Addressing racism and bringing change
It didn’t take long for Nellie Borrero to encounter racism when she joined a major consulting firm in 1986 that was the predecessor to Accenture.
A secretary handed her a subway token and told her she was the “token hire.” At her first Christmas party, the partner who hired her gave her a gift that turned out to be roach spray and told her everyone knew Puerto Ricans had roaches in their homes. The next Monday, Borrero confronted the partner, who expressed remorse and promised to help her change the company’s culture if she stayed.
Borrero is now Accenture’s senior strategic adviser for global inclusion and diversity. She shares that story in “Unwavering: Rejecting Bias, Igniting Change, Celebrating Inclusion,” a memoir of her nearly 40 years at the company. In 2020, Accenture set goals surrounding racial and gender representation, including increasing the number of Hispanic U.S. managing directors from 3.5% to 4.7%.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Borrero discusses her book, Accenture’s goals, and the legal backlash against corporate diversity policies by conservative activists.
The story about the gift was shocking to me. Did he really not realize it was offensive?
He thought he created an environment where everybody laughed and had a great joke and a great laugh. For me it was demeaning and it was hurtful. It minimized me. It embarrassed me, but he did not take the time to even think about that as a possibility. But what I loved about that moment is that it became the moment when I knew I had to change the culture.
How do you see this moment in the DEI space?
We are running the risk of going backwards. All this time it had been about going forward. That’s what concerns me. However, that concern gets diminished when I remind myself that for the organizations that understand the business imperative, the business value of diversity from the perspective of clients and customers, they are going to continue to support diversity.
Accenture has goals on representation, which is one of the things groups have challenged as maybe constituting illegal hiring.
We set out those goals because we wanted to hold ourselves accountable. We still have those goals in place for 2025 and we are one year from meeting those goals and I’m super, super excited about the representation we have across the board when it comes to diversity. We are staying steadfast on those goals.
The number of Latinos and Black people in managerial roles at Accenture is still small. Do you see the progress as slow or just right?
I cannot tell you the level of effort it has taken to even get there … I am pleased to where we are, but I’m not satisfied.