What happens when a conference says diversity is not on brand?
It’s a story we’ve all seen before - white conference organizer hosts conference with majority-white speaker lineup and people feel left out, so they speak up. The difference this time? It’s not the conference organizer’s first time being asked to bring forth more diversity.
In 2016 in an article titled “The Ugly Truth About White Privilege In The Wedding Industry,” the Huffington Post unpacked the problems with Creative@Heart Conference’s lack of diversity.
So something pretty interesting happened last week. A well-known conference for wedding industry creatives, Creative at Heart, posted its speaker line-up on Instagram, encouraging folks to sign up for early bird registration. The photo shows a grid of 26 smiling faces, all of them white. The post inspired 95 comments and counting. After a handful of yay!s, woo!s, and heart-emojis, Stacy Reeves wrote, “Extremely disappointing to see a sea of caucasian faces with no diversity. You are not creating an inclusive and welcoming place for women of color here.” Mic drop.
The article went on to talk about the conference organizer’s response to the controversy and how it lacked any sense of true intent to change.
The conference organizers scrambled to respond, at first thanking individuals for “sharing your heart,” ensuring they valued the feedback, and encouraging public commenters to take their concerns to the private medium of email. Kinzie Ferguson, the Empowerment Photographer, challenged this saying, “There is not enough dialogue around these issues right now, which is contributing to our social and political climate where black people’s voices are being silenced and dismissed. This conversation should ABSOLUTELY be happening out loud and not taken to email.”
That’s when the conference organizers let down their guard and responded publicly: “We have never intentionally NOT invited women of color to participate on a higher level within C@H (as a panelist, speaker, etc.), however, we absolutely accept full responsibility and sincerely apologize for not being intentional about ensuring that our conference is as diverse as possible and that women of all colors, shapes and sizes are represented well.” They go on to encourage folks to apply to be speakers through their website.
Commenters went on to say that they weren’t asking for much, they simply wanted some basic inclusion. No major brainstorming sesh was required, just invite some POC speakers, and by the way here’s like five people that would be perfect.
After back and forth, a few days later the conference posted an apology to its Instagram account:
Hello fellow creatives,
There has been heartbreaking tension the last few days, and my desire to boldly express my heart has never been stronger. I wanted to reach out to all of you regarding the recent discussion on social media involving diversity within Creative at Heart.
I started Creative at Heart two years ago because I was passionate about creating an environment that fosters open & honest education. To this day, our goal remains the same. I have a desire to bring together like-minded women, to lift them up with inspirational content with a focus on community among all creative industries.
With that being said, I have unintentionally failed, and I owe all of you an apology. By focusing on diversity through industries, I left out one vital component - diversity of race & ethnicity within our speaker/panel lineup. I accept full responsibility. I am saddened to think that my actions, or lack of action, created an environment that was not perceived as open & welcoming to ALL.
I want you to know that I have heard your concerns. From the bottom of my heart, I am so, so sorry.
I am taking time to listen, learn & pray; as a conference, we will be moving forward with excitement as we embrace diversity in the coming weeks! Creative at Heart has always been and will always be open to all backgrounds, races, ethnicities, religions and industries.
I truly believe we are all creative at heart. Thank you for your grace and for your support.
Love, K
Four years later in January 2020, the conference lineup for Round 10 of Creative@Heart Conference (the conference founder’s 20th in-person event launch, according to a blog post on the website) went live online. Face after face of white speakers was eerily reminiscent of the situation four years prior. To make matters worse, comparing Round 10 to Round 9, a decline in visible diversity from 24.4% to 18.7% was painfully evident.
On the day that the Round 10 information went live, I posted to Instagram Stories saying that minorities were still “not at parity in the room where it happens,” explicitly referencing the speaker lineup. That same night, I posted an update on my Instagram feed retracting my endorsement of the conference (which had been given on the basis of commitment to change). I went to bed hoping that people might be as upset as I was but not expecting anything else to happen.
Eight hours later, I woke up to a phone that was so hot the screen was black / wouldn’t light up and hundreds of DMs and comments sharing similar feelings - including from Creative@Heart speakers, past attendees, and volunteers. Throughout the remainder of the weekend, I continued to post updates on the situation on Instagram stories (you can view the highlight here). Over that same period, stories of discrimination beyond “just” a speaker lineup began to come out.
A deaf attendee was told that the conference could do anything but get her an interpreter to accommodate her attendance (when the cost of an interpreter would be less than 2% of total revenue from ticket sales).
A Jewish attendee was promised that the event was not religious but then had to join in Christian prayer when two separate keynote speakers lead the entire conference in prayer during their keynotes.
