Consulting Psychology Journal:

Practice and Research

© 2020 American Psychological Association 2020, Vol. 72, No. 4, 243–246
ISSN: 1065-9293 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/cpb0000191
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THE STATE OF PROGRESS IN

DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION INITIATIVES:
PERSPECTIVES FOR CONSULTING
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PSYCHOLOGY
Bernardo M. Ferdman
Ferdman Consulting, San Diego, California

Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) are critical issues for leaders and organizations.
Although they have been important for a long time, recently amplified attention to
DEI serves as a backdrop to this special issue of Consulting Psychology Journal:
Practice and Research, which focuses on the state of progress in initiatives for
diversity and inclusion across industries and contexts and includes a varied set of
articles that, together, begin to create a picture of both where consulting psychology
is with regard to DEI and where it needs to go. As the first collection of articles in
this journal specifically focused on such initiatives, it is both timely and much
needed. The articles, written by scholars and practitioners, include reflections on
practice, case studies, and calls for studying a greater range of populations. It is
hoped that this collection will inspire more sustained, systematic, and systemic work
on DEI by consulting psychologists.

What’s It Mean? Implications for Consulting Psychology

The field of consulting psychology will benefit from more sustained and systemic
attention to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), both in our practice and in our
client systems. It is important for consulting psychologists to learn about, address,
and become more proficient in issues of DEI and to integrate this knowledge and skill
into our theory, education, and practice. This special issue begins to provide a
foundation and a direction for that work.

Keywords: diversity, inclusion, consulting psychology

As I write this in September 2020 —in the months after George Floyd was killed by a Minneapolis
police officer, who was subsequently charged with murder, and Breonna Taylor was killed by
Louisville police as they invaded her home—the prevalence of systemic racism and its pervasive and

X Bernardo M. Ferdman, Ferdman Consulting, San Diego, California.

I am grateful to the guest editors for the invitation to prepare this introduction to the set of articles published
in this special issue.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Bernardo M. Ferdman. E-mail:
bernardo@ferdmanconsulting.com

243
 244 FERDMAN

pernicious effects have become much more difficult, if not impossible, to continue to cover up.
People everywhere of all races continue to raise their voices to proclaim that Black Lives Matter,
and many organizations and their leaders are engaged in efforts to reexamine their practices and to
uncover and perhaps change the manifestations of centuries of anti-Black racism (Hanna-Jones,
2019) and other forms of discrimination.
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In this context, diversity and inclusion and their importance are perhaps more salient than ever in
organizations of all types as well as for general public (Kyle, 2020), both in the United States and around
the world. The American Psychological Association (APA) has put out multiple statements, held town
halls and other convocations, and shared a range of resources with the public to promote greater
awareness of what APA president (and consulting psychologist) Sandra Shullman has referred to as the
“racism pandemic,” as well as to emphasize the need for and path toward systemic change, both across
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the United States and its institutions as well as within psychology itself (Abrams, 2020). At the same
time, the differential effects of the COVID-19 pandemic as a function of race (e.g., Moore et al., 2020),
economic conditions, and other variations in social identities have increased awareness of the great
disparities in the U.S. and elsewhere in health care and health outcomes, in work conditions, and in other
critical social indicators. And many practitioners who specialize in diversity, equity, and inclusion
(DEI)—such as myself— have experienced large increases in the number of inquiries and engagements,
as people in a range of organizations decide that addressing DEI issues is no longer optional and needs
to be a priority (see, e.g., https://ideacoalition.org; https://ceoaction.com), even in the midst of the
pandemic and its concomitant economic and other challenges.
These are but some of the manifestations of the amplified attention to DEI that serves as a
backdrop to this special issue of Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research, which
focuses on the state of progress in initiatives for DEI across industries and contexts and includes a
varied set of articles that, together, begin to create a picture of both where consulting psychology
is with regard to such initiatives and where it needs to go. It is important to note that the call for
papers came out well before current events made DEI much more salient and that the importance
of these issues is not new (see, e.g., Ferdman & Deane, 2014; Holvino, Ferdman, & Merrill-Sands,
2004). Indeed, prior special issues of this journal, for example, have focused on culture, race, and
ethnicity in consulting psychology (Cooper & Leong, 2008) and on coaching and consulting in
multicultural contexts (Turner, 2007). Other than those issues and occasional (and rare) single
articles (e.g., Plummer, 1998), however, this journal has not previously addressed DEI initiatives,
in spite of their importance to organizations and their relevance to the discipline and practice of
consulting psychology (Ferdman, 2018). This is the first collection of articles in this journal
specifically focused on DEI initiatives—sustained and systematic efforts to attend to and increase
diversity and to foster inclusion—and so it is both timely and much needed.

