June Sarpong: Trump's ban won't kill DEI – companies will just call it something else

Yahoo

22-02-2025

I hear June Sarpong's booming guffaw before I see her. The TV presenter, author and first ever BBC Director of Creative Diversity, is posing for photos in the glass penthouse of her publisher's London offices.
Backlit, her hair is an impressive mane of braids and curls. 'I'm glad you like it,' she laughs. 'It's all the rage in Ghana! I just came back. '
June Sarpong OBE is Britain's most high profile advocate of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI); the figurehead of an industry which has ballooned in recent years but whose peak has most definitely passed.
In the past three years hiring for DEI roles has fallen by 70 per cent in the UK, and President Trump's announcement that he is banning it from all federal agencies seems like the final nail in the DEI coffin – global companies from Accenture to Amazon, Google to Goldman Sachs have been ditching the initiative. This must be a challenging time for Sarpong.
Not only has her £267,000 a year BBC gig (for a three day week) come to an end, the consultancy she set up, linked to her 2017 book Diversify, must be struggling with a lack of demand too.
But when I ask her whether all this spells the end for her lucrative career in inclusion, she shakes her head.
'The pendulum swings one way, then there is pushback,' she says. 'It will settle itself; in fact I am hopeful that we will end up in an even better place.
'One of the biggest failings of the inclusion conversation was there was never a defined role for those privileged white men who were the beneficiaries of the old system.'
Ironically it is that lack of inclusion, she argues, which has caused the current about-turn.
'The problem with the DEI agenda has been that we haven't done enough to create clear role models of what inclusive leadership looks like. We need to make the case for allyship; if you are a powerful white man and opening the door for lots of other types of people that doesn't mean you lose. It means that together we create a bigger pie.'
She points out that even Goldman Sachs admits that more diverse leadership teams drive higher profit, before rattling off a raft of research including McKinsey's Diversity Matters report which shows that more diverse teams outperform homogenous teams by 35 per cent; and a Pipeline survey showing companies with gender parity at executive committee level add 25 per cent to the bottom line.
'Imagine what we could unlock if the potential of ALL the people who haven't been given a chance yet was unleashed? This current pushback is just allowing us to see who is serious about this agenda.'
But why are so many companies and institutions turning their backs on her credo? 'DEI in its current form was rooted in second wave feminism which was about demonising men, hopefully now it can be more truly inclusive.' She gives me a sizzling smile, with the same charisma that during her years as a TV presenter charmed everyone from Tony Blair to Bono.
'At the end of the day if I was a white privileged man I would also want to hang onto the fact that, as one, you get special treatment. I understand there are Telegraph readers who hate DEI. I understand that there is concern if people feel that they, or their kids, are being discriminated against. But let's not forget what DEI was intended to fix.'
She points to her new book, Calling Una Marson: The Extraordinary Life of a Forgotten Icon, a biography of the first black female presenter on the BBC. It is the first title in Sarpong's debut imprint, Akan Books, which is 'all about publishing voices the mainstream ignores, voices from BAME backgrounds, older women, the disabled. White male writers don't need their own imprint or prize because they already HAVE all the prizes.
'I couldn't believe that I had never heard of Una,' says Sarpong. 'When I arrived at the BBC as Director of Creative Diversity in 2019 with a remit to make their output more representative of the UK population, I met with their archivist who said: 'Well we have to start with Una Marson.' And I went: 'Who?'. I was a black female presenter and I'd never even heard Una's name. She was the voice of the BBC to the Commonwealth in the 1930s and 40s, the first black woman to produce and present a BBC show and she had been written out of history. Ever since I have been determined to tell her story.'
Una Marson was born in Jamaica, the highly intelligent daughter of a clergyman. In the 1920s she set up a magazine for female voices before moving to London in the 1930s, where she helped Haile Selassie, the Emperor of Ethiopia, write his famous speech to the UN, wrote plays and poetry and broadcast regularly for the BBC.
Her writings on the reality of being a black woman then are bold, passionate and unflinching. Marson was permanently skint, and never fitted in. 'In London children would spit at her in the street for being black; in Jamaica her skin was deemed 'too dark' and she was seen as too clever; in America she ran the gamut of segregation laws. Everywhere she was a victim of grotesque sexism as well as racism,' says Sarpong. 'Her father was her safe space but he died when she was 10.'
