A slate of departures by top Black female executives at some of the world’s leading entertainment and media companies has caught the eye of industry experts and lawmakers who are questioning what prompted their exits.
Those who left their roles include deeply respected and popular leaders who worked in the industry for over a decade. One executive, Karen Horne, who served as senior vice-president for diversity, equity and inclusion for Warner Bros Discovery North America, was laid off as part of restructuring in the company. Others, including Latondra Newton, who served as chief diversity officer at Disney, and Joanna Abeyie, head of creative diversity at the BBC, all announced their departures in a span of about a month.
Most had been in their current roles for less than two years, having been part of a sweep of highly publicized diversity efforts from the industry following the racial reckoning in 2020 in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder.
The reasons for their departures are varied but the trend has attracted the attention of lawmakers and experts in diversity.
In brief statements posted to social media, some executives said they were leaving their posts to focus on their own goals and pursue other opportunities.
“How I manage my career has always been grounded in mental health,” Jeanell English, who served as executive vice-president of impact and inclusion for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, said two days after she announced her resignation. “How am I doing? How am I feeling? How does this align to my values?”
Verna Myers, who left her role as senior vice-president of inclusion strategy at Netflix, said in a Linkedin post: “Leaving Netflix is not easy, but for a while now I have been feeling the call to work across different industries and address the polarization I see in the world and to apply more of a spiritual lens as a way of helping bridge the divide.”
The sweep of departures has drawn the attention of Californian officials. Lawmakers with the California Legislative Black Caucus held a press conference 13 July asking studio leadership to meet with them about the departures. The state legislature recently approved giving the film industry $330m in tax credits each year starting in 2025.
“One executive removal could be a fluke,” said state senator Lola Smallwood-Cuevas during the press conference. “But four more? And we’re hearing more are to come. This is a troubling pattern. A pattern that suggests diversity, equity and inclusion is no longer a priority at the highest levels of the film industry, where decisions are made and institutional change happens.”
Across all industries, leaders who focus on diversity often have higher turnover than other executive positions. According to 2022 research from leadership advisory firm Russell Reynolds Associates, 60% of chief diversity officers who held their roles in 2018 left their roles after only a few years. Most chief diversity officers leave after three years. In comparison, CEOs tend to stick around for five years.
“The constant emotional taxation this role can have can lend itself to burnout,” said Tina Shah Paikeday, global head of diversity, equity and inclusion at Russel Reynolds. “If you layer on top of that other challenges they’ve had – clarity around what success looks like, unrealistic ideas about what kind of resourcing is necessary, timelines that might be too short for organizational change – this can be a very, very taxing role for some.”
The departures come as diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives face even more uncertainty after the US supreme court ruled affirmative action in higher education unconstitutional. Though the ruling focused on colleges and universities in the US, legal experts predict DEI initiatives in workplaces could come under scrutiny soon.
The decision hangs over some Hollywood diversity programs instituted over the last few years, especially ones with quota requirements for productions. Amazon Studios, for example, said it aims to have 50% of above-the-line roles (directors, writers, producers, etc) be women and 50% be from an underrepresented racial or ethnic group. Outside bodies, including the California state legislature and the Academy, have similar diversity requirements for studios that receive tax breaks or awards.
Like all industries, Hollywood will have to get creative and iron out exactly what DEI goals they are willing to fight for – a hefty undertaking for an industry that has long faced criticism for its lack of diversity on- and off-screen.
The last several years have seen the industry grapple with a lack of diversity. The #OscarsSoWhite campaign took off in 2015, when the Academy awarded all 20 of its acting nominations to white actors for two years in a row. Since then, public campaigns against the film and TV industry have appeared to help increase some diversity on-screen, especially streaming original releases, but not much has changed behind the scenes.
A UCLA study conducted in 2020 found that 92% of the chairs or CEOs of 11 major studios were white, and 68% were men. And among all senior executives, 93% of positions are held by white people and 80% by men. White male executives comprise the vast majority of people who ultimately approve whether a film or TV show can be made, making executive diversity roles at studios all the more crucial.
“It’s a largely white-male-driven space in terms of where greenlighting and other decisions are made about what gets done. Overlaid on this whole thing are these diversity executives who are supposedly helping the companies move forward and better match what the industry is producing to what increasingly diverse audiences want,” said Darnell Hunt, executive vice-chancellor and provost of the University of California Los Angeles and professor of sociology who studies diversity in Hollywood.
“Some of the people who’ve left have been longstanding figures in this space,” he said. “To see what appears to be this avalanche of exits, it’s concerning for a lot of people.”
In collaboration with the NAACP’s Hollywood bureau, Hunt led another study that looked at Black executives in Hollywood and the impact they have on the industry. A survey of Black executives showed that most were not in positions that allow them to have the final say on whether a show could be made.
“The closer a project gets to being programmed, the higher up the ladder it needs to get approved. And the higher up the ladder you go, the less diverse the industry is overall,” one respondent told researchers.
“There are about 12 people that get into a room, 12 to 15 people that discuss it. But a greenlight decision is not arrived at yet in that room. The chairman takes all of those inputs and then the chairman makes the decision. That’s really one person deciding and 15 people opining,” another respondent said.
Hunt noted that studios need no convincing that representation on screen is important, even if just for their bottom lines, given how diverse audiences are now. But diverse executives are crucial in making sure characters accurately represent the people they are based on and ensuring that content will not demean or stereotype any groups.
Despite box office and critical success of projects like Crazy Rich Asians and Everything Everywhere All at Once, recent studies have illustrated how films with Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) representation often fall short of substantive representation. One study found that 14 out of 44 films with AAPI leads were led by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, who is of Samoan descent, while another showed half of AAPI characters in movies from 2010 to 2019 were used as the punchline in the film.
“The troubling part of the exodus of these diversity executives now, one reading of that might be that the networks and CEOs have decided, ‘Yeah, we don’t need to focus on that. We have it down. We can continue to put out content that includes diverse characters and actors, and keep everything else pretty much the same,’” Hunt said.
While the executives who exited their jobs recently have largely not spoken about any of the structural issues that may have influenced their decision to leave, English, the former vice-president of impact and diversity at the Academy, hinted at some of the struggles Black executives face in Hollywood in an Instagram post.
“Despite my successes, this work has not been easy. These paths are often lonely, uphill battles. Leaders in these positions need the support, love and advocacy while they are in the roles, not only when their departures make headlines,” she said.
