Jenan Matari is the founder of a virtual platform for Muslim women, www.MissMuslim.nyc, which brings together thousands of women across the globe in a community that never previously had a dedicated space. The “Dear Doctors” column at MissMuslim, in partnership with two doctors at The Women's Therapy Center, provides necessary education about female mental and physical/sexual health to women from conservative communities who may not previously have had access to doctors or community leaders. In 2017, Matari was honored with the Shirley Chisholm Award in Journalism for being a catalyst for change and outstanding representation of Muslim and minority women in the media.

Nicole Dye-Anderson oversees all DEI PR for Barclays’ USCB division. She is a founding member of its Black Professionals Forum (BPF) employee network, and she was recently appointed to chair the communications committee for BPF America. She also co-chairs the communications work-stream for  Barclay’s Race at Work Taskforce. Dye-Anderson was the driving force behind the #BlackWealthMatters Instagram Live series powered by Barclays to champion Black wealth creation and sustainability. She has recognized opportunities to increase access to capital by advocating for financial investments to those disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, she secured funding for the Student Emergency Relief Fund at Delaware State University, a historically Black university.      

Stacie de Armas oversees data collection and analysis on diverse consumer behaviors and media consumption trends. In this role, she is responsible for research initiatives that allow analysis of diverse representation in advertising and media. She spearheaded Nielsen’s Hispanic Diverse Intelligence Series reports, uncovering Hispanic consumer and media trends that offers comprehensive findings that focus on the media, consumption and purchasing habits of diverse consumers. In 2019, de Armas was honored with the Joseph A. Unanue Latino Institute's Excelencia Award, awarded to a Latina who has achieved superior accomplishments in corporate America.

As a proud member of the LGBTQIA2+ community, Kevin Martinez has committed himself to serving members of marginalized populations. To help youth find opportunities to both play sports and gain leadership skills, Martinez created Sports4Life with the Women’s Sports Foundation to help Black and Hispanic girls access sports and engage in educational programming. He also made ESPN the Global Presenting Sponsor of Special Olympics Unified Sports, bringing people together to compete while spreading messages of inclusion worldwide. Martinez also created “Shred Hate, Choose Kindness” to eradicate bullying, which has trained 13,000 teachers and staff, and 120,000 students have received tools to stop bullying.

Michael has cultivated an employment partnership with Urban Alliance (UA), which provides skills training, mentoring and paid internships to underserved high school seniors who are at risk of disconnecting from school or the workforce. Under Michael’s leadership, LINK also actively seeks interns from the Marion S. Barry Summer Youth Employment Program. His firm launched a new partnership with Georgetown University’s PIVOT Program, which offers a custom certificate in business and entrepreneurship, created for formerly incarcerated individuals. This partnership includes both employing PIVOT participants and offering pro bono communications and marketing support for the program. Akin also created the Changemakers Series at LINK, which fosters change by creating space for needed dialogue.      

Pamala P. Proverbs is a PhD Candidate in the College of Journalism and Communications at the University of Florida. Her research challenges the definition of public relations. She challenges the definition's classification as a business/management function instead of being thought of as a function that addresses issues beyond traditional areas of business and politics. In terms of the Caribbean community, Proverbs' research aims to serve two purposes: to be a red flag for the media to do better at communicating about victims of gender-based violence, and to increase the use of more empathetic framing by communicators to change the way gender-based violence is written and talked about, which is thought to help in reducing incidents of violence against women.

Ariel Cooley has been heavily involved with her school's chapter of the Public Relations Student Society of America (PRSSA). Her role as community service chair consisted of scheduling committee meetings, planning committee events and communicating with members on the board to get the budget and events approved for the chapter. As president, she has been crucial to hosting the PRSSA's six-part “Elephant in the Room” panel, in partnership with Pitch Publicity/INICIVOX, a seminar series on race relations and critical communications strategies for students pursuing degrees in journalism, public relations and advertising at Howard University and the University of Florida.

