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<p>Employees say:</p><p>"RAMS is an incredibly nurturing workplace. People's strengths are assessed and opportunities are presented that will enhance a persons skillset and foster continued growth within the organization and field of social work and peer support. RAMS understands the importance of self care and a work life balance to help avoid burnout working in such an emotionally demanding and heavy working environment."</p>

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The Middle East has some of the highest youth employment rates globally, while nearly 60% of the population is under the age of 30. As a result, expanding education programs  and supercharging job creation is critical for the strength of the region's economies. A  playbook for how the public and private sector can work together to solve for these  challenges and unlock the region’s full potential.  

Unlocking Potential: Workforces For The Future

Conferences

The Middle East has some of the highest youth employment rates in the world. Nearly 60% of its population is under 30. Uh, with us to share what it takes to build an engaged workforce across generations is managing director and senior partner with Boston Consulting Group Leila Ho. Thank you for having me here. Uh, we live in a region that is packed with potential. More than half of the population is less than 35 years old. When we talk about the future of work, we're often hearing things like job job displacement automation anxiety. AI is going to take over our future roles. But what if we flip the narrative? What if instead of thinking about what we stand to lose, we talk about what we have the power to build? What if this, this is our opportunity to instead of trying to prepare the workforce to be ready for the future, to actually uh give them the confidence to build and shape the future. What we need to do is to ensure that we um that we help the youth achieve their full potential. When we look at the future of work, we see that there's industries that are shaping very quickly, reshaping new industries, industries that are that are disappearing, and in our BCG report titled The Next 50 Years of Work, we we identified some of those future sectors. And Alright So what you see here is regenerative industries. I'm gonna mention a few of those, regenerative industries. So these are industries which are going to reshape whether it is in manufacturing, in the urban infrastructure, in construction, in in agriculture and fishery, they would be completely reshaped using new material, using different processes to ensure that you're not just protecting the environment or protecting the economy or social society from harm, but actually regenerating nature, regenerating the economy, regenerating society. Another sector that is going to be very high on the agenda is the care-based economies, so the human to human interaction, the human to human contact, taking care of children, uh, the senior citizens, people of people of vulnerable groups, but also community at large, mental health and well-being of community at large. Um, we also see everything to do with play and creativity-based sectors, so which blend entertainment with learning, care, and art, including e-sports that are happening in the metaverse. When you think of all of this, you can see that there's so much labor abundance. We talk about labor scarcity and the worry about labor scarcity, but there's an infinity of possibility of what could be shaping the world in the future. And there's many more of these sectors that are going to grow, many more that are going to be shaped in the next few years, and it's our job to prepare our youth to be able to shape these sectors, to be the early adopters, to be the early adopters of the emerging skills. So when we think about these skills, what are these skills? So in the in the same report that I mentioned, we look at some of the key skills that are going to be emerging in the future, um. One of the first ones is existential capabilities. What we mean by that is the ability to have a mindfulness, emotional self-regulation, physical regulation, optimism, decisiveness, and as for all of you parents out there, I can tell you this is probably the these these are probably the most important skills that you can impart your kids in terms of role modeling in front of them. This is what's going to make them able to shape the future. Bionic skills and by bionic skills, we don't mean the ability to code because AI agents are going to be already coding for us. Bionic skills is the confidence to be able to command AI to command technology and robotics. Creativity, so imagination, expression, all of this will be critical in the world of the future for people to be able to contribute to solving. Uh, our biggest challenges again, human to human community and community skills, the communication skills and the influencing skills, the negotiation skills to ensure, to ensure that we can achieve collaborative problem solving together and solve our biggest challenges. And of course entrepreneurial mindset you've heard this, but every one of our youth should should have the courage to build ventures to create new opportunities and to create new jobs. And as we know, these skills are changing constantly. So what you see as a skill, so this is from the uh latest World Economic Forum Future of Jobs report and what this says is the from from today's skills that are identified as important for the future, 40. of them will be completely obsolete in 5 years' time, and that shelf life gets shorter and shorter as time goes by. For the Mina region, the situation is more urgent. 