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Snap Inc., the parent company of the popular multimedia messaging app Snapchat, announced on Thursday that it has hired Oona King as its first-ever vice president of diversity & inclusion. King, who most recently served as director of diversity strategy at Google, began her career in politics, and was the second Black woman ever to be elected to British Parliament in 1997.
King may well find her transition to Snap to be the most difficult of her career: Snap is one of the few large technology companies not to have released its diversity numbers, and the firm recently settled multiple allegations of gender discrimination.
But does Snap’s move reflect a genuine desire to improve an unwelcoming and seemingly toxic culture, or is it simply an attempt to keep up appearances? Will King be able to exert her influence on the leadership to effect real change or will she be relegated to compliance and reporting activities?
If past evidence is any indication, the prognosis is not great. A recent report on chief diversity officers (CDOs) by Russell Reynolds Associates found that while nearly half of the S&P 500 companies have a CDO, many diversity and inclusion initiatives are disconnected from business priorities and more than half of the CDOs do not have sufficient resources to fulfill their responsibilities.
One of my colleagues, Lisa Magill, recently compiled an extensive list of the challenges commonly faced by D&I leaders: having to change an established culture; being overwhelmed by conflicting priorities; lacking authority and influence; lacking budget; lacking leadership support; being asked to prove the business case for diversity; lack of data; and inconsistent prioritization. It is interesting to consider how some of these challenges may have a particular impact on King’s success and, more generally, on Snap’s ability to achieve significant and lasting change.
First off, the company is almost eight years old and was founded at a time when diversity was not yet a significant consideration for most internet startups. Eight years is nearly an eternity for these kinds of companies and it is likely that King will have to deal with some deeply entrenched behaviors.
In spite of her recent experiences at YouTube, owned by Google, King’s background in politics will make it challenging to gain the level of influence that is needed to drive significant change. On the positive side, her international background may be valued, not so much for Snap’s employees who are mostly in the U.S., but because of the global reach of Snap’s flagship product. In fact, a memo by chief people officer Lara Sweet announcing King’s hiring mentions the importance of ensuring that “Snap’s employee culture represents the diversity of our global users.”
While Snap claims to be collecting – albeit not publishing – diversity data, it seems unlikely that they have a disciplined and thorough approach to collecting diversity data, or else they would probably already have published such reports. After all, it’s hard to imagine that they could be in much worse shape than many of their corporate peers so that would probably not be a reason to withhold results. It is possible that, in fact, Snap has been collecting extensive data, but felt the need to have an expert who could build a compelling story around its efforts – or at least not a damning one. This, ostensibly, is one of the main responsibilities placed upon diversity and inclusion leaders.
It is hard to guess whether King will have to do a lot of convincing about the business case for diversity, though one promising aspect of this hire is that she was brought on by Sweet in her role as Chief People Officer. However, it is worth noting that Sweet was only promoted to this role a few days ago from her prior role as interim CFO, which calls into question how influential Sweet might have been in selecting and hiring King. On the other hand, Sweet has held various positions in her three years at Snap, and while all of them were in finance, she managed operations across multiple functions, including people teams. Hence there is hope that Sweet understands and appreciates the strong connection between personnel and finance and will be able to use it to give King the resources and support she needs without demanding proof of a business case for diversity.
Time will tell whether King can make a difference— or whether she will last long enough to establish a sufficient track record to be able to tell whether anything changes under her guard. In this time of growing awareness about the importance of diversity and inclusion as a competitive advantage, we can only wish her the best and wait to see what transpires.
