Diversity & Inclusion

Steve Kerrigan, president & CEO, talks about Kennedy Community Health Center's expansion into Milford, his cooperative relationship with other nonprofit leaders, and the start of a new trans healthcare practice.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion leaders have some of the highest turnover rates among executives. The cause is manifold, but it often has to do with the organization a CDO is serving.

Latin and Black American women can have access to the inner circles – that’s diversity – but once inside, they face unique challenges, aggressions, and are often isolated from conversations. That shows lack of inclusion.

Worcester’s chief diversity officer role was the lowest-paid chief position in the City cabinet in 2020, making a salary roughly $74,000 lower than the average c-suite city employee, according to 2020 data on Worcester’s website.

In the first year after elected officials allowed a statewide moratorium on evictions to lapse, tenants in neighborhoods where a majority of residents are nonwhite were nearly twice as likely to face eviction than renters in mostly white areas, according to a new report.

Stephanie Williams, who is resigning as Worcester’s chief diversity officer, has been hired by Mount Wachusett Community College in Gardner to be the school’s first-ever chief diversity executive.

At Tuesday night’s Worcester City Council meeting, City Manager Edward Augustus said he was open to hiring an independent investigator to help understand the cause of high turnover within the chief diversity officer role in Worcester.

Joseph Corazzini, vice president for government and community affairs at Clark University, has been appointed to serve on Massachusetts’ Black Advisory Commission.

Stephanie Williams, Worcester’s chief diversity officer whose resignation was announced on March 4, has released her own statement about her decision to leave.

"We have gone backwards. With a population so diverse we now only have one person of color in the leadership of the administration and no Black women," wrote Fred Taylor, president of Worcester’s NAACP Unit, in a letter.