46% of the skills that you see today as important will be completely outdated in 5 years' time. And when we think about Saudi and we interviewed employee employers in Saudi, what they said is over 70% said we need tech literacy now in our youth. We need, we need tech literacy, we need them to know how to work with AI. We need them to know how to work with big data, and we're still far from achieving that. So what is our role? what is our role? At a very high level is two things. One is we need to completely reform our education systems, and the second one is we need to really embrace a lifelong learning mindset. In terms of our education system. I'm not going to go into detail, but just to say we're really still very much stuck in the past, whether it is what we teach the curriculum, or whether it is the approach in which we teach, everything needs to change so that we can. Move away from the passive learning approach that we that we follow to an approach that focuses on critical thinking, collaboration, real world problem solving. We need to prioritize tech literacy even in the earliest of ages. We need our children, our young children to be playing with robots, to be experimenting with AI, to be learning in the metaverse all the while, of course, while protecting them from social media. And we need to shift the mindset in terms of lifelong learning. We need our youth to understand that they will be lifelong learners. They need to embrace that. They need to have the courage to know that every couple of years, all the time, they just need to be learning new skills to be to be able to continue to be relevant and to be able to embrace the future. But we can't do this alone. What we need is we need to see uh No. We can't do this alone. What we need is we need private sector, public sector, and third sector to come together. We need them to come together to identify the future skills and then identify, develop the right education programs whether within school walls, within university walls, or outside of those walls to be able to teach those skills. At scale we need to invest in mentorship. We need to invest in mentorship because we need our children and our youth to have a risk to have a risk taking approach to be able to build new ventures, to be able to go into new industries, and we need to fund and design upskilling and reskilling. programs this is critical in strategic sectors if we need to move forward, we need to create innovation ecosystems where youth-led solutions can be developed in emerging fields and only through this collaboration and shared leadership across all three sectors will we be able to scale opportunities. There's many examples of this in Singapore or in the private sector like AI Alliance, but as a closing remark, what I would like to say is we need much more of these. We need them tailored to our region. We need it with our youth at the center. A population is energetic. It is ambitious. It is. Digitally native, imagine the possibility if every young person was either building a venture or solving one of our toughest problems like water scarcity, where would the world be? And so what we need to do is to ensure that we provide them the space, the skills, and the tools to reach their full potential. Thank you.

Does DEI promote or prevent meritocracy? After a growing number of companies announced they’d be rolling back their DEI programs, some employees were left wondering if the pre-2025 DEI movement in business was wholehearted or largely performative. How will the private sector navigate external pressures while fostering inclusive and equitable environments for employees and customers? Netflix’s inaugural Vice President of Inclusion Vernā Myers joins Anson Frericks, the author of the recent New York Times opinion essay “Working at Anheuser-Bush, I Saw What Went Wrong With the D.E.I. Movement,” for a thought-provoking and multifaceted conversation about how America got here--and where DEI is headed.  

DEI IN 2025: RETREAT OR REINVENTION?

And welcome. Thank you for being with us today. We're excited to start our 2nd day of conversations and connections. We have lots to dive into today, like multi-generational workforces and how to manage them under one roof and the debate over return to office policies. We'll look at the trend of skills over degrees. We'll talk about integrating AI as your new employee. We'll hear lessons on career building from a Hollywood power player and we'll step into the world of the hit show Severance to see how corporate dystopia is brought to life. It's gonna be so much fun and we're going to get right to it all, but first, a quick reminder about what can be shared and what's off the record. What's said on stage or in our breakout sessions is on the record, including the open Q&A. Feel free to post on social media. And tag us using hashtag fortune workplace summits. What's said over the table during a meal or on breaks is private and off the record unless that's agreed upon by those involved. In just a moment, Fortune's next to lead editor, Ruth Umo, we'll kick off our conversations, but first, our partner McKinsey and Company wants to share some thoughts on getting the most out of tech. Tech has limitless potential, but how do we turn that into value? Unlock the power of AI at scale, reinvent tech delivery, build innovative products, and entirely new businesses. We rewire organizations to get the most out of tech, from strategy and talent to operating model, data and governance, capabilities, and culture. Great tech is essential, but with McKinsey, it's never just tech. Hey, good morning, everyone. Let's start with a big question. Is DEI DOA dead on arrival? Diversity, equity