A White Paper on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at Well+Good
This white paper traces the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives at the digital publication Well+Good across 2021 to offer insights and learnings for the food, wellness, and lifestyle media industry at large.
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Table of Contents
Some context on white papers and Studio ATAO's approach
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About Well+Good, our key stakeholders, and areas of focus
Initiative 1: Diversity-focused writing Style Guide
Initiative 2: Audit & cleanup of past content
Initiative 3: Benchmarks for diversity across platforms​
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Initiative 4: Increasing diversity in freelance & contributor pools
Initiative 5: Company-wide DEI trainings
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Equitable Representation in Food Media Initiative
What is a White Paper?
The term white paper came from British politics, where legislators would write reports analyzing details of specific issues, often offering certain policy suggestions and rationale for support.
Today, white papers are common in business-to-business (B2B) educational content; in particular, we see them as a tool to present long-term research in a structured way. Compared to other content, white papers are generally expected to be far more heavily researched, longer, and more academic in tone.
At Studio ATAO, we aim to use white papers to provide extremely detailed action plans that supplement broader call-to-actions from our toolkits such as “Hire talented, experienced people of color in decision-making roles” (Toolkit for Recognizing, Disrupting, and Preventing Tokenism).
This white paper and others like it are meant to break down what exactly needs to occur to start moving towards the end goal, while offering a realistic understanding of the challenges and considerations along the way. This way, we can proactively counteract the any fear of taking action due to "not knowing where to start."
We are not compensated by any publications included in these white papers to avoid conflicts of interest. We believe that by sharing information transparently, we can collectively develop higher industry standards for equitable representation that benefits everyone.
These white papers are 100% self-funded so if you do learn from this work, we hope you will consider supporting us financially so we can continue to pay our team equitably for their work. You can do so by joining our Patreon community as a monthly donor, or by making a one-time gift via GiveLively.
Overview of this White Paper
We began the process of this white paper with Well+Good (WG) in January 2021. Well+Good is a wellness and lifestyle digital media publication started by two industry journalists in 2010. In 2018, Well+Good was acquired by Leaf Group Ltd. (LG) as one of their fitness and wellness brands alongside Livestrong.com. In 2021, LG was acquired by a larger holding company, Graham Holdings Company.
To date, Well+Good has 10.1 million monthly readers (source: comScore March 2021) and 2.7 million social media followers across all channels. Well+Good employs approximately 23 full-time employees, while Leaf Group employs approximately 370 full-time employees.
Our main stakeholders at WG were:
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Tara Turk-Haynes, VP DEI & Talent Management, LG
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Abbey Stone, Executive Editor, WG
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Kate Spies, SVP and General Manager, WG
For this white paper, we will focus on three goals within WG’s wider Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) action plan and LG’s company-wide policies.
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Reexamine, revise, and codify brand values and procedures for equitable content standards on WG
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Implement systems to further diversify compositions of WG teams and contributors, and track against internal benchmarks
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Engage WG employees with new DEI training and workshops customized to their areas of work
To accomplish these goals, five specific initiatives for WG were identified by our stakeholders for this white paper:
Content
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1. WG’s internal style guide for content, specifically the portions dedicated to DEI language and topics
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2. The systemic audit and cleanup of WG's archive of content
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3. Update WG’s benchmarks for diversity of representation in content across mediums and platforms, such as sourcing, talent, social media, imagery, and video.
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E-Commerce
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Social Media
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Video
People
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4. Increasing diversity in WG’s freelance and contributor pool.
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Editorial
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Art & Design
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Video
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5. LG’s rollout of DEI trainings (with specific ones for WG) and support of employee resource groups (ERGs)
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DEI Learning Platform & Training
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Hiring Practices
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DEI Council and Response Committee
Area of Focus: Content
Initiative #1
Updating an internal style guide for content, specifically the portions dedicated to cultural sensitivity and other DEI-related topics
WG began work on an internal DEI Style Guide in June 2020, which serves as an addendum to the already-existing House Style Guide. The goal of the DEI Style Guide is to standardize the brand's use of language and scope of coverage to ensure it is inclusive and respectful of underrepresented groups. It was created in consultation with existing language guides such as the ADA National Network, AP Stylebook, The California State University Diversity Style Guide, Trans Journalists Association, and GLAAD Media Reference Guide. It is expected that all WG team members use the DEI Style Guide when commissioning, reporting, writing, and editing content across all WG platforms.
