DIVERSITY, EQUITY, AND INCLUSION
Our commitment. Our ongoing work.
At New York Public Radio, we provide our audiences with rigorous journalism, civil conversation, and inspiring music—free and accessible to all. As a public media organization, we work to reflect the diversity of the many vibrant communities we serve: everyone who calls the New York City area home. And as a mission-driven organization, our urgent responsibility is to engage in the ongoing work of building an equitable and inclusive workplace culture that empowers all of our staff to thrive, grow, and build meaningful careers.
It is rewarding to be part of an institution that understands how deeply all of this is intertwined, and which views Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) not as a discrete area of focus, but as the animating force behind everything we do.
In 2016, NYPR established a dedicated DEI department to formalize and sharpen our efforts to support DEI across the organization. Over the next several years, we rolled out impactful diversity training for staff, developed Employee Resource Groups, and enhanced our recruitment processes to support a diverse pipeline of talent, among many other initiatives.
But in 2020, in the wake of the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and other Black Americans, and a global pandemic that unearthed so many inequities in our society, NYPR accelerated programming and developed a coherent strategy to embed DEI into our DNA. We deepened our work to create real, lasting change, while also providing our staff with communities and training to build resilience as they navigated the pandemic and shifted to remote work.
In 2020, a peer-nominated Race Equity Culture Working Group made up of 22 diverse staff and four executive leaders from across the organization was created to serve as an advisory body. They were charged with identifying blindspots, troubleshooting ways to remove obstacles toward progress, and acting as change ambassadors. This cohort drafted the inaugural Race Equity Action Plan, unveiled in 2021, with concrete commitments for advancing racial equity inside NYPR and in the content we create.
The publication of “Living Our Mission,” our first-ever Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Report, fulfills one of the central commitments in our Action Plan: to increase our transparency and accountability to our community and publicly chart our progress for 2021/2022. Below you will find the Executive Summary of our progress on the plan for the last fiscal year. And please read the full report, “Living Our Mission” and our 2022-2023 Race Equity Action Plan.
This work is our North Star. We must do everything in our power to take this opportunity to be a leader of change and an employer of choice. The actions we’re taking now have been part of a DEI conversation at NYPR that has grown and gained renewed urgency in recent years. Every one of us across the organization has a part to play in making our commitments a reality. We are excited to be on this journey together.
It has been an honor to lead this work alongside our DEI team and the colleagues and partners at NYPR who continue to advocate for progress.
Onward.
Brenda Williams-Butts
Chief Diversity Officer
Progress On Our Goals
We fulfilled 14 of the commitments outlined in the 2021-2022 Race Equity Action Plan. Our progress to date is as follows:
OUR PROGRESS
1.
Hired three critical HR roles — Chief Human Resource Officer, Director of Talent Recruitment, and a second Human Resource Business Partner.
2.
Hosted BIPOC listening sessions. These sessions are designed to provide more community, transparency, communication, progress, and accountability.
3.
We continue to deliver on our commitment to securing a diverse slate of qualified candidates for all new and replacement roles to generally reflect the demographic diversity in the New York Metro Area. And our Newsroom is close to 50% BIPOC editors and reporters.
4.
As part of our commitment to overhaul our hiring process, we developed a new Hiring Playbook for hiring managers, a comprehensive guide that standardizes and documents best practices for the entire lifecycle of the hiring process. It includes how to write inclusive job descriptions, recruiting strategies, and successfully onboarding new employees.
5.
We prioritize our talent sourcing strategy. We expanded our recruitment pipeline and implemented a process and structured approach to hiring. We are reaching out to targeted groups and diverse professional groups to attract diverse candidates.
6.
We are also committed to eliminating structural barriers and unconscious bias from interviews. We instituted staff panels to ensure that candidates are interviewed by a diverse group of staff.
7.
Implemented Managing for Impact (MFI) training for all people managers to equip our managers to lead and support our BIPOC staff. We also launched the Accelerating Leaders of Color program specifically for our BIPOC leaders, providing leadership coaching to an initial cohort of 10 staff from across NYPR this year.
8.
Developed a career framework encompassing job bands, levels, and functions—rationalizing our structures and also reflecting the frameworks that many other organizations use to categorize their jobs. This framework is the first step in developing a career pathing program.
9.
Engaged in a series of anti-racism trainings and workshops to build racial literacy so we are better equipped to have the conversations that will continue to move us forward.
10.
Conducted robust audience research that has informed the three-year strategic plans for WNYC-Gothamist, WNYC Studios, and WQXR.
11.
Implemented new audience development practices beginning in the fiscal year 2022.
12.
Teams across the organization are making headway on The Source Project, which tracks the demographics of NYPR guests and sources.
13.
Developed a system to track and assess the diversity of our hiring practices, promotions, retention, and staffing levels, across departments and have begun to present the data, on a quarterly basis, at All Staff meetings.
14.
The publication of this year’s DEI Report, “Living Our Mission,” fulfills our commitment to be transparent and accountable to our community