and inclusion in America is at a crossroads. Critics argue DEI initiatives have gone too far, creating new divisions and unfairness. Supporters say DEI strategies are necessary to address workplace inequities and can drive business success. We're gonna dive into both sides of the debate, and we have two great guests to do just that. Anton Ferris is co-founder of Strive Asset Management and a business leader who believes talent and results should take priority over diversity metrics, and Bernie Myers is founder and president of the Vernie Meyers Company, which helps organizations build effective DEI strategies. Please welcome them to the stage. Welcome, welcome, thank you both for joining us. Let's cut straight to the chase. Anson, you have argued that one of the fundamental failures of corporate DEI movement is that no one has ever clearly defined what it was trying to do. Let's do just that to level set. How do you each define DEI? What do you think it is actually trying to accomplish? something you want to take it first here, Renee, ladies first here. Thank you, thank you. So I am now start not saying DEI anymore. I'm saying diversity, equity and inclusion. When I say diversity, I mean talking about a difference and a mix, quite frankly, of culture and identity and experience when I'm talking about inclusion. It's about how do you make all of those differences work on your behalf, right, creating an environment where people of all backgrounds feel included. I often say expected, respected, and also reflected that's that's the idea of inclusion and with equity it's what you need to do the processes and. And the, the kinds of, uh, I would say tools that are necessary in order for that inclusion to actually flourish and for you to get the best out of human talent. Same question for you. Yeah, and I think, I think one of the biggest problems with diversity, equity, inclusion, it's never been well defined. If you ask everybody in this room, they're going to give you a different answer. I think that. Bernay's answer was a very plausible answer for DEI, and I think if you go back in time 5, 10 years ago, I think probably everyone in DEI wanted just to go out and find the best and the brightest. DEI was about finding a diverse group of candidates, trying to make sure they had an equitable opportunity or an equal opportunity to be able to succeed, and then we want to be inclusive of all people and walks and different backgrounds. I think there was a lot of positive in the initial DEI movement. why it's become controversial and I'll define why I think it's become controversial is DEI instead of just providing equal opportunities for people of diverse backgrounds. I think it's about now perceived in a lot of circles as forcing equitable outcomes for people as opposed to equal opportunity. So based off of your race, sex, gender, etc. the diversity piece has been about a lot of quota systems in certain. Companies we're going to hire people based on their race, sex, gender. That's become very controversial. The equitable piece is not about sort of equal opportunities, but making sure that everybody gets promoted in an equal way or an equitable way based on race, sex, gender, and then even the inclusive pieces, I think, become very challenging because the inclusive piece is very difficult to define and I actually think stifled a lot of open debate and free speech and dialogue. So I want to thank you for Having this conversation because I think it's incredibly important, but that's how I think about DEI and think about the two different definitions of what it was and I think what it's become. Well, Renee, let me turn to you then. What is your response to critics who argue that DEI, to his points, often rewards identity over performance and risks sidelining the most qualified candidate, um, in the name of representation? I'm gonna say poppycock. Right, because the whole point of DEI is to allow for merits, right? And it is much older than 5 years ago or 10 years ago. We've been doing the work of DEI since the civil rights movement. In fact, that's the birth of diversity, equity inclusion, and the idea is that it is hard to get to merit when there are obstacles, unfair. Obstacles in the way and so there is no MEI without DEI. In fact, it is impossible and and and what is so upsetting for me and I feel like it's, I would say morally unjust and bankrupt to suggest that we could just move forward as if we had somehow managed to level the playing field. You cannot get. To equality without recognizing inequality, it is impossible to do that and in no other business setting would we have an objective, not measure it, not looking at outcomes and how well the actual operation is either delivering on equality or not. And so we've got plenty of data that would suggest that it's not equal. I mean, if I look at women right now in the C-suite. We've got, uh, I, I actually brought the numbers because I am always not, I'm not always on numbers, but I know that there's 28% now women in uh the C-suite and that's up. It was 17% in 2017. So the work we did to get women to be recognized for their merit is working. In fact, I think this backlash against the EI is because we're winning, is because we are leveling the playing field and not because by identity. But by allowing people to actually share and exhibit what they're capable of, I will also say that if we look at women of color in the suite, C-suite, it's much, much lower. So let me jump in here because I do want to hear from you, Anton. Yeah, thank you. Uh, and, and I love that this is a spirited debate because Anne Sandy, you wrote, uh, a New York Times op ed, um, and you pointed to