The guide includes:
1. Brand guidelines and best practices for addressing race and ethnicity; gender, sex, and sexuality; and people with disabilities. These are generally framed as “do’s” or “don’ts.”
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Below are some examples around guidelines when writing about people with disabilities. When possible, WG will cite directly from a credible source — in this case, the American Disabilities Act National Network.
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Defer to “people first” language unless the subject prefers otherwise. Always ask the subject for their preference (e.g., “person with a disability” or “people with disabilities” instead of “disabled person” or “the disabled”)
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If the disability is not part of the story and there isn't a need to include it, don't.
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Emphasize abilities, not limitations (e.g., person who uses a wheelchair vs. wheelchair-bound; confined to a wheelchair)
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2. Guidelines for coverage that are specific to each of WG's main verticals, including beauty, fitness, food, health, and lifestyle. Some also utilize a “do’s and don’ts” format, such as not using the term "Buddha bowls," because it is a Western-created term that appropriates an Eastern religious figure. These are generally tied into longer explanations; for example, one guideline for when covering foods with roots specific to a certain culture is as follows:
If a cultural dish has been changed/altered, explain how and why clearly. We should only be altering cultural dishes for specific, understandable reasons—like providing a vegan or gluten-free version of a dish so that people with dietary restrictions can enjoy it. (Not just “healthifying” it for no reason other than to make it palatable to a white audience.)
For example, this Sweet Potato Noodle Pad Thai recipe in this 2017 roundup. This was explicitly positioned as a “healthier” version of takeout solely because it used sweet potato noodles instead of rice noodles, when there’s nothing necessarily wrong with rice noodles.
Similarly, guidelines for discussing maca are as follows:
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When covering maca, always include information about its origins and cultural significance to Indigenous people of Peru.
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Be mindful about recommending maca / how you frame it, so you are clear and measured about the lack of robust scientific evidence behind its benefits without being dismissive of its importance to Indigenous peoples in Peru.
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Only recommend products that are sourced from Peru.
3. Guidance around coverage of wellness practices that may be considered cultural appropriation when performed by someone from outside the culture of origin (e.g., smudging, Ayurveda, Traditional Chinese Medicine). These include recommendations for what is and is not appropriate for WG to cover and how to evaluate expert sources if/when covering these topics.
For example, matcha is an ingredient that WG has previously covered across content, including in recipes and commerce-focused stories. There have been internal discussions on whether matcha should be utilized in contexts detached from the traditional matcha tea ceremony.
In order to make a decision regarding coverage, WG spent time consulting experts about matcha and created a public-facing article outlining WG’s official stance on matcha to set future reader expectations. WG plans to link subsequent articles that include matcha to this piece, to avoid contextualizing the ingredient from scratch each time.
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Similarly, yoga has been another major point of internal conversation at WG. In Sept 2021, the WG editorial team started the process of researching how best to cover yoga going forward and created an action plan for setting coverage guidelines. This includes speaking with a number of yoga experts from different backgrounds.
The first version of the DEI Style Guide was rolled out in August 2020, and the WG editorial team was given a quiz to use to familiarize themselves with its contents. Now, new additions to the DEI Style Guide are flagged in team meetings and in Slack, the company’s messaging app.
