ColorComm conference opens in Miami, as professional women of color promote DEI
About 400 professional women of color gathered at the Ritz-Carlton Key Biscayne Hotel Wednesday for the first of three days of ColorComm, a conference designed to support diversity and inclusion in the communications, marketing, advertising and media industries.
Founded in 2011, the group’s sold-out national conference his year in Miami is its first in person in four years due to the coronavirus pandemic. Media and entertainment leaders like MSNBC President Rashida Jones and hip-hop musician and actress MC Lyte are just a couple of the prominent women here for the event.
LeAndra Cleveland, a senior manager of diversity, equity and inclusion for New York-based global advertising and marketing company The Interpublic Group of Companies, traveled to Miami for her third ColorComm conference. Cleveland cherishes the opportunity to be surrounded by other professional women working to improve diversity across industries.
“Being here is super important, because I feel motivated and inspired afterward to continue to make that change and carry that forward,” she said.
Florida has been at the center of much national controversy on this issue after Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a sweeping law in May banning spending by the state’s colleges and universities on diversity, equity and inclusion programs, as well as in academic coursework. When signing the bill into law, DeSantis said it’s intended to curb “woke” ideology on campuses statewide.
In June, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, issued a travel advisory warning travelers to avoid Florida.
MSNBC broadcast journalist Alicia Menendez moderated a panel discussion Wednesday focused on Florida’s complicated handling of diversity and inclusion.
“How we got here is that our stories have been suppressed and people have been oppressed,” panelist and Florida House Minority Leader Fentrice Driskell, a Hillsborough County Democrat, told Menendez, a Miami resident.
Panelist and author Maria Elena Salinas is all too familiar with DeSantis’ efforts to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion from classrooms and college administrative programs. Two of her children’s books — biographies of Latin music icon Celia Cruz and Pittsburgh Pirates Hall of Fame baseball player Roberto Clemente — were banned in Florida.
“Diversity and inclusion is what people want when people decide where they want to work,” she said. “This is a time to be more united, more integrated and actually understand that DEI is everyone of us.”
Organizations have begun moving their events and conventions from South Florida in protest of the state’s staunch position on DEI. Black fraternity Alpha Phi Alpha announced Wednesday that it would be relocating its 119th Anniversary Convention in 2025 from Orlando to a different location due to what it called DeSantis’ “harmful, insensitive and racist policies against the Black community.”
