Wealthspire was, in some ways, an ideal firm at which to launch a serious effort at DEIB, as it was “created” in 2019 through an acquisition that brought two groups of otherwise unrelated people together, she said. “After a lot of initial integration noise having to do with our servers and email, we all met to go through a facilitated process to come up with and articulate what we wanted our culture to be,” she said.
That was January 2020, and the newly minted Wealthspire leadership had established six cultural beliefs to guide the firm. Soon after, that new culture was severely tested by the COVID-19 pandemic and the murder of George Floyd.
“For us, the history of our firm really coincided with the whole summer of 2020,” Barry said. “We couldn’t see the headlines about disparities and not see that reflected in our company. What was most challenging was deciding where to start. It felt like sipping on a firehose. There was just this explosion of material and voices, and while we could bring our expanded perspective to work, that’s different from expanding a work perspective.”
The three other contributors to “Metrics That Matter” include Stefanie Johnson, associate profession at CU Boulder’s Leeds School of Business, who wrote “Framework for Metrics.” Her article identifies the four lagging and four leading indicators in diversity metrics and offers guidance on how to use them.
Lisa Shalett, CIO and head of the global investment office at Morgan Stanley Wealth Management, explains “DEI Signal,” a new metric that Morgan Stanley is using to monitor asset managers’ progress on DEI and to help the firm make investment decisions going forward.
And finally, Rachel Robasciotti, founder and CEO of Adasina Social Capital, shows in “Want More Asset Manager Diversity?” how considering new metrics in the due diligence processes can move the needle on DEI without increasing risk.