McKinsey Provides Update On Commitment To Racial Equity Through Black Leadership

McKinsey & Company, a global management consulting firm, has released an update on its commitment toward racial equity and justice.

Amid the 2020 Black Lives Matter movement and the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, numerous companies made financial and business commitments to racial equity and McKinsey announced 10 actions it would take as part of its commitment to racial equity.

In a McKinsey release, the firm provided an update on some of those actions.

The firm launched the Black Leadership Academy, which is made up of two programs designed to accelerate the careers of Black professionals, one for early-to-mid career managers and another preparing senior executives for the C-suite.

According to the firm, in just three months 10,000 participants enrolled from 300 organizations in North America, giving them the knowledge, insights and capabilities to achieve their goals. McKinsey is also building on the program and last year launched its Connected Leaders Academy for Asian, Hispanic and Latino and Black leaders based in Africa, the Middle East and Europe.

McKinsey also committed $200 million in pro bono work over the next decade to organizations advancing racial equity including the Greater Washington Partnership.

The firm is also working with 20 partner organizations to launch more than 20 projects including the Juntos Conference in Brazil, which has one of the largest Black populations in the world. More than 4,000 people have participated in the event, both live and virtually since it began in 2018.

“We wanted to help young Black students advance from university to the workplace,” said Vijay Gosula, a McKinsey partner. “We created an annual conference called “Juntos,” which means ‘together’ in Portuguese.”

McKinsey has also partnered with Homeboy Industries, the largest gang intervention, and rehabilitation program in the world, annually serving more than 8000 individuals with clinical treatment education and workforce development. Over the past two years, the firm has worked with Homeboy Initiatives to strengthen its workforce pipeline and more.

Among its other racial equity commitments, McKinsey is also working to double its number of Black leadership and colleagues, fund an Institute for Black Economic Mobility, build Its Next 1B Business Accelerator for Black-owned retail brands and donate more than $5 million to nonprofits focused on creating educational opportunities and combating racism.