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BITC

Fri, 27 Jan 2017
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As Impact continue to make great strides around improving diversity in the workplace, co founders Nick Evans and Julia Dosne were invited by BITC to attend the Media Peer Learning Forum on Race. They were joined by leading advocates on diversity, from companies such as Harper Collins, Google, Guardian Media, Hachette UK and Cohn & Wolfe.

BITC brought together key players in the sector to improve performance around race equality in the workplace and representation in the media. The intimate Round Table event was generously hosted by Haper Collins at their office in London Bridge.

We explored opportunities for tackling issues affecting race equality in the workplace whilst discussing how we can better drive representation in the media.

The CEO of Harper Collins, Charlie Redmayne and Director of People, John Athanassiou, kicked off the meeting with an overview of the award winning work they do around diversity; which is setting the pace for the whole publishing industry (and media too!).

This was followed by Joseph Harker, Deputy Opinion Editor for Guardian, who gave a passionate talk on the problems facing the ethnic minorities wihtin media industries and how we should all be doing more to attract and employ high quality candidates into the industry. He himself has run the personal Action Scheme which has enabled individuals from ethnic minorities to get work experience at The Guardian, many of whom have gone on to do great things.

Chuck Stephens from Google spoke about their ability to attract candidates on the tech side, but the emphasis was really to get kids interested in the brand from an early age and to a wider part of the businesss.

The meeting covered excellent points on diversity and what we in the media industry can do to attract candidates from BAME communities. Everyone was in agreement that engaging with and attracting school children from a young age to a career in the media was the way forward and that Impact’s work with Reach Out as well as our Attracting Talent Through Diversity Project was an excellent way of doing just that!