Beyond

Fortune partnered with Great Place to Work to analyze survey feedback representing more than 70,000 U.S. employees.

GPTW_100BestCompaniesToWorkForByRegion_2026-Bay_Area_SMB-Beyond_Pricing_US1__69b3fc2561790aef776b1063_5

Employees say:"What makes Beyond special is the level of trust and ownership people are given. Teams are encouraged to think like owners, not just execute, and there's a lot of transparency around how the business is doing and why decisions are made. The people here are also a big part of it—smart, curious, and genuinely kind. There's very little ego, and a lot of collaboration. You get to work on meaningful problems while still having flexibility and support, which makes it a great place to grow."

75 Best Small and Medium Workplaces in the Bay Area

Fortune partnered with Great Place to Work to analyze survey feedback representing nearly 85,000 U.S. employees.

Employees say:"[We have a] bi-weekly company-wide meeting to celebrate wins, shout out teammates, and ask anonymous questions via Q&amp;A that get immediately answered on the spot. Most employees work from home full time which is amazing and we also typically have an opportunity to get together in person with our teammates for team building. [We also have] paid parental leave and unlimited PTO (which people do actually use)."

See which workplaces made this year's list.

GPTW 2023 Best Workplaces tech small:medium GPTW 2023 Best Workplaces tech small:mediumBeyond_3

Employees say: 
 
"Beyond encourages being your true self. I've never once felt judged for being myself and have never felt like I had to put on a professional persona to be taken seriously. I love that I can be myself and still be recognized for my contributions and achievements."

Best Small and Medium Workplaces in Technology

Fortune partnered with Great Place to Work to analyze survey feedback representing nearly 100,000 U.S. employees.

GPTW Bay Area 2023-Beyond

Employees say: 
 
"Weekly opportunities for open Q&amp;A with executives create a work environment in which every employee has a voice and meaningful agency in big-picture decisions."

These are the best workplaces in the U.S. that employ between 100 and 999 people.

GPTW Medium 2023-Beyond

"We have weekly opportunities for open Q&amp;A with executives, which creates a work environment in which every employee has a voice and meaningful agency in big-picture decisions."

100 Best Medium Workplaces

Based on employee reports, Bay Area-headquartered companies excel at fostering wellness.

GPTW Bay Area Small Medium 2022-Beyond

Employees say: 
 
“Since the majority of the company is remote we have the opportunity to meet other co-workers randomly through an app called Donut so we'll have opportunity to meet others that we might not work with on a day to day basis. We celebrate each other's achievements by giving shoutouts to co-workers over Slack and we present these shoutouts on every Monday's all-hands calls, this helps make each other feel good about their contributions to the company and being congratulated by co-workers!” 
 
Read the Great Place to Work review .

These are the best workplaces in the U.S. that employ between 10 and 99 people.

GPTW Small Companies 2022-Beyond

Employees say: 
 
“The culture and transparency here are my favorite part about working at Beyond! I have a clear understanding of how my work impacts the entire company as a whole. We celebrate the small things here - birthdays, work anniversaries, vacations, promotions, new additions to your growing family, everything! It makes me feel very connected to the organization overall. I also love the unlimited vacation that people actually take! Monthly random coffee pairings! Weekly Q&amp;A in front of whole company and core value discussion.”

100 Best Small Workplaces

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Best Medium Workplaces

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Cynical headlines about Gen Z and Gen Alpha’s entry into corporate America are hard to ignore, but they are also stepping into a workforce unlike any before. These generations, deeply shaped by technology and instability, bring a distinct lens on work, culture, and reinvention that business can’t afford to ignore. Hear insights about the realities early career workers face today, how they’re challenging legacy cultures, and what leaders must do to move beyond the stereotypes and truly harness the distinct perspective and potential these generations bring. 

Gabrielle Judge, Founder, Ms. Anti Work
Brad Rencher, Chief Executive Officer, Bamboo HR
DV Williams, Chief People Officer, Match Group
Moderator: Kristin Stoller, Editorial Director, Fortune Live Media; Co-Chair, Fortune Workplace Innovation Summit

