2021 INNOVATIONS IN DIVERSITY AWARDS

Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, LLP

Innovation Title: Shaping Your Future virtual recruitment series Company Website: www.akingump.com Year Introduced: 2020

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Innovations in Diversity

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Executive Summary

The legal industry has consistently faced the challenge of identifying and hiring diverse legal talent. As a result, law firms have been evaluating their recruitment strategies and are now looking beyond their traditional approach to hiring, which has involved focusing on a select group of law schools and standards.

Last year, Akin Gump’s Firmwide Resource Groups (FRG) created Shaping Your Future, a career development series for law students offered in a virtual format and open to all law students, which allowed for a greater reach. Each program focused on a different topic and was hosted by lawyers from our Asian, Black, Latinx, Women’s and Parents and Caregivers FRGs, who provided authentic advice and guidance relevant to law students. (See examples here, and here.)

Traditional law-student recruiting programs are focused on a particular set of schools and often target students with a specific profile. The Shaping Your Future series allowed Akin Gump to interact with a larger group of diverse students who attended schools outside those from which we typically recruit. All law school students were invited to attend, but the firm recognized this was a unique opportunity to engage with minority students in particular.

During the pandemic, firms were unable to rely on critical in-person, on-campus activities to establish relationships with students and provide guidance to students seeking to navigate the legal profession. Akin Gump lawyers looked beyond these barriers to develop a virtual series aimed at providing guidance and opportunities for all law students. The events were advertised in various ways, including targeted LinkedIn advertisements, and open to any student who expressed an interest. Content was developed based on questions submitted in advance by the attendees, which allowed lawyers to provide authentic insight and advice. The primary purpose was to support and inform law students, not just to recruit students for Akin Gump.

Akin Gump partners (and recent Diversity Journal award honorees) Jaelyn Edwards Judelson and Estela Diaz spoke in depth about the program and its success on an episode of Law.com’s podcast series, Legal Speak (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/ podcast/hundreds-law-students-areshowing-up-for-candid-discussions/ id1286870904?i=1000509841094).

The events attracted the largest and most diverse groups of law students the firm has ever hosted, reaching 450+ students from 40 schools. Attendees were from a wide variety of schools, including schools where the firm does not typically recruit, giving lawyers the opportunity to reach a group that we would not otherwise connect with in person. Students made comments regarding the authenticity and genuine insight provided by the lawyers, with one attendee saying, “[T]hank you again for leading this webinar and speaking on the challenges and rewards of being a woman in the legal field. As a 1L at Georgetown Law School, I am just beginning my journey as a woman in my legal career and was comforted by the encouragement and successes of you and your fellow female colleagues at Akin Gump.’”

In addition, the firm recruited its most diverse summer associate class in 2021 with 43 percent of the class identifying as racially or ethnically diverse. The firm also received top marks in The American Lawyer’s and Law360’s 2021 Summer Associates surveys, which ask respondents to rate their firms across a variety of categories, including quality of work, guidance and training, and inclination to accept an offer. The firm plans to host a series of recruiting programs, partnering the FRGs, throughout the remainder of the year.

Dechert LLP

Innovation Title: Increasing Transparency around the Use of Force by U.S. Police Company Website: www.dechert.com Year Introduced: 2021

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Innovations in Diversity

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Executive Summary

The May 2020 death of George Floyd prompted myriad questions about racial influences over the use of force by U.S. police and law enforcement. Despite the great societal uproar, however, a dearth of reliable nationwide data undermined chances for informed debate. Although theoretically matters of public record, incident reports pinpointing when, why, and against whom police officers employ force are rarely released to the public.

To increase transparency and propose solutions, The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, the largest U.S. human rights coalition, set out to create the first national database of police “use of force” data, enlisting a 20+-strong pro bono team from global law firm Dechert to kick-start its database by using state-level “freedom of information” laws to request data from police agencies.

Dechert’s involvement sits squarely within the firm’s longstanding efforts to fight police misconduct. The firm was recently appointed expert adviser on false confessions to the Cardozo School of Law’s Innocence Project, which works to exonerate the wrongly convicted through DNA testing. Collaboration with the Pennsylvania Innocence Project has also secured release for several wrongly convicted prisoners.

