Racial Equity Audits: The Why and How of Community Stakeholder Engagement

June 29, 2022 | 1:00 pm to 2:00 pm EST

WATCH RECORDING HERE

Following the murder of George Floyd and racial justice protests in 2020, major U.S. corporations began to pledge their commitments to promote racial and economic equality.  Two years later, it is more critical than ever to hold these corporations, banks, and tech giants accountable for both their internal diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts as well as their outward facing policies and practices towards Black and Brown communities. 

The contributions of civil rights advocacy groups have made these interventions at the corporate board level possible. And we now have an opportunity to make sure that these successful interventions are strong, comprehensive and lead to meaningful actions to address issues of systemic racism and discrimination at these companies. In order to build power behind the growing movement towards business racial equity and civil rights audits, The Leadership Conference, SEIU, Majority Action, Color of Change and the SOC Investment Group are excited to co-sponsor this webinar on Wednesday, June 29, 2022.

The webinar will be informational and strategic, covering what experts are seeing, as well as how to leverage burgeoning racial equity and civil rights audit opportunities as a powerful means to intervene in systemic racism.  Discussion topics will include an overview of how shareholders of these major corporations are using their voice to hold companies accountable for their racial justice commitments by requesting companies conduct racial equity or civil rights audits and how civil rights organizations can become more involved in the framing of these audits.  The webinar will offer a space to discuss the growing momentum of this powerful initiative and how the audit process can be used to elevate critiques of companies by civil rights advocates.

featured speakers:

Renaye Manley is the Deputy Director of Strategic Initiatives for the SEIU. Renaye led the effort to develop the racial equity audit shareholder proposal, which was filed in 2020 at major financial institutions, including BlackRock, State Street, and Citigroup.

Laura W. Murphy is a business consultant and a national civil rights leader. Laura pioneered the process for conducting business civil rights audits with her groundbreaking audits at Airbnb in 2016 and Facebook in 2020.

Ryan Bowers is co-founder of Activest, the first Fiscal Justice investment research firm that analyzes racial, social and economic justice risks in municipal finance. Activest has previously participated in a racial equity audit as part of the stakeholder engagement process.