The bis screens and small screens are leading the way through the power of story telling. We saw in series like Breaking Bad, All the things we cannot see, the inclusion of disabled actors, we saw an accomplished actor, Michael J. Fox, with advanced Parkinsons playing a lawyer.
In October 2022 the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published that 1 in 4 adults (61 million or 26%) in the United States live with a disability. The same goes for the United Kingdom, where according to Disability i23% of working adults live with a disability. Disability includes mobility, psychiatric, or cognitive impairment. Over half of the disabled adult population have a physical disability affecting their mobility, hearing, or vision. Disability Acts came into effect after many years of campaigning and awareness raising, with the aim to eliminate systemic and discriminatory practices that create barriers to economic opportunities, career choices, or self-employment. While there have been achievements in the educational sector and inclusion into the general workforce, the same cannot be said for higher leadership positions. Still today, we mainly see disabled people in leadership positions in organizations dedicated to bettering the lives of disabled people. According to BoardSource in 2021 only 5% of surveyed non-profit board seats were held by people with disability. In Heidrick & Struggles 2022 Board Monitor which focuses on US Fortune 500 companies, disability wasn’t even mentioned.
It is our vision and aim to break down barriers to board service. We accelerate awareness and access to board rooms across organizations, by consciously being inclusive in board recruitment. We encourage boards to follow our recommendations and to make the governance level more equitable, diverse, and inclusive to fully reflect the societies they operate in.
Firstly, boards ought to conduct a board and competency audit on a regular basis to capture the diversity presence or absence. We have developed a helpful short quiz to assist in this process.
Next, boards must adopt a more transparent and equitable recruitment & succession process. We have created a platform to assist organizations to publish their board vacancies and for individuals to find board appointments.
Boards who want to become more aware of their board diversity, board recruitment, and onboarding best practices are invited to reach out to us for support under: info@designation.one