As reported recently by the Wall Street Journal and other news organizations, NLPC agreed with Goldman Sachs to withdraw a shareholder proposal it had submitted for this year’s annual meeting, which requested the elimination of diversity, equity and inclusion criteria from consideration for adding new members to its board of directors. The bank did so following brief negotiations.
Following that step, Business Insider reported earlier this week that the company’s top DEI executive had departed:
Goldman Sachs’ top diversity official has left for a rival in recent weeks, multiple people familiar with the matter told Business Insider. Her exit comes as Wall Street retreats from long-stated DEI pledges about hiring and career advancement.
Megan Hogan (pictured above), Goldman’s global co-head of talent left in January for Morgan Stanley, several people familiar with the matter said. Hogan, who joined the firm nearly 12 years ago, held the title of chief diversity officer until early 2025 before taking on the broader talent position for the past year…
Earlier this month, the bank also agreed to remove race, gender identity, and sexual orientation from its board-member selection criteria following pressure from a conservative shareholder group, the Wall Street Journal reported…
“This is a reflection of the changing legal environment and adapting to the reality of those legal shifts,” a spokesperson for the bank told Business Insider, adding that the firm stands by the benefit of “diverse perspectives and experiences,” and is following the law while running programs designed to “attract the best talent.”
With the changes formally implemented at Goldman Sachs, this represents the first public statement (that we are aware of) from the company about the board DEI language removal that we have seen. We agree with the spokesperson, that companies benefit from a variety of viewpoints and work/life experiences, and that they should seek to be a draw for the best talent they can acquire.
We will take this opportunity to reiterate what we stated eight months ago: That elimination of discriminatory DEI does not mean you avoid the pursuit and recruitment of outstanding candidates from potential pools of talent, however you may find them. That’s what companies including American Express, Disney and Meta misunderstood last June, when they skipped out as sponsors of an annual job fair event held by the National Association of Black Accountants. In doing so, they likely missed out on meeting and possibly onboarding several excellent employees.
Exploring as broad a viable pool of candidates as possible to find great workers is not DEI. Making hiring decisions to fulfill goals or quotas based on skin color or to achieve a percentage of “diversity” is DEI, and it’s also discrimination.
If Corporate America spent more time looking in all the best places for qualified candidates to fill needed positions, instead of hiding their DEI policies that they don’t want to get rid of, diversity would likely develop organically. But then they’d have to dump all their DEI hires who do the DEI hiring, and companies would lose a crucial virtue-signaling function.
