After the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and too many others, followed by Black Lives Matter marches globally, we knew our employees and communities were hurting. First, we engaged our Black employees in honest, small conversations with our CEO and President to brainstorm how we could help.

Subsequently, Barings held a firm-wide audiocast on June 4 featuring our CEO and President and global team to talk about these issues candidly. As a result, in 2020, we issued a public statement denouncing racism and outlining our commitment to change, and took several steps to address racism and inequality, including:

• Supported the formation of two grassroots, employee-led Black ERGs (one in the UK and one in the US)
• Donated $250,000 to non-profit organizations in the U.S. and UK dedicated to addressing inequality and advancing economic mobility: The Urban League of Central Carolinas (Charlotte); Harvey Gantt Museum (Charlotte); All Stars Project (Chicago); The Aleto Foundation (London); The East London Business Alliance (London); Amos Bursary, Pilot of Women's program (London).
• Committed to continued transparency with our employees, including sharing our diversity demographics

We also continued to work with non-profit organizations, such as SEO, to hire interns and analysts to further develop our pipeline of diverse talent, in addition to launching inclusion and unconscious bias training for our Directors and Managing Directors. While these are solid initial steps, we know there is much more to do. As such, we have hired Chasity Boyce as our Chief Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Officer, who sits on Barings' Senior Leadership Team, to help build out and implement a strategy to make our firm more diverse and inclusive. This is a journey. Our company is committed to making changes within and supporting our local communities.