The New Generations at Work: Moving Beyond the Stereotypes

Conferences

So Gabriel, your brand is literally anti-work or decentering from your 99 to 5 from being your whole identity. DV, you are trying to retain talent as a at a company where the culture kind of is the product in, in a lot of senses. So I, to start, I, I'm curious if you both agree on what Gen Z actually wants from work. So give me the top thing on your mind that is important to this generation. Gabriel, let's start with you, um. You know it, it's, it's a very interesting time for Gen Z. Um, I would say overall we do want some meaning. Meaning to work looks different than what it did for millennials, um, and so oftentimes it does take being able to sit with them for a little bit and ask those questions of what meaning means. Um, at the same time we don't play the office politics games, and I know that that can be quite challenging and different right now, um, so the whole mode of just communicating in the office is much different right now. Yeah, yeah, I think they want a few things. I think transparency and communication is huge. They want to understand the inner workings of the business, how decisions are made, and how they can impact those decisions. Another component of it is agency. Are they sitting at the tables and have the ability to influence what the product is, how they, uh, you know, how they begin to work together. So they definitely want that influence. They also want to be aligned to the mission. And so that's why you have a lot of Gen Zers who question, they're not questioning the authority of their leaders. They're wanting to understand that they are aligned to how the leaders are running the organization and how the mission is evolving at the company. And so those things are very important to that that group of people. Absolutely. And another thing I think is important right now is AI and how that's affecting this generation because you have young workers who are being told you quickly adapt to AI it's you need to do it to get a job, but then also being told at the same time AI is replacing you, you're not gonna get a job. So I, I'm wondering which is it love for you to debate is the early career dead to AI dead because of AI and why or why not? So, I was going to say early career is not dead at Match Group. I can tell you that for sure. We're actually doubling down on it and starting to implement more entry level roles. We're talking about the Gen Z population who's actually AI native. They grew up with technology that the other generation. did not, so they know it firsthand. And as we think about our end product and the fact that it's going to serve Gen Z and Gen Alpha behind it, we want those people influencing how the product evolves. And so we're doubling down on it through our internship program. We reinstate it as well as implementing more entry level roles. I, I think one part of it that could be refreshing for Gen Z is because their early career they may not have as much, uh, well, let me explain like how millennials are thinking about this. So if you told them for 20 years to do these tasks because it's the entire meaning of your life and then all of a sudden I. We're Gonna automate them with AI and robots. It's almost like, wait, hold on. Was I like a robot this whole time? I think we'll lose. I think we'll not have as much resistance with Gen Z as well in that because they're so early career they don't know what they, what they don't know, right? And they don't have that baggage and they don't have that expectation. Um, at the same time, uh, I really liked your point of high agency with Gen Z because that was, that was the reason I left corporate America, to be frank, that's why, because it almost felt like high agency in order to have those high agency roles took so much time and also so much trust, and it just, it's, it just took too much time. It was too clunky for me, whereas now with social media and AI how it's working today, it's so easy to go independent in some way and so the things that I do at 29. Would have taken me like 20 years to cultivate in a career in, in, uh, in corporate America and so I do, I really like that point that you have with high agency. um, I do think as well early career is gonna look very different for Gen Z. Um, one question I have for you with that is what do these job scopes look like for entry level? How are they changing, if at all? Yeah, so they're definitely changing. The, the goal of, of the output. is similar, like what you need to accomplish. The how is what's shifting. And so instead of saying, hey, this is how we make X, we're saying, hey, the goal is to get to X. Let's think through it as a team on how we get there and how we use AI and technology to help further the mission that then starts to break down the role of the structure that a lot of Gen Zers don't want and it gives them the agency that we just talked about to say we can create the path and we probably can get you there faster. If you don't give us all these hurdles that we need to, you know, kind of overcome, mm, Gilbert, I wanna go back to something you said because you, you left the corporate world. We have a lot of people who are trying to convince your demographic to come to the corporate world. What was it missing that you really didn't see and why did you decide to go out on your own? So I come from the tech industry. I graduated college in 2019, um. I had about a good 7 months until everything closed down, right? So it was so funny because I would be in these meetings every day, remote working and people would be like, I can't wait for it to go back to normal, and I'd be like, I've been remote working for 14 months now in the pandemic, this is my normal. Um, so it's just like a weird time to join the workplace. I will say every time that I would hit around 12 to 18 months with these big tech companies, all of a sudden due to economic factors they wouldn't have departmentwide raises and I was like fool me once, OK, fool me twice, OK, I'm not doing a third time. I'm just gonna figure this out myself. Um, there was also a lot of things going on at the same time where any disgruntledment, anything that made me disgruntled with work, I just had to practice a lot of self. Self-awareness and be like, hey I just Gab, I don't think