The book is a poignant reminder of how far we have come. 'Marson was no angel; she was competitive with other women, grumpy, a workaholic, and ended up having a nervous breakdown. She was an icon yet had never been celebrated.'
Marson's struggle speaks to the core of Sarpong's agenda; to help level the playing field for those born into circumstances which make it impossible to make the most of their talents.
I ask about her time at the BBC. Was she really worth £267k for a three day week? 'I hope so,' she says unapologetically. 'Not bad for a girl from a council estate in Walthamstow.'
During her two and a half years at the BBC – which she points out was extended – there was an exodus of women of colour, including at least 15 female journalists from the BBC News division with many, according to Variety magazine, feeling 'abandoned' by a 'culture that favours white, middle class and privately educated staff'. Why was that happening on her watch?
'Those women were NOT under my remit. I was not responsible for News or for workplace DEI. My brief was just about the diversity of what viewers saw on screen. It takes time to change culture.'
What did she achieve for the licence payer? 'Working alongside Charlotte Moore [BBC Chief Content Officer] we put together an investment fund for diverse content over a three year period which was worth £100million, with an additional £12 million for radio. When I left in 2022 the BBC increased the amount in the fund by £50 million.'
But what did we the viewers get for that money? 'In the UK, 20 per cent of the population is not white. So now for all BBC productions – from Strictly to EastEnders – at least 20 per cent of the talent has to be diverse.'
Although Sarpong had always dreamed of working for the BBC, she found it a bruising period. 'It was the first time, despite all those years of presenting and interviewing people like Tony Blair, that I got really horribly trolled – overt racist and misogynist abuse. It was very upsetting and confusing.'
What does she put that down to? 'I realised that the BBC is the bastion of Britishness. And some people felt that through the work I was doing I was challenging that.
As an immigrant kid from the commonwealth, I understand that deep reverence for the BBC. It signals how to be British and for us Britain is the mother country. British culture is so powerful.
'It is the reason that a small population from a small island could take over the world; the knowledge, universities like Oxford, the private schools, the humour, the efficiency and productivity. People from the colonies wanted to adopt that. But crucially they wanted to keep their own culture too, not to have to assimilate. And to be proud of where they had come from.'
One of three children, Sarpong was born in 1977 in Newham east London, but when she was a small child her parents sold up and returned to Ghana where her father Samuel worked in finance for the Ghanaian government. Four years later, following the coup of 1981, the Sarpong family were forced to flee.
'Luckily we had British passports so we weren't refugees but we lost everything. It was scary. I can remember coming to England and standing outside the housing office. We were put in a hostel and then on a rundown council estate in Leytonstone that Prince Charles later dubbed 'uninhabitable'.
'Our estate was scruffy and there was wee in the lift. But my mum, Thelma, a nurse like many female African immigrants, was very aspirational. Though that experience left me with a strong sense of how quickly civil society can unravel.'
Sarpong attended the local school Connaught School for Girls and then Sir George Monoux Sixth Form College in Walthamstow, where the family had relocated to.
Her teenage years were scarred by a dramatic accident. At 14 she was hit by a car, and injured so badly that she was forced to spend the next year in hospital.
'I had a dislocated and fractured vertebrae. I was raised a Christian and my faith got me through that year in hospital. Lots of problems in society including anxiety and depression I believe are due to that God-shaped hole. I had to wear a neck brace until I was 18. The boys were not exactly chasing me – I had to work on my personality!'
Her personality shone through. After leaving school at 16 – she didn't study higher education – she found work experience at Kiss FM (one of the biggest pirate radio stations, that had just become the UK's first legal black and dance music specialist radio stations).
'It was scrappy, a start up; my job was to answer the phones and to be on air. I was in the right place at the right time. From Kiss I went to Sony BMG, then to MTV and Channel 4.'
Did she have any #metoo moments? 'No. Never a single one, thanks to the 'mother hen' tendencies of my first producer at MTV'. Her rise was swift; her OBE awarded in 2020 is for 'services to Diversity and Broadcasting'.
