- When you have people from different backgrounds,
they bring different perspectives.
I mean, look at the things that we now see on TV,
things that we never used to see
and that is because we have different storytellers.
(soft music)
- [Chris] Creating real systemic change
is a continuous journey
that requires us to always keep taking steps forward,
no matter how big or how small.
This is The Work in Progress.
2020 was a year that gave a re-energized
and much louder voice to the longstanding issues
surrounding systemic racism and inequality.
For the country and the world at large,
it was clear that business as usual
was no longer acceptable.
In the literal sense,
the American workplace was no exception.
Many studies have shown that White males
make up 66% of America's C-suite
and there are only four Black CEOs of Fortune 500 companies.
And while I did meet some white males,
innovation thrives and businesses grow exponentially
when there is much more representation
from Black and Brown voices, persons with disabilities,
different gender identities and global cultural backgrounds.
And arguably, no industry has as big an opportunity
to change this landscape as the media industry.
The pandemic has us viewing more content than ever
in the middle of one of the biggest global focuses
on diversity in recent history.
And one of the biggest content providers is Netflix,
a global epicenter of culture.
What Facebook or Twitter is for social media,
Netflix is for entertainment.
Both a technology and entertainment brand,
Netflix is a media giant within a fragmented industry
with a vast library of stories to tell.
And like a lot of companies,
it's not without its very sometimes public missteps.
The brand needs its internal culture to be inclusive
in order for its content to be diverse,
which is key to their global business model.
And although the company has made some great strides
in representation onscreen,
there was still a lot of work to be done internally
as Vernā Myers, VP of Inclusion Strategy,
found out when she joined the company in 2018.
It's public information,
but when I look at Netflix and their history,
I mean there was an inflection point
around the time that you came in,
there was some damaging reports around like,
somebody used the wrong language.
You know, I'm curious as like,
were they doing the work before that critical moment hit
and then what has been implemented since then?
- Yeah, so I was actually consulting at Netflix
prior to that time.
And the company had also, maybe a year before that,
added inclusion to its values.
And I think what the company realized
is to really achieve this value,
they were going to have to invest
and that they were going to have to bring in professionals
and that while it is true that everybody,
and we believe this in the work that we do,
everybody's responsible for creating this environment.
You still need a professional set of people
who can really guide that cultural change process basically.
And so what we have been doing
is creating this comprehensive, in depth,
cultural change process.
And so a lot of times people will say,
"Well, what have you accomplished?"
And we got some things that we've accomplished
but I want people to recognize
that this is a long-term cultural change process.
Companies have not gotten into the situation that they are
where there is this dominant group
and the other folks who are deeply underrepresented.
That didn't happen overnight.
So to shift it and to change it
is also not going to happen overnight
because each group may have a specific set of barriers
or issues around inclusion
that they need to pay specific attention to.
Tech is different from the studio,
which is different from marketing,
which is different from finance and legal.
So what we have tried to do
is to bring a certain kind of expertise
that our colleagues can call on
and can learn how to own this work for themselves.
I often say that it can't be
like a bunch of cocktail parties, a bunch of events.
You know, I sometimes call it drive-by diversity.
It has to be comprehensive,
it has to be thoughtful and it has to be strategic.
- And it seems like one of the first things you did
was this sort of company-wide survey interview thing.
Can you walk us a little bit through that process
and what you learned?
- I will be in front of the executives and I'll be like,
"Everybody, we're going to do a conversation on privilege."
Right, and as you might know, some people are like,
"Oh, privilege."
- A lot of folks a bit worried
about them. - I'll take some.
- Like being a bad word,
but we really see it as a superpower.
That when you can identify your privileges,
that's the thing you can leverage
to create more equity and inclusion from others.
We talk about allyship being so important
because it's a thing that every one of us can do.
Like a Black person who's straight
could be a very good ally to an LGBT person, right?
So you may be experiencing oppression on the Black side
but as a straight person, you have privilege
and so how are you going to use it?
So all of us, because we have multiple identities
in this social hierarchy
and are treated differently based on it,
we can find those places.