What Is in the Special Issue?

The authors in this collection represent a wide range of identities and roles and vary greatly in their style
and perspectives, as they address different aspects of DEI work and the variety the issues that it involves.
Given the relative newness of this area to consulting psychology, this diversity is welcome, necessary,
and appropriate. The contributions include personal and professional reflections, case studies, and calls
for studying (and serving) a greater range of populations.
In a contribution grounded in many years of DEI and consulting psychology practice, as well
as in his lived experience, Gregory Pennington (2020)—a past president of the Society of Consulting
Psychology—shares a powerful reflection that combines the personal and the professional through
the lenses of multiple identities to challenge readers and consulting psychology to take a deeper look
at what constitutes “progress” with regard to race and other aspects of diversity and inclusion.
Pennington’s powerful questions—many of which he leaves open—and his engaging and compel-
ling vision impel the reader to a more nuanced and complex view of diversity and inclusion work.
Umran Beba and Allan Church (2020)—two PepsiCo executives, the latter of whom is a noted
organizational and consulting psychologist—provide practice-based insights, grounded in the first
author’s experience, about the importance of adopting an organization-development and culture-
 DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION INITIATIVES 245

change approach in designing and implementing strategies for diversity and inclusion (D&I) and
embedding them in the organization’s systems. Janice Gassam and Nicholas Salter (2020)— both
external consultants and one of them an academic—argue in their article for the benefits of external
consultants as providers of DEI workshops in organizations, and they provide useful insights on
what external consultants might do to help ensure that participants are open to the learning in such
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workshops. Theodore Hayes, Kathleen Oltman, Leah Kaylor, and Aishwarya Belgudri (2020)—a
team led by practitioners working in the U.S. federal government—focus their contribution on the
question of how to drive commitment to D&I work, particularly in corporate boards and among
individual managers and as a key element of an organization’s climate.
In their article, Courtenay Cavanaugh and Keith Green (2020)—a professor of psychology and
a professor of English, respectively, at Rutgers University–Camden—share a case study that
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explains the process involved in implementing a training program for members of faculty search
committees designed to decrease bias and increase racial and ethnic diversity of faculty hires.
Finally, Abby Corrington, Mikki Hebl, Dillon Stewart, Juan Madera, Linnea Ng, and Jordyn
Williams (2020)—a team of management and psychology scholars specializing in D&I—provide a
compelling call for practitioners and researchers to pay specific attention to several populations that
typically have been ignored or understudied by consulting psychologists and scholars studying D&I.
Specific attention by consulting psychologists to these populations—including people who are
transgender and gender nonconforming, undocumented immigrants, people who are poor or have
low socioeconomic status, seniors, and those with multiple marginalized identities—would certainly
go a long way in preparing the field to better address diversity and perhaps inclusion.

The Way Forward

Overall, the articles in the special issue cover a wide range of topics that illuminate various important
considerations and issues in D&I practice. Although I would have liked to see additional contributions
more systematically addressing how consulting psychologists, in particular, approach D&I initiatives,
their absence may in itself indicate that this work has not yet become a core element of what many
consulting psychologists do or are prepared to do. This set of articles, and the special issue as a whole,
may very well serve as a catalyst both for more participation in systemic DEI work (Ferdman, 2018;
Ferdman & Deane, 2014; Ferdman, Prime, & Riggio, 2021) by consulting psychologists and for the
development of more points of view on such work grounded in frameworks and perspectives for
consulting psychology as well as in extensive experience with strategic DEI initiatives.
We have come a long way in consulting psychology with regard to DEI, as shown by this
collection of articles, but we still have a long way to go. It is very important for consulting
psychologists to learn about, address, and become more proficient in issues of DEI and to integrate
this knowledge and skill into our theory, education, and practice. Current attention to DEI, and
particularly to the need for more intentional and sustained work on antiracism (Kendi, 2019) as well
as on racial dynamics and power and privilege, will hopefully spur increased awareness on the part
of consulting psychologists to the full range of DEI literature and practice as well as the more
complete integration of these into the field. There is evidence that this is already happening, as seen
for example in presentations by consulting psychologists at the 2020 conference of the APA.
As this happens, and as DEI considerations continue to take a more central place in our
discipline—in both practice and scholarship— consulting psychologists will be better prepared to
truly make a difference in creating more inclusive and just organizations and communities.

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Received September 22, 2020

Accepted September 23, 2020 䡲