Anheuser-Busch, where you worked for some time as a cautionary tale of DI gone wrong, but was the real failure DI itself, or was it the clumsy way that DI was executed? Why is it a failing of DI overall and not just how they leveraged that business strategy potentially in a in a way that was erroneous. I think that DI there was a failure in terms of definitely how it's been implemented in companies, and I think what I think about sort of a company and why does a company exist, you have a clear mission statement that most companies have, you know, if you're a beer company, you were supposed to, our mission as a company was to create a future with more cheers. That was the mission of the company as a as a beer company, perfectly good mission. There's lots of other missions as well. Coinbase is doing crypto. Indeed is, I don't know, empowering people and finding jobs, whatever it is. Those missions are great. Then I have a view that we should find people and attract people that's going to help the company fulfill that mission. And if you're, you know, in the business of fighting fires, you want to have firefighters that are brave and resilient and all these things. If you were a beer company and the way that InBev worked and Anheuser-Busch and 3G, it was a very hard-nosed finance kind of driven company. And if you're a healthcare company, you probably have different people for that, and you should have different sort of characteristics and adjectives that you can describe to recruit people, and I think that each company needs to define those own adjectives to create. the sort of workplace they went in, but every company, I think before defining what those values were of who they wanted to recruit, they first looked at it through a DI lens, and I think that was problematic in saying that before we find people that are brave or empathetic or compassionate or hardworking or whatever adjective you want to describe for that company, first you have to look through this lens of, well, what's people's race or sex or gender or others, and I think you know there's a why is it you used the word before. Why can it all happen at the same time? This is just my experience working at Anheuser-Busch and then also running Strive Asset Management where we're investors in hundreds of different companies across the S&P 500. It just didn't. It probably can, but I think most people, they look through sort of the lens. Wells Fargo is a good example of a company that said in 2020 that we're going to have to interview 50% of all candidates have to be minority candidates for any job that's over $100,000 and then they were actually accused of literally encouraging minority candidates to apply for jobs after they'd already been filled just so they could check a box. And I think that's sort of the problem of like a lot of people just implemented DEI policies poorly and wrongly. And they became, I think, frustrating for, I think, a lot of minority candidates. They were supposed to help. And then also conversely became very frustrating, I think for non-minority candidates or even say candidates of background that were Asian or Indian or others that might have been passed over for a job because they weren't called the check the box right minority. Let's dig into it really quickly, and I think you might actually be about to touch. On this because you mentioned DI quotas, hiring quotas, and we saw a number of companies, uh, that instated the certainly post George Floyd and so if, if, if the argument is that DI initiatives result in these diversity quotas, Verne, how is that not trade in one form of exclusion for another? Let's, let's, let's get the language right. There's no such thing as quotas. Quotas are illegal. They've been illegal for a very long time. Kenji Yoshino last night yesterday explained to us it's not about quotas. That's another example of a disinformation campaign. It was about goals. And every company, if you want to achieve a change or cultural transformation, you have to have goals. How else are you knowing whether you are making a difference with what you're implementing, right? So people said unless we pay attention to this problem, the problem being the underrepresentation of groups of people over a long period of time due to exclusion, both intentional and Unintentional. This work does not get done unless you pay attention. It's attention and intention. People often think, well, just let it go. It'll just happen. It never just happens. I mean, you know, people will quote that like the moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends towards justice. Thank you, MLK, my love. It doesn't bend by itself. You have to bend it. I'm a, I, I came into the legal profession. I was the first black person in my law firm, the only black lawyer, I should say, in my law firm. When I went back to my Harvard Law School, um, women in Harvard Law School, I learned that in 19. 