Our Commitment to the Black Lives Matter Movement

Jun 24, 2020 by Tim Sarchet

We at Nomadic Learning stand in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement.

We recognize, like many people, that simply touting that position is an empty gesture. Instead, we want to share the actions we’re taking to show our solidarity.

As a global education company with roots in the United States, we recognize that we are embedded in and, ultimately, beneficiaries of a racist system built on notions of white supremacy and oppression that has shaped global society for the past 400 years.

Our purpose at Nomadic has always been to create the best online education in the world. But now we must ask ourselves, to what end? And for whom?

We help organizations and individuals develop the knowledge that will allow them to excel in the modern world. We teach from a human-centered lens, emphasizing things like empathy, self-reflection, and learning to understand problems within the contexts in which they arise. We believe that, through education, people grow, organizations become more successful, and the world bends toward justice.

Given who we are and the system in which we operate, we recognize that we cannot do the work we’ve set out to do unless we address fundamental problems within this system.

To that end, we commit to:

Amplifying Black Voices in our Content: We strive to be inclusive in our content, bringing in voices from around the world. But, too often, we reflect the experiences of white voices, failing to make room for the experiences of Black people and other People of Color around the world.

We commit to change the defaulting of white stories as “everyone’s” experience. We will ensure that we highlight voices and experiences that are underrepresented in our content, especially voices from the Black American workforce and other globally underrepresented voices.

One of the major ways we’ll do this is through a Program designed for companies to actively dismantle systemic racism within their organizations, created in partnership with experts who are already leading this work.To get it right will take some time, but we hope to launch this Program in early 2021.

Increasing Racial Diversity on Our Team: We cannot fulfill our commitments toward creating a more just, educated world by relying on a team that is predominantly white. To that end, we commit to improving our hiring practices to bring on more team members from non-white backgrounds, in full-time, permanent roles, with an initial emphasis on bringing on more Black team members.

A more diverse team is essential to the success of the organization and the fulfillment of our purpose. A more diverse team means better content that serves a wider audience with a broader range of viewpoints.

Offering Free Access to Our Content: We are a global education company dedicated to helping organizations and individuals develop the knowledge that will help them excel in the modern world. We’ve spent thousands of hours creating world-class learning that helps organizations and individuals thrive.

Now, we commit to offering our management and leadership content to organizations working in the Black Lives Matter movement, and organizations working for equality and access to education worldwide, with the aim of giving these powerful leaders more tools to further their work. To request access for you or your team, contact us here.

Exerting Our Soft Power: We reach hundreds of thousands of influential and powerful people: the leaders and employees of the world's corporations. But we don’t talk about real injustice in corporate training. We commit to changing that.

Nomadic is committed to using our platform to influence and educate the influential. We will tell the stories of injustice and the triumphs of the oppressed to the audiences we reach. And we’re committed to empowering and enabling Black voices to tell that story in their own words.

Supporting Organizations through Time, Knowledge, and Funding: While our content is aimed primarily at professional-class adults, we as a collective have skills, time, and money that we commit to offering to worthwhile organizations, particularly those who are working to bring access to education to underserved communities worldwide. For the past 3 years we have offered our staff 8 days paid annual leave for volunteering activities. From today we will increase this to 12 days per year.

We have made a $4000 contribution to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and have committed to reimbursing up to $200 per employee for contributions to nonprofits of their choosing. We will continue to support organizations on the front lines of the Black Lives Matter movement and organizations fighting for equality and access to education worldwide with annual donations equal to 5% of the total employee bonuses we pay to our staff.

At the moment, we are focusing our attention around issues raised by the Black Lives Matter Movement. We also acknowledge there are countless instances of oppression and injustice in the world today and will strive to amplify the voices of underrepresented people wherever we can. In future blog posts, we will share some of the concrete ways we plan to do that.