues to be the case. But before we go there, we developed this plan with the input of members of the community, including students, but we also developed it at a time when many of the students were away for the summer doing internships. And they all came back in September and we launched the plan. I'm wondering how they reacted to it and whether there were things that they were able to teach us last year that we hadn't thought about, or that helped to enhance what we had in mind with the action plan. And, Jan, maybe I would ask you to reflect on that a little bit. Did the students teach us things over the past year?

Jan Hammond: Oh my, did the students teach us things. Absolutely. We learned so much from our students and we're so grateful that they're willing to push us and to talk to us honestly about where our program is working and where we might have opportunities to increase the inclusiveness for everybody. So there are times when they've been absolutely pivotal in helping us see opportunities for improvement. I'd say that they have been pleased to see the increase in the number of case studies, for example, that have more diverse protagonists. They have been pleased by the increased diversity of the student body. We're just launching now for the new year, we have a more diverse faculty than we've had in previous years. So I think we're getting very positive feedback from them. I think one thing that we've learned from them, just as an example, is how exhausting it is, enervating it is for the African-American students, for example, to have to explain to people over and over again why it is that after 150 years after the end of the Civil War it's important for us to talk about race. Why is race still relevant? And I think this burden falls disproportionately on our African-American students, and it's unfortunate that it really does... it's tiring. And one of the things that we've done in response to that, and we're starting to do this with other identities as well, is we wrote a note on “African-American inequality in the United States” so we would have a record and a note for all the students to read. So they would have common background information that they would be able to build on in their class discussion. So rather than asking very basic questions during a case discussion, they all have that same common background and they can build on that and make recommendations based on a deeper knowledge base than they had before.

Brian Kenny: That gets to this notion of gathering insights as we go and sort of adjusting course. Srikant, you are able to spend a lot of time talking to alumni and to business leaders in your role. And I'm wondering that in the context of talking about what we're doing here over the last year, if you've been able to gather some new insights that maybe have you rethinking our approach in certain aspects of this, or infusing new ideas into what we're doing that are coming from outside of campus?

Srikant Datar: Our amazing colleague Jim Cash has helped me in setting up a racial equity advisory board. And through that, I've been fortunate to learn more about the efforts of people like Doug McMillon at Walmart and leaders like Lisa Skeete Tatum, Ken Frazier, Ken Chenault, and Brian Moynihan. And what strikes me, Brian, is their personal commitment. How and why diversity and inclusion has become a part of how they measure success at their firms. They walk the talk every day and they are seeking to transform their own organizations. And this is something I hear from a large number of other business leaders. So this is something that business leaders are thinking a lot about. But what is even more heartening is that they and other leaders aren't stopping there. They believe that business is a force for good in society. And so they're looking externally and thinking more broadly too. A great example that Jan and I have already talked about how business leaders truly might transform our society and many of the names I mentioned are indeed the founders of the OneTen initiative, which as Jan said, seeks to provide those who have the necessary talent and skill, but might lack the credential or a college degree, with meaningful career opportunities that offer family supporting wages. So these are individuals who have the talent and skill. And what has been fascinating for us to learn about, Brian, is that this whole initiative will help companies identify talent that they might otherwise have overlooked. So this is a great area where I'm hearing from the business community opportunities where what is good for them, that is seeking talent, is also good to address some of the greatest challenges we face in our society. And those are always such inspiring examples.

Jan Hammond: If I could build on that, Brian.

Brian Kenny: Sure.

Jan Hammond: I think one of the things we've learned this year, first of all, it's disheartening to people in the Black community when people say there's no pipeline, so there's nowhere to go to find talent. And what we've found is although we may have to look a little bit harder or look in slightly different places, we might have to build talent, there's a tremendous amount of talent out there. So I think that this OneTen project, as Srikant has said, is going to really help further develop talent and really feed the pipeline for just tremendous people to be able to take over positions in our companies.