53 when they finally let in women, they had no toilets for no bathrooms for the women. So you can say they had gender diversity maybe, but you cannot say they had gender inclusion and if you arrive in an environment and it's not set up for you, it's not conducive for you. It's insisting that you emulate the person or the group that has been there. And who have dominated for a period of time and if you don't, you can't advance because somehow we have this idea of fit and that's about our own comfort and it's a lot about our prejudice and also our biases and that is what DEI is hoping to do to create an environment where everyone can succeed versus being. Held back because of an identity, it's just the opposite of what is being perpetuated these days about the disadvantaging effects of DEI. Who has been disadvantaged? We have no data that would suggest that white men are being disadvantaged by the work of DEI. Well, let me ask you that, do you think that white men have been disadvantaged by the work of DEI? No, but I think definitely like Asians have 100%. If you take a look at Harvard versus Fair admissions, it was all the Asian students that had to essentially have twice the SAT scores, twice the whatever the scoring rubric was that that that black students have to have to get into Harvard. So I think yes, there's definitely been, and if you look at med school admissions, you look at other admissions, definitely certain races have been excluded, and I think We have to get back to the MLK's dream is that we have to get back to finding a place where we don't discriminate based off of race, sex, gender. Like any type of even reverse discrimination is discrimination. And so if we're discriminating against Asian people for advantaging black people, that's discrimination. I think we have to have an open and honest dialogue and conversation about that, and the data shows that the people are being discriminated. No, I don't think which data? Well, if you look at any admissions data for Harvard University, that's why affirmative action was overturned. And even if you go back like, you know, you're right, the Civil Rights Act that started in 1964. Hubert Humphries, who was the floor leader at the time, said this ever leads the quota systems, I'll eat my hat. Affirmative action, you're lower by background. California versus Bakke essentially said that you cannot have quota systems. When the California system literally set aside a quota of 16 positions for minority students in med school, they said that's illegal, but you can do affirmative action to take into race considerations. That was upheld in Michigan in the Supreme Court case in 2003. But even Sandra Day O'Connor at that time said at some point the affirmative action has to go away. At some point we can't just keep giving. Certain people an advantage based off race, sex, color, gender, and Sandra Day O'Connor said within 25 years. And so maybe it was 5 years earlier than she originally anticipated when Harvard versus Fair Students for admission overturned affirmative action, but it went away and at some point we have to get to the point where we're not looking at people based on race, sex, gender, sexual orientation. We're looking at them as individuals and say when do you want to do that? When do you want to do it? Do you want to do it now when we still have deep Equality and disparities not just in outcomes but just how people are being treated and in fact I feel like what we're doing what we're hearing is a way of trying to divide and distract and keep people from being connected and being unified across their differences and their commonalities and so I'm saying to you, when do we just stop doing it and. When do we start to acknowledge that there is still an enormous amount of work to do? We've been at this DEI work for a long time. It's not time to stop it. It's time to continue to evolve it. So let's talk about that evolution because we are running up on time. If we strip away all of the buzzwords, is there a version of diversity, equity and inclusion that both skeptics and supporters could agree on? What does that look like? And let's try and make it quick. OK, I think that what it looks like is, uh, I'm going with the, I'm going with the R's. I think we have to actually reassess. We need to redefine, we need to reimagine, and we need to re-engage. We need to redefine what we mean because obviously folks have a different opinion about what DEI means and what it means to have equality, right? And I do think we need to really try to do an assessment. What are we doing that is working and what are we doing that might be holding people back or making certain people feel excluded and then how do we reimagine a new idea, a new possibility, and then how do we re-engage, which is a lot of listening and a lot of caring? Yeah, 20 seconds for you. Yeah, I think it's the most exciting time if I was in the HR world because we don't have to do DEI specifically anymore and every company essentially adopted DEI. Yes, they had a different little flavor of it, but it was very similar to DI. Every company should have their own program to hire people and as long as we have a baseline, we don't, we don't discriminate based on race, sex, gender, then come here with your own program. It could be MEI, it could be whatever program you want to come out with. But talk about what's unique about your company, the people you want to attract, the values that they have, and talk about that and extol that being unique to your company. I think that will create an amazing workforce. We'll create amazing HR, uh, business partners in this room where you guys can really define what is unique about your company and who's gonna thrive there. Well, we'll end here. Thank you both for an illuminating conversation. Although you have cons shots and viewpoints, clearly, uh, your insights underscore the importance of continued dialogue. So thank you, thank you. So that's That's this way. OK, thank you so much.

Who will be the go-to business advisors in 2025’s legal climate? Attorneys. In- house counsel and employment litigators are tackling new political, social and legal headwinds related to workplace DEI. Join foremost legal mind Kenji Yoshino as he explores the implications of the new administration’s executive orders around DEI. Yoshino will also offer practical guidance on how leaders can mitigate legal risks by shifting DEI programs to meet contemporary challenges.   

