Pittsburgh Black business leaders create 'Executive Action & Response Network'

Pittsburgh is often touted as one of America’s most livable cities as well as an economic market on the rise. But recent studies have shown that Pittsburgh does not present the same livability and economic opportunities to its Black citizens.

While African-Americans make up one-quarter of the city’s population and 13 percent of Allegheny County’s, they represent less than 0.1 percent of executive leadership positions, according to statistics from Carnegie Mellon University.

In response, a local group of Black business executives has launched the Executive Action & Response Network (EARN), seeking to increase opportunities for Blacks to assume top executive roles in the region. It joins other recent efforts, such as The Advanced Leadership Institute, which partnered with CMU’s Tepper School of Business in 2018 to establish an Executive Leadership Academy.

EARN co-founder Jessica Brooks said the organization’s goal is to address and eradicate the impact that systemic racism has on growth for African-Americans in Pittsburgh.

“We’re focused on the executive level within our organizations, our corporations and other institutions both in the private sector and non-profit sector,” said Brooks, CEO and executive director of the Pittsburgh Business Group on Health. “It is a call and a response to what’s happened nationally as well as the experience of having less than 1 percent of African-American executives in Pittsburgh.”

The other co-founders are Martin T. Shepherd, CEO of Arch Access Network, and George Robinson II, director of supplier diversity & inclusion at UPMC.

EARN is sending letters to CEOs of corporations, academia and nonprofits in the region, opening with, “There’s an emergency in Pittsburgh.”

The letter continues, “Far too often, corporate cultures and the institutions that support them lack the discipline and fortitude needed to advance the aims and promises of their own diversity agendas. Even still, with few exceptions, ‘diversity’ efforts miss the mark as they relate to African American professionals and entrepreneurs.”

The letter cites as a warning sign the findings of “Pittsburgh’s Inequality Across Gender and Race,” published last fall by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh. The report, the letter said, “concluded that Pittsburgh’s black residents could move to any other U.S. city of comparable size and have a better quality of life in terms of employment, pay equity, and health.” Commissioned by Pittsburgh’s Gender Equity Commission, the Pitt report found major gaps in health, income, employment and education among whites, blacks and other minorities.

“As an observer and as a resident and as someone employed by one of the largest institutions in the city, I completely concur that there’s a lot of lip service, especially this summer,” said Pitt assistant professor of sociology Junia Howell, one of the report’s authors. “There is a lot of necessary showmanship of ‘oh yeah we care about this,’ but there often seems to be very little true engagement and thinking about what that actually would mean and the changes and sacrifices that might require.”

Brooks said without significant change in Pittsburgh, there will be a mass exodus of Black professionals.

“We don’t want to be capped at the senior executive, upper management level. The talent is here.”

Brooks believes that in the wake of the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers, it’s time to talk openly about racism.

“We’re looking at providing a framework and a level of empowerment to the existing leadership of our region. This isn’t an adversarial approach at all, but creating a safe space to talk about systemic racism and oppression and inequity. This time has to be different.”