“Scott Brighton became CEO of Bonterra, an Austin-based social-good software company, in June 2023. Yes — the same month that the Supreme Court ruled against affirmative action policies in college admissions, emboldening a flurry of anti-DEI lawsuits.
At that time, the company did not have a chief diversity officer on the team. But Brighton set out to change that — in part because Bonterra is a remote company, and Brighton felt that Bonterra had the advantage of sourcing top talent from all around the globe. That necessarily meant working with people of various demographics and helping them “thrive,” he says.
But also, as a company helping nonprofits and enterprises with fundraising and other efforts often impacting underrepresented groups, Bonterra needed to be a “credible partner” to those organizations, Brighton says: “Having a leader who was focused on that 24/7, I felt, was the only way we could be consistently intentional about it.”
In October of that year, Brighton brought on Dionn Schaffner as the company’s chief diversity officer. She’s helped launch an e-learning platform centered on DEIB, started a DEIB council that now has about 40 employees, and revised performance evaluation processes and hiring rubrics to be more equitable — like, for instance, reconsidering why a bachelor’s degree may be required in some job descriptions.
Schaffner’s efforts have already had an impact at the company, Brighton attests, which boasts about 1,000 employees. In the company’s 2024 employee survey, engagement for Black or African workers increased 7.2 percent year-over-year. For Latinx or Hispanic employees, that was more than 14 percent, according to a company representative.”
To read the full article, visit Inc
https://www.inc.com/sarah-lynch/these-ceos-still-have-chief-diversity-officers-heres-why.html
