Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

"The strongest, most creative and most resilient companies in the world benefit from a tapestry of different backgrounds and thought. By delivering on these commitments, we are valuing, respecting and empowering all individuals to show up as their authentic selves every day."

  • Chad Oakley
  • CEO

Our Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Mission

At Charles Aris Executive Search, we're committed to fostering an inclusive culture that embraces humanity’s greatest strength: our differences. We know that our differences make this firm, our clients and our community stronger. In order to make Charles Aris more diverse and inclusive, we will continue to do the following:

Educate ourselves

  • Firmwide training sessions with DEI Expert Mary Kendrick on diversity, respect and inclusion and unconscious bias
  • Continuing education series to foster open and honest dialogue and understanding among our internal team
  • Created and launched resource library to keep team members informed on the latest business news, current events and thought leadership around DEI
  • Annual sponsorship of Charles Aris team member Other Voices, an eight-month DEI community building experience

Change our narrative

  • Conducted inclusion survey to assess current inclusiveness of the Charles Aris culture
  • Established DEI committee to ensure that DEI is a part of our governance
  • Regularly post external content on DEI topics
  • Better equipped our team members with tools to speak more confidently with out clients and candidates about DEI topics
  • Acknowledging where we are on out DEI journey and being more intentional when recruiting DEI talent for our team

Take accountability

  • Inclusive leadership development training
  • Added internal DEI metrics to our firm’s performance scoreboard
  • Revising the Employee Handbook to ensure Charles Aris policies and regulations support and protect an inclusive culture
  • Amended internal performance evaluations to be more transparent and timely, ensuring equitable feedback
  • Committing that by 2025, we’ll have 15% racial and/or ethnic diversity in leadership and 30% firmwide

Our progress

We've made strides in gender diversity – from no women on our leadership team in 2010 to eleven in 2024. Today, women comprise 36.6% of our leadership and 56.4% of all full-time team members.

36.6%
of Charles Aris leadership are women
56.4%
of full-time Charles Aris team members are women

Our challenge

We've fallen severely short in regard to the racial and ethnic diversity of our team – especially at the leadership level.

Today, BIPOC employees comprise 12.5% of our leadership and 26.4% of all full-time team members.

12.5%
of Charles Aris leadership are BIPOC
26.4%
of full-time Charles Aris team members are BIPOC

Our commitment

We're placing an increased firmwide emphasis on identifying, attracting and retaining BIPOC employees at all levels and functions in our organization.

By 2025, we will have 15% racial and/or ethnic diversity in leadership and 30% racial and/or ethnic diversity firmwide.

15%
racial and/or ethnic diversity in leadership by 2025
30%
racial and/or ethnic diversity firmwide by 2025

LEAF Groups

Charles Aris LEAF Groups (learn, elevate, amplify, fellowship) promote allyship in the firm. These include BIPOC, women’s and LGBTQ+ learning groups as well as a family resources network.