The DEI Style Guide is a locked document for control purposes; while the entire WG staff has the ability to view and comment on it, only senior members of the WG editorial team have regular edit access in order to ensure sections aren't changed without being vetted. Writers and editors are encouraged to bring up new topics not yet covered in the DEI Style Guide (e.g., how to address substance abuse and addiction were added in November 2020 after being flagged as missing within the guide) by bringing them to the attention of their manager, commenting directly into the document, or by sending a message into a designated DEI Slack channel. These suggestions are then assigned to someone on the WG editorial team to research further, consult experts, review guidelines from advocacy groups, and present a cohesive recommendation to the team for inclusion in the DEI Style Guide.
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Since summer 2020, there have been bi-weekly open meetings for anyone from WG to discuss ongoing DEI initiatives across WG. The core group attending this meeting is ~25 people across WG’s functions (e.g., Editorial, Design, Operations) and the meetings last roughly 30 minutes. DEI Style Guide changes are often discussed in these meetings.
Initiative #2
Conducting a systemic audit & cleanup of Well+Good's archive of content
WG publicly announced its plans for updating its content library via a public-facing article in February 2021 (see here). As of the end of June 2021, WG had evaluated all of the top priority articles (defined as articles with more than 5,000 views within 180 days) identified in phase one of the content audit, as well as articles that included terms flagged as potentially offensive or harmful (e.g. smudging). In September 2021, a new list of terms was compiled to repeat this process.
The internal system for identifying outdated and/or offensive content that needed to be removed or revised to meet WG’s updated DEI Style Guide included two separate initiatives:
1. WG editorial team to incorporate DEI updates — revising content to meet brand guidelines — into their existing workflow of reviewing and optimizing top-performing SEO content. This is done by the WG editorial team at a cadence of 30 articles per month.
2. Articles including topics and terms flagged as culturally appropriative, insensitive, or offensive are revised by the WG team, in order of traffic received per month.
To date, the process to do this has been:
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1. WG editorial team compiles a list of potentially problematic words that may indicate cultural appropriation, suggest a white gaze, or incorrectly represent a cultural practice when used inappropriately (or at all). In the first round, this list of terms included words such as sage, shaman, guru, and chakra.
2. Third-party developers crawl WG to find all articles containing these words and document them in a spreadsheet, organized from most monthly traffic to least.​
3. The WG editorial team members divide up the work of reviewing these articles, starting with the all-time most visited pieces as well as new top performers (e.g., articles with more than 5,000 hits within 90 days). For simple edits (e.g., changing “guru” to “expert” in the case of “fitness guru”) most have already been addressed. Articles that require greater scrutiny (e.g., larger rewriters, or potentially need to be deleted) are assigned to senior editors.
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On the video side, the same review over potentially problematic videos has been done manually by the video production team. WG has a library of 600+ videos, and roughly 20 videos have been removed entirely for depicting culturally appropriative practices. Examples of videos that have been removed include: How to Use Sage and Palo Santo in Your Home, A Cool Cocktail Recipe with Rose Quartz Crystals, I Got Full Body Gua Sha and Learned to Use It at Home.
Initiative #3
Updating WG’s benchmarks for diversity of representation across mediums
ECommerce
WG has pledged to diversify its eCommerce content by:
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Ensuring at least 15% of the brands in the WG Shop (launched in December 2020 and currently in beta) are BIPOC-owned brands or businesses, then growing that to 30%.
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Requiring at least 30% of other affiliate eCommerce content coverage to feature BIPOC-owned brands or businesses.
BIPOC-owned brands are determined by the founder self-identifying as BIPOC or the majority (over 50%) of co-founders self-identifying as BIPOC. (A brand with multiple owners but only 1 BIPOC co-founder would not qualify towards the target percentage, but may still be considered for inclusion on the site.)
When initially onboarding merchants to the W+G SHOP storefront, WG used four key criteria for selecting merchants: sustainability, inclusivity, safety/efficacy, ethical sourcing and manufacturing. For example, when evaluating inclusivity for a brand, if the brand purports to offer skin care for all skin tones, WG would make sure that is actually the case (e.g., covers 40 shades, the standard for the beauty industry. Additionally, when selecting merchants and brands to feature in the W+G SHOP storefront, particular attention is paid to items that relate to cultural practices, such as gua sha, turmeric, tea blends, and matcha; WG looks for brands that are owned by those who share that cultural heritage.
