How the ad industry can make better progress on D&I efforts

Pedro Pina: Everyone thinks about diversity the same way they think about climate change.

It’s really important, but it’s someone else’s job to go and fix it.

Adrianne Smith: My motto is don’t talk about it, be about it.

I think the industry evolves by staying active, by understanding that it’s not an overnight

fix.

But you continue to create programs, providing them tools to be successful in environments.

That’s how we overcome it.

It’s just the basics of information, continuous training, and just having a natural human

condition of love and respect.

Ete Davies: The best strategies I’ve seen for building accountability when it comes

to diversity and inclusion, nothing talks harder than hard metrics.

And it's not having quotas for the sake of it, but I think when you have targets and

you have objectives that are tied to your strategic business priorities, that is a reason

that the whole business especially leadership can be laser focused on making real change

and real progress towards diversity and inclusion.

Sarah Kate Ellis: What we need and can do more of is showcasing the diversity within

our own community.

Because LGBTQ people are people with disabilities, we are women, obviously, we are people of

color.

We are everywhere.

We’re immigrants.

And so, showing that range is really, really important in the future.

And the advertising community has one of the biggest prolific platforms to do that on.

Pedro Pina: I do think that the solution is all about what every one of us can do to change

things.

This is, of course, a lot more relevant for managers, directors, people who are people

managers.

They have incredible power, because every year they hire people.

Every six months, they promote people.

They choose who are going to lead their businesses and who’s going to continue to climb the

ladder of an organization.

The problem is that everyone is waiting for the silver bullet, and that doesn’t exist

at all.

So it’s up to every single one of us to make a difference in order to ensure representation

happens.