Dechert and the Leadership Conference were keenly aware of the challenges involved in contacting all 19,466 law enforcement agencies in the country. Instead, they resolved to begin by targeting the 200 largest police and sheriff’s departments by population, including those in New York City, Miami-Dade County, San Diego, and Spokane.

Dechert lawyers first identified the state-level laws to be invoked; then they refined the data types that would be sought. Metrics, such as the names of officers involved in incidents, which were arguably not a matter of public record, were discarded. Data fields in the final template included the rank, years of experience, age, race, ethnicity, and gender of officers in question; the type of force used; whether injuries were sustained; and whether officers wore body cameras. The lawyers then filed requests with the 200 police agencies, seeking information on incidents from the previous four years.

Prizing information out of often-recalcitrant police departments was no easy matter. Dechert lawyers shouldered much of the burden in refuting often creative objections or countering straight refusals by police departments to divulge information, despite them being required by law to do so. Some departments stalled so long that Dechert eventually felt obliged to impose a finite timeline on each request, informing the Leadership Conference when a request had been in limbo so long it could sensibly be considered moribund.

Despite the challenges, the Leadership Conference launched its Accountable Now database (www.accountablenow.com/) in February 2021, winning press coverage in Time and other media outlets. Six months on, it now contains data from 143 law enforcement agencies in 14 cities, analyzed to aid comparison, and presented in a user-friendly way that is easy to filter by city, year, type of force, race, or gender of the person that police used force against—evidence of real progress in efforts to help the public examine racial and other demographic disparities in how their cities are policed.

The Estée Lauder Companies

Innovation Title: Value Chain Conscious Inclusion Series Company Website: www.elcompanies.com/en Year Introduced: 2020

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Innovations in Diversity

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Executive Summary

At The Estée Lauder Companies (ELC), we are committed to living our values. While we are proud of the overall progress and commitment we have made to inclusion, diversity, and equity (ID&E), we recognize that we all need to work together to continue to foster a culture where every person feels respected and that their uniqueness is supported and appreciated.

At the start of this calendar year, a cross-functional group of Value Chain employees gathered to consider how we could enable a deeper dialogue about ID&E. This led to the creation of the Value Chain Conscious Inclusion (VCCI) Series. VCCI is globally driven, with equal participation from all levels of the organization. Through virtual events, storytelling, and active engagement, VCCI activates hearts and minds to drive conscious inclusive leadership behaviors into daily action. The series is grounded in our company’s purpose and cultivates respect and belonging.

Series 1.0 focused on building awareness of the meaning of conscious inclusion and introducing three inclusive leadership behaviors: Curiosity, Courage, and Connection (the 3C’s). The series comprised seven events held between January and March. Each event included mixed-level panels with virtual engagement exercises to build skills for driving each behavior. We also set a standard for offering each event twice to ensure global inclusivity and developed an internal online presence for sharing event recordings, obtaining feedback, and supporting continuous engagement.

Series 2.0, currently in progress, takes a deeper look at our global diversity and how we all work together to drive inclusion within our teams and in our communities. Events in this series have focused on personal stories of bravery, humility, and allyship from contributors that work at our manufacturing and distribution sites. We also had events on inclusive beauty with a focus on how Value Chain teams use the 3C’s to understand and address the beauty needs of our global consumers. In addition, we increased executive leadership messaging by initiating a video series in which leaders shared their personal inclusion stories and commitment to drive change.

Series 3.0 will focus on leadership-development training and toolkits to further embed the 3C’s into our culture.

To date, more than 60 executives and individual contributors have played an active role in both series, with more than 300 participates attending each event.

New American Funding

Innovation Title: New American Dream Company Website: www.newamericanfunding.com/ Year Introduced: 2016

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Innovations in Diversity

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Executive Summary

What Makes New American Dream Unique

In 2016, New American Funding formed New American Dream, which seeks to raise awareness and increase homeownership within Black communities by building consumer confidence through home-buying education programs and increasing accessibility to a variety of loan programs. The committee that heads New American Dream helps identify and remove roadblocks that can act as barriers to fulfilling the dream of homeownership.

