Latest news with #diversityinitiatives
New York Times
12-08-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
West Point and Air Force Academy Affirmative Action Lawsuits Are Dropped
When the Supreme Court struck down race-conscious admissions at colleges in 2023, the justices said the decision did not apply to military academies because they had 'potentially distinct interests.' The group behind the litigation, Students for Fair Admissions, sued shortly after to test that idea. It argued that the use of race in admissions at the academies, including the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and the United States Air Force Academy, should also be struck down. On Monday, the group dropped its case, acknowledging a significant shift in the political landscape since it had brought its lawsuit. In some of their earliest actions in office, Trump administration officials reversed diversity initiatives, including the considering of race in admissions, at the military schools. A week after President Trump took office, he issued an executive order that stated that no one in the armed forces 'should be preferred or disadvantaged on the basis of sex, race, ethnicity, color or creed.' In announcing the end of the cases on Monday, the president of Students for Fair Admissions, Edward Blum, called the moves historic. In a statement, the group said it had reached an agreement with the Department of Justice, on behalf of the Defense Department, that ensures that future cadets will be admitted 'solely on merit, not skin color or ancestry.' The Air Force Academy declined to comment immediately. Representatives of the Department of Defense and West Point did not respond to messages. The agreement on Monday stated that the Department of Defense had determined, after reviewing evidence, that considering race in military academy admissions 'does not promote military cohesiveness,' national security or any other interest. The settlement states that the military academies will have no goal based on race or ethnicity and will not track the race of applicants. It also says that if an applicant selects a race or ethnicity on an application, 'no one with responsibility over admissions can see, access or consider' that information before a decision is made. The secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, has long argued — first as a cable news host and then in his current position — that 'woke' policies undermine morale in the military. But some who have studied military history disagree with that assertion. 'Nothing in my nearly 25 years of experience in the military substantiates that argument,' said John W. Hall, a professor of military history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Dr. Hall, a 1994 West Point graduate, said that the military had been an early champion of diversity initiatives, 'not out of any sense of innate progressivism or certainly not wokeness.' Rather, he said, 'they were necessary for the effectiveness of the military.' He added that in exempting the service academies, the 2023 Supreme Court ruling, which involved race-conscious admissions policies at Harvard and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, gave 'deference to generations of experience, expertise and lessons learned.' The settlement comes as the Trump administration has made stamping out any diversity efforts from colleges a pillar of its attack on higher education. On Thursday, the administration broadened this effort when it released a White House directive requiring colleges and universities to share a broad array of information about the race, test scores and grades of applicants and enrollees. It argued that a lack of data 'continues to raise concerns about whether race is actually used in practice.'
Yahoo
20-07-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
She left her federal job because of Trump. Now she's running for office to fight his policies
Becoming a federal prosecutor was a longtime professional dream for Erika Evans, one she achieved nearly four years ago. But Evans soured on her job as an assistant US attorney in Seattle this year soon after President Donald Trump returned to the White House. She cites the Justice Department rolling back diversity initiatives and defending Trump's push to end birthright citizenship. 'It just like felt like, 'Oh my goodness, this is not the Department of Justice that I know,'' Evans recalled. 'We were getting notices to report on colleagues doing diversity work in the office, and that if we reported it within 10 days, we wouldn't be in trouble,' she said. 'Crazy, crazy things.' She quit in March. Now, she's running to become the city attorney in Seattle. Evans is among what some Democratic groups identify as a growing trend: Former federal officials alienated by Trump's remaking of the federal government deciding to run for office themselves. Those groups are actively recruiting current federal employees as well as those who were fired or left voluntarily, betting that they will make good messengers against Republicans. Ryan Crosswell testified before Congress about resigning from the Justice Department's public integrity division over the agency's move to drop corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams. He is now running for the US House, one of several Democrats vying to unseat Pennsylvania GOP Rep. Ryan Mackenzie in what is expected to be one of the most competitive House races next year. 