you wanna be an employee. I think you wanna like take on the risks and that's OK, right? And there's some Gen Z that are like that and there's some that aren't, um, but for me kind of what I was talking about earlier is that agency so I felt either I needed to be micromanaged or be given a lot of free. Like quiet we call it quiet hiring projects outside of my career to like prove myself and things like that um and so I understand why that works and why that worked for so long but I do believe that's an outdated way to um approach talent and so now for me it's like I'm an employer now which is insane and for me I'm always looking for. It, it's strategy at this point, right? I'm not looking for task execution. I could find a VA or I could find, you know, AI to do that. It's more about strategy, um, and so that's where I think the biggest part is going to be is that curiosity, empathy strategy for this next talent of Gen Z. Um, but yeah, that's kind of, I mean, that's, that's why I left and, and just kind of made a career out of it, which is crazy, yeah, and, and DV, hearing, hearing that, how do you, how do you feel about that? Is that how are you trying to prevent that from happening to your young workers and if so, how? Yeah, uh, earlier you had mentioned, uh, during the intro that they're breaking the rules, and I look at it as they're reshaping. Helping evolve how we work all together and so it's less of how do you get them to fit your organization, it's more how is your organization evolving to ensure that they can bring their best work and so it's it's a different approach and it's one that is being forced, which I think is very healthy for us because how we, you know, how we work today is not how we're going to work in the next 5, 10 years. Gabriel, you coined the term and have gone viral for the term. It's called lazy girl jobs. Can you explain to our audience what that means and do they still exist today? Yeah, so lazy girl jobs came from the great resignation era, um, so different time obviously than where we're in today. Um, I'm a huge high achiever. I'm a huge workaholic. I have been since before I had a job. It's just something that was taught in me, uh, from my family. And for me I go 170% at everything that I do, um, and I didn't have a lot of balance and so what was really hard for me was to get a quote unquote lazy girl job which was still a really good job. I was pretty much like an account manager for Wix at the time, um. It wasn't a next rung in the ladder or anything like that. It was just a lateral move, um, and I was able to get my job done in 2 to 4 hours a day and build Miss Anti-Work, the media company that I run today. And so some people get lazy girl jobs because they're. Not careerists and they just want work-life balance. Some get them because they're like me where they're like, OK, I don't have the means or the funds to do my own thing yet, but I wanna try it out in a low risk way, kind of part time while I do something else. Some people start their own therapy practice and are crazy and say that's their lazy girl job. I would disagree. That sounds like a lot of that to be lazy. So, you know, it's like it's, it means. Something to everyone, and I think that's why it popped off so well. At the same time, lazy girl job, those three keywords together are quite controversial. I knew that going into it. I thought it was fun. Uh, that's like, you know, that Gen Z humor. And so, yeah, I mean, that's how I started it and then it, it resulted in tens of thousands of worldwide media mentions. I've met, you know, Doctor Phil and 60 Minutes Minutes and the whole thing, you know, so that was a really fun time. Um, but do they exist today to answer that last question? I mean, I think so. I think they do look different though. I mean, especially just how corporate America works right now, but like I said, it's subjective. It's, it means something to, to, you know, everyone. I think, I think that lazy girl jobs have a time and a place for sure in the workplace at the same time. The division of labor, the wants and needs of these companies are gonna shift so much. I don't know if I would tell an entry level person right now, like, uh, just chill for two years, yeah, just opt out, yeah, yeah, um, DV, I want you to respond, but I just wanna let our audience here know that after this I wanna come to you all for questions. So if you have one, please raise your hand. One of our mic runners will run a mic over to you. But, but DV, I wanna know what you think because, you know, Gabriel's built this following around people who are really resonating with, yeah, I. Want to opt out. Maybe sometimes they want a quiet quit, but you know your job relies on relies on people opting in and really wanting to be their full selves at work. So is there a middle ground and how are you working on finding that? So I think that what she's describing is literally a place and a space for individuals to make a call on. I don't think it's a like a group dynamic and everyone's saying like this we all should be doing this now, so you should conform to that. Uh, we've seen, and what I believe this is the agency part again, what we've seen for people who do want to take like their career in that direction, they would stay in roles because they didn't believe that they could do like this is what they had to do. And when they got the ages and you would sit there and then you would call them a poor performer, no, they weren't being engaged the way that they wanted to be engaged, and it wasn't a good fit for them. And so you see them leaving the workforce, which is positive for them because they're leaving and doing the things that engage them. Uh, in our environment we want to continue to engage them against our mission and make sure that alignment is still strong so we won't see a lot of people who will say, hey, you know, I want a job that's only 2 to 4 hours per week or per day that you work in, uh, that that wouldn't work in terms of how we need to get things accomplished, right? And so for those folks when we identify them, we help them understand like. Is this right for you? Does this work for you? This is what we're trying to accomplish. It's the transparency and communication as opposed to going down a path of you're not good or you're not aligning to