And for a long time in corporate America,
we could not name racism.
We could not say anti-Black,
we could not say systemic inequality, right?
Because everyone felt this can't be true.
I'm like, how else are you going to explain the disparities?
Like either there's a problem with the system
or you're saying this whole group of people
aren't as capable,
like which is its own racism or it's its own bias.
So we need everyone with a certain kind of understanding
and vocabulary and concepts to use those
to look at what they're doing every day,
who they're hiring, how they're promoting,
how they treat people, even in a meeting.
So who gets heard, who doesn't get heard?
How do we listen to different languages and ideas?
How do we bring perspectives?
All of that is the work of inclusion,
and we need everybody looking through that lens
as the work they do in order to move us forward.
- Innovation in and of itself
is like entering the unfamiliar at its best.
I think that echoes what you do.
I mean, there's this whole like wiggle room of forgiveness
or lack thereof.
And especially in light of cancel culture,
is like you said one thing, you're gone.
And it's like, "But I apologized and I didn't know."
Like there's so many dynamics
of the psychology that goes into it.
Like how does Netflix approach that
from a storytelling standpoint as well as internally?
- Our strategic bet as the Inclusion team
is that we work on the inside first
and as we get better on the inside,
it has a positive impact on everything we do outside.
Everything from the service and the way our technology looks
and serves our customers and customers to be
to what kind of content we have,
who's in front of the camera, who's behind the camera.
We've done a lot of great work, lot of good progress,
lots more work to do.
- One of my fears, I guess,
is like, someone might watch this
and go like, "Yeah, but that's Netflix.
They have money, they have resources, they have XYZ.
And if I'm mom and pop startup
or you I'm 60 employees deep in my organization
or maybe I'm 100,000 and there's no way I can even
begin to think about how to...
Like what are some of the first steps to take,
large or small?
- No matter where you are, you can start, right?
And what that start
looks like it's really asking the question,
where are we missing it?
Who's missing?
I always say you need two things
if you're going to try to make difference in inclusion.
You need attention and you need intention.
It's never going to change if you're not paying attention
and if you don't have an intentional longterm commitment
to see change.
So my belief is that no matter what size you are,
too small to large, maybe COVID has decimated on your staff.
In some ways, there is some silver lining,
sometimes as we've slowed down.
So now we have conversations that we didn't have before.
Sometimes we had a dominant group,
but now because we had to let people go,
when we start hiring again,
we got to keep our eye on the ball
and make sure that the hiring pool is diverse.
Sometimes it's,
we're going to work in this particular department first,
see what kind of changes we can make.
And like maybe it's the the sexy part of the company
or it's the part where there's influence.
You just have to be strategic and find like an entry point
and then commit to pushing that through.
- In January, 2021, Netflix released its first ever
company-wide inclusion report
with an accompanying short film
to offer a snapshot of where the company currently is
in terms of diversity and it's plans for the future.
Just under half of all employees are female.
And over 46% of Netflix US workforce
is made up of people from one or more
underrepresented groups.
But both Black and Latinx employees
only make up about 8% of that total each,
far less than the nation's population average.
I feel like a lot of organizations
do things behind closed doors,
but you being here today, for instance,
is like, look, let's talk about it.
Let's put it out there.
The good, the bad, the ugly and the work in progress.
- I was a consultant.
And so I used to watch companies put out stuff
and I would just be like,
but I'm inside and I know what's going on.
Like it's a lot of window dressing.
It's a lot of pretense and so forth.
And so initially when I came in, I was like,
"Everybody let's just work," right?
But year two, this is the end of year two,
and I feel like we have things
that we can say that have worked
and that we love and that we're excited about.
And maybe that excitement will excite others
and other companies.
And because we're part of this whole ecosystem, right?
We're part of like, we can't just exist by ourselves.
We've got to influence the industries that we're in.
I mean, that's where the exclusions still exist, right?
So ultimately we've got to say,
"Hey, this is what we're trying.
Here's where we are trying to go."
- There are other organizations and individuals
outside of those walls that are doing the good work as well.