But back to diversity, does the world in 2025 really need DEI, or Akan Books for that matter? Isn't all that kind of positive discrimination now in the past? 'It's not just the BBC or publishing, Eleanor. I've written this book about Una in the spirit of Lest We Forget. When I walk into a meeting I am still often the only person of colour, or woman from a working class background.
'History is still written by the winners and for those of us from diverse backgrounds our story still begins with slavery; despite Africans going back thousands of years, being the first people. We need to tell stories that give us the full perspective on humanity.
'Most of us are still made to feel bad about ourselves – it is only a small select group of white, elite, highly educated men, ideally from a line of elite men who went to prestigious schools and universities, who are valued for the fullness of who they are. But the rest of us also have something to contribute.'
Surely this is the end of DEI though? She shakes her head. 'If you are a business to consumer company trying to sell to younger demographics then it is essential. In America those in favour of DEI are already boycotting brands which have cut it such as Target and Walmart. A recent Yallo study found that 64 per cent of young people expect to see diversity in a company, and if they don't find it they won't work there.'
Grinning, she tells me that Conservative leader David Cameron is one of her diversity icons. 'Credit to the Tories, and I don't say that often as I am a Labour girl. They have been ON the diversity agenda. I remember sitting next to David [Cameron] at a dinner party and I was really impressed by how passionate he was about diversifying the Tory party, and putting diverse candidates such as James Cleverley, Rishi Sunak or Kemi Badenoch into good seats.
He doesn't get enough credit for those achievements – the Tories have been far better than Labour at this; they have been an extraordinary election-winning machine.' She is right. Labour is yet to have a female or a BAME leader; the Conservatives have had three women, including a black one, and our first Asian prime minister.
But what about Trump's ban, what will happen now? Sarpong grins. 'What I am seeing is that companies are just calling DEI something else – like Culture, Talent Strategy or Wellbeing. We're actually seeing who is serious about it.'
What about when the rights of different intersectional groups conflict, for instance over the case of Sandie Peggie, a female nurse who was suspended after complaining about sharing a changing room with a transgender colleague?
'People haven't yet figured out how to balance the hard-won rights of cis-gendered women with those of trans people. We need a proper conversation so we can live side by side. It shouldn't be impossible to have changing rooms which are male, female and gender neutral.'
Britain, she says, is more tolerant than America 'in the US everything is decoded through the colour lens. Whereas here we are a beacon to the world in terms of the social elements of inclusion; if a black family moves into a village, they won't be ostracised, the neighbours will pop by with a cup of tea; we have the highest rates of inter-racial marriage in the world. We should celebrate that.'
She tells me that for the first time in her life she has left London and is living in what she describes as a 'commune' on the edge of Oxford, with seven sets of friends who work in the media or creative industries. They all live in separate houses on an estate. 'I never thought I'd become a commuter but I love the countryside and the peace. I'm not a fan of Work From Home though, everyone should go to the office three days a week.'
At 47, Sarpong is currently single, and child-free, although her romantic conquests have included Foreign Secretary David Lammy whom she dated for two years and is still one of her best friends, alongside many other Labour MPs.
'I hate internet dating but I like being introduced through friends…' She insists that she is never lonely. 'I love living with all my friends. In Africa it is normal to live in a community; I come from the Ashanti tribe; this is how we all used to live. One of my girlfriends owned the estate and invited the rest of us. There is lots of dropping in and out of people's houses, compound living. It's the future.'
Still high profile, until recently Sarpong was a regular panellist on Sky News weekly debate programme The Pledge and Loose Women, and is on the board of the British Fashion Council. Today she's wearing a Burberry jacket and trendy boots with curved heels from luxury brand The Fold. She lives a jet-set existence between Oxford, London and Ghana. I suggest that she is living proof of the social mobility she espouses; that sense that anyone from anywhere with talent should be able to make it. 'Yes!' she says.
I wonder what success for Sarpong looks like now? 'I'm just so grateful to be here. One of my friends just found out they have stage four bowel cancer. It's a privilege just to be around; as George Clooney says: 'Ageing is better than the alternative'. I don't have a five year plan, I'll do whatever the universe has in line for me.' And with her trademark guffaw she is off.
Calling Una Marson by June Sarpong and Jennifer Obidike is published by Akan books, out Feb 27