Choir, a diversity technical forum and certification program for financial services conventions, announces the first group of choir certified and inaugural participant conferences, taking action toward increasing the visibility of women, non-binary people and people of color. are. The startup was launched earlier this year by Sonya Drezler, an impact investment consultant and founder of Solutions with Sonya, and Liv Gagnon, founder of public relations and marketing consulting firm Portga, with the goal of setting the industry standard for conference diversity.
“Since we launched, there has been an increasing interest in the financial industry to seek out this exact type of third party verification and support from conferences to help them reach representation goals on their platform,” said Gagnon, Choir Co- The founder said, in testimony. “Conference teams have a huge task to do each year, and it can be easy to overlook the specifics of the agenda that could impact speaker diversity and equity. The data and guidance we provided has already been prepared for the conference. has proved valuable to the organisers, and we are just getting started.”
Envestnet’s 2021 Advisory Summit, The Carson Group’s Accel 2021 and The First Positive Financial Network’s 2021 ESG to Impact! Choirs are the first events to receive certification, meaning they have earned a choir score of 60 or higher.
The choir uses a proprietary assessment to quantify “visibility”, which is not just the number of women, people of color and non-binary people speaking on stage at the event. They look closely at each speaking venue and assess visibility based on seven factors, such as stage visibility, number of concurrent sessions, and number of panelists. They also look to see if a session offers continuing education (CE) credits, as they tend to be more popular among attendees. Another factor is the length of the presentation; For example, a lot of conferences have “mini-sessions” which get less visibility.
Those factors are then cross-referenced with race and gender data for each speaker, with an additional metric that accounts for the multiple levels of discrimination that women of color face.
The choir aggregates all of the data to come up with a choir score ranging from 1 to 100, which determines how well the convention highlights marginalized groups compared to their representation in the US population. Conferences with a score of 60 or higher will be eligible for certification and receive a bronze, silver or gold badge to show their commitment to diversity on stage.
The choir also announced its inaugural partner conventions, including Informa Connect’s RIA Edge, Snappy Kraken’s Flick! Future proof the conference and advisory board. The partnership is for first-year events that seek to meet choir representation standards. The company works with the event planning team to benchmark goals and assess conference representation in real time. This collaboration also increases the chance that the event will receive a certification upon completion.
“The Wealth Management Edge is shaping up to be the largest third-party event in our industry, and we have both the opportunity and the responsibility to ensure that we emphasize the importance of diversity, and the wide range of voices and perspectives that we have to offer. Reshaping financial advice,” said Mark Bruno, managing director of wealth management at Informa Connect. “The partnership with Choir is a significant step forward—and it is the first of many new programs and initiatives we’re looking to introduce to diversity and wealth management. Will present to focus on inclusion.”
