D&I TBD

Love Malone's long career in advertising spans both brands and agencies. The founder of The Gradient consultancy spent close to a decade in pharma at GSK and Merck. After that, Malone landed in the agency world as a senior strategic manager at BBDO and then had the role of Ogilvy's global director for four years. Malone has a keen eye and understanding of talent. The Gradient elevates and connects talent of color to the advertising and marketing industry. Recently, Malone has rediscovered a passion and responsibility of being a voice in diversity, inclusion, equality and equity. Additionally, she has found that leaning into gaps in her experience with other communities is an opportunity to grow. Much like many in advertising today, Malone is focused on action across the industry and sees opportunities to go beyond the pipeline to help talent thrive.

This week, Adweek introduced its first-ever industry award honoring LGBTQ leaders. All 15 of Adweek’s inaugural Pride Stars honorees are breaking boundaries and pushing forward advocacy and visibility across advertising and marketing, brands, media, tech, and culture. One of Adweek’s 2020 Pride Stars, Mastercard chief inclusion officer Randall Tucker, joined D&I TBD to talk about leading the company’s global diversity and inclusion programming. Tucker also addressed the importance of bringing one’s full self to work, and about how for so many people, there’s no separating your identity into neat little categories.

Adweek's D&I TBD podcast is honored this week to have two guest hosts: Kai Deveraux Lawson and Simeon Coker, hosts of the must-listen podcast Mixed Company. The resulting conversation about violence against Black Americans is just as powerful, contemplative and vital as we expected. The opinions expressed here are, of course, those of the hosts, but Adweek is proud to host a conversation our industries need to hear and engage with.

This week, Streamlytics CEO Angela Benton joins to talk about diversifying artificial intelligence, data brokerage, and more. Benton’s company recently introduced Clture, a data ownership app for the black community that helps people monetize their digital footprints. But before founding Streamlytics in 2018 (Insecure’s Issa Rae is an investment partner,) Benton was already well-known as the founder of NewME, Silicon Valley’s first accelerator for minority tech entrepreneurs that helped raise over $47 million in capital. On the pod, Benton riffs on how the latest diversity scandal at Google shows how the tech industry sometimes takes steps backward, as well as forward, in its slow march to inclusion. She also speaks frankly about NewME’s own experience with Google—which she says quickly degraded after a staffing change at the digital giant.

On episode 3 of D&I TBD, Adweek is joined by strategist Nina Kossoff. Currently on furlough from Matter due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Kossoff has sat on brand planning and strategy teams at Imprint Projects, McCann, Ogilvy & Mather, and Barbarian Group. It’s not every day that two non-binary queer people co-host a podcast about advertising. So in between discussing Kossoff’s work on Mastercard’s groundbreaking True Name campaign and non-binary health and fitness platform Thems Health, Kossoff and host Mary Emily O’Hara joke about astrology and the moral quandaries of working corporate jobs amid the queer community’s anti-capitalist ethos.

Jezz Chung, Anomaly’s diversity and engagement lead, joins us this week for episode two of Adweek’s new podcast D&I TBD. Speaking with diversity & inclusion reporter Mary Emily O’Hara, Chung muses on how inclusive workplace goals are shifting during Covid-19 layoffs and cutbacks. This episode covers how diversity & inclusion initiatives pay it forward; prior to her current role overseeing D&I, Chung was on the receiving end of programs like MAIP, AAF’s Most Promising Multicultural Students Program, and Adcolor Futures. We also discuss class and wealth as D&I issues, mentorship, the Asian American perspective, and more.

In the first episode, Glenn Singleton, president and founder of Pacific Educational Group and Courageous Conversation, discusses his early experiences in becoming a leader in the space, the importance of authenticity in creating inclusive spaces and the persistent issues of systemic racism that holds the industry back.