20 APRIL 6, 2020 |^ ADWEEK
®Caroline Wanga
chief diversity and
inclusion officer
TA RGE T N
ot one to mince words, Wanga once told a crowd
of retail suppliers that the industry was “in crisis”
and “past the point of opt-in” on making its
workforce and C-suites reflect the diverse makeup of
America’s consumers.
“We cannot afford to have homogeneity in our
decision-making because we don’t decide who walks
in the door,” she said during a pull-no-punches
2018 conference talk in Phoenix. Sporting a T-shirt
emblazoned with a Sojourner Truth quote, “Ain’t I a
woman?” she told the largely white, male audience
that diversity and inclusion is a “business imperative
that if left unaddressed will render us irrelevant.”
“If you look at metrics every day on how your
business is performing,” she said, “you should do the
same thing on how you are performing on diversity
recruiting and gender parity.”
Since taking over the top D&I spot at Target in
2014, Wanga has posted impressive numbers by those
measures—in a single recent year, more than 40%of new corporate hires in the retailer’s home state of
Minnesota were ethnically or racially diverse. And
she’s spearheaded 170,000 hours of inclusion training
for Target employees, which she calls “immersive
experiences” that use podcasts, videos and other
educational tools.
But beyond the typical recruiting and retention,
Wanga also inf luences areas like community
outreach and philanthropy, product mix and
marketing. She’s advocated for a dramatic increase
in shelf space for multicultural food, beauty
products and toys, for instance, with double-digit
sales jumps to match. And a recent TV campaign,
under the theme “Founders We Believe In: The
Honey Pot,” focuses on the retailer’s commitment
to female-owned challenger brands. Honey Pot
CEO Bea Dixon says Target’s support “changed my
life” and opened doors for her beauty and wellness
lines. Her success, she says, means that “the next
black girl who comes up with a great idea—she can
have a better opportunity.”
Often publicly preaching her “be yourself ” mantra,
the native Kenyan has said it’s tough but necessary
to “unleash and weaponize your dimensions of
difference,” which will translate to better bottom lines
and stronger companies. “Stay who you are based on
the truth of your experiences, and ... don’t adjust who
you are for the organization.” —T. L. S.Ariana Isabel Sokolov, CEO
Georgia Messinger, COO
Trill Project
Accepted into the Target Incubator
program, Sokolov and Messinger
channeled Wanga’s “empathetic
listening” approach to hone the
community guidelines for their
mental health app and social
network. Wanga linked them to
like-minded, mission-based groups
and tech heavyweights, teaching
them “to never underestimate
our worth as a startup, and as
people, and to embrace every
challenge we face as young
female entrepreneurs as new
opportunities for growth.”
‘Stay who you are based
on the truth of your
experiences, and ... don’t
adjust who you are for
the organization.’