Carolynn Johnson joins SHRM to lead CEO Action for Inclusion and Diversity

Carolynn Johnson spent more than 20 years at inclusion strategy company Fair360 (formerly Diversity Inc.), climbing the ranks and overseeing editorial strategy and DEI research before eventually taking over as CEO in 2019. She took on the role just months before Covid-19 shut down the world, but still managed to grow revenue by 49% during her tenure.

After both of Johnson’s parents passed away in 2023, she said she needed to step away from DEI work for a while. Now, she’s ready to return to the work she’s spent decades moving forward, this time at SHRM, where, in early March, she was tapped to lead its CEO Action for Inclusion and Diversity (I&D), helping leaders build inclusive workplaces through research and insights.

Johnson recently sat down with HR Brew to discuss her new role at SHRM, and how I&D plays a role in modern workplaces.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

How did you know you were ready to step back into DEI work?

When I saw a lot of the work that was researched-backed—literally the points of people who were promoted or who chose to stay because we were able to help leaders understand what organizational change looked like—when I started to see that disappear, I said to myself, “It’s time.”

Tell me about your new role at SHRM.

In Oct. 2024, SHRM took over CEO Action for Price Waterhouse Cooper (PwC). … And so my goal is to transition it from a coalition to a think tank member community that offers advisory services.

The research agenda is going to be aligned with what we know is happening inside of workplaces. It’s going to include what we know should be happening, and we’re going to make sure that people understand corporations are still committed to doing this [I&D]. It just has to be done according to the law, and that has always been the case.

Given the pushback on DEI in recent years, is there any part of you that feels scared about its future?

Absolutely not. As a data scientist, there’s a difference in reframing, renaming and getting rid of research, and I think SHRM is a perfect example of that. This idea that we no longer valued equity, I think it was a huge misunderstanding, because the importance of it is still there. But when half of your workforce, or half of the audience you serve believes that something excludes them…you have to respond to that.

We’ve had to evolve our language and how we talk about people, processes, and things in the corporate space for a very long time. This is no different.

What recent I&D trends surprised or disappointed you?

I believe we started to really do the most when it came to I&D. I believe that during Covid, a lot of researchers and a lot of folks that held the title as chief diversity or inclusion officer got out of control with who they put in the front of rooms.

I think that dragging people into a room and telling them that they’re inherently biased just because of the color of their skin was disgusting. When we think about how we got here, it’s because people are not responsible to prevent the very thing they were saying they were trying to stop happening to someone else.

You still have your own beliefs that may be contrary to the person sitting across from you. How do you check those at the door to make sure that you’re advising people properly?

You have to do it with a level of intentionality, and you have to walk into it having played through in your mind, all the probabilities of what could be said and what would go wrong. You have to actually get comfortable being in a place where you’re not going to agree with most of what somebody is going to say.

You have to go in there with a goal and make sure that when you leave, that goal is met, and that is to get information or share information that will help the people that you’re focused on. And for me, and for SHRM, that’s our members, the chapters in all of our community, people who are touched. … It is not about emotion.

Do CEOs still support employees showing up authentically?

Yes; they may not do it [I&D] on a website with a big splash, but how they’re designing programs, how they fit identity into their overall strategy, that is still very real. That’s still very strong.

I think about CEOs who talk about the fact that they’re going to continue with certain I&D programs because they’re a business necessity. That doesn’t go away. How we talk about it may change, but understanding that people are our greatest asset, not computers or artificial intelligence, but people—that’s not going to change.