USAID’s first diversity chief aims to make the agency more inclusive

Since the murder of George Floyd two years ago and the racial and social justice protests that followed, organizations around the world promised to do more about diversity and inclusion at their institutions. The U.S. Agency for International Development is no exception, and part of its response was to swear in its first chief diversity officer, Neneh Diallo, in March this year. The move is in line with the goals of the Biden administration, which has made clear that it wants to ensure diversity permeates through the federal workforce. Last summer, Biden signed an executive order that stipulated that it was the policy of his administration “to cultivate a workforce that draws from the full diversity of the Nation.” Diallo, a former news director, who also worked at the Millenium Challenge Corporation — leading diversity efforts there, has been on a listening tour of sorts since she joined USAID, talking to employees to get their take on diversity at the agency. She told Devex that her new colleagues have told her that they want to ensure the department is intentional in the way that it approaches diversity and inclusion. “We also have to make sure that we're fixing our own house,” Diallo said she heard. “Let's make sure that we are recruiting and diversifying our workforce. Let's make sure that we are providing opportunities for advancement for people of color.” The demographics of the workforce at USAID demonstrate the extent of the challenge facing Diallo and the agency. Diversity efforts at the agency department had stalled during former President Donald Trump’s administration. “We want our agency to reflect the diversity of the American people so that we can show the world the riches of our country and the people in the countries where we work, appreciate seeing and working with our staff who also look like them.” --— Neneh Diallo, chief diversity officer, USAID In the last year, USAID has changed its hiring to try to increase the number of individuals in its foreign service — individuals who typically are posted by the department to serve abroad — coming from racial and ethnic minorities. The current foreign service staff is made up of 34% racial and ethnic minorities, according to data provided by the agency. But the department said it had started to improve on these numbers, with 52% of this year’s hires coming from racial and ethnic minorities. However, representation is lower at senior levels. Nearly 81% of foreign service officials are white. Around 9% are Black or African American, 5.6% are Asians, and nearly 4% Hispanic or Latino. Meanwhile, Native Hawaiians or Pacific Islanders were the most underrepresented with zero officials at this level in the department. Senior foreign service officials are split relatively evenly on gender, with males at 51% and females at 49%. In the civil service, the part of the department that’s typically based in the U.S., 48% of the current staff is racial and ethnic minorities, USAID said, with 47% of new hires being of that demographic. Meanwhile, 73% of senior civil service executives are white, with 11.5% Black or African American with Asians also at 11.5%, and Hispanic or Latino making up 4% of officials at that level. Growing the pipeline Diallo told Congress in July that the department was piloting a masked hiring approach to mitigate against potential biases during recruitment. And USAID’s new diversity chief told Devex she is also working to improve diversity by creating a better talent pipeline for the department. She referenced the existing Payne Fellowship, which was created to attract individuals from historically underrepresented groups to have a shot at working at the foreign service. She said the plan is to double the number of fellows recruited each year. She also said that as part of diversifying efforts at USAID, she is working on increasing the number of people taking part in the ICAP program, a self-described “professional development, and leadership program for highly promising mid-career professionals in international affairs in the United States.” Diallo was keen on emphasizing that she wanted to see diversity in the department go beyond racial, ethnic, and gender lines. She told Devex that her department has a goal of having 12% of its staff be people with disabilities. “We are reaching out to those people with disabilities to understand that USAID is open, you know, come work for us, we're hiring,” she said. “We want you to know that you are a valuable member of society who deserves an opportunity to work with USAID and around the world.” Moving beyond workforce “It's one thing to say that you want to diversify the workforce. It's another thing to say that you want to actually look at how we can implement [diversity] in our programming,” Diallo told Devex. On a recent call with country mission directors, Diallo said, they implored her and the agency to do more on diversity. ‘“We need to make sure that our development is seen through the lens of [diversity, inclusion, access, and equity],”’ she said they told her. The mission directors, Diallo recalled, were keen to ensure that efforts like localization, a focus of USAID, is embedded into the way that the agency delivers its programs abroad. They told her that they wanted to ensure “inclusive development” and that “we recognize that there are local partners on the ground, who have lived experience, they have the knowledge, they know the communities, and they can help us lift those communities voices up to identify what their development challenges are.” Backing from the top When asked if she had plans to mitigate against any potential frustrations that other diversity experts elsewhere in the United States have faced where they sometimes felt a lack of support from their institutions, Diallo said she didn’t have those concerns at USAID. “I am not feeling like I'm alone in this,” she told Devex. The message of how important diversity is at the department was coming straight from the top from the agency’s administrator Samantha Power and her leadership team. “They hold our agency and our staff accountable to implementing the [diversity] principles across the agency,” she said. Diallo said that beyond hiring, she wanted to ensure that there was a clear partnership between her agency and minority institutions such as historically black colleges and universities, or HBCUs, and tribal colleges, to work on projects and be a source of talent for the agency. “In two years time, to say that we've got a dozen or so minority-serving institutions and small and disadvantaged businesses, who were not previously working with USAID, now working with USAID, as partners, to me that [will be] success,” she said. “We want our agency to reflect the diversity of the American people so that we can show the world the riches of our country and the people in the countries where we work, appreciate seeing and working with our staff who also look like them,” she added.