Additionally, WG works to develop close relationships with these brands to better understand their DEI practices, give back initiatives, and sustainability. On sustainability, however, WG acknowledges it is a complicated practice to evaluate properly due to factors like complex supply chains (where WG does not have the resources to independently vet every single step) and balancing other needs like accessibility and price. As of now, WG is trying to offer as many options as possible for people looking to do things like cut back on plastic, eliminate factory-made cottons, only buy from places that offer worker protections, etc.
For the latter pledge, WG is tracking the percentage of BIPOC-owned brands being featured in its eCommerce articles via Airtable and Google Spreadsheets. ECommerce articles make up approximately 25% of WG’s new articles per month, and include singular product reviews and product roundups. WG has hit the 30% pledge each month since it started tracking this metric in August 2020.
In November 2021, WG pivoted its eCommerce strategy away from the W+G SHOP’s storefront to focus on a new eCommerce platform with curated collections of products that are presented alongside editorial articles. WG still prioritizes the above four criteria when selecting brands and merchants to be featured in eCommerce content, but is no longer using the first pledge (15% overall products are BIPOC-owned) as a growth metric. Instead, WG is applying the second pledge (30% of eCommerce articles to feature products from BIPOC-owned or -founded brands) to all eCommerce content.
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Social Media
WG has set benchmarks for representation and inclusion across its social media channels. In particular, WG has paid special attention to its Instagram (IG) channels (3 in total) and Facebook (FB) groups (2 in total) because they form the brand’s largest social footprint. On IG, the 3 channels are a general WG page, a food-specific page, and a beauty-specific page.
On WG’s main IG account, the goal is for 30% of coverage to amplify marginalized voices by highlighting issues that affect BIPOC and LGBTQ communities and/or featuring creators from those communities. This is a mix of original content from WG (such as the article types mentioned below) and re-grams from creators. For example:
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An article about clean water, the Indian farmers’ protest, or how anti-racist educators are practicing self-care
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A profile of a Black-owned brand or a video featuring BIPOC talent
For the food and beauty IG accounts, the goal is that 50% of content amplifies Black, Indigenous, or creators of color. This coverage is typically in the form of amplifying existing BIPOC-generated content (through reposts), with ~10% being original content from WG (similar to the BIPOC content on WG’s main IG, but related to food or beauty).
The social media team manually reviews each comment and removes comments that are harmful (racist, sexist, etc.), but does not delete comments that express differing opinions or ask hard questions of WG. If comments point to WG as having caused any sort of harm, the social team will consult with WG editorial leadership on how to best respond; for example, with a new comment, revising the caption, or removing the post. Each instance is evaluated on a case-by-case basis. The social media team notes that typically comments are not a major issue, save during IG Lives when hosts will occasionally be swarmed with trolls; in those cases, commenters are removed, blocked, and reported.
For WG’s FB groups (one for beauty, one for food), the social team has rewritten its guidelines to be more explicit about the type of content that will be shared and the expectations for the forum to be a safe place. For example:
Well+Good believes that healthy eating looks different for everyone, so we’re not here to promote any one eating plan, or shame or criticize anyone’s food choices - and neither should members of this group.
Words are powerful, and we never want the things we say to imply that someone should feel bad about what or how they eat. As such, you will never see admins or moderators using these words: cheat meal, guilt/guilt-free, junk food, indulgence, splurge, treat. We encourage all members to refrain from using these words when talking about food and cooking.
Otherwise, while the FB group members are very vocal these 2 spaces have not been a source of any contentious debates.
WG has also reviewed its top 100 best performing pins on Pinterest to update the imagery and words to be reflective of WG’s DEI goals. For example, some pins of stories that had multiple embedded images used the hero image of a white woman; many of these have been changed to be more racially diverse and representative of different shapes and sizes.
