JOURNEY’S BEGINNING
23andMe has earned a strong reputation for offering some of the most reliable DNA health and ancestry testing available on the consumer market. Melinda King serves an integral role for the powerhouse company as the Head of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI).
With more than 20 years of history working in Human Resources, King brings a rich history of experience to her role as an important member of their leadership team. In recent years, diversity and inclusion have come to the forefront of many HR departments’ recruitment and retention processes.
While many organizations are only recently learning the value of a multi-faceted team that includes individuals of all backgrounds and cultures, King says she prioritized these factors before it was her job to do so. Comparably spoke to King to get more insight into her career and her role at 23andMe.
“Every role that I was in, I was always asking questions like, ‘Well, why does the top end of the organization look exactly the same? Why are we only recruiting at these particular schools? Who’s been left out of this conversation?’,” she recalls thinking. “I didn’t even know that it was what we now call diversity work.”
With every role she accepted, King was tasked with bulking up the company’s diversity and inclusion efforts. For one company, she organized affinity groups (now known as employee resource groups); for another, she started a field-based diversity committee. All of these initiatives attempted to solve the same issue facing so many organizations in today’s landscape.
Finally, after fielding a question from one of her employees for help as they pursued their journey in DE&I, King realized her passion for the subject: “I realized, that’s it. I could turn this into my career,” she told us.
RETURNING HOME
After her mother fell ill, King moved home to Alabama. Her Alma Mater, the University of Alabama, was nearby, and she landed a position working for the school.
During her tenure working at the university, King began to look at the statistics of students who graduated and their eventual job placements. She began to work for the school’s Division of Student Life and focused on the DEI efforts of the Division. At this time, she started to consider her future and what she wanted from her career in DE&I.
“‘Do I go back to a traditional HR role? Or do I focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion?’,” King remembers thinking.
And it was at this moment on her journey that King was shaken by the murder of George Floyd — an event that rocked the entire nation, forcing a cold, hard look at this country’s history of unfulfilled promises when it comes to equality. The murder impacted her sons’ lives as well as her own and drove her toward a solution-oriented mindset.
FINDING 23andMe
King told herself she needed to be part of the solution and began to focus on diversity work. When she found 23andMe, she wasn’t familiar with the company or its mission, but she identified with its commitment to improving its DEI strategy.
She says she heard 23andMe CEO Anne Wojcicki talking about diversity and inclusion on CNBC with a very frank and honest approach that appealed to King so much that she sought her out on LinkedIn. After sending a note with a simple point — “I think I can help you” — the two connected online, and a professional relationship was born.
“A lot of companies were making these broad statements about diversity. But they weren’t talking specifically about race, and they weren’t saying, ‘This movement right now is about the Black community.’ I appreciated that she wasn’t afraid to say Black and wasn’t afraid to talk about race,” King told us.
At the time, 23andMe had some diversity efforts underway, but hadn’t yet established a dedicated focus on DE&I. Once the company created its diversity role, it contacted King and selected her for the opportunity, which is now her current role.
“I don’t have a story like that for any of my positions that I’ve landed over 20+ years, but it feels like I landed exactly where I was supposed to be when I got here,” King says.
When asked about the culture at 23andMe surrounding DE&I, King says the workplace is unique in its frankness and willingness to be open about society’s issues. By creating space to talk about the events happening in the world, employees feel safe to express their feelings and discuss how it impacts their personal lives.
Instead of encouraging employees to keep their professional and personal lives separate, the team at 23andMe wants to know more about the perspectives of each person they employ.
King spoke of her experience during the George Zimmerman trial, fearing for her sons after hearing the verdict. She didn’t feel the same freedom to speak about her experience in the workplace then – a stark difference from the atmosphere 23andMe fosters for its employees.
“At 23andMe, every time something major happens that impacts our employees, we create a space to talk about it, like when laws are being passed that oppress people. That was a pleasant surprise for me. It was unexpected,” King told us happily.
DE&I DATA
King says she looks at data to determine whether their diversity initiatives are effective and uses data to find ways in which they can improve.
For example, the data may show that individuals from a certain group leave the company more frequently than others, which would indicate an area in which the organization could improve its inclusion and equity.
She understands that people leave jobs when they do not feel appreciated, seen, or heard — particularly if they feel excluded based on race, gender, or disabilities.
GOALS
She tells us that setting clear goals are an essential part of the company’s DEI strategy. King believes in having both cultural and data goals, each with their own important role in elevating diversity and inclusion in the workplace.
While diversity is important, King says that inclusion — and fostering an attitude of inclusion among current employees — is a core part of retention.
“It’s important to make sure that employees feel part of an inclusive culture. You can spend a lot of time hiring individuals from diverse backgrounds, but you don’t want them to get the impression our environment isn’t inclusive, that they were only hired as a diverse hire, they don’t feel included,” she says.
Employees who feel they don’t have a genuine voice on their team will eventually leave and share their negative story with other job seekers in their community. Biases – even unconscious ones – surely stop what would be a natural tendency to embrace diversity for the better of all businesses.
That basic situation, the flaw in human thinking that leads not just to racial discrimination but to sticking with a broken system, is exactly the thing that people like Melinda King are trying to dismantle and rethink at progressive companies like 23andMe.
It’s clear that King’s passion will continue to serve the company well.
