The team at Serial Box is personally and collectively committed to building race equity and inclusivity. Last summer we outlined our plans to support race equity and inclusion in terms of how we manage and build our company, and of course in how we develop, acquire, and staff new stories and shows.
A quick recap of the goals we set: we asked our Race Equity & Inclusivity Committee to review and strengthen our hiring practices, we decided to elect a new member to our leadership team to broaden our perspective, and we committed to signing five new projects by Black authors, and to adding 30 stories by Black authors to our slate of short fiction.
Here is how we did in the final months of 2020.
HR + Hiring practices:
— We actively promoted open roles to Black Tech Jobs, Diversity, Black Career Women's Network, Blacks in Technology, People of Color in Tech.
— For every open role, we seek to have at least two women and two BIPOC individuals in the candidate pool.
Leadership:
— We expanded our Leadership (Board and Advisors) so this group is now 28% female and 28% BIPOC.
Creative Talent:
— We greenlit five Originals with Black lead writers.
— We released 25 stories by Black writers. 50% of the short fiction we released in Q4 was written by Black writers.
— BIPOC authors now account for 38% of writers on our slate; of these 56 authors, 26 are Black.
— Narrators we cast in Q3 and Q4 were 66% BIPOC; 33% Black.
— The visual artists we’ve hired in the same period of time were 63% BIPOC; 27% Black.
As we continue to make progress across many fronts, we will continue to provide a Reading Benefit for our employees to cover the cost of anti-racist self-education. Last year, we developed a list of books together, along with a list of Black-owned bookstores to support—here is a link. We plan to keep adding to it and welcome suggestions from our listeners, readers, and collaborators. Please write to us at [email protected] if you have suggestions.