Video
WG is also active on YouTube, with over 300K subscribers. One of the ongoing goals of WG video has been to actively promote increased diversity for both behind-the-camera (production) and on-camera talent. In 2020, WG set an initial goal that on-air talent would be 50% BIPOC. To achieve this, WG has been more intentional in scheduling shoots with longer lead times (i.e., planning shoots for July in March) in order to have more visibility to where there may be unequal representation (e.g., if three white fitness trainers were hypothetically featured in a row).
More about the process for diversifying video talent is under People: Initiative 4.
Area of Focus: People
Initiative #4
Increasing the diversity of WG’s freelance and contributor pool.
The freelance contributor pool at WG typically falls into three categories: editorial, photo/design, and video.
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Editorial
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WG currently works with a pool of approximately 100 freelance writers and editors; roughly 20-30 of these contributors submit work for WG on a recurring, monthly basis. To track diversity within this pool, WG created an optional, anonymous survey that asks freelancers to self-identify their race and ethnicity. When the survey was finalized in September 2020, it was sent to all current active contributors. Now, it is sent to new contributors during the onboarding process.
Because the survey is anonymized, WG receives a snapshot of diversity in the responses that are compiled quarterly. Since Q3 2020, WG has seen a ~50% response rate. Among respondents, the contributors self-identifying as “white” have decreased 8% between Q3 2020 and Q1 2021 and those self-identifying as BIPOC have remained above 50% each quarter.
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The plan is to annually update this diversity snapshot by removing inactive writers and resending the survey to the entire pool starting January 2022.
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Photo & Design
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Similar to the DEI Style Guide, DEI image guidelines have been incorporated into WG's existing imagery brand book and rolled out via an imagery training session for anyone selecting or creating visuals for WG's platforms.
Due to the sheer volume of content that WG pushes out, much of the photos being used are stock images from sites like Stocksy and Getty Images. Just before the COVID-19 pandemic began, the WG Design Team was in the process of arranging photoshoots with a diverse set of volunteer WG readers as models, in order to diversify the models in these stock images. Given ongoing pandemic, this initiative has been paused.
WG has restarted a limited number of photoshoots for its content, mostly for branded content. The team references an internal list of BIPOC freelance photographers and crew members whenever it is possible to bring them in.
Since Fall 2020, there has also been an initiative to work with BIPOC photographers to license their work, in perpetuity, for use in articles. The goal is to amplify independent creatives of diverse identities who shoot subjects and models with diverse backgrounds in a way that fits WG’s aesthetic. First, the WG Design Team compiled various databases of BIPOC creatives, both in-house (e.g., photographers from past photoshoots and crews) and external lists. Since then, the photo and design team have been reaching out to photographers whose work fills in certain gaps in WG’s stock photography database. Since beginning this process in November 2020, WG has been in talks with about 8 photographers, and is hoping to close a deal for ~60 photographs in 2022. The goal is to license at least 4 photographers’ work per quarter going forward.
This has been a slow process, partially due to the paperwork involved in the process and partially because WG wants to be intentional in this process. As one editor mentioned, “Selling your work in perpetuity is scary, and a lot of independent creatives may not know how much to charge. Sometimes I tell them, ‘No, that’s way too low.’” WG wants to pay all photographers the same rates for their work, which may be as much as 4x the price for a photograph on a stock site.
Video
Sourcing talent for WG video is currently done through a Talent Management team. The team uses social media as a discovery tool for finding new communities and networks where we can form relationships with people to be considered for future opportunities with talent needs. For example, WG found LA Hike Clerb, an intersectional space for BIPOC women to get into the outdoors, on IG. The founder was used as an expert source in an article, and later named a Well+Good 2021 Changemaker and featured in an episode of the Well+Good podcast.
Another major challenge WG has faced with diversifying their on-camera talent has been pay equity, as WG previously only paid talent for the opportunity cost of their time (e.g., paying a personal trainer for a 2 hour session) instead of a set talent fee. WG has since switched to standardized pay rates for talent who are recurring and doing similar work (e.g., a host on a food show and a host on a fitness show), and pay bands for one-off or rotating guests. In addition to new talent rates, any additional work product that talent contributes (e.g., an original recipe) is also paid.