Brian Kenny: Terrill, I want to turn to you for a minute. First thing, thanks again for being here with us on day two. I don't even think it's been a full 48 hours since you've stepped into this role. But you have the... obviously, you've got the benefit right now of not being immersed in this, in the way that we are and being able to bring an outside perspective. You're coming to us from Villanova where you've played this role along with many others in helping to lead them down this path. I'd like to start just by asking you, why is it important, from your perspective, for institutions to focus on this? We've talked about why diversity helps us create a richer experience for students, but why is it important for us to really double down on this effort?

Terrill Drake: Well, I'm happy to be here and thank you for the warm welcome, Brian. And yes, it has not been a full 48 hours yet, but we're closing in on that very soon at any rate. Yes. No, you asked a really, really important question. I think it is extremely important for us as institutions to provide environments and create spaces for everyone to be at their best and ensuring community members have what they need to be successful. And that's every part of our community, right? So it's the community of faculty, community of staff, and community of students. And when we do that, it really allows us to model for the world or model internally the types of environments that we know we're sending our students out into because we expect that they're going to go out and make change. And so we want them to have experiences doing that here locally. And so I think when we invite people in to our community and we're focused on their experiences, we want to create the best experiences and the best realm of possibilities for folks to really succeed. And so I think it's important for the institutions to be focused.

Brian Kenny: So I've been here for 14 years at HBS and this topic has come up, frankly, over the years, more than once. It's something that was one of our prior dean Nitin Nohria’s, “Five I's”. Inclusion was one of those. And so I think we've always recognized that it's been important, but I think we've had trouble, like many institutions have, sustaining the momentum to really do something about it. And this time feels different to me and that could just be my own personal take on it. But I do want to turn back to Srikant and Jan on this and just say, do you have thoughts about what we can do to make sure this doesn't slip back into business as usual, and that we do continue to focus on it and sustain the momentum?

Jan Hammond: One thing I'd like to say is the reason that I'm optimistic that this will be a sustaining effort is the amazing efforts that our faculty, staff, and students have put into this work. I had suggested to the unit heads that perhaps they might want to send somebody to an event that the PhD project was having that would be showcasing the market-ready PhD project students. These are PhD students who are underrepresented minorities. Just a little suggestion that they might come… and we had by far more faculty visiting and observing that than any other school had. It was really extraordinary.

Brian Kenny: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Srikant, any thoughts on that?

Srikant Datar: Let me just add a couple, and I know Terrill is just looking at barely getting 48 hours, but Jan and all our faculty, colleagues, and staff, and students, and I have been waiting with great eagerness for Terrill to begin. We know the experience and expertise that he will bring to our work will be invaluable and I know will be an important part of sustaining our momentum. As Jan has mentioned, there is so much enthusiasm and commitment to this work across our community that it does feel different. It does feel that this time, we will make progress, and I've already seen in this year the progress that we have made. But I know that at the end of the day, I know Terrill is going to be absolutely invaluable, but my personal energy and attention can't be diverted now that he is here. And Angela (Crispi) and I must, and we will, continue to focus on our racial equity and inclusion efforts. In the strategic plan of aspirations and engines that we had developed, diversity and inclusion is one of six priorities we have identified, and we will be persistent in ensuring we bring this priority and lens to every effort. At the end of the day, though, the work does need to feel owned by and embedded in our programs, our initiatives, and in our community, as Jan so correctly pointed out in her comments. So I think we need to be sure we're doing enough to empower and support the efforts where we feel our impact can be meaningful. We have done this, but this is a time for us to redouble our efforts in that area, and I feel very confident that that's what we'll do as a school.

Terrill Drake: Can I just make one addition to this as well? Because I think that sort of this next step is really important, right? So building on the enthusiasm of the work that's already been done, I think now that we have to start communicating back to our stakeholders and those that we've involved in this work on the progress that we've made and communicate as a whole, right? Here's what we've done. Here's what we're doing, but also communicate the places where we've fallen short and doing things like this conversation today, where folks can really see how authentically we're leading in this work and what we're trying to do. And that we're also being honest with our community when we say, you know what? We said we were going to do this, but we didn't do it, and here are some reasons why that might be the case. And so I think we've communicated our commitment. We started to make some work, and I think now it's time to hold ourselves accountable, allow our community members to hold ourselves accountable by letting them know where we are, and using that to fuel the momentum forward as we evolve and make changes and maybe add new things to the work that you know that we have to do.

