Whiteboard is seeking to become an anti-racist organization in the next three years. Read the whole plan here.
April 25, 2022
Hi! Welcome to an update from Whiteboard’s Change Committee. We’re an internal team committed to activating on our Anti-Racism Plan. At the end of every quarter, we take a moment to reflect on our progress as a company. We review what we've done well and what we need to do better, and we think it’s importantto do this work in the open. So—let’s review!
2022 is already proving to be quite the busy year and Change Committee is no exception! We have completed goals, made great progress, and begin prepping for new members.
In January, we kicked off the year by completing Goal 3 (“Provide pro bono support to Black or Latinx-led organizations”) for the year! We had the opportunity to support the National Day of Dialogue live event on January 5th by producing the streaming platform and the landing site for the day. This event was created by Ideos Institute Founder & CEO Christy Vines.
We have officially marked Goal 10 (“Include an anti-racism pledge in all Whiteboard branding and collateral”) as complete, although it did take us much longer than anticipated. We also have plans to incorporate even more seamlessly into our social media.
There are a couple of goals that have been slow going last year, but we’re excited to see some great movement happening. Goal 5, “Develop a protégé program,” is underway! Whiteboard co-founder and CEO, Taylor Jones, has been leading this goal by mentoring a new agency owner. Goal 12, “Launch one community impact project,” is officially in progress as well! We have connected with a local school to help lead an after school program to introduce kids to skills around design, coding, and web strategy. We hope for this to take effect for the next school year, so be on the the lookout for further updates.
Goal 9, “Develop an industry directed initiative focused on advancing anti-racism within the digital design industry,” has been an interesting one, to say the least. Our team has workshopped several different approaches and connected with other like groups, and have been thinking through what is the most beneficial and valuable way to make an impact here. On the surface, it does not feel like we have made any movement, but internally, our team has landed on direction and made helpful connections to push this forward. Looking forward to the next update!
Goal 4, “Provide subsidized support to two Black or Latinx-led organizations per year” has also begun for 2022! More details to come, but we’re excited to be supporting a new endeavor for a Black-led organization.
The ongoing Goal 2, “Offer and require staff participation in at least one anti-racist education or training opportunity per year,“ is also in progress! After last year’s training with ARCC, we received great feedback how to structure our training opportunities. This year, we have already scheduled our introduction training (led by ARCC again) and we are planning for additional opportunities for team members to continue education.
In Q1 of this year, Whiteboard also celebrated Black History Month! We initiated an internal campaign led by members of the Change Committee to share staff-wide weekly, if not daily, resources and recommendations, focusing on uplifting Black voices in the web and design industry especially. It was a success, with team members not on the Change Committee engaging and sending in their own recommendations! It led to some great conversations across the teams at Whiteboard.
We’re also welcoming new members to the committee in Quarter 2, and creating space for current members to stay or bow out for a bit. Like we said, the first quarter of 2022 has been a busy but exciting season for the Whiteboard team and we’re pumped to see what the rest of the year has in store!
Bailey Dingley
