New report: How green orgs can retain diverse staff

People of color are among the biggest advocates for the environment — after all, many of them live in areas disproportionately impacted by pollution and climate change. So why are so many green organizations failing to retain racially diverse staff?

It’s no secret that environmental science and advocacy have struggled with racial equity problems. Diversifying new hires is one fix, but the practices that have kept these spaces so white can persist even when people of color are added to the table.

This week, Green 2.0 released a report called “Leaking Talent: How People of Color are Pushed Out of Environmental Organizations. It was a follow up to its annual study, released earlier this year, that found that the number of people of color among the ranks of the country’s largest environmental organizations fell from 2017 to 2018. (In 2018, only around 20 percent of employees and senior staff at nonprofits identified as people of color. At foundations, it was closer to a quarter of employees.)

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About the Author: DrStefanieKJohnson

Dr. Stefanie K. Johnson is an Associate Professor of Management at the Leeds School of Business, University of Colorado Boulder. She holds a Ph.D. from Rice University and is particularly interested in the effects of unconscious biases in the evaluation of women and minorities, with the goal of finding ways to mitigate those biases. Dr. Johnson brings bias to light with an engaging and humorous approach to advanced scientific research, which has earned her numerous accolades and invitations to present her work at meetings around the world, including the White House for a 2016 summit on diversity in corporate America on National Equal Pay Day, and the 2016 Harvard Negotiation and Leadership Conference. She has published over 70 journal articles and book chapters in outlets such as Harvard Business Review, Journal of Applied Psychology and The Academy of Management Journal. She has extensive consulting experience and has created and delivered leadership-development training with an emphasis on evidence-based practice. In recognition of her unique research, Dr. Johnson has been awarded nearly three million dollars in external funding to study leadership and create leadership development programs aimed at increasing safety. Media outlets featuring her work include: The Economist, Newsweek, Time, and CNN. Stefanie lives in the Boulder Bubble in Colorado with her Biology Professor husband, two young kiddos, and two old kitties.