Brian Kenny: That's a really great point Terrill, and it's a great segue into my next question, which is, if we pull the lens back a little bit and we just look at the business community, Srikant, you've talked a lot about the role of business in society and the important work that business can do to help address societal problems. There's no more important societal problem than this one. I'm wondering what we can learn from what we've already seen out there, what some businesses might be doing, the conversations that you've had with the Racial Equity Advisory Board that you mentioned earlier have certainly been illuminating. And then how do we bring those insights back into the classroom in ways that our students can benefit from what they're seeing, both good and bad, in the business world?

Srikant Datar: I think today, if you think about what it means to be a business leader, you have to be able to both work with differences and understand how these differences are in fact a tremendous asset, and as you work with them, why it's important for business leaders to engage in this discussion. Now, I don't want to say that this is easy for business leaders and CEOs, because I have spoken to many who are grappling with how to find their voice in this arena. They understand the importance of the topic, but it's hard, and every month brings for them, as they tell me, new challenges. For example, should they speak out about voting rights issues, and they're thinking about this in important thoughtful ways. Then the role of business in society clearly is changing and in such moments, the path as to exactly how they should go may not be clear. So as Terrill was saying, these are areas where they are struggling, and you might say are still evolving. At the same time, what they tell me is customers, employees, many other stakeholders, increasingly see this engagement as vital. Making the most of differences is a source of competitive advantage. And I think many business leaders are understanding that and I think making good progress in how they should think about it. But I think it's getting more and more clear about why they must engage and why our students must engage when they graduate from Harvard Business School.

Jan Hammond: You know, one example of, I think a company that has done very well, is TIAA. Roger Ferguson, as CEO, has really infused the culture of the organization with, I think, an understanding of why differences are important, why recognizing and respecting differences are important, and looking at difference very broadly, by the way, not just race, but also why having an inclusive culture will lead to better business outcomes. I think he's tied that explicitly to the outcomes.

Brian Kenny: So the mission of Harvard Business School is to educate leaders who make a difference in the world. And I'm wondering, I'm going to ask each of you to maybe comment on this, and maybe we can start with you, Jan, where do you see the greatest opportunity for us to have an impact on this particular topic?

Jan Hammond: I see the impact as coming through our students, our graduates. I think it can be easily shown that every HBS graduating class collectively end up influencing the lives of millions of people. So we have this tremendous opportunity, and I would say responsibility, to teach these young people how they can proactively manage difference for the good, and then they, in their numbers and in the people that they will affect, I think they can just have a huge impact on the world.

Brian Kenny: Terrill, what do you think?

Terrill Drake: I first fully agree with Jan. But I also see this sort of starting internally first, right. So if we're pulling back the curtain and looking at ourselves, I see the greatest opportunity or one of the greatest opportunities is really getting in and asking our community, the HBS community, to do the hard work, to do the interpersonal work, the personal work, to come together as community and really learn how to celebrate those differences and use those differences to fuel our forward success and forward momentum.

Brian Kenny: And Srikant, what do you think about impact?

Srikant Datar: I think our greatest opportunity as a business school is to focus on the role for business when I think about things like OneTen or access to capital for entrepreneurs, I am excited by the potential to see tremendous, and I would say almost inconceivable and incomparable impact. That's how big an impact we can have. I think the idea, for example, for people to find growth and dignity in their work while earning family-sustaining wages is a truly noble and inspiring aspiration. So I think through our… And this is a great example, Brian, where we are bringing together our research, our case writing, and our teaching in ways that I think will create leaders who will be trained differently, and who'll have a big impact. I can tell you when I spoke about this to the MBA class, in one of the MBA open houses that I was participating in, the number of MBA students who want to actually work on this initiative, if we can find ways in which they can connect, is tremendous. And it is tremendous because they feel this is truly inspiring work and will make them into amazing leaders that will make a difference in the world and in society.