New American Funding uses manual underwriting to accommodate borrower scenarios for earning, spending, and credit that are common among minority borrowers. This tactic is different from many employed by other sizable lenders that focus on technology to speed up the underwriting process.

New American Dream is led by Director of Legislative Policy & External Affairs Charles Lowery. In his role, Lowery also represents the company in aligning with national organizations to further the company’s mission of increasing minority homeownership.

New American Funding believes in hiring “mirrors,” people who are familiar with cultural differences and equipped to help those in minority communities. As a result of this effort, approximately 46 percent of the company’s workforce is made up of minorities.

The company also partners with Freddie Mac to host monthly virtual homeownership events that educate would be home buyers and encourage Black homeownership as a means of creating wealth.

New American Dream also launched The Listening Circle, a growing group of hundreds of employees who discuss current events and cultural issues. The group raises awareness of important topics and works to enact necessary changes in those areas.

The Program’s Purpose and Goal

For far too long the Black community has been left behind, when it comes to buying a home. New American Funding Co-Founder and President Patty Arvielo, a first-generation Hispanic-American, created New American Dream to address these shortcomings. As a mortgage lender, New American Funding is committed to lending $20 billion in new mortgages to Black borrowers by 2028.

Benefits and Positive Changes

Through this program, New American Funding helps thousands of individuals and families in minority communities buy a home. This helps build stable neighborhoods and creates generational wealth and financial security. Indicators/Metrics

This program delivers results. According to the latest Census data, 12.1 percent of the U.S. population is Black. However, only 6.7 percent of total purchase loans in 2020 went to Black borrowers, per the 2020 HMDA data.

New American Funding exceeds both numbers, as 12.4 percent of the company’s purchase loans in 2020 went to Black borrowers.

Put another way, the company’s percentage of purchase lending to Black borrowers in 2020 was 85 percent more than the industry’s percentage.

How New American Dream Drives Growth

By working carefully and thoughtfully with Black borrowers, New American Funding is enabling the Black community to build wealth, stabilize communities, and create generational opportunities. While other lenders may overlook this important demographic, New American Funding is laser focused on helping those in the Black community buy a home.

Impact

New American Dream directly impacts the Black community, especially those who were previously excluded from lending opportunities in the U.S. for decades due to redlining. New American Funding’s team of more than 4,600 employees works tirelessly to provide homeownership opportunities to the Black community.

Sephora

Innovation Title: Sephora Racial Bias in Retail Study Company Website: www.Sephora.com Year Introduced: 2019 (commissioned); 2020 (shared)

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Innovations in Diversity

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Executive Summary

What Makes this Study/ Report Unique

In mid-January, Sephora released a report on the results of the first-ever large-scale U.S. study on Racial Bias in Retail, commissioned in 2019. Not only did we spearhead a study that has never been done before, but also shared actions we would be implementing across the business, and general steps the retail industry at large could consider. To learn more visit: https://www.sephoranewsroom. com/press-releases/racial-bias-inretail-study

Purpose and Goal

The goal was to measure the problem of racially driven bias in the U.S. shopper experience and identify opportunities to end unfair treatment. Using our Diversity and Inclusion Heart Journey Strategy and the study’s findings, Sephora designed an action plan focused on three key areas—marketing and merchandising, the in-store experience and operations, and talent and inclusive workplaces—with the goal of mitigating the negative effects of bias.

Benefits and Positive Changes

The Study findings offer retailers timely insights into how to create strategies and implement actions in their own businesses to confront, address, and determine how best to reduce racial bias and unfair treatment. While change will require a comprehensive commitment, the study points to several clear areas where shoppers (specifically BIPOC shoppers) and retail employees believe they can be better served.

