MESSAGE FROM THE DIVERSITY COUNCIL STEERING COMMITTEE CO-CHAIRS AND CHIEF TALENT & INCLUSION OFFICER The year 2020 brought long-buried issues of racial inequity and injustice to the surface, with the COVID-19 pandemic taking (and continuing to take) a disproportionately heavy toll on communities of color. On top of that, incidents of racial violence, bias, and racially motivated police brutality and misconduct made headlines on a seemingly daily basis. As the November elections neared, our nation was more divided than it has been in years, and attempts at voter suppression focused on disenfranchising diverse communities resurfaced in ways that they had not in decades. These challenges sparked new conversations across the legal profession and within the Crowell community. Our firm has a proud tradition of being a leader in the legal industry when it comes to creating a truly diverse, equitable, and inclusive workplace. We have achieved this by implementing truly innovative initiatives focused on ensuring that we offer everyone a welcoming work environment and culture where they can succeed. But the events of 2020 raised the stakes, as the realization grew that we could no longer be satisfied with gradual progress. After the murder of George Floyd, the chair of our Management Board circulated a heartfelt letter to the entire firm, urging us to not only be sensitive to, and supportive of, those in our firm community who were hurting and feeling personally threatened, but to also: “… speak up, speak out, and channel, constructively, peacefully, and persistently our outrage that such things as these can happen in a nation defined by principles of freedom and equality …” This willingness of Crowell & Moring’s senior leadership to engage in a candid and potentially uncomfortable conversation sent a strong message to the firm, especially to our diverse lawyers and professional staff, about our commitment to pursue meaningful and significant change even more aggressively than we had done before. Encouraged by this message and rightfully enraged by our world’s circumstances, members of the African American Affinity Group began a dialogue with firm leaders that led to the creation of our Racial Equity Task Force. This initiative was unquestionably one of the most impactful achievements of our 2020 diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.
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2020 Diversity & Inclusion Report
