Doing the Work at Work

What are companies desperate for diversity consultants actually buying?

- By Bridget Read

As the sun went down on May 31, 2020, Kellie Wagner was packing up her Brooklyn apartment when she heard a roar: the chanting of thousands of Black Lives Matter marchers arriving in Fort Greene Park from a nearby rally at Barclays Center. It was the sixth day of nationwide protests in response to the murder of George Floyd, and the NYPD had already made several violent arrests. Wagner was about to move to California, expecting a slow summer: The pandemic had caused half a million dollars in future business to dry up virtually overnight for Collective, the workplace-diversity consultancy she founded. Companies told her they no longer had the budget for her services. Wagner, who is 35, thought she might have to close up shop for good. Just before she left for the airport, she passed the remnants of a burned-out cop car, broken glass glittering on the sidewalk.

Two days later, Wagner was in Palm Springs—and her in-box was overrun with more than a hundred inquiries from prospective clients. Companies that had canceled on her two months prior were now desperate for help. There were a lot of white CEOs crying on the phone, Wagner recalls, because they had crash-read Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility and were racked with guilt. There were heads of fashion and beauty brands whose Black employees had begun speaking out on social media about their companies’ racist cultures. What should the CEOs Slack to their staffs? What should they tweet to their customers? What wouldn’t get them criticized but would seem humble and aware—but not so humble and aware that they’d get criticized regardless?