I have been interested in and engaged with racial equity my entire life. My father was a Legal Aid lawyer in the 1970s and 1980s. Nearly 100% of his clients were impoverished African Americans who lived in the city of Cleveland. He worked out of the Hough Office, which is the heart of the African American community in Northeast Ohio. We also lived in a neighborhood that was racially diverse. My elementary school was about 50% white and 50% black. As a consequence of my father’s passion for racial justice and my early friendships with black and brown peers, I have always been drawn to DEIJ. Our organization works in the fields of land conservation and restoration and urban revitalization. We now know based on the science behind the determinants of health that in the absence of relative environmental equality, we will never realize human equality. Collectively we have to improve the environmental conditions of our diverse cities; the conditions in which many BIPOC people live are themselves a powerful and overlooked form of oppression. CEOs are leaders, and it is incumbent on all CEOs in America to lead with regard to DEIJ; otherwise, change will never happen. It is long past time for us to expose and destroy the insidious and often invisible hand of systemic oppression.

Richard D. Cochran