The three words this year among politicians and business leaders at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Switzerland Davos: Diversity, equality and inclusion.
It’s no surprise that Dei is on the minds of corporate leaders because he’s front and center in the White House.
“My administration has taken action to end every discriminatory diversity, equality and inclusion nonsense,” President Donald Trump said Thursday during a virtual appearance in Davos. “America will once again become a country based on merit.”
Trump signed the executive order on his first day in office Dismantling the federal government’s diversity and inclusion programs. The order written only applies to federal government employers, but he also mentioned that his executive order is on private institutions in his comments in Davos.
Following the executive order, his administration also targeted affirmative action in a federal contract and Ordered all DEI federal personnel to be placed on paid leave.
On the ground in Davos, DEI was the subject of conversation both on the record and behind closed doors, with discussions including the potential to ditch the commonly used acronym and change external communications around certain policies.
Most of the corporate leaders who spoke to CNBC during the first four days of the summit reiterated that while the language may change and internal policies may adjust, the company’s values will remain the same.
Here’s what executives had to say:
Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase CEO
“We’re going to continue to reach out to the black community and the Hispanic community, the LGBT community and the veteran community. … Everywhere I go — red states, blue states — mayors, governors say they like what we’re doing. So we we we. We’re not trying to break through any side or any things. We have done, and what we have done is to raise cities, schools, countries, companies, and we will do more of the same.”
Adena Friedman, CEO of NASDAQ
“For Nasdaq, we really continue to look at everything we do about building the right culture. We believe that a place where we feel like people can be themselves and can perform at their highest potential and have a diversity of views and a diversity of backgrounds actually makes us a better company and makes us better. At the same time, I believe there is a lower leg that continues to support.”
Bill Ready, CEO of Pinterest
“People on our platform come from all walks of life, from all different backgrounds, and so we’ve been very focused on how we drive inclusivity in our feed into our platform with things like inclusive AI, with things like ‘Diversity’ … we haven’t [changing anything]And the reason is that we’ve seen that it actually leads to better engagement, there’s consumer demand, it’s good for our business. “
Chuck Robbins, Cisco CEO
“I think what’s happened is that there’s a subset of DEI-branded initiatives that they don’t particularly like. And I think that’s blown the whole thing up … if I’m sitting in a room to try to solve a complex problem or pursue a big opportunity, I want a lot of diverse brains in that room, and I don’t care if it’s gender or if it’s just diversity of experience. The pendulum swung and I think it was a handful of issues that really set it off.”
Robert Smith, CEO of Vista Equity Partners
“I think diversity is a great thing in business. How do I know? Because I look at the data, I look at the facts. When we have diverse teams, our teams are more productive. We have lower risk. We’re lower risk. We’re lower risk. We’re actually able to to produce those who don’t have different teams. Different thinking in the work they do, in the products they deliver, and the markets will benefit in the long run … we will have to navigate through it, and there may be certain laws. Adaptation, but people will correctly.”
Alexandr Wang, CEO of Scale AI
“We operate in an incredibly competitive and fast-moving industry in AI, and I have no option but to hire the best and brightest and most capable people for every single job in my company. So we have, as a result, we have No option but to be meritocratically … and in that process we achieve diversity.”
