We have some extremely talented people as co-founders and advisory board members. What's interesting is our diversity and skill mix. Without specifically trying we have;
We put together people we know with specialist skill sets to meet what we need to develop our organisation. Our one key common criteria is to have a genuine interest in helping organisations help themselves.
When Apple hired Denise Young Smith as Vice President of Diversity & Inclusion in May 2017, she was famously quoted as saying "There can be 12 white, blue-eyed, blond men in a room and they’re going to be diverse too because they’re going to bring a different life experience and life perspective to the conversation".
Denise was to lead a charge in defence of Apple's starkly white male leadership, a company that in 2017 only had 3% of leaders that were black, and women representing 23% of tech jobs (Fortune). Hardly diverse.
Instead, her comments caused controversy, and she was forced to apologise and said the comments "were not representative of how I think about diversity or how Apple sees it". Just after 6 months in the job, she has resigned and has been replaced by a blue-eyed, blonde haired female.
Irrespective of whose message it was, Denise, Apple, and The Impact Suite all agree that diversity drives innovation.