Legal Power Play: Why Attorneys Are Critical in Business in 2025

OK, well thank you all great start to the day so far. Um, my next point here is on President Trump's first day in office in January. He signed an executive order rescinding all diversity, equity and inclusion policies in the federal government. He also ordered government agencies to combat illegal private sector DEI preferences, mandates, policies, programs, and activities. Now, the government does not have the legal authority to tell private companies to get rid of their legal DEI programs, but still, the order rattled the corporate world, of course. Uh, our next guest is here to help us distinguish between the signal and the noise when it comes to DEI. Kenji Yoshino is the Chief Justice Earl Warren Professor of Constitutional law at New York University and the director of the Meltzer Center for Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging. He joins my colleague Fortune Leadership deputy editor and Workplace Innovation summit co-chair Azure Gilman with some important insights to share. All right, Kenji, thank you so much for joining me. I'd like to actually start with a question to the audience. Who here has felt that they've been put under pressure to change their DEI programs in some way over the past few years? OK, more hands, more honest people than I thought. OK, excellent. All right, so reminders to the audience, if you have a question, please raise your hand and someone will come over. Um, all right, so Kenji, you have a few different tools for companies to kind of think about the risk factors involved in some part of their DEI programs. The first is called a 2x2 matrix. Can you explain to me what that is? Of course. So first of all, thank you so much for having me. It's such a joy to be here and Uh, I am Kenji Oshino. I run a center on DEI that operates out of a major law school. So you can imagine that the first part of this matrix looks at anti-DEI legal risk, and that's what our phones and emails are blowing up about when the administration first came into place, and those include things like, Am I going to get sued under Title VII or Section 1981 or is Attorney General Bondi going to come after my organization and put the might of the executive branch behind these lawsuits, etc. etc. But the more we had these conversations, the more we realized that if we thought about the risk only as a legal risk, that that would be inadequate because as all of you know, the January 21st executive order said 120 days from now we're going to publish a blacklist of companies, by the way, for those of you who are counting, that's Wednesday, so it could be as early as this Wednesday. And companies are saying it doesn't matter if I know that I'm going to win all my lawsuits in the Supreme Court 3 years from now if I'm on that list. That's a social harm that I'm not going to be able to overcome. So we brought in our aperture to think about not just anti-DEI legal risk but also anti-DEI social risk. But if you think about it, right, the other thing that we need to worry about is the pro-DEI legal risks. So one of the things that we're seeing already is that companies are shutting down their DEI policies and then they're getting sued from the other side by traditional plaintiffs. Like what people of color, women who say, look, you know, we don't trust you anymore when you said you wanted to create an inclusive and equitable workplace, not just because you've retreated from DEI but also because you've retreated so quickly and you've pivoted on a dime. And then finally for those of you who love a 2x2 matrix and our completion, you know, compulsionist like I am, there's that bottom left hand box of pro DEI social risks where even if you're free of legal liability from the so-called left, right, then you could also encounter social risks. So those would include things like boycotts or bycotts, right, so individuals punishing, you know, major retailers, for example, for retreating too quickly from the. GI policies that's not legal, but it's certainly a cost to the organization or global risk for your uh global organization. Oftentimes what people want to do is to lower everything to the lowest common denominator, but then they get pilloried by jurisdictions abroad, the Canadas, EEAS, Australia's of the world that say we actually are still for DEI as much as ever, and we're going to push back if you try and lower your DEI standards globally because that's not where we are. OK, yeah, so it's not just a risk of being on Trump's blacklist, it's a risk of a boycott, a boycott, stuff like that. All right, um, the next one, it's really mouthful, stick with me, everybody. It's called the Three Ps. When a program confers a preference on a protected group with respect to a palpable benefit, so what would be an example of that? Yeah, so just to set that up, you know, we often get asked what's legal and what's illegal because the executive orders all talk about legal and illegal DEI, and the answer is the executive orders don't tell us that because they don't have the authority to do that. That is going to be defined by congressional statute, Title VII, Section 1981 as. Interpreted by the United States Supreme Court. So our North Star here is the Students for Fair Admissions decision that was decided in June of 2023, and it may look like it happened far afield in academia, but the Supreme Court gave us such a clear window into how it was thinking about discrimination that we developed these three pieces as a kind of heuristic, right, a rule of thumb to help all of us think about what's legal and what's