what we need out of you and taking that path. And it's more, hey, where are you right now and what is it that you need? And here's what we need and let's see if it's still a match. Excellent. No pun. Any questions from the audience? OK, well, if you do keep raising your hand, I'll keep looking out, but for now, Gabrielle, you've mentioned this before, you know, part of the Gen Z stereotype is how disgruntled they are with work. I, I don't actually don't even know if it's Gen Z. It could be us, us geriatric millennials, and Stevie likes to call us here on stage too. Yeah, but it's, it's, uh, you know, everyone wants to complain about work. It's kind of like a badge of honor. In a way, um, but as we heard on the stage last year we had a panel of Gen Z's, um, there's so many white papers that it's like Gen Z values, integrity values, realness, but then there's still this, this negativity that they have around work. How do we square both of those getting past negativity if I wanna start such a good question, um. I think that Gen Z is pretty nihilist in my opinion than we've seen. I mean, I think millennials had like a grunge phase for a second too when they were younger. I think it's just that teen angst. I don't know. I mean, there's so many different factors going on for Gen Z. We've never been more. The, the global media is, is, is a lot for us, right? So you gotta think back when I was like, I don't know, I don't even know how old I was during the Iraq War. I was like scared, you know, like, and could you imagine now like being a kid and seeing all these TikTok shorts and blah, blah, blah, like all this stuff going on. So there's that aspect, right? So they feel powerless over that. They feel powerless over all these affordability stats that are now coming out, and we're starting to see how much, um, reactions to the pandemic, etc. really change things. Um, there's just so many things. There's the AI conversation, right? There's so many things going on, um, that it's hard for Gen Z to understand what they can and can't control. And so oftentimes the things that they can control, they'll equate to, well, I can't control that either. And so that's where you're seeing that nihilism, that disgruntledness, um, and that's like an important conversation between the distinction of us as well because sometimes my lazy girl job or other trends that I come up with or just my media company as a whole will get. Co-opted by this like disgruntled thing and I, I, I never, I'm not, I'm not into that at all. I think it takes two to tango, right? So it's like you're, you're only a victim for so long with the, with the job that you don't like if you're continuously staying, staying for 6 to 9 months. That's your choice, right? So yeah, I, I think that it's important that we like overall just really touch on that nihilism for Gen Z. I know you all aren't their parents and you shouldn't have to be, but at the same time there's a lot going on for them. It's a different media. Landscape and yes they may say things like they want 100K out of the bat and that sounds crazy. I live in Colorado. You need to make 250K just to like live and breathe. So it's just, it's a different time, you know, that's, that's where that energy is coming from. Yeah, I agree. You know, as you think about it, I don't see it as much as disgruntle as them questioning what are the reasons to believe in what they're doing. Like why am I here? They're like, we only have so much time. There's a lot of negativity that they see or perceive in the world, and they're like, Is this what I want to spend my time doing? Have we done our jobs and saying, hey, align to our mission, do this work, and if not they're going to question you and they're asking those questions not to be angry and not to be bitter they're asking those questions to say, do I continue to invest in this and they're doing it in a way that generations before them couldn't. And because of that it comes off as very angry. If you look at how many generations we have in the workforce, some people would never question their manager. They would never, you know, speak in a meeting unless they were spoken directly to. And then you have people who are taught you ask questions to truly understand the answer like you need to know these things before you start to make decisions and so they do and they bring that to work. Sometimes people are offended by that, but that's what we've evolved into and if you're doing your job right, you should be able to answer those questions and if you don't have the answer or if you don't have an answer that they like, they will still respect you more by giving them the transparent answer and communicating with them instead of trying. To belittle them by title or age or level and you know kind of discrediting the fact that you know they're negotiating whether or not they still want to show up for you. Yeah, very quick last question fire round for you both. What parts of the traditional workplace do you think are going to die either because of Gen Z or Gen Alpha's expectations or because of AI? Is it the 9 to 5? Is it 40 hour work weeks? Anything you think is not gonna be around in 10 to 15 years? The 9 to 5 shift for sure. Reid Hoffman's done a really good job of breaking that down of like what autonomous agents are gonna look like in the workplace. I think it's the death of that 40 hour 9 to 5 here very soon. I think that and it's very relevant to our field that uh growth for you know growth as an employee looks like a hierarchical move up as opposed to it'll it'll evolve more into the development and skill acquisition. Oh yeah, those are great ones. Well, thank you both so much for all your insights. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Neurodivergent employees (such as those with autism or ADHD) represent a chronically underutilized talent pool — because few employers have developed the inclusive practices necessary to unlock their full potential. In this talk, we will explore how organizations fail to recognize different ways of working, what that oversight costs them, and how innovative organizations are driving real results through neuroinclusive design. How can leaders think beyond traditional systems and reframe inclusion as both a leadership responsibility and a business advantage? 

