Sangita Kumar wasn’t shocked by President Donald Trump’s executive orders this week attacking diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives; she’d been anticipating them for months as part of the “slowly building terror” around his second term.
But as founder of Oakland-based Be the Change Consulting, she’s anxious about the social impact of the orders, as well as their ramifications on her 13-year-old business. Kumar started her firm to improve the culture of companies and organizations and has worked with the likes of BART and the de Young Museum.
“We’re bracing for a dramatic shrinkage in our DEI portfolio,” she said. Her San Francisco clients for DEI training have included the Planning Department, the Department of Public Health, and a private school.
Even before the orders, Fortune 500 companies like Meta, Walmart, and McDonald’s started slashing programs and departments focused on DEI. Trump’s directives eliminate DEI-related programs at federal agencies but also signal that corporations and nonprofits could be investigated for having such initiatives.
Now, local companies and nonprofits built around this type of work are scrambling to recalibrate and find a way to work within the new regime — or around it.
“Our team is taking time off right now to cope with the chaos of how things are unfolding,” said Alex Suggs, cofounder of the consultancy Different DEI, via email. Another diversity-focused startup founder refused to speak on the record in case “our business is deemed illegal” or could be targeted by lawsuits.
“Everybody’s trying to be cautious — the main thing right now is just trying to wade through a lot of the confusion that’s out here,” said Bo Young Lee, president of the nonprofit AnitaB and former chief DEI officer at Uber.
AnitaB, which supports women in tech, and like-minded organizations are trying to parse exactly how the executive orders might affect their work. “We want to make sure that we can continue our mission but also stay within the guardrails being created,” Lee said. “We just don’t know what those guardrails really are right now.”
She foresees a chilling effect on inclusion efforts at private firms, with grim results: She believes the cessation of DEI-related initiatives will make companies less effective, with worse output.
“If we get to a worst-case scenario, where organizations just have to stop all this work, I think we end up as a society with products that don’t meet our needs and with services that just don’t fit us,” she said.
Eugene Dilan, founder of a consultancy that has worked with global tech companies, sees a silver lining. Many DEI programs have been performative and have functioned as a “department bolted onto a company,” he said.
“There’s going to be an uphill battle, in terms of budgets being cut and people losing their jobs,” Dilan said. “But it’s causing a lot of reflection for people, which could be good in terms of reevaluating the approach.”
Ineffective initiatives may be retired, as might the term DEI itself, which could be replaced with more precise language.
That could mean new frameworks that shed the politicization and demonization of DEI, according to consultant Lily Zheng. “Anti-DEI extremists often rely on misinformation claiming that DEI is itself ‘reverse discrimination’ or that it ‘goes against meritocracy,’” Zheng said.
Amber Cabral, a consultant who previously ran diversity and inclusion efforts at Walmart, believes important inclusion work will still happen, though it may require “words that people can actually hear without being triggered.”
She expects that private companies will find ways to hire and support a diverse workforce.
“I’m a believer that good people break bad laws,” she said, “and I’m inclined to believe that that’s likely to happen as laws that aren’t working for the populace create more disconnection, frustration, and anger.”