Black Lives Matter.
At IWBI, we stand for health and all human rights. Those rights were denied to George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery when their lives were cut short. Their murders - and the loss of so many other Black lives - record in sharp relief that we’ve not done nearly enough to fortify our cities, neighborhoods, workplaces, schools and homes to protect the Black community against racism, oppression and injustice.
The civil rights movement in the U.S. proved the power of place and its ability to welcome or to reject, to integrate or to segregate, to empower or to disempower, to help or to harm. There is much more work to do to ensure that the places where we live, work, gather and heal not only safeguard Black people but also help Black families and communities to flourish. This has to be the bedrock of our collective efforts.
To channel our outrage and our anger around this unending cascade of injustice into lasting, systemic change, we are making a commitment to do better: to hold ourselves accountable to the values we believe in and to take persistent action. We will begin our work by meeting today as an all-staff, global team to discuss how we can match our actions with our aspirations - how we can dedicate ourselves and our organization’s resources - our dollars, our time, our platform, our programs, our daily efforts - to celebrate diversity and combat bias and racism. We commit to sharing transparently with you as we put the pieces in place.
These efforts hinge on our ability to pose hard questions and truly listen to our fellow team members and the WELL community at large:
What will we do to recruit more people of color to be part of our team? How can we fundamentally challenge our own ways of thinking and being? How can we better recognize unconscious bias and commit to courageous conversations to evolve ourselves and our collective consciousness? And can we inspire similar explorations across our community? How can we use our platform to help diversify the industry and highlight Black voices? How will we stay connected to one another in this moment and how can we show up in support and solidarity for our Black friends, family, neighbors and colleagues?
We are also thinking about the WELL movement: What should our mission of market transformation look like as applied to equity, inclusion and diversity, and how can we continuously raise the bar to help organizations and communities achieve it? What can we do to make WELL more accessible? How can we proactively diversify our community of WELL APs and champions? How can we influence the flow of capital to underwrite the change we collectively seek?
At IWBI, we acknowledge that we have work to do, from the inside out, in order to better show up for the Black community. We commit to doing that work. We commit to sharing our process with you as we learn. We encourage you to join us, and are grateful to every one of you who have already raised your hands to do just that. We are listening: letsdobetter@wellcertified.com.
Rick Fedrizzi
Chairman & CEO
Rachel Gutter
President