Daniel Wendler, Clinical Psychologist, Author, Improve Your Social Skills

Untapped Talent: Why Neurodiversity is a Workforce Advantage

I need to ask you all the most important question. This is the most important question you're going to hear all summit. It might even be the most important question you hear all year, because this question could save your life. You ready? Here it is. How do you survive a bear attack? Imagine this, you're out in the wilderness, your phone battery is dead, you can't ask AI what to do, and then behind you, you hear a rustling, you hear a growling, and you turn and there is a bear. What do you do? How do you survive? Well, first of all, this is a metaphor, so bear with me, because this metaphor is going to explain how to unlock one of the biggest sources of wasted talent within your organization. And second, it depends on the bearer. There's actually a series of sayings that explains what you're supposed to do depending on the situation, and it goes like this. If it's black, fight back, because a black bear is not that big, it's not that aggressive. If you pop it in the nose, it'll say, oh, that hurt, and it might leave you alone. If it's brown, lie down, because a grizzly bear is much bigger, it's much more aggressive. If you punch it in the nose, it's going to take that really personal, and so your best bet is to play dead and hope that maybe it eats somebody else instead. But there's one more kind of bear, and it's the polar bear. And in that case, the advice goes like this. If it's white, good night, because a polar bear is an apex predator, it is the deadliest thing on the Arctic ice, and if it decides that you look tasty, you might as well just accept that that's what's going to happen. There's really not a lot that you can do about it if a polar bear wants to turn you into bear chow. But, What if we took our polar bear from the Arctic, where it's having a grand old time eating all the people that didn't come to this talk and learned to avoid it, and for some reason, we decided to give it a ride down to Austin, Texas, where I live and where our summers often reach over 100 degrees for weeks at a time. In that case, our bear would not be doing so well, would it? It would really be struggling in that Texas heat. It might not even survive. And if we saw that happening, if we saw our polar bear struggling to get by in the Texas desert, what would we say? Would we say, that polar bear is lazy, it just needs to try harder. Would we say, oh, that poor polar bear, it, it has polar bear disorder, and so it's, it's just not capable of anything. We, we can only pity it, we can't expect anything good from it. No, of course not. Remember, the polar bear is an apex predator, it's the deadliest of all the bears, so the bear isn't the problem. The problem is the environment. The polar bear is in an environment that isn't set up to meet its needs, and if we want our bear to thrive, we don't need the bear to change. We need to change the environment. We need to get our polar bear some air conditioning. This is the exact same principle that explains how we can unlock the talent of the neurodivergent team members within our organization. Neurodivergent refers to people who have minds that work differently than the norm, people with autism, ADHD, dyslexia, things like that. And it's, uh, it's different than folks who aren't neurotypical, who have minds that function the way that society expects. And because most people are neurotypical, our organizations are designed according to neurotypical needs, which means that people with neurodivergent needs get left out. We design meetings for neurotypical ways of communication, and then autistic people might struggle to speak up and contribute their ideas. We design our workflows for neurotypical ways of allocating attention, and then somebody with ADHD gets lost and struggles to make their full contribution. One way or another, the talent of neurodivergent team members gets left wasted. I should know. I'm autistic and the early stages of my career looked a lot like a polar bear staggering around with heatstroke. I was fired from jobs where I had the talent to contribute, but not the support I needed to unlock that talent. I was rejected from graduate schools that didn't believe an autistic person would ever be capable of becoming a psychologist. But you know what? I did become a psychologist, and I built a great career where I get to speak to audiences like this one all across the country. I'm still just as autistic as I've ever been. The only thing that changed is that I figured out how to get myself environments that worked for me. I was able to build inclusive environments where instead of fighting against neurotypical norms, I was able to focus more on making my unique contribution. But most neurodivergent people are not as lucky as I was, and this represents a staggering waste of talent. Gallup estimates that 15 to 20% of the population is neurodivergent, but 80 to 85% of that group is unemployed or underemployed. That is a huge pool of talent just waiting on the sidelines, looking for an organization where they can make their contribution, and many of them don't find it. A 2025 EY study discovered that neurodivergent people, 92% of them, said that they were unable to reach their full potential at work due to a lack of support or unnecessary barriers, 92%. Is it any wonder that that same study found that over a third of neurodivergent employees planned to leave their job within the next year? It doesn't have to be this way. We can build inclusive workplaces where every kind of mind has what it needs to succeed. And when we do that, something remarkable happens. It unlocks benefits for the entire organization. Accenture found that organizations that lead in inclusivity for neurodiversity and disability are also the companies that win economically. They have higher revenue, higher income, higher profit. This is borne out by the experiences of a number of leading organizations such as Wells Fargo, SAP, Microsoft, that discovered that when they invested in neuroinclusivity programs, they were rewarded with more employee retention, more innovation, more productivity. So neuroinclusivity creates a win-win where taking care of your people also means taking care of your bottom line. And it's a fun way to kind of dunk on your competition because that same Accenture study found. That more than 2/3 of organizations were not achieving leading scores in inclusivity, meaning that if your company becomes a leader in this area, you immediately leapfrog over 2/3 of your competitors and you gain a durable, competitive advantage in attracting the kind of talent that is looking for a place where it can make its best contribution. But of course business is around hard strategic choices, and you might be saying, well, I, I want to invest in this area, but I've got to think about the rest of my team. I've got to think about all the neurotypical folks. I can't focus on just one small group, and to that I would say, aha, you need to hear about universal design because there's a principle, and this is borne out by a lot of research, that when we invest in less typical needs, it ends up benefiting everybody in unexpected innovative ways. If you've ever used the ramp on a sidewalk to push a stroller or a shopping cart or do a sweet skateboard trick or something, you can thank somebody who uses a wheelchair because those were added to sidewalks as part of the disability rights movement to allow wheelchair users to access more spaces. If you've ever watched a video with the sound off but understood it because of the captions, you can thank somebody who's deaf because that technology was invented to help deaf people access videos, but now it helps everybody. And in the same way, if your organization invests in in innovations that help neurodivergent folks, it's going to end up helping everybody. If you rethink how you do your meetings to allow autistic people to communicate better, well, that's probably going to lead to ideas that help everybody communicate better. If you invest in flexible workflows that work better for minds with ADHD, well, those flexible workflows might end up creating benefits for everybody. And you also unlock the innovative potential of your neurodivergent mind. A different EI study found that neurodivergent folks were 55% more likely than neurotypical people to use AI at work, because we need AI tools to help us in those neurotypical environments, and so we're going to be pushing the frontiers, we're going to be finding out what those tools are capable of, and when we learn that, we're going to bring that to the rest of the organization. That's what you get when you invest in neuro inclusivity. So, no matter how you happen to invest, one thing is clear, it is a necessary thing. All you have to do is ask yourself the real, most important question. When somebody on your team is struggling, you need to wonder not, are they lazy, do they need to try harder, are they just not the right fit here? You need to ask, are they a polar bear in the desert? Is there a need that our working environment isn't meeting for this person, and then critically, can we create a workplace environment that does meet that need? Because nobody gets to choose the temperature outside in the desert for the polar bear, but our workplaces, we get to choose what those look like, and we can design them in a way that works for everybody. And this might look different depending on the needs and the structure of your organization. It might look like rethinking your processes like it did for SAP and Microsoft, who discovered that their hiring processes didn't work for autistic people who were struggling during the job interviews. They said, OK, what if we offer people a work sample instead so we can evaluate their capabilities in a way that is inclusive for them. It might look like training your leaders and empowering your managers, like it did for JPMorgan Chase that invested in training programs for their managers to teach those managers how to provide direct, clear feedback to autistic team members in a way that those autistic team members could could use and apply to their work. It might even look like rethinking physically how your environments are set up, like it did for Barclays, that pioneered inclusive measures when they designed their new flagship corporate campus, and they built it from the ground up with features like sensory friendly quiet rooms and low decibel hand dryers, because they realized that it just didn't make sense for their talent to be focused on dealing with an uncomfortable sensory environment when it could be giving its full attention to the work. No matter what it looks like for your organization. One thing is clear. It will be one of the smartest investments that you ever make. Give your polar bears what they need to thrive and be amazed at what your people are truly capable of. Thank you.

