Talent Makers

Expert Insights: Joelle Emerson

Please tell us about your background.

I've always been passionate about equity and justice. I started my career as a civil rights and women's rights lawyer, suing companies for things like pay and promotion discrimination, pregnancy discrimination, sexual harassment, and retaliation. In the course of doing that work, I began to feel like this reactive approach—suing a company after so many things had gone wrong—wasn't inspiring the level of impact I wanted to see in organizations.

I fundamentally believe that organizations can be powerful tools for creating a better, more inclusive world, and I wanted to find a way to drive that change. Ultimately, I founded Paradigm alongside Natalie Johnson, who developed and analyzed a wide range of diversity and inclusion initiatives at Google, and Dr. Carissa Romero, who co-founded Stanford University's applied research center on learning mindsets. We partner with organizations around the world that want to build best-in-class cultures where people from all backgrounds can do their best work and can thrive.

Hiring is one critical aspect of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) efforts: It directly influences representation within organizations, and it is a core process where organizations have an opportunity to embed equity and inclusion into their decision-making. Over the past several years, we've partnered with hundreds of companies on a wide range of hiring initiatives, from building more inclusive, ...