A talented African-American designer applied to speak numerous times through the form referenced in the apology above but never even heard back let alone was considered as a potential speaker.
I got on the phone with the conference organizer and the results of the call were not promising.
When we got on a call, we first shared our thoughts and intentions. The conference organizer (“K”) mentioned that my post(s) were disheartening to read, she didn’t expect that from me, and she was sad that I went about it the way I did. I acknowledged that this was a hard topic and stated my reason for sharing - after the 2016 “crisis” around C@H diversity, K and I had private conversations wherein she had committed to changing. But what I had seen in conference lineups did not show that (and I referenced the stats mentioned above).
K shared that she didn’t believe that sharing about this publicly in the way that I did was helpful for fixing a problem, that these instead should be private conversations. She said that she has worked hard with C@H to build a conference community where all feel welcome while also providing top quality content. She also shared that she is open to learning more while also staying true to the community she is already building.
I reminded her that this was not a new conversation for her and that her statements around being open to learning don’t cut it, that we’re beyond that because it’s been four years. She is surrounded by a beautiful community of minorities and that there are those of us that are willing to talk with her that she already has relationships with. I also said that “I want to learn” is not an acceptable response when she has the same white female speakers year after year after year. I then pointed out that visuals and words on a stage in a recap video aren’t enough.
At this point, K asked what she could do to change this. I shared that she needs to make her lineup match our broader community and that she needs to not repeat the same white female speakers over and over again. She stated that she surveys her past attendees to see who they want to see next year (because of C@H’s high repeat attendee rate). She also defended her returning speakers saying that their content changed. To which I pointed out that her past attendee audience skews white/Christian and that creates a self-fulfilling bias.
K shared that there are aspects of a brand that limit other elements of the brand. She said that she wants to have people resonate with the content and see people that look like them but also she needs content to be in alignment with the brand and uphold her educational quality standards. (Editor’s Note: If you’re reading between the lines here - diversity is not “on brand” for C@H)
I said that I hear from her -
+ a desire to learn more
+ an openness, but also
+ a defensiveness for the way things are done
+ a defensiveness for the fact that she's already made "big strides"
And that she needs to stop operating out of "I've done this 10 times" muscle memory.
She agreed that all of this was true and that she had a right to be defensive because of the way this gets brought up to her and that she believes that C@H has truly grown since 2016. She said that when people bring this up in a "professional and open" way she would be more willing to make changes, versus someone feeling the need to "attack" her.
We wrapped up by K again asking me again to discuss issues like this with her in private versus continuing to post publicly and to send people to her for conversation who are in my DM’s talking about this. I told her that I would continue to post publicly about this until I see a change in the Round 11 lineup. I also said that I would share that her DM’s are open to hear more about this (but that she’s also been hearing about this for 4+ years).
After this, the commentary went quiet for a few days until the conference organizer posted on social media promoting that conference registrations are still open (without addressing any of this). She also followed up by emailing the conference speakers and stating that she believed this situation was cyberbullying and that she had absolutely no intention to speak publicly on the topic. That same day, the aforementioned blog post went live listing the seven things this conference organizer has learned in her 20+ live event launches. None of the lessons learned referenced the 2016 absence of diversity, this 2020 situation, or any mention of the importance of diversity and inclusion at all.
This brings us to today. In an Eventbrite trends guide for conference organizers, the second trend indicated that diversity is now at the forefront of event planning. Specifically:
“If responsibility for the environment has become a big deal, responsibility for our fellow humans is even more so. From gender-balanced lineups to staff racial diversity to more accessible venues, a progressive stance on inclusion has become a necessity.
Diversity is an important focus for 65% of event creators in North America. An even bigger number — 81% — agree that promoting events to a more diverse audience is a socially-conscious way to scale their event.
But it’s not just about inviting more people to the table; it’s about making everyone feel welcome. People look for subtle cues about whether they belong. Truly inclusive event brands are invested in overhauling their marketing, being clear in their communication, and using signage that makes explicit a commitment to diversity and inclusion.”
So to you, reader, I pose the following question: what do we do when a conference makes the same mistake twice and demonstrates no remorse or intent to change, no public sympathy for those affected, and calls the attempt to raise awareness to the situation “cyberbullying”?
This post is cross-posted here.
Updates and changes:
2/7/2020 10:15am CST — updated the language in the three individual examples of discrimination to be more precise about what happened.
2/7/2020 10:25am CST — heard that C@H has since reached out to the deaf attendee about accommodations. No updates had happened prior to my first posting about this on Instagram stories.