When I wrote our first editor’s letter on June 1st—my mind was racing on how I, as a gay white cis-male, could help in lou of physically being at the protests. With COVID-19 still working it’s way through California and limited testing available to those without cars, I proposed to the team that we raise money for 3 Bay Area charities and the George Floyd Memorial Fund. To better help those keep their faces covered and provide some fiscal give back to our direct communities.

And with the support of you, we raised $153.43. Though it may not be a lot of money—time and time again we watch huge brands who have access to millions of dollars worth of capital not open their purse. A small media business, we can help facilitate a community purse.

As we round out this month however, I’ve reflected personally everyday on my impact toward BIPOC. What I can do in my corner to be serve the community who continually make the Bay Area is shining place to be. Though it may not be a shining place to some—those Black and Brown owned businesses, artists, theater players, writers, government officials, and more continue to show up and be your best Black and Brown excellent selves.

At Bob Cut, we continue to be mindful of our diversity and inclusivity but ultimately, we can take it a step further. Moving forward on July 1st, 2020—we’re enacting new goals and rules that continue to better suit our current and future BIPOC workers. Thus, we wanted to lay those plans out here for you.

Actively hire BIPOCIf you’ve seen on our Instagram, we posted our current and past hiring numbers for those to be enlightened on what race we’ve hired. We want to make it transparent to you that we see these stats and need to balance the numbers out. We plan to incorporate more BIPOC in our marketing images when it comes to hiring and careers. We want to make sure BIPOC can see themselves at the seat of the table without trepidation. Engage expectations as a two way streetAt Bob Cut, we should all be held accountable for our aggressions whether micro or macro. This includes interns to c-level. We want all employees of Bob Cut to feel comfortable, challenged in a healthy way, and feel able to be apart of what we do. For this, we will be enacting weekly one-on-one and/or team meetings to discuss our internal diversity and inclusivity footprint. Having conversations on the regular helps set the standard for a normalized workplace. Create channels for conversationWe also understand that these conversations are hard to talk about—we want to have everyone speak up whether in person or not. We will be creating an in-house support email that will go directly to a human resources representative that has had bias and diversity training. If need is there, we will create a Slack channel that no c-level has access to. We want to be able to fuel the conversation in however medium is best suited for the individual. Re-evaluate Bob Cut’s business and editorial partnersAs a company, Bob Cut works with a variety of third party businesses in order to complete daily tasks. We get solicited by public relations firms, technology firms, warehousing and fulfillment agencies to use their services. We will start approaching them to see their diversity numbers before we engage working with them in any Bob Cut capacity. We need to know beyond words that the company in question is working with diversity and inclusivity of BIPOC in mind. If not, we will cease or terminate any ongoing work or agreement. Hire BIPOC in c-level positionsAs Bob Cut grows as a company, so does the need of our c-level board. Hiring BIPOC in higher positions has shown to create a more empathetic workplace. So as we enter Quarter 3 and 4, we will be on the look to hire BIPOC into our COO, CCO, and CPO positions. And we will be upfront if we don’t hire and examine those learnings of why we didn’t.

Of course, we’re not perfect and we welcome your comments. Without you, coming to Bob Cut to read stories on why we love the Bay Area—we wouldn’t be in a position to hire, uplift, and platform BIPOC. Have feedback for us? Why not write in here and let us know.

We plan to incorporate more BIPOC in our marketing images when it comes to hiring and careers. We want to make sure BIPOC can see themselves at the seat of the table without trepidation.

Thank you all—we are excited to move forward. Feature photography courtesy of Corbin Bell.