Day of Understanding: PwC - CEO Action for Diversity & Inclusion
US Chairman and Senior Partner of PwC Tim Ryan meets with the nation’s top CEOs every day to discuss their business challenges. In these conversations, diversity is often a focal point.
While CEOs are passionate about the topic, they are also concerned that not enough is being done inside and outside their companies. They are unsure how to tackle the issue, and would benefit from others’ perspectives and insights. These insights led Tim to support the creation of the coalition, CEO Action for Diversity and Inclusion(“CEO Action”), launched in June 2017 and now includes nearly 600 CEO signatories from companies, universities and nonprofits.
In 2018, every CEO Action signatory company was invited to take a bold action and host conversations, on or around December 7, 2018, within each of their respective companies in order to further embrace the differences within their organizations, educate their people and build more inclusive cultures.
While some organizations have held conversations like this before, the CEO Action Steering Committee recognized that not every signatory organization has done this and recognized difficulties from a financial and organizational perspective to develop materials or bring in external facilitators.
Therefore, the Steering Committee created a full suite of resources to help signatory organizations facilitate the sessions – at no cost. These resources included unconscious bias training materials, how to facilitate courageous conversations, and personal facilitators. Additionally, CEO Action committed to working with any signatories to help shape the discussions and customize the sessions to what would be most effective for their organizational culture.
More than 615,000 employees from more than 150 CEO Action signatory organizations in more than 1,000 US and international locations participated in candid conversations about unconscious bias and other diversity and inclusion topics and The Day of Understanding received national media attention.