illegal. So the three P's are they have to be a preference, as you said, for a protected group with regard to a palpable benefit. The preference means that you have to be favoring one group over another. It seems really obvious, right? But a lot of DEI policies don't do that. So if I have a really aggressive unconscious bias. Program, let's say I force every single person in the organization to do unconscious bias training. That may not be very popular, but it's absolutely legal because what you're doing is you're taking bias out of the of the organization rather than putting bias into it. Then with regard to protected groups, the group actually has to be protected by a civil rights law. So in the Title VII context, that's race, national origin, religion, color, gender, sexual orientation, and gender identity, and Section 1981, which regulates the contracting, uh, uh, uh, kind of, um, domain, so think about. Your supplier diversity programs that would involve just race. so you can actually do a lot more with supply diversity than you can with regard to employment, which is covered by Title VII. It's not covered by either of those statutes, you're totally fine. So veterans preference is totally fine, you know, first gen preference totally fine as long as it's not a pretext for engaging in a prohibited form of preference. And then finally with regard to palpable benefit like I can't sue an organization just because my feelings are hurt or because I have some ideological objection to the program. I have to show that it touched on my employment relationship in some way or I can't even get into court. In the Title VII context. This is called an adverse employment action. What the Supreme Court did last April in 2024 in the Muldrow case was to debate whether Or not it should zero that out and say you don't need to show any harm other than the distinction itself, but it ultimately settled on not significant or material harm, but some harm that a plaintiff needs to have encountered before they can advance a Title VII case in a lawsuit. So notice that all three of those elements have to be present. If one of those is missing, then there's no legal risk whatsoever, again suggesting that there's a lot we can do. Um, I think, you know, a lot of companies worked really hard on their DEI programs, years in the making, and they're trying to keep some part of it. They're just not sure which part to keep. So I'd like to play a game with you called Red Light Green Light. Are you ready? So red light means no, don't even think about it, it's off the table. Green light means yes for sure, yellow light means, you know, a little in between, tell us. Tell us what you think. All right, a women's ERG for women only, right, OK, because that's that keeps other people out. Yeah, it's, it hits a 3P. It's like it's a preference, right? Only women or a protected group woman with regard to a palpable benefit belonging to one of these ERGs is a benefit to your work environment. A women's group open to everyone. All right, an unconscious bias training that all employees must attend. A mentorship program for young people of color. Uh, red, it's only young people of color. It doesn't matter that they're young. The fact that they're people of color, white individuals are excluded is a problem. A mentorship program for young people. Totally fine. All right, recruiting at a job fair at an HBCU. Totally fine. Great. Sponsoring a ride festival. I would say green. OK, having a supplier diversity goal. Uh, depends on how rigid it is and for whom it is for. So if it's for women, totally fine because it's not a protected group if it's race. Also totally fine if it's aspirational, but if it's a hard edge goal that says we will have X%, you know, if that's red. Having a hiring quota based on race or gender, bright red, but it was bright red before SFFA, so no one has those quotas. So I don't know why we, I still, I mean, I know you know this. I don't know why the the press keeps talking about this because we haven't had those since 1978. Yeah, having the phrase diversity, equity inclusion written on your company website, fine. I mean that that might lead to social risk but legally completely fine. Um, doing an internal diversity survey. Totally fine, agree. All right, lovely. OK. That's a fun game. if anyone has a red light green light, please, this is your chance. All right, um, so you know this is a group of people from the most powerful companies in the United States. If you want them to leave this room knowing one thing for sure about DEI moving forward, what is that? It's a good question. I would say that I want you all to think about that risk matrix that I talked about and not to make any decisions. So I'm not advocating for a decision. I'm advocating for a process. I want you not to make any decision without going through the holistic process of talking through all four of those boxes. You would never engage in this kind of uh. Significant activity outside of DEI without engaging in a holistic risk analysis, right? So why should it be any different in the DEI context? So I want you to think about the pro-DEI and anti-DEI risks, and I want you to think about the legal risks and the social risks. It's only after you've thought about all of them that you act. If I had one message for you, that would be it. Um, you know, it's been quite a year, it's been quite a few months. Um, we've seen a lot of companies do a lot of things. Um, are there any responses to the new DEI landscape that are notable to you in one direction or another? Yeah, in both directions, the precipitous responses riffing off of what