In June, we challenged ourselves and our community to take action and address the racial disparities we continue to see in our society – to commit ourselves today to build a future together that works for each and every one of us.
At the Chamber and our family of organizations, we’ve advanced our work in this space significantly over the past few months:
- We’ve doubled down on our commitment to Prosper CO, our pledge to every Coloradan, especially women and people of color who continue to face barriers, that we will take action to bring those barriers down and ensure they have the opportunity to access good jobs, stable housing and the ability to start a business. While this initiative began in 2019, we made the decision this summer to redeploy some of our investors’ existing investment in the Chamber to Prosper CO, and we have created the Prosper CO Leadership Council made up of business and civic leaders who care deeply about this work and drive our efforts. We’ve made some serious progress over this past year, and we look forward to telling you more about our goals and strategies at our Annual Meeting on Sept. 3.With all that our state and nation are experiencing, Prosper CO is more important than ever. We are grateful that so many Chamber investors understand that our economic recovery will be stronger and more sustainable if everybody in our community benefits from that growth.
- In June, the Denver Metro Chamber Leadership Foundation and B:CIVIC made the promise to take action to ensure that our values of celebrating diversity and practicing inclusion are more present in their work, and in July, they shared some of the ways they will keep that promise.
- Refreshing Colorado’s Civic DNA with our alumni and community to better reflect a community where everyone can prosper.
- Investing in staff training and organizational evaluation to ensure our team has a high level of cultural competence and can support all leaders with whom we work.
- Implementing learning models to better equip leaders to learn, discuss and act in building racial equity in our community.
- Amplifying the work of organizations and civic leaders who are committed to improving the future of Black and Indigenous communities and people of color. Virtual Voices, a series of online discussions for Leadership Foundation alumni, has held two sessions devoted to racial justice. You can read about those on the Foundation’s blog.
- Building strategic partnerships that will advance racial equity in our community.
- Being transparent and accountable to our community.
- Under the leadership of a unified coalition of CEOs, B:CIVIC, along with the Chamber, Prosper CO and Inclusive Economy, helped launch a CEO social justice pledge, “Colorado Companies Uniting Against Racism.” The pledge calls on CEOs to listen, learn and lead to advance racial equity within their companies, communities and society at large. Companies that sign on will be asked to report their progress in six months. The founding companies include Ball Corporation, Bank of America, Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, City BuildHer, Craig Hospital, Delta Dental of Colorado, Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce, Downtown Denver Partnership, Global Security Solutions, GroundFloor Media | CenterTable, HealthONE, HSS, The IMA Financial Group, JLL – Rocky Mountain Region, KPMG, Leadership for Lawyers, Metropolitan State University of Denver, Otten Johnson Robinson Neff + Ragonetti PC, PNC, Prosono, RevGen Partners, RK, Sage Hospitality Group, Scream Agency, Taloma Partners, USA Basketball, Wells Fargo, Workplace Resource and Xcel Energy. We encourage your company to sign this pledge. Read the pledge and access resources for businesses and individuals at bcivic.org/ceo-pledge.
We hope these examples express our commitment to make progress toward racial justice, but these are just our first steps and we are committed to continue this work for the long haul. In the words of U.S. Congressman John Lewis:
“Ours is not the struggle of one day, one week or one year. Ours is not the struggle of one judicial appointment or presidential term. Ours is the struggle of a lifetime, or maybe even many lifetimes, and each one of us in every generation must do our part.”
Thanks for all you are doing as business leaders.
Kelly Brough is the president and CEO of the Denver Metro Chamber.