Workplaces have been actively rethinking how they approach diversity initiatives, creating an important moment for leadership and talent strategy. While language may be shifting and hiring programs may be restructured, the underlying business imperatives—talent access, belonging, and culture resilience—have not disappeared. In this session, panelists will move beyond reactive pivots to examine this strategic evolution, focusing on how to align people initiatives with enterprise risk, growth, and workforce strategy. 

Jarvis Sam, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, The Rainbow Disruption
Ray Dempsey, Founder, Dempsey Inclusion Group
Moderator: Kristin Stoller, Editorial Director, Fortune Live Media; Co-Chair, Fortune Workplace Innovation Summit

The New Culture Calculus: Prioritizing Inclusive Growth Strategically

So I wrote about this in my newsletter recently and I want to share a stat that I was really, really intrigued by. So Littler surveyed employers to find what most impacted their businesses over the past year. 71% said DEI policy changes, 65% said immigration policy changes, and both of those were more than twice the share who selected any of the other workplace policies. So you know it's clear the language about this has shifted dramatically in the past year. How are you each describing what you do now and has the underlying strategy changed, or is it just the vocabulary that has changed? And Ray, we'll start with you and go to Jarvis. All right, well, Kristen, thanks for having us here. I, I think this question is a great way to start this because there's a couple of, I believe, practical truths. The language has undoubtedly shifted. Um, millions and millions of people have been convinced that DEI is a bad word and that it represents bad stuff. The vast majority of those people have no idea what it actually is or was, but that's a slightly different point. I. I think that the practice has had to kind of refocus in on what it is meant to do, and that is to create value for the business. And I think there's loads and loads of organizations that have been really thoughtful about examining their portfolio of activities and initiatives. They've been thoughtful about understanding where there are risks and and exposure in this environment. But those who have been committed to driving real and measurable diversity, equity and inclusion to create value for the business, if they were doing it before the murder of George Floyd, they're still doing it. Um, they understand that it actually is not just a good thing to do or the right thing to do, it's not just a social imperative, it's, it's a genuine business imperative. When I advise clients on how to think about this context, I, I, I often say I struggled initially with what we call it, and I've decided I don't care what you call it. We can, we can change the, the letters, change the acronym, but more than ever before, the determination to be thoughtful about how every person, every leader is intentional about driving the best person, the, the best opportunity, the best market and consumer focus, and that's why I'm optimistic the, the work will endure. Jarvis, I wanna ask specifically because Ray, you mentioned. The business case of DEI, I feel like people are obsessed with the business case for DEI. Maybe it's because it seems like the only safe way of talking about it right now, but in, in your view, how do you feel about it? What is the new value prop or this new business case for DI? Yeah, I love this question and thanks so much, Christian, for having us. Uh, for me it's always been around this concept of the value proposition. Part of the rebranding effort that DEI has to undergo is an acknowledgement. that from the very beginning we were charged with creating a reorientation of how our systems either create or promote access or limit and reduce it for communities, particularly through the lens of selection, hopefully to have an impact on outcomes, but not in an attempt to drive outcomes driven approach. Part of the challenge that we encountered is that following George Floyd's murder, organizations felt this unequivocal commitment that. had to be all things to all people and so certain aspects that should have been controlled by government intervention, nonprofit engagement became the workplace's authority to engage and connect. But in that pursuit, this construct around how we resolve elements of social justice and social advocacy became so deeply entrenched in how we do effective workplace DEI building and advocacy internally within our organizations. The challenge we begin to see an unclear separation between activism and advocacy and so our organizations were put on the front lines to have to tackle challenges that they were quite frankly ill equipped to have to navigate from the beginning. Then trying to justify that through this lens of the business case created a very clear slippery slope at best and fallacy of thought, argumentation and reasoning. At worst, allowing for government, namely through the lens of the EEOC, to come in with a significant amount of challenge questioning how does this contribute to good faith efforts promoting advocacy within the workplace. And so this centering on rather the value proposition of what it means to build diversity within our workforce, understand what that means for our culture, and then define where and how our systems. Not our strategies, not our programs, that's further downstream, but truly our systems may be creating differentiated outcomes for communities becomes the big question now. You brought up the EEOC, and I think a lot of people here probably are wondering, you know, we keep having this pendulum swing between Democratic. Republican-led led regimes and administrations here, but as, uh, you know, a people officer, it's hard to think how do we, how do we navigate between the changes because it's, it seems like you can't prepare for, for either scenario. How do you kind of stay middle of the road or do you stay middle of the road, Ray, any thoughts on that? Well, the EEOC was born out of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. And while there's been so much policy shift, largely in the form of executive orders and, and I don't downplay the impact of those, there's been real impact on real people and real organizations, but the law that guides this practice of DEI is still the law. It's still the Civil Rights Act of 1964. There are some court cases that have kind of. Tuned around the edges in some areas, some of them in real and important and meaningful