We’re excited to announce that Kepler Group has received bronze-level certification from Management Leadership for Tomorrow’s Black Equity at Work program. Launched in October 2020, the MLT Black Equity at Work Certification is a first-of-its kind offering created to help employers make meaningful, measurable progress toward Black equity through sustained action. This work is essential to successfully addressing the stark inequities between Black and non-Black Americans that permeate every aspect of our society, including the workplace.
The program provides employers with:
- Measurement—A meticulously developed scoring rubric to measure aggregate progress toward Black equity
- A roadmap—Individualized support to efficiently develop rigorous three-year action plans, incorporating applicable parts of existing employer equity plans
- Support—Multi-faceted services and resources that assure and accelerate progress
- Recognition—Announcements and a distinguishing mark for milestone achievements that send a powerful signal about commitment to racial equity rigor to institutional investors, current employees, and prospective talent
“The program MLT has designed demands accountability, consistency and investment from leadership—three of the most important ingredients for progress to be possible in the DEI space,” says Justin Roberts, Director of Kepler’s DEI Center of Excellence. “When we fight for Black equity in the workplace, we’re choosing to take part in a centuries long struggle against racism and oppression. This program has been one of our most helpful tools in taking part in that struggle.”
In the first year of Kepler’s Black Equity at Work plan, Kepler has seen improvement in representation for Black employees in entry-level and mid-level positions, successfully overhauled our talent sourcing process to include more diversely representative institutions and HBCUs, introduced equity as a factor for all employee performance reviews, launched executive and manager DEI training, added Black equity-specific questions to internal company surveys, and rolled out company-wide DEI audits.
While we’re proud to have achieved this milestone, there’s still more work to be done. We remain committed to diversity, equity and inclusion at work and we look forward to making continuous progress toward a more inclusive industry.
Read more about our commitment to DEI and our progress toward certification.