For video production, WG typically works with a full-service production agency called Hayden5. WG has asked Hayden5 to work with them to bring more women onto set, and offered resources to find and support potential female production personnel. For example, an obstacle that has been identified is the fact women often do not own the video equipment necessary for shoots (while men often do), so taking on the cost of covering gear has been very helpful to widen the pool of production staff WG can utilize. WG has also developed a set of best practices for shooting on-camera talent, which are often women. For example, focusing the camera on the instructor without objectifying their body and avoiding certain angles that may feel inappropriate (e.g., a top-down shot when a pilates instructor is sitting in a “V” shape.)
In order to track their progress, WG has been sending out an anonymous, voluntary production contributor survey after every shoot, to everyone who was on set - from the DP to talent to the makeup artists - it asks for demographic information such as race and ethnicity.
Initiative #5
Rolling out a series of DEI trainings and supporting Employee Resource Groups
DEI Learning Platform & Training
Eskalera is the new DEI learning platform LG rolled out across the company in May 2021, starting with senior leaders and the DEI Council. The intention is to integrate DEI learning into the company’s regular operations, and require everyone to dedicate time on a weekly basis to this training. The content is ready out-of-the-box, with an emphasis on inclusivity, exclusion, diversity, identity, and introspection.
To date, 90% of managers and 85% of non-managers have engaged with the first Eskalera “path” (multiple learning tracks) on the topic of Inclusion & Diversity. The followup path will be on the topic of Exclusion. LG is planning to measure the efficacy of Eskalera through changes in employee engagement surveys conducted in Q4. These will be done via CultureAmp, which offers out-of-the-box-ready questions on topics such as belonging or personal and collective growth.
There are also DEI resources being regularly updated on LG’s company Intranet. (This is the landing page for employees to access departments like HR and tech as well as company information and announcements.) The DEI section now offers information like past recorded panels, terminologies, safe space guidance, a calendar of observances, updates across different LG brands of their DEI work, as well as DEI-related readings.
For all heritage months (e.g., Black History Month) educational resources are organized by time commitment. For example: 5 minute listens, 10 minute watches (e.g., short video), 15 minute read, 2 hour films. There are also supplementary virtual events employees can attend; past ones included a fireside chat with Oscar nominee Kemp Powers, a conversation about Intergenerational Women in the Workplace, a Speaker Series conversation with our CEO Sean Moriarty and Dr. William Jelani Cobb, Latinx in the Workplace, and a talk on the documentary 13th.
In addition to Eskalera, WG has organized their own series of DEI trainings focusing on the wellness space specifically. Last year, Maryam Ajayi, founder of Dive In Well, led a five-part series on Diversity in Wellness. In February 2021, WG kicked off their second four-part workshop series, this time with Dr. Akilah Cadet of Change Cadet.
In Q3 and for Q4 2021, WG arranged editorial workshops for the team with the journalist Jill Filipovic. Topics include diversifying sources as well as reporting and writing about sensitive topics (such as sexual assault and mental illness). WG is also looking for additional workshop leaders to lead discussions on how to cover practices like yoga appropriately, as well as combating ableism in content.
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Hiring Practices
In analyzing past LG hiring data, LG has noted that they have over 50% of self-identifying female candidates. However, LG notes a disparity in the percentage of total applicants from marginalized backgrounds (as indicated through a voluntary self-identifying EEOC survey), and thus are working to recruit a more diverse candidate pool when it comes to demographics such as race, age, gender, socioeconomic status, disability status, etc.
There is an informal goal to increase demographic numbers of underrepresented applicants across the board by 3% over the course of 2021. To reach this, LG had just signed on Broadbean, a job posting aggregator service, to post new roles on a variety of hiring sites as well as Handshake to promote its roles to 1,100 colleges and universities, including HBCUs.
