The strategic area of the agencies has a lack of black people in their structures; project wants to stop imbalance in advertising
The first official meeting of Academia Preta, a VMLY&R project, took place last week with the participation of leaders from the Service and Business Group. The ten students selected for the first class are interested in this strategic area of the agencies, which has almost zero levels of Afro-descendant professionals on its staff.
The educational initiative aims, as explained by Valerya Borges, director of equity, inclusion and belonging at VMLY&R, to stop consolidated stereotypes and open up opportunities for black people based on knowledge. Valerya, who entered the advertising market through a recommendation, dreams of a new metric to break the paradigm of IQ (Who Recommends), which cannot be the key to opening doors for black people in the world of customer service and generating business.
The first group will have weekly online and in-person meetings. The course will conclude in November. For 2024, the idea is to increase the volume of participants. Valerya highlights that this year the plan was to receive 20 registrants, but, due to the available space, it was necessary to make adjustments. The lack of networking not only depletes but also inhibits the chances of black people competing for positions on equal terms.
One of the areas that has the fewest black people in advertising is customer service. Therefore, we want to employ this sector. This pilot project aims to map talents that have an aptitude for the business sector and create opportunities for them to get to know the segment and our market, in addition to opening up the exchange of experiences and the exchange of knowledge, considers Valerya, who has statistics that prove that Many black people study communications, from advertising to public relations, from journalism to radio and TV, but go on to work in other sectors of the economy.
Read the full article in the October 2, 2023 edition
