Parity.Org is the leading impact organization increasing representation of women and people of color in organizational leadership, where the gap is the widest. Founded in 2017 with a mission to create parity in leadership for women, we expanded that focus in 2020 to include people of color.
We take a pragmatic approach, offering straightforward, practical strategies and tools that work, and work fast. Quite simply, organizations that take our ParityPLEDGE® and then use our ParityMODEL™ and ParityINDEX® make swift, measurable progress toward their DEI goals.
Our Mission:
To increase representation of women and people of color in organizational leadership,
where the gap is the widest.
The Representation Gap
Although white men represent just 38% of the workforce, they hold 61% of C-Suite positions, and 85% of Board positions at large and mid-sized companies.
McKinsey 2022 & EOEC 2020
The Perception Gap
Women and people of color are consistently perceived as having less “leadership potential” than their peers–even when they are outperforming those exact same colleagues on evaluations of current performance.
Yale Insights 2021
The Access Gap
Minority job applicants are far less likely to get interviews when it is apparent on their resumes that they are people of color. Companies are more than twice as likely to contact them when they have “whitened” their resumes–and this is true even at companies that claim to value diversity.
Harvard, 2017
The Pay Gap
Just 3 years after graduation, 75% of men are paid more than their female classmates from the exact same programs at the exact same universities. Men with Georgetown accounting degrees, for example, make $155K three years post-graduation–a whopping 55% more than their female classmates. Similarly, Black and Hispanic workers earn less on average than their white peers of the same education level; Black workers with advanced degrees, for instance, earn 18% less.
The Wall Street Journal 2022 & Economic Policy Institute 2019
The Exposure Gap
Women and people of color are more likely than white men to be assigned office “housework” tasks as opposed to the more high-profile assignments that tend to fuel career advancement. And fewer than a third of Black professionals say that they have access to senior leaders at work, compared to nearly half of white professionals.
Harvard Business Review 2018 & Coqual 2020
The Advancement Gap
For every 100 men who are
promoted from entry-level to manager, just 87 women are promoted, and just 82 women of color. As a result, men significantly outnumber women at the managerial level, creating an unbalanced candidate slate when senior leadership positions become available. To make matters worse, when there is only one woman on a slate of four finalist job candidates, the woman statistically has a 0% chance of landing the job. (Yes, you read that correctly.)
McKinsey 2022 & Harvard 2016
Companies with diverse management teams generate an average of 45% of their revenue from innovation, compared to just 26% of revenue from those lacking diverse leadership.
Boston Consulting Group 2018
Companies with ethnically and culturally diverse leadership teams are 35% more likely to see above-average profits, and those with diverse Boards are 43% more likely to see above-average profits.
McKinsey 2020
Companies with 30% female leadership enjoy a 15% boost in profitability compared to similar companies with no female leadership. Having three or more women on the Board is correlated with a +10% Return on Equity (ROE).
Peterson Institute 2016 & MSCI 2017
Founder & CEO
Parity.Org
Cathrin has more than 25 years of experience as an executive and thought leader in the healthcare industry, having held senior operating roles and served as an advisor to investors, tech companies, as well as State and Federal governments.
After mentoring and supporting the careers of numerous women throughout her career, Ms. Stickney founded Parity.Org in 2017, in an effort to address corporate gender imbalance on a larger scale. In 2020, she expanded the Parity.Org mission to include people of color.
In addition to serving as CEO of Parity.Org, Ms. Stickney is currently an Adjunct Professor at NYU, teaching a course she wrote on The Making of an Entrepreneur, and developing a new course on Diversity in Business. She also advises early-stage tech companies on their strategic growth and business models. In 2021, she was selected by Business Insider as one of the Top 100 People Influencing Business.
Managing Partner
Zetta Venture Partners
Mark has been in venture capital for more than 25 years. His firm, Zetta Venture Partners, is not only committed to gender parity; but is the first firm to include a no-sexual harassment clause in all of their term sheets.
Chief Communications Officer
Domo
Julie is Domo’s Chief Communications Officer, responsible for communications strategies and programs to build and protect brand reputation and help teams sell. Previously she was a partner at The Outcast Agency leading the high-tech firm’s east coast business. Julie helped launch Parity.Org in 2017 and has served on the advisory board of Utah’s Women Tech Council for more than a decade.
Education Director
The Kennedy Forum
Amy is the Education Director of The Kennedy Forum where she pursues partnerships and collaborations that emphasize evidence-based research and programming to facilitate policy change in the areas of education and mental health. Her experiences as a mother and teacher have propelled her efforts and advocacy around social-emotional learning and mental wellness for children. Kennedy was the Democratic Party nominee in the 2020 elections to represent New Jersey’s 2nd congressional district.
CEO
Aetion
Carolyn has been an operations leader at major healthcare companies like United Healthcare, Evolent, and Remedy. She is now CEO at Aetion where she delivers real-world evidence for manufacturers, purchasers and regulators of medical treatments and technologies. Under Carolyn’s leadership, Aetion and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are working together in a new research collaboration to use real-world data (RWD) to advance the agency’s understanding of and response to COVID-19.
Venture Advisor
NEA
Director, Bank of the West/BNP Paribas Group, Best Buy Corporation, and CoreLogic Inc. As the managing director of IBM Venture Capital Group, Claudia served on the board of the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA), the Latin American Venture Capital Association, Women in Leadership in Private Equity in China, Canadian Innovation Exchange, Savannah Fund in Africa, and many other global venture capital organizations. In 2015 she was named by Worth Magazine as one of 20 most powerful players in Silicon Valley.
President
Harvey Mudd College
Maria Klawe began her tenure as Harvey Mudd College’s fifth president in 2006. A renowned computer scientist and scholar, President Klawe is the first woman to lead the college since its founding in 1955. Prior to joining HMC, she served as Dean of Engineering and Professor of Computer Science at Princeton University.
