Acknowledgments
Data‐Driven DEI has leveraged the contributions of countless individuals and organizations. First and foremost, I would like to sincerely thank all my colleagues at BCT Partners, including the executive leadership team, leadership team, DEI community of practice, and various lines of business that reflect our leading expertise in diversity, equity, inclusion, research, evaluation, analytics, learning, and beyond. Our mission at BCT Partners, to harness the power of diversity, insights, and innovation to transform lives, accelerate equity, and create lasting change, and our pioneering work that spans the globe in service to this mission, undergird everything captured within this book.
At BCT, I am enormously grateful to Lawrence Hibbert, president, for our partnership and his leadership; Peter York, principal and chief data scientist, for his input, reviews, and feedback; Damita Byrd, senior director of DEI, David Hunt, senior director of health equity, and Riikka Salonen, managing director of health equity, for their advice and assistance; Jaan Bernberg, for leading the development of the scorecards, dashboards, and mobile app mockups; Stacey Gatlin and Stephanie Snider, for helping coordinate the numerous moving parts; and Kate Jordan, Patricia Neuray, Tanisha Washington, Freida Hughes, and Amira Pinkett, for their support of the website. I would like to thank my colleagues at our joint venture partner, N‐Touch Strategies, including Natasha Williams and Dr. Jenae Harrington, for their contributions to the research and development. I would also like to thank BCT's clients, who have been essential and instrumental to the growth of our data‐driven DEI work and more, expressly Milton Anderson, managing partner at Korn Ferry and former executive vice president and chief administrative officer at RWJBarnabas Health; Leah Wallace, former senior vice president of workforce development and DEI at Citigroup; and Dennis Pullin, president and chief executive officer and Rhonda Jordan, executive vice president and chief human resources officer, at Virtua Health.
I am especially thankful to my mentors, Vincent R. Brown and Dr. Janet B. Reid, and our colleagues Patricia Melford, LaToya Everett, Pamela Ramsey, Angie Dodge, and Lena Ryals at VRBC and BRBS World; Steve Mahaley at Red Fern and Allison Mahaley at Red Fern and The Dialogue Company; Dr. Amanda Felkey at Lake Forest College; Ann Herrmann‐Nedhi, Karim Nehdi, JT Thompkins, and Anne Griswold at Herrmann International; Julie O'Mara, Alan Richter, and Nene Molefi, authors of the Global Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Benchmarks (GDEIB), and Sudeep Mohandas at the Centre for Global Inclusion; Edward Boon at Promote International; Larry Mohl at Rali; Emily Aiken at IDI LLC; Lamont Robinson at RLC Diversity; Richard A. Kreuger and Mary Anne Casey at the University of Minnesota; Dr. Michael McAfee, Josh Kirschenbaum, Michael Hassid, and Jennifer Tran at PolicyLink; Gamiel Yafai at Diversity Marketplace; Jane Wesman and Andrea Stein at Jane Wesman Public Relations; and Sheilisa McNeal‐Burgess.
Thank you also to the entire literary team at Wiley, including Richard Narramore, Deborah Schindlar, Dawn Kilgore, Michelle Hacker, Jeanenne Ray, Jozette Moses, Michelle Hacker, Gayathri Ganesan, Philo Antonie Mahendran, Jessica Filippo, and Kate Wimpsett. I am eternally indebted to Mike Campbell, former acquisitions editor at Wiley, for not only being the catalyst for this book but also for being a tremendous thought partner, prompting me to think deeply and critically about the book's framing, and helping strengthen its content by challenging my ideas in very positive and powerful ways. This acknowledgment is a minor gesture compared to your major role in bringing this book to fruition.
Last, but certainly not least, to the extent this book was a formidable undertaking, I am deeply appreciative of my entire family and village of friends, including my loving wife, Natasha, children, Amira, Jaz, Marquis, and Aniyah, and above all, God, with whom all things are possible, for the strength, the space, the stamina, and the support to see it to completion.
—Dr. Randal Pinkett