Brian Kenny: So this has been a wonderful conversation. Before I let you go. I would love just to get a little bit more personal, just thinking back on where we were this time last year, what was happening in the world around us, what was happening in the United States, I think a lot of people had grave concerns about things. And I'm wondering as you think about where we are today as an institution, how are you feeling? Are you feeling optimistic? You're feeling hopeful? Or are you still concerned about the path that we're on? And so I'll ask Srikant to start. And then Jan, I'm going to give Terrill the last word since he's been so good to join us today.

Srikant Datar: So thank you for that question, Brian. And I will start by saying that I am truly, truly grateful for the work we've done thus far, and for Jan (Hammond) and Jan (Rivkin) and Ron (Chandler), and so many others who have done such amazing work to bring us as far as we have come. And I'm so excited to have Terrill with us and just hearing his thoughts today, and what he'll help us do is, also makes me extremely hopeful. This is going to be hard work for a number of years, and we will not always do everything that we had hoped to do, but as Terrill says, we'll be authentic. We learn from where we didn't do as well. And that makes me genuinely optimistic by all that we can do. And this confidence comes from the many people, faculty, students, staff, and alumni, I have met who are deeply dedicated to helping the school move boldly down the path we have collectively identified. And at HBS, we pride ourselves in how we enable our students to learn how to learn, how to ask the right questions, how to listen carefully, but equally important, how to be humble, how to seek help. I think all of these skills are crucial in advancing racial equity, too. I am very hopeful, the passion and engagement of the HBS community throughout my time at the School, and especially now as Dean, realizing there isn't anything we can't accomplish when we put our mind to it. And that gives me tremendous hope and optimism. I want to underline how much hard work it is, but I also know that this community does things that are important and never shies away from doing things that are difficult and hard. So it gives me a lot of confidence and a lot of hope.

Brian Kenny: Great point. Jan?

Jan Hammond: I'm very optimistic. I'm optimistic partly because of some of the process developments that we have made. The Dean's anti-racism task force, as we've heard, had students, had faculty, had staff, had alumni. And working together, I think that these various groups were able to really create something that none of us could have done individually. So I think it has created strong connections across faculty and staff, for example, faculty and alumni, students and alums. So I think we're building a muscle that we're going to be able to use in a variety of different contexts. For me, racial equity is absolutely the top priority. And I can see us using this muscle when it comes to other types of diversity as Srikant said, Latinx, LGBTQ+, and a variety of different identities. People who are neurodiverse for that matter. There's just so many ways that people are different. And so many opportunities, I think, to engage these different people in the workplace and in the creation of value. So I think that we're building a muscle that will allow us to do this in an even broader way in the long term.

Brian Kenny: Thank you. Terrill?

Terrill Drake: I would echo everything that Srikant and Jan have both said. And I also feel very optimistic as well. A couple of reasons, number one, this is an HBS priority. And the fact that it is a priority at the highest levels means that we will be focused on it and we will continue to make steps forward. I also think the support of that's there, we've got a lot of work that's happening in a lot of pockets across the School. And so for me, that's exciting to walk into work that's being done. And now we take that work and we bring it all together so that we understand what exactly it is that's being done, how it's going to impact our goals that we're going to create related to this work. And we continue to push forward. We use that to fuel future momentum and innovation in this space. And so for that, I remain extremely optimistic and also humbled that I am a part of this community to help lead this work.

Brian Kenny: If you haven't figured it out yet, Terrill, we're a little excited to have you join us. I don't know if that came across.

Terrill Drake: Absolutely. Just a little bit.

Brian Kenny: Srikant, Jan, Terrill, thank you for joining me today. I think this has been a really important conversation to have, and we're going to keep doing this and we're going to keep sharing what's happening here at the School on this front. So this is just hopefully the beginning of many other conversations to follow. Thank you.