Indicators/Metrics

Our actions are focused on three core areas of the business, as mentioned above, to tackle bias across all aspects of the organization. We’ve provided our first set of biannual updates against these actions here: https://www.sephoranewsroom.com/ press-releases/sephora-diversityequity-amp-inclusion-progressreport-july-2021

How the Study and Report Are Driving Growth

Sephora shared its action plan via a trio of exclusive stories, with key voices in the equity space and Sephora executives discussing the study and the importance of the work today. This was followed by a press release and reveal of visual assets to achieve widespread awareness and the detailed changes that will be implemented across all U.S. stores.

We shared our new knowledge, insights, and opportunities with other U.S. retailers, who may wish to enact systemic change within their own organizations to better the retail industry at large. Similarly, we partnered with leading trade and diversity organizations Open to All, RILA, and Diversity Best Practices to ensure dissemination to interested retail leaders.

Impact

Our study successfully brought widespread attention among retail industry leaders, consumers, and media to the very real issue of underlying racial bias and the nuances of how it manifests in retail environments. The five truths uncovered by the study highlighted tangible actions retailers need to take to ensure shoppers enjoy a sense of belonging in store. In collaboration with Open to All, we are also in the process of launching a #Mitigate Racial Bias in Retail Charter, leveraging insights from the Sephora Racial Bias in Retail Study, which will encourage more retailers to foster inclusive experiences for BIPOC shoppers.

Stoel Rives LLP

Innovation Title: Move the Needle Fund Company Website: www.stoel.com Year Introduced: 2020

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Innovations in Diversity

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Executive Summary

What Makes this Initiative Unique

Stoel Rives is a founding firm of Move The Needle Fund, the first collaborative effort designed to test innovative initiatives—or, “bias interrupters”—that result in a more diverse and inclusive legal profession. Working in partnership with Diversity Lab, other MTN Fund founding firms, and more than 25 founding General Counsel members, Stoel Rives is implementing trailblazing bias interrupters over the course of five years.

Purpose and Goal

Working to address racism and institutional bias in the legal system and across the country, as well as increase diversity, equity, and inclusion at our firm and in our industry, Stoel Rives has set ambitious, measurable, and public goals relating to the firm’s retention of historically underrepresented lawyers. Specifically, the firm will improve the retention rate of its diverse attorneys to be at least equal to the retention rate of its non-diverse attorneys by 2025, with the ultimate goal of increasing diversity among the firm’s partnership.

Benefits and Positive Changes

The firm is implementing research-based bias interrupters to create a more inclusive work culture, including Engagement Interviews to boost retention and work satisfaction, Inclusive Job Postings to draw more diverse candidates to open roles, OnTrack Sponsorships to support advancement of historically underrepresented lawyers, “Focused Five” business development opportunities for diverse partners to foster connections with in-house counsel, and a DEI “AV Club” to encourage communication and knowledge sharing around DEI topics. Stoel Rives will share outcomes of bias interrupters tested to accelerate adoption of successful DEI initiatives within the larger legal community.

Indicators/Metrics

The firm has conducted baseline personnel data (quantitative) analyses, based on current data and historical trends, as well as firmwide Belonging & Inclusion Assessments (qualitative), to establish starting points against which the effectiveness of the bias interrupters is measured. These analyses will be conducted periodically over the MTN Fund’s five years to assess the impact of the initiatives. On an ongoing basis, the firm is gathering contemporary feedback on the bias interrupters to iterate the initiatives for optimal effectiveness.

How this Initiative Is Driving Growth

Stoel Rives is testing bold new approaches in DEI programs and practices to model transformative growth and cultural change in the legal profession and beyond. As a MTN founding firm, Stoel Rives is developing best practices for other firms to emulate and adopt to make the legal profession more inclusive overall.

Impact

The bias interrupters Stoel Rives is piloting are designed to boost recruitment, retention, development, and advancement of women lawyers, lawyers from historically underrepresented racial/ethnic populations, LGBTQ+ lawyers, and lawyers with disabilities. The firm is also focused on boosting and retaining diverse talent in its leadership pipelines, such as lawyers approaching, or at, the partnership level. The DEI initiatives Stoel is testing through MTN will ultimately have a broad and significant impact on the legal industry, increasing diverse representation and systematically dismantling historical biases that have been obstacles to inclusion within the profession.