I just said have been dismaying. So some organizations have engaged in with the best of intentions, total stout denial, saying like this is nothing to do with us. We're not we're not changing anything, you know this is business as usual, right? And I worry about those companies being in the crosshairs of the administration or of anti-DEI activists, so I worry about that. Uh, in that direction, in the other direction, the organizations that have retreated often get really punished right by younger employees like Gen Y or Gen Z that we were just talking about, who seem to be unionized as a generation figuratively around a commitment to DEI or through these boycotts that have inflicted a huge amount of pain. The company that I want to praise that I'll call out here is uh McKinsey and Bob Sternfes there where he gave the best statement, you know, in the wake of these executive orders where he said, we believe in diversity and we believe in merit, and we believe those two things are inextricably intertwined. Because what that did was it reversed the spin of this narrative that says DI is about anti-meritocracy, right? And he said actually we believe that these two are intricated with each other and every time I use a diversity word diversity, I'm also going to use the word marriage. Yeah. Um, you know, Trump's executive orders have made a big splash. They're designed to make a big splash. Lists might be coming out this week of companies in his crosshairs. How freaked out should companies be about that? Do you have, you know, what would you say to the company that comes out on the list this week? Yeah, I think you should be, you know, appropriately concerned, right? I don't think. Need to tell you that I think that what I would say if you're on that list is take some instruction and solace in the fact that uh we've actually seen this happen before so go back and look at the law firms go back and look at the universities and think about what they have done because what we saw in both of those instances is that the first targets immediately caved and negotiated but as time. on more and more companies began to fight and then other companies took that kind of finesse, you know, position in the middle, right? So that's one thing to think about. Another piece that I really like is Sheila Hean's memo from the Harvard negotiation Project. It's the project that brought us the blockbusters getting to yes and getting past no, where she has this really insightful memo that says, I almost never tell people not to negotiate, but I'm telling you right now, don't negotiate with the administration, right, unless you have eyes wide open to the fact that this is not going to be the end, because what organizations often think is, oh, if it's just a, you know, $100 million or so, then there's a very low price to pay relatively for getting off of this, you know, blacklist or getting out from under the crosshairs, but it's never the end, right? That that that just exposes you as a soft target for more negotiation. So it may be, again, I'm not dictating a. You know, it may be that that's worth it to you, but the cost is not going to be $100 million. The cost is going to be the $100 million plus future demands made by the administration plus all the negative press and backlash that you're going to get from the other side. So thinking about the spread of reactions that we've seen from the law firms and the spread of reactions we've seen from universities and thinking about the reactions that people have had to all of them is very instructive, right, if you find yourself on that list later this week. Um, we have 20 seconds left. Are we headed to an inflection point? I think so. You know, let me end by saying, you know, I always think about DEI according to that old labor organization quote of first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, and then we win. So that's been my career. Right. Indeed, honestly, when I started this work two decades ago, people didn't know what it was. I'm sure many of you can relate to that, and they kind of laughed at me, right? They were like, You're in the most prestigious field of law. I teach constitutional law con law. Why would you go over and do this marginal thing that just seems very soft and fuzzy? And my response was I actually see much more continuity than rupture between the two enterprises because I've always cared about equality and dignity and inclusion. But nobody's laughing at me anymore, right? I mean, everyone understands that this is a fight and it's a fight for the identity and the soul of the nation, if not the world, right? So then the question becomes who wins that fight? In a world where talent looks like what it looks like, where more than 50% of college educated workers since 2019 are women, where by 2042 we'll be a majority minority nation with regard to race, where 23%, according to Gallup of Gen Z, self-identifies as LGBTQIA plus, not to mention trends about globalization and the like. Like, who do you think is going to win this fight? Is it going to be people who think about diversity, whatever we call it, and think about the importance of developing skills, about how to bond and how to connect and how to team with individuals who are different from ourselves no matter what that difference is, or people who are going to say, no, I don't really like this very complicated world. I want to go back to the way we never were in some kind of magical kind of imagined sort of 1950s era, thank you so much. I'm going to have to end there. Thank you so much for joining me.

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