Spotlight Series: How Ayanna India, DEI Coordinator at Heidrick & Struggles, is Increasing Diversity
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Here at Team JTC, we love to highlight individuals and leaders working on increasing diversity by creating inclusive and equitable workplaces. Recently, we had the opportunity to speak with Ayanna India, the Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion Coordinator at Heidrick & Struggles. She shared with us the value of increasing diversity and what DEI coordinators can do to support diversity recruitment. Check it out.
Team JTC: Can you tell us a little about Heidrick & Struggles?
Heidrick & Struggles is a global leadership advisory firm. We partner with senior executives and leading organizations worldwide to develop future-ready leaders and organizations. We offer a broad range of services in executive search; on-demand talent; diversity, equity, and inclusion; leadership assessment and development; organization and team acceleration; and culture shaping.
Team JTC: What does increasing diversity mean to Heidrick & Struggles?
The firm’s commitment to DE&I is deeply rooted in our organizational values. We are dedicated to fostering leaders and teams rooted in diversity, and we strive to create an inclusive culture and workplace where everyone feels a sense of belonging. This, we believe, enables individuals to thrive and achieve equitable success.
As a firm, we prioritize creating a culture of inclusion for all employees and investing in the advancement, experience, and success of diverse talent at our company. Also, we build talent pipelines internally that include a diverse group of leaders.
We also hold ourselves accountable by tracking our progress. For example, at the end of 2022, women represented 63.8% of our global workforce, while people of color made up 25.4% of our workforce in the United States.
Team JTC: How are you increasing representation? How does your organization help companies increase diversity?
As part of our ongoing DE&I journey at Heidrick & Struggles, we have identified several key areas we are focusing on to increase diverse representation and support an inclusive culture.
For example, we have a few key leadership programs dedicated to equitable advancement. The “Accelerating Women’s Excellence” is one such initiative that aims to prepare high-potential women for leadership roles. Another such program is “Advancing Professionals of Color”, which focuses on honoring the experiences and supporting the acceleration of the company’s junior- to mid-level ethnically diverse talent in our Americas, Europe, and Africa regions.
From a client-facing perspective, we have established a global Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion (DE&I) Practice. Our consultants work closely with clients to build diverse and inclusive leadership teams, organizations, and cultures. They focus on diverse talent recruitment, leadership development, and building inclusive cultures, thus helping our clients achieve their DE&I goals, no matter where they are in their journeys.
Team JTC: Now, can you share a little about yourself and your role within your organization?
I am neurodivergent and queer, based in Brooklyn, NY, which is traditionally Munsee-Lenape land. My nature has always been expressive and empathetic. Coming out in 2016, around the same time as the Pulse Nightclub shooting, really tore me up. That event deeply affected me. It forced me to be honest about my own identity, in a very unapologetic way, and I knew I needed to become deeply entrenched in creating a sustainable, equitable future. To be honest, earlier on, I had not realized that DE&I could become a career path, so when I learned more, I discovered it was a sphere where I could bring my personal and professional lives together.
I got my B.A. in Women & Gender Studies from the City University of New York at Brooklyn College in 2019, with a strong emphasis on Africana Studies and Studio Art. I realized the overlapping, historical similarities, specifically between the African American and Trans experience and, from there, I began to consume everything I could around race and gender identity.
As a creative, I also needed to find a way to support both of my passions. This led me to my current role at Heidrick & Struggles as a DE&I Coordinator. Here, I work closely with our Chief DE&I Officer, Cecilia Nelson-Hurt and various teams across the company. My work revolves around supporting our internal DE&I efforts, promoting intersectionality-conscious work, facilitating community healing and building across various dimensions of diversity, and encouraging progressive and collaborative storytelling in corporate culture.
Team JTC: If you could offer one piece of advice to other DEIB professionals supporting their company’s initiative to increase diversity, what would it be?
I don’t think enough people realize how important allyship is. Feel confident in knowing that your voice is needed to help design and create support systems of safety for others. There’s often a greater risk in staying silent; sometimes, all it takes is a “plus one.”
Today, we have access to so many ways to contribute. Understand and accept that advocacy work isn’t perfect, but the movement needs you to be aware and engaged. Distinguished author bell hooks taught us something very important: “to build community requires vigilant awareness of the work we must continually do to undermine all the socialization that leads us to behave in ways that perpetuate domination.” In other words, building a strong community is like being a vigilant gardener: always pulling out the weeds of domination to let the flowers of unity bloom! I firmly believe in that.