Each year for the past three years, the employment rate for graduates of Morgan State’s Department of Strategic Communication—of which Marshall is Chair—has been 90 percent or better. Marshall also serves as the President of PRSA MD. This year, he recruited the chapter's first diversity co-chairs and wrote a board amendment to elevate diversity chairs to the board so that DEI would have a voice at the board table.  Marshall has also been active with national DEI discussions concerning agencies recruiting talented students from HBCUs. He has worked with The National Chair of PRSA, The National PRSA DEI Committee and The PR Council about ways to develop policies.

Teaching public relations at a federally designated Hispanic Serving Institution located on an international border had already provided Dr. Kaye Sweetser with many opportunities for advancing DEI among her students. In the fall of 2020, she forged an HSI-HBCU relationship designed at mentoring students of color and creating experiential opportunities. She also began a nationwide advocacy program for her peers to encourage using their “power from the podium” in planning courses and created modules to make it easier for PR educators to incorporate engaging assignments that showcase representation, highlight successful practitioners of color, encourage mentorship and create a sense of belonging for all PR students.    

In the seven years since Dr. Tania Cantrell Rosas-Moreno has been the Loyola PRSSA Chapter faculty adviser, she has repositioned the Chapter as a known hub of ethical, service-oriented pre-professionals ready to assist on-campus institutions with their PR needs and to embark into the larger community. She has done this by aiding the chapter in receiving awards annually at both the national and regional levels; connecting it with its local PRSA Chapter; navigating university bureaucracy to have its own carry-over budget; serving up new PR and strategic communication courses at both the undergrad and grad levels; maintaining an aggressive research agenda; and helped lay the groundwork for a student-run firm.

Natalie Green led in the establishment of Elon University’s Unity in Communications student initiative, which supports students of color and LGBTQ students, while promoting diversity and inclusion within the School of Communications. After completing a National Association of Broadcasters Media Sales Fellowship, Green interned remotely for Warner Media, where she focused on improving CNN’s relationship with Black-owned businesses. Green earned the role through the T. Howard Foundation, where she has mentored other Elon students in the application process. Green remains active in PRSSA, in Elon’s Black Student Union as the communications lead, and in Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, all while serving as a work study student in the School of Communications Dean’s Office.

The Nielsen Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Team is working to build a globally inclusive culture via local Inclusion Impact teams, active Business Resource Group participation for managers and supporting the in-house Diverse Leadership Network program. The team works with HR to ensure diverse, equitable and inclusive retention and recruitment, and collaborates with Panel Relations to recruit diverse Nielsen panelists. The team is also involved with community outreach, promoting DEI within industry organizations. Nielsen developed Being Seen on Screen, its first report on the state of inclusion and representation on TV, to provide a scorecard for the industry.

LINK’s internship program is a paid opportunity that provides Associates (what LINK calls its interns) a real title to help with career progression. Over 65 percent of LINK's current full-time salaried employees have come out of this internship pipeline. The program empowers each Associate—ranging from high school students to seasoned professionals looking to switch career tracks—to accomplish professional goals while receiving mentorship from their peers. LINK also provides an Executive Coach to every team member to work on personalized professional development plans. Many LINK Associates come from the Urban Alliance (UA) program, which provides skills training, mentoring and paid internships to underserved high school seniors.

Inspired by a belief that brands should be doing more to advance meaningful conversations among minority populations, Capital One and Boss Women Media saw an opportunity to make an impact. The partnership was slated to kick off with a seven-city tour with a curriculum to support women of color on their journeys to financial well-being. Due to the pandemic, Capital One and Boss Women Media were forced to pivot to a two-day virtual experience that focused on how attendees can prioritize their financial, physical and emotional well-being in response. Five finalists pitched their businesses live during the Summit to a panel of judges, and the top three businesses went home with $25,000, $15,000 and $10,000 grants.

APCO established its North America regional DEI Council in 2018 with the mission of informing the priorities of the firm and partnering with leadership to secure the necessary resources to accomplish APCO’s DEI goals. The Council has supported and guided the creation of four employee resource groups (ERGs), including ones for parents, LGBTQ+, a Women’s Leadership Group and LatinAPCO. APCO is also working to eliminate bias from talent selection, including standardizing the interview process to adhere to the STAR Method (behavioral interviewing). The Council's work has also included launching “Accelerate What’s Right,” APCO’s commitment to fighting systemic racism.   