ways, some maybe not so. And so my, my optimism again is that In the same way that President Trump in his first hour after his inauguration in the second term, rescinded some 80 executive orders from the prior Biden administration, and frankly that same thing could happen again in a few years' time, and the law, which is essentially to say that everybody should have a fair chance. It is still the law and it'll still guide the choices and the activities and, and it'll shape the way we manage and mitigate risk around talent. Yeah, so let's hear your, your thoughts as well. I think that too because I, I wonder, you know, after George Floyd, a lot of people were con uh accused of being maybe too performative with other DEI initiatives and not actually backing it up with substance. How, what do you recommend companies do? Do some companies take it too far? Part of the challenge is we are having a hyper dependency on this pendulum swing deeply rooted in a US construct. For the majority of us, we are likely managing and leading workforces that are global in nature that paired with Gen Z and Gen Alpha entering the workforce with a deeply entrenched view on what multiculturalism means to them, implies that this pendulum swing and this, this shift in name or nomenclature. Actually creates more risk downstream for our organizations as we're continuing to go on this rebranding effort. Take for example the climate change movement. What was initially dubbed in the creating of strategies and approaches to navigate global warming was later defined as climate change and then sustainability. Within every one of those approaches, it took years to rebrand and get greater understanding of that work. There's been a lot of. Academic scholarship around why we dub this work BEI. There's been a lot of translation and localization in global markets around why this has to be the nomenclature that we use and why this focus on systems has to be what we build. Positioning your strategy going with the wind of how the pendulum is swinging, undoubtedly creates more enhanced risk as in an attempt to. Solve the issues of today, we're not continuing things that are hypercritical like pay equity analysis and studies within our organizations, understanding the impact to the build and development of representation of all communities within our space, and of course those communities that are far too often viewed as fringe communities in this work, communities with disabilities, LGBTQ plus communities, end up either being silenced, hyped. For minoritized are left out of the conversation altogether and so I, I caution organizations that as you're looking to shift your strategy of today to comply with current policy, acknowledge it could be creating a lot more risk that opens yourself up for a lot over the next 3 to 5 years. Good point. I'm gonna turn to the audience, um, in just a second for, for questions, so start thinking of them if you have them, but first I want to ask both of you, you both held. Chief diversity officer titles, um, now it's, it's really hard to find those titles in corporate America and you know some sometimes it's rolled into the CHRO title sometimes they just don't exist whatsoever. Do you both think having that title on your resume, um, on your profile has, has impacted your, your career prospects in any way, pigeonholed you at all, or, or how, and how do you look at that role going forward? Yeah. In running my own practice these days, myself and my team, we, we interrogate this question all the time, and I think it's quite powerful, you know, for many of you, we know there's a litany of different DEI, B plus consulting firms that exist in the space. However, only someone who has truly held a chief diversity officer role understands the immense complexities that come with navigating both the legal landscape, sociopolitical complexities, socioeconomic complexities, and how we talk about, describe, and Understand the ways in which we truly create shareholder value within our workplace and role. The unfortunate reality is that as the title or the role disappears, it becomes unclear both to consumers, customers, clients, fans, and of course our employees and teammates where the center of gravity exists around our organizational commitment to this work. Now we recognize anybody who holds a CDIO title is largely influencing with. Out a lot of direct responsibility for the work they hold a lot of big A accountability in it, but they likely don't have a team large enough to do all of the work supported within the org. When these titles continue to disappear and it becomes unclear what organizational commitment looks like, it leads to a lot of questioning around where the future of this work exists and how do we have specific domain expertise within our organizations to support it. I will highlight to you though, when. Enter a space where the name and role comes back around in greater capacity or greater clarity. Avoid the tendency to simply put the highest ranking person of color or woman in our organizations into that job. We need to be as deliberate and intentional as we are in hiring CFOs, COOs, CFOs, and any other role as we are with this one, with a defined set of criteria, expectation of pedagogy or study to enter the role, and define accountability for what it is. And why it exists. Very good point. Ray. Anything you want to add? You, you heard them say that I was chief diversity Officer for BP America. It's true, but that that was not my last chief diversity officer role. I, I retired from BP after more than 30 years. I'm an engineer and an MBA by background. I've done all kinds of things, but I found mission and purpose when I was appointed as chief diversity officer there. And decided I wasn't happy to just wait until I was uh all done and I just lifted my head up a bit and Barclays came calling. I, I have a thing for big British companies. So I spent, I spent the last 3 years of my career as group chief diversity officer at Barclays. I retired about 2 years ago and so I, I retired out of conscious choice. I had a successor, she was the CHRO of the investment bank at Barclays at the time and it wasn't completely on fire, I have to tell you, it was, there was a little bit of smoke. And there were signs that things were shifting, but it hadn't completely gone ablaze. And so I left, you know, happy and proud of that title on my resume and, and frankly, I, I looked forward to the chance to, to go serve on some corporate boards. So the answer to your question, Kristen, is the consequence for me has been that the