Our Commitment to Drive Sustainable Change for Racial Equity

On June 1st we held a company wide meeting to address the hurt, pain and anger due to racial injustice in this country following the unjust murder of George Floyd. We held an open, candid dialogue about the changes that we wish to see in this country and the changes that need to happen in Gravity. We understand that our commitment to change is nothing without the effort to educate ourselves on the African American plight and create policies that adhere to our stand against racial injustice in the workplace.

To be candid, in the past, Gravity has not done enough to fight racial inequities in society or to proactively foster a higher level of diversity and inclusion within our own company. Moving forward, we commit to focus on driving transparency on diversity and inclusion in the workplace starting with our African American employees. We acknowledge that each one of us is accountable for our part towards progression, we commit to educating ourselves in an effort to teach one another how to make a difference in the workplace and the community and finally we commit to be one, meaning that we will be the change that we want to see in an effort to ultimately become one.

Since June 1st we’ve taken the following actions:

1) Created an African American Employee Resource Group (ERG).

The purpose of this group is to provide a safe space for our African American employees to strategically address some of the cultural challenges within our company. The African American ERG is based on providing support, enhancing career development, and contributing to personal development in the work environment and to act as a sounding board for hiring, tone in communications and creative content output for clients.

2) Created a Resource Toolkit.

In an effort to educate ourselves, we’ve enlisted the help of our employees with diversity backgrounds to create a toolkit that educates us on how to get involved, get engaged, where to donate and how to speak up. This toolkit has been shared company wide and is available here.

3) Juneteenth.

For years, the Juneteenth holiday has fallen on deaf ears as companies did not recognize this date until now. It is not an official office holiday even MLK Day is not for many companies including ours whereby it is an optional holiday. Therefore, we’ve allocated company wide time on June 19th to educate ourselves on the importance and significance of this day to the African American community and ultimately to American History. The African American Employee Resource Group will present historical facts, educational resources and updates on company’s actionable plans towards these efforts.

As we continue to work on our plan of actionable items in an effort to keep our commitment of transparency and change within our company, we invite you to join us on our journey of education to ultimately becoming one. In celebration of Juneteenth, please click here for a resource toolkit. This guide will show you how to easily set aside time to continue your personal education journey and become a strong ally with different options for 10, 25 or 45 minutes a day. Also, check out this Washington Post article released this morning about the creators of this resource toolkit who will be guest speakers at Gravity in the coming weeks.

Finally, while we don’t have all the answers today, this marks the first step in a renewed commitment from Gravity to help drive systemic change and fight racial inequities in our communities and workplace. We will get our own house in order. And we will help drive change around the world.

More to come in our next update in the coming weeks.