How do you go about identifying, vetting,
and then even activating potential collaborators
and maybe an example or two?
- Well, what's really awesome is we've got all this content
and we are trying to go places where people have not gone.
We're trying to tell the most authentic stories.
We have this incredible bootcamp that we're doing now.
And we're working with Norfolk University
which is a historically Black college.
And you see a lot of companies starting to say,
"Okay, where are we looking for talent
and where have we missed talent?
But not only that, how do we grow talent?"
So we have a number of programs
to one, identify folks we've missed,
and two, help to strengthen what they're capable of doing
so that they have opportunities.
We're changing access to the extent that we can.
'Cause you know bias
is the thing that prevents people to have access
which allows people to rationalize the exclusion, right?
So we're trying to take away that.
And then the other thing we're doing
is we are trying to create the pool because quite frankly,
with all the ways that bias has operated
and the systemic ways that inequality has gone forward,
there are people who are brilliant
who can't even see themselves as being someone who's in tech
or someone who's on that screen
or someone who's even behind that camera.
We've got to change those narratives
and we've got to give people the tools they need
in order to come.
And really it's all about future-proofing our company.
I mean, some of it is about fairness and equality,
but a lot of it, for any business,
is about how are you future-proofing yourself?
Like, are you going to be relevant and competent?
And are you going to have the best people
as you move into the future?
- [Chris] Part of the Netflix approach as a media company
certainly seems to be
that if they work on fixing issues internally,
then that will reflect externally and it's content.
And in order for authentic representation onscreen,
they need to work with both execs offscreen
and to create new opportunities for underrepresented groups.
Darnell Moore, author and the director
of the Inclusion Strategy at Netflix
was brought on by Vernā to do just that.
- I am part of Vernā's team supporting our content
org, physical production, marketing, com,
publicity and awards, also including animation,
really supporting all of our colleagues,
ensuring that they have all of the tools that they need
to effectively do their jobs.
And to effectively do a job is to do a job
with inclusion in mind.
It's not inclusion cosmetics.
It's not about us being able to point
and give you just numbers,
but it's like inclusion beyond a surface.
It's really allowing the folk who are making decisions
around green lighting,
folk who are making decisions around acquiring shows,
who are populating productions.
It is really about ensuring that they have the bandwidth,
the inclusion muscle necessary to make good
on our value of inclusion.
- The word pipeline gets thrown around a lot
and you guys really worked on some really amazing work
in terms of filling the pipeline.
I think one of the things that really caught my eye
because it was pre-COVID,
there was a post on March 3rd, 2020
and it was you in front of a crowd of college students
and it was a workshop all about career development.
Tell us a little bit about
your work in the pipeline's ecosystem.
- That was an a program that we partner
with 50, I believe 50 college,
and others who are not even in college.
Folk could come in to learn about the business,
get tools that were necessary for them
to find their way into the business.
We are a reputable company
that sits right squarely in Hollywood, right?
Right off of Sunset Boulevard in a neighborhood
where people can walk by our building, right?
Have dreams of making their way into Hollywood
but may not know how to get into our building, right?
And this was like an opportunity for us
to open up the flood gates
to ensure that we are not just talking the talk
of diversity of representation, but opening the door
for folk who are traditionally underrepresented
in a variety of fields with an entertainment to be here.
So the work that's being done across the company,
it has everything to do with disrupting
whatever those walls were that kept folk
who have traditionally been underrepresented out,
bringing them in.
- [Chris] Now, if we think about Netflix
in the entire ecosystem of the entertainment world,
they have the potential to play a major role
in disrupting that industry and moving equality forward.
- We put out so much content
which means we need so much talent,
which means we can begin to populate an industry.
And even also on the tech side,
that has been like too exclusive.
We now need so many people.
And with the other streamers, they need so many people
that we have the ability to offer opportunity.
And that opportunity, we hope,
will become more and more diverse.
And by doing that,
people will see that difference is the power.
It is not the thing to be afraid of.
It is the thing that is true about us as human beings
and will help us to improve as human beings.