Hiring managers are also encouraged to go through specific training via the incoming Eskalera platform as well as Udemy (approximately 1.5 hours a month). LG also provides articles about inclusive hiring via the company Intranet and Slack, and offers resources upon request for data or research assistance in the recruiting process.
Every week, LG also pulls demographic data from employees’ human resources information systems (HRIS) paperwork and offers this demographic data to executive management for review.
LG did not change its interview process this year. Currently, applicants are tracked throughGreenhouse (will be transitioned to Lever in 2022) and hiring managers review all resumes with a member of the LG HR team. All selected applicants then go through 3 rounds of interviews with different members of the brand they are interviewing for. All interviewers have scorecards with questions to ask; most of these questions are different from one another. Some examples of questions include: “What do you think your coworkers have found to be the most rewarding thing about working with you? What about the most challenging?”
DEI Council & Response Committee
The DEI Council at LG has 2-4 representatives from each of LG’s brands. The first company-wide DEI Council meeting was held in May 2021, and the group meets on a quarterly basis. The goal for the DEI council is to update the group on what their brand is working on, what resources they would like LG to provide, and to come together to collaborate on a small business challenge that would create impact within LG. DEI Council representatives work on a volunteer basis. Right now, the DEI Council’s major initiative is to create a mentorship program for LG’s brands; the program structure is planned to be finalized in Q1 2021.
In addition to the company-wide DEI Council meetings, LG meets WG’s DEI Council representative on a bi-weekly basis to share updates. Most of the updates from WG’s side are pulled directly from the aforementioned WG DEI meetings that gather various departments of WG (e.g., editorial, design, operations). In these meetings, team members from each functional group per department (e.g., editorial, events) all report on how DEI initiatives are going within their respective purviews and ask for assistance if needed (e.g., talent needs more trainers with different types of abilities for a video).
LG has also built a Response Committee to discuss how best to address larger news, such as Black Lives Matter or the anti-Asian Atlanta murders in 2021, by splitting situations into red / yellow / green, and deciding what avenue (e.g., all hands meetings or company-wide email or some facilitated conversations) would be most appropriate.
Conclusion
Through this white paper, we tracked Well+Good and Leaf Group's implementation of 5 DEI initiatives over the course of 2021. Our ultimate goal is to provide a sample roadmap for other food media companies interested in leading similar initiatives, by recording benchmarks, processes, and systems utilized by Well+Good and Leaf Group in the last year. In doing so, we hope this resource can minimize some of the activation energy needed to foster a more inclusive, equitable industry for BIPOC and otherwise marginalized talent. The initiatives we tracked in this white paper were:
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Updating an internal style guide for content, specifically the portions dedicated to cultural sensitivity and other DEI-related topics
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Conducting a systemic audit & cleanup of WG's archive of content
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Updating WG’s benchmarks for diversity of representation across e-commerce, social media, and video.
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Increasing the diversity of WG’s freelance and contributor pool across editorial, art/design, and video.
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Rolling out a series of DEI trainings across LG and WG, and supporting employee-driven DEI efforts with Employee Resource Groups (ERGs).
We also conducted an Instagram Live session with our primary stakeholders for this whitepaper in 2021 (see left) for those interested in hearing more about these initiatives directly from those in W+G and LG leadership.
We are grateful to our stakeholders and interviewees at Well+Good and Leaf Group for their time and energy throughout 2021.
This free resource has been a labor of love and the result of tremendous emotional labor from all parties involved. If you found this white paper valuable, please consider backing us on Patreon or sending us a donation via GiveLively.
If you would like to reference this during industry conversations or conferences please provide a backlink to the original webpage to provide full context and credit Studio ATAO. Our mission is to shift the trajectory of food media representation by laying out different guiding principles for our industry.
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If you are a company or organization interested in working with us to host workshops and/or trainings on the topics covered in this initiative, you can learn more about doing that here and reach out to us at hello@studioatao.org.
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