Laura Walker Responds to Investigation
While I am gratified that the investigation found no evidence of systemic discrimination, we at New York Public Radio must hold ourselves to a much higher standard. I vow that we will.
The report has laid bare some important issues in our workplace. The painful fact is that some people experienced mistreatment and marginalization at an organization that prides itself on inclusivity and excellence. As I have said, this happened on my watch, and I accept responsibility. I offer my deep apology to those affected and I commit to doing everything in my power not to let it happen again.
It is time to transform our culture – to build on the values of respect, equity and honesty that we hold dear – off the air as well as on the air. Read about our plan, "Transforming Our Workplace," here.
A national reckoning of sexual harassment and discrimination is taking place in the United States. We can either stand by and let chance decide the outcome or we can seize this moment to make real changes and to lead the way. I choose the latter.
We are developing even stronger ways to prevent harassment, discrimination on the base of race or gender, and bullying; we are creating more transparent and comfortable ways for employees and guests to report objectionable behavior and for management to take swift action to address it. And we will. But we can’t stop there. We must prevent it from happening in the first place through implicit bias training, and adopting best practices for giving feedback and building strong, diverse teams and managers.
I have carefully read the report, and not only do I accept every one of its recommendations, I can affirm that we have already adopted many and are adding even more. As the investigation indicated, I took prompt and significant action when learning of discriminatory behavior, but we need to take further steps. We’ve used this as an opportunity to reflect and assess our organizational strengths and weaknesses. And we listened to hundreds of staff, who passionately came forward with feedback and ideas. Eight employee-led working groups made up of extraordinary and passionate staff members are each focusing on different elements of our change process—from creating a clear values statement, to launching a pay equity study to defining a fair and transparent process for dealing with “out of bounds behaviors.” I’m overwhelmed by the collective commitment to making NYPR a great place to work.
We will not stop there. We will continue to look outside of our company to consider every best practice from corporate, academic and nonprofit organizations that are taking this cultural transformation seriously in order to turn ourselves into a model organization. I am personally and professionally dedicated to this quest.
New York Public Radio is a non-profit, serving millions of people. Our staff, guests, listeners and entire community deserve to have a safe, inspiring and excellence-driven environment, where our work and all who participate can thrive. I am committed to this aim and you can expect to regular reporting from me on our progress.
Read "Transforming Our Workplace" to hear our plan for moving forward.