According to the latest U.S. Census data, 51,000 Native Americans are living with active epilepsy, yet a large percentage of the population has very little information about the illness. The Epilepsy Foundation joined forces with LERIS Media for a National Epilepsy Month campaign geared toward Native Americans. Targeted outreach was performed for three tribal nations through the primary newspaper outlets for each tribe of both an epilepsy awareness article, “Epilepsy and COVID-19 Awareness for Native Americans” and Seizure First Aid posters produced in their respective tribal languages. Posts with both #EpilepsyEquity and #NAHM hashtags on Twitter led to over 221,000 impressions.

Over 525,000 Quinceañeras are celebrated in the U.S. every year, but because of the pandemic, many girls had to cancel their large parties. Neutrogena recognized this year’s “new normal” and leaned into engaging digital touchpoints, including a consumer-facing sweepstakes. Reggaeton superstar Rauw Alejandro honored the winners during a virtual show. The team enlisted Gen Z stars Lilimar Hernandez and Jasmine Gonzalez to spread the word of the sweepstakes to quinceañeras across the country. This campaign amassed nearly 17 million impressions, and the livestream concert drew 436,000 viewers.

This seminar series was inspired by #BlackOutTuesday. The team wanted to turn this week of listening, learning and sharing into a professional seminar series. Pitch Publicity and INICIVOX identified student groups at Howard University and the University of Florida to host the series designed to mentor students interested in entering careers within the communications industry, while preparing them for impactful work to address the long-standing elephant in the room when it comes to racism. Six virtual panels took place during the fall of 2020, and over 540 attendees participated. The team received positive feedback from attendees, with 92 percent reporting finding the information to be valuable.  

In the aftermath of the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, the NBA's Portland Trail Blazers launched the Racial Injustice Initiative (RII). As part of this, the Trail Blazers Foundation Racial Injustice Fund was founded to invest in local and national nonprofits fighting racial injustices and racism. Along with launching the Fund, the team produced a video utilizing in-house talent, allowing members of the RII Task Force to communicate how these events directly impacted them. With the Racial Injustice Fund, an initial investment of $200,000, seeded by staff, players and coaches, was distributed to seven local and national nonprofits. 

The Communications Department for the City of Renton, Washington (a minority-majority suburb of Seattle) launched a grassroots campaign to inform its residents of the importance of self-response to the 2020 Census. The effort included city-wide training for front-line staff, development of the “Renton Complete Count Committee” and recruitment and training of Census Ambassadors. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, in-person efforts were scrapped. Census Ambassadors found ways to keep promoting the Census from home via text, phone calls and Facebook Live. The city reported a self-response rate of 75.1 percent, among the highest rates in neighboring cities that have similar ethnic and socioeconomic breakdowns.    

Gerald Bostock joined a gay men’s recreational softball team and was promptly fired. In 2013, he filed a lawsuit challenging his termination. His case became a landmark LGBTQ civil rights case when oral arguments were heard before the Supreme Court of the United States in 2019. The question before the court: Whether discrimination against an employee because of sexual orientation constitutes prohibited employment discrimination “because of…sex” within the meaning of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Poston Communications collaborated with key community organizations to provide necessary case updates. The Court ruled in favor of Bostock, creating a platform for broader conversation on the topic of LGBTQ rights.             

The Tulsa Juneteenth Block Party was a response to Donald Trump’s decision to hold a Make America Great Again rally on Juneteenth in the city of Tulsa, the site of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. Over just four days, and with the national spotlight on Tulsa, celebrities were enlisted to join the virtual Juneteenth lineup with the collective goal of drowning out any negative racial rhetoric that could arise from that weekend. Tulsa’s Juneteenth Block Party reclaimed the airwaves and many news cycles during the Juneteenth weekend. The original web show included conversations, stories, messages of hope and musical performances from a number of prominent Tulsans and celebrity guests. It ran for over two hours and was followed by a live DJ party. The event brought in nearly 40,000 viewers, with viewers from over 65 different countries tuning in.