Giving Compass' Take:

• B Lab co-founder Jay Coen Gilbert discusses a recent company survey that showed how people of color didn't feel completely comfortable at the office, and how he decided to confront the problem.

• How can all of us — in the nonprofit and private sector alike — find ways to improve work cultures? What can we learn from Gilbert's effort to look closely at his own bias and learn from it?

• Here are three key steps to creating a workplace that promotes inclusivity.


The words hit me like a punch to the gut, but they shouldn’t have surprised me.

Only 57 percent of B Lab’s staff who are people of color feel they can bring their whole selves to work, compared with 96 percent of their White coworkers.

B Lab, the organization I co-founded in 2006, is the nonprofit behind the global B Corporation movement. B Corporations redefine success in business — they compete to be best for the world and meet the most rigorous standards of social and environmental performance, public transparency, and legal accountability to balance profit and purpose.

Yet, in a 2017 survey of our staff, only 57 percent of B Lab’s staff who are people of color feel they can bring their whole selves to work, compared with 96 percent of their White coworkers.

Houston, we have a problem.

B Lab, an organization of roughly 65 people, is 68 percent White — whiter than the U.S. population, which according to the 2017 estimates by the U.S. Census Bureau is 61 percent White, non-Hispanic or Latino. That wasn’t what surprised me. What surprised me was that the staff survey suggested that our culture is more like 98 percent White. More specifically, White middle-to-upper-class culture. Things I hadn’t noticed were negatively impacting our team’s experience at work ...

The quantitative and qualitative results of our staff survey were a cold-shower reminder to look at the data and not to trust blindly in my own personal experience, which may be quite different from the experience of others, including others whom I care about. Despite the pain I felt learning the information in the survey results, I would have been far more devastated had I and our management team remained oblivious any longer. Data — and the deeper understanding it can offer — creates opportunities.

Read the full article about confronting institutional bias by Jay Coen Gilbert at Forbes.