BOCA RATON, Fla.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Black marketing executives from 26 iconic consumer and business-to-business brands and companies today announced the formation of the Black Executive CMO Alliance (BECA) – an alliance designed to champion diversity at the corporate leadership level. BECA will provide a vibrant forum for collaboration and networking, while also creating opportunity, access and change through mentorship – helping to build the next generation of C-suite marketing executives.
“The vision for BECA was inspired by my own journey as a Black global marketing executive,” said Jerri DeVard, BECA Founder and Fortune 100 CMO and Board Director. “Many of our founding members, like me, have worked incredibly hard throughout their careers to achieve positions of leadership and quickly realized that ‘few others look like them’ and have experienced the discontentment of being the ‘lonely only’ at the top. I created this Alliance of Black marketing executives because it didn’t exist and is so desperately needed. BECA will challenge the corporate diversity gap and change the census by mentoring and building the pipeline of talented Black executives who will follow in our footsteps.”
The founding members of BECA pledge to be catalysts for change by addressing inequities, while developing tangible actions to better prepare, support and cultivate Black marketing talent. This includes mentorship programs, first-hand executive exposure and coaching, career pathing and identifying skill opportunities to grow the Black marketing leadership talent pool.
BECA will serve as a safe space for communication, collaboration, networking, and will serve as a force to drive meaningful change through the collective genius and influence of its membership. BECA’s members, whose titles include president, CEO, COO, as well as CMO, have marketing at the core of their experiences. They bring a diverse range of expertise and currently serve as executives of:
3M |
Nationwide Insurance |
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Adidas |
Netflix |
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Amazon Prime Video & Studios |
NielsenIQ |
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Amway |
Peloton |
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BCW |
PetSmart |
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Eastern Bank |
Prudential Financial |
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Ecolab |
Thought Exchange |
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GroupM |
Trinity Health |
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HARMAN |
UPS |
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Jellyfish |
Unilever |
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Logitech |
Viacom CBS-BET |
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Mars Wrigley NA |
Vice Media |
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Merrell |
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“It’s a privilege to be among the founding members of BECA,” said Esi Eggleston Bracey, Unilever Chief Operating Officer. “BECA is a powerful opportunity to use our collective scale to show the next generation what’s possible and to pay it forward as passionate champions of diversity at the corporate leadership level.”
According to Coqual, formerly The Center for Talent Innovation, and "Being Black in Corporate America" released in late 2018, Black people account for only 3.2% of senior leadership roles at large corporations. Despite an intense focus on diversity, equity and inclusion within many organizations, these numbers largely remain unchanged over the last few years as further validated by the Association of National Advertisers “A Diversity Report for the Advertising/Marketing Industry” (November 2020).
“Black professionals are severely underrepresented at the executive and senior leadership levels,” said Kevin Warren, UPS Chief Marketing Officer. “We must identify and develop the next set of marketing talent so we can help them ascend. It’s our duty, and I am proud to be a part of BECA, an organization committed to driving these efforts.”
For more information on BECA, visit www.blackexec.com and follow @TheofficialBECA on Twitter and Black Executive CMO Alliance on LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook. To request a BECA member for a speaking opportunity, visit https://blackexec.com/speaking-engagements.
About the Black Executive CMO Alliance
The Black Executive CMO Alliance (BECA) exists to provide member Black marketing executives based in the U.S., Germany and Switzerland a safe and trusted space to share, learn, elevate and pay it forward to create opportunity, access, and equality for the current and next generation of Black marketing leaders.
