5 Eclectic Approaches to Corporate Diversity and Inclusion

Continuing on in my research into how companies are approaching societal profit, I came across an encouraging number of initiatives by American corporations that took of all different shapes, sizes and degrees.

In particular, many of the programs I came across were dated in the wake of the murder of George Floyd in particular. In this time period, many companies produced diversity-focused advertising campaigns, made donations (typically $500k to $1 million) to BLM-related philanthropic causes, reiterated their diversity and inclusion policies, touted their D&I executives, and produced D&I reports. Yet some approaches went beyond this common set, standing out for their uniqueness.

Here is a summary of several of the most interesting instances I found of companies taking novel approaches to innovating in their pursuit of racial and gender-based societal profit, from both equality and equity-based perspectives.

Microsoft — Diversity and Inclusions Efforts of the World’s Most Valuable Corporation

Microsoft is arguably the world’s most valuable company, and is a company injected with the corporate ethos of one of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs, who plowed $37 billion of his own money into his namesake charity. Given its wealth of resources, global footprint, and ability to exert influence as a corporate role model, Microsoft is also uniquely positioned to make a highly…