chief diversity officer title is not nearly. As valuable for corporate board nominees as it was just a few years ago and so I, I, I accept that. I acknowledge it. I'm, I'm, I'm serving on some nonprofit boards. I'm chairing the board at my alma mater and so I'm hoping that I'll just be able to leverage my network to get to where I hope to be, but does it make a difference? Yeah, it, it does interesting. Any questions from the room? Oh, I see one right over here. Thank you for a candid conversation. I feel like, uh, would love to hear your perspective on how this era is also, um, having challenges with data and being able to, you know, you talked about pay equity, the ability of the real legal risks right now of being able if you still wanna do the work, if you still have mission imperative, business imperative, tracking mechanisms are becoming extremely difficult around data and so I'm just curious about how are you advising clients. Right now. Yeah, I, I can take this first. There, there's a few things. One, the. Intentionality around how we both use our data and then splice our data is more critical now than ever because again going back to the global nature of our organizations, there are numerous countries around the world that still have requisite approaches for the need to collect and transparently distribute how we leverage our data within organizations. And so speaking about it specifically through a US lens, this is where some of the legal questions continue to come up that surfaced far before the current Trump administration and will continue to exist. Chapter what we collect, how we talk about it, how we utilize it has always had key parameters built in around it. The unfortunate reality that we have to acknowledge transparently is from 2020 to 2025 there was a lot of ineffective misuse of diversity related data in organizations or what has dubbed the branding of this construct of illegal DEI. What I'm advising clients on though is the collection of this data is still imperative for us to begin to see trends and. Understand as this pendulum swings, where are our investments continuing to pay off versus where it's being reduced. The unfortunate reality, there were billions of dollars committed to support community-related efforts impacting historically underrepresented populations that has gone unreported on since 2024. And if this trend continues by 2028, we will have a complete miss of very tangible data to understand the impact within our organizations. And so what I think the EEOC would likely. Advise on is the collection of data is one piece. How organizations are utilizing that data is where a lot of risk or what they believe tangible harm is being set up and how certain programs are being created, how approaches to things like succession planning or hiring are being measured or managed along the way. The big question though that I think we have to consider is to what end if the argument is true that the data was previously utilized to disenfranchise certain historically represented communities. We could argue that it substantively didn't work. Take a look at representation of C-suites right now, board representation, pay equity issues that continue to suffice with a significant negative impact on women in communities of color, and we have to then re-engineer how we think about. Effective utilization of data. Great question. Thank you. Can I, can I build really fast? I, I know we're gonna, we gotta move, but I, I love what you said, Jarvis. I, I agree completely. I'll add a slightly different angle to this point though, and it's, it's risk, legal risk mitigation. We, we hear a lot today about reverse discrimination. We, we might hear a little bit about that tomorrow, um, in conversation. But here's a, here's a simple practical truth. You add the sum total of all the legal judgments, verdicts, and awards that have come from. Reverse discrimination actions and you compare them to the sum total of all the discrimination actions and one bar is really, really high and the other bar is really, really, really low. It would be foolish for any enterprise to, to presume that they no longer have discrimination, legal risks, and the only way to be aware of and to mitigate those potential exposures is by having a real conscious understanding of the data. So I think the reliance on the data is still absolutely essential. There's no sacrifice or substitution for that awareness. Jarvis is right though. In much of Europe there are privacy laws that restrict the collection and use of that. Data. So organizations have to be creative and thoughtful in the ways that they develop their understanding of the workforce. Very well put, Ray. Now we're gonna end on a bit of a fire round for the two of you. 30 seconds or less, and I know this is going to be hard, but try your best. 5 years from now, what does it look like for a company who got this moment right versus one that simply survived it? Jarvis, let's start with you. There'll be a focus largely on the concept of cultural intelligence where we avoid this need to chase identities which can ultimately result in what we dub as oppressive Olympics and how we compare experiences. It will be organizations leveraging data more effectively to where they start to see congruence and experience between employee experience and consumer experience. Historically, when those two meet, that's how you maximize shareholder value. Right. I love that. The marketplace is going to decide winners and losers. Those organizations that are demonstrating an effectiveness in attracting, retaining, developing, promoting people of all dimensions of difference, of cultivating markets and customers that represent the increasingly diverse America and world are going to win in the marketplace, and those who have sent the signals that that's not important, it's not a priority, they are going to lose. And in 5 years, I believe there will be evidence of that distinction. That is fabulous. Thank you both so much for your insights here. Thank you for joining us. Yeah.

For over 40 years, Qualcomm technology has powered some of the world’s most transformational technological advancements. Today, the company is moving beyond smartphones, building a future with wearable AI, humanoid robots, and a 6G cellular network.

In this episode, Fortune’s Editor-in-Chief Alyson Shontell speaks with Qualcomm’s President and CEO Cristiano Amon to discuss the company’s commitment to constant reinvention and why Amon is optimistic about the AI revolution.

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