'I'm uniquely motivated to do this because of the pain that's been caused by this administration,' Crosswell told CNN. Early signs of Democratic enthusiasm A recent CNN poll found Democrats are far more energized than Republicans about the midterm elections. Seventy-two percent of Democrats and Democratic-aligned voters surveyed by SSRS for CNN said they were extremely motivated to vote in next year's midterms, compared to 50% of Republican and Republican-aligned voters. There's no central list of former federal workers seeking elective office. But officials with Run for Something, a PAC that recruits and supports young progressives running for state and local offices, say more than 50,000 people have signed up to seek office since Election Day last year, a number that outpaces the group's first three years of recruitment combined. Amanda Litman, the group's founder and president, says the potential candidates she talks to feel 'a desire to do something specific and practical to push back against Trump.' Interest among Democrats in running for the US House also has climbed, with candidate filings from Democrats at the Federal Election Commission outpacing those from Republicans. Not all the individuals filing statements of candidacy with the FEC will follow through with the fundraising and campaign activity to mount a serious bid. But the early Democratic advantage mirrors a pattern seen in the 2018 midterms, when 527 Democrats compared to 338 Republicans reported active House campaigns with fundraising activity in the first six months of that election cycle, according to FEC data. In the end, Democrats flipped more than 40 seats to regain the House majority in that election. At the same time, Trump's second term has seen a wave of job losses among federal workers, as his administration seeks to dramatically shrink the workforce and reorganize or shutter federal agencies. Tens of thousands of federal workers have been laid off or targeted for layoffs, and more cuts are expected after the Supreme Court this month cleared the way for mass firings to resume. Tina Moeinian, a 37-year-old in Littleton, Colorado, said she was let go from her job as a Department of Veterans Affairs mediator in February as part of a wave of terminations of probationary employees pushed by the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency. Although Moeinian is a nearly 10-year veteran of the federal government, a recent promotion had resulted in her probationary status, she said. A few weeks later, she decided to join a Run for Something training to learn more about seeking office. She was rehired by the VA in April, but Moeinian has since decided to pursue a seat for a nonpartisan position on her local school board this fall as another outlet for her interest in public service. The firing, she said, 'felt like a wakeup call to serve in a different way.' Another group — Emerge Action Fund, which recruits and trains Democratic women to run for office — decided this year to reach out to federal workers who might be exploring new careers. One training session specifically for federal employees in April drew 40 participants. The group's training covers everything from how to get comfortable asking people for campaign contributions to the best way for first-time candidates to share their personal stories with voters. 'There's a place for you,' Virginia state Sen. Danica Roem, an Emerge alum, told participants during the session attended by federal workers and observed by CNN. 'As candidates who have experience in the federal workforce, you know what constituent service is because you do it every day,' she added. 'You've already been the ones doing it. You already know how it works from the inside.' Evans says a run was in her DNA Evans, 35, is one of the candidates who has undergone Emerge's training. She's now running to become the first Black person to serve as Seattle's city attorney in the 150-year history of the office, she said. Her campaign platform includes creating units focused on fighting hate crimes and discrimination in housing, along with tackling wage theft, which she said builds on her past work undertaking civil rights prosecutions at the Justice Department. Those concerns are deeply rooted in her family's history, Evans said. Her late grandfather, Lee Evans, who medaled in the track and field competition at the 1968 Olympics, was among the athletes who protested racial inequality in the United States at the Games by donning a Black Panther-style beret and raising his fist to the air during the medal presentation. The elder Evans wasn't the first to do so at those Games. Two other Americans – 200-meter medalists Tommie Smith and John Carlos – famously made the salutes during the playing of the national anthem during their medal ceremony. Once that happened, she said, other Black athletes including her grandfather received threats from the Ku Klux Klan, pledging to 'shoot you dead' if they also demonstrated. Her grandfather did so anyway as he received his gold medal in the 400-meter race. An Associated Press photo from the time shows him atop the medal podium, flashing a broad smile as he protested. 'He said that he smiled because he thought it would be harder to shoot someone that was smiling,' Evans recalled. His granddaughter recalled how the elder Evans shared stories with his family of his childhood in California, picking fruits and vegetables with his parents during summer vacations and 'getting cheated at the weigh-in scale.' 'That experience of injustice guided him,' she said. 'Those things just live in my DNA, of always standing up and fighting.' Evans faces three other candidates, including incumbent Republican Ann Davison. Davison, the first woman to hold the job, has touted support from prominent Democrats, including former Gov. Gary Locke, and has pledged to defend the city against what she describes as the Trump administration's unlawful actions. Evans, for her part, has scored the endorsement of Washington state Attorney General Nick Brown ahead of the Aug. 5 primary. The top two vote-getters, regardless of party affiliation, will proceed to the general election in November. Brown is among the Democratic attorneys general who have challenged some of Trump's most controversial policies, including suing to block the president's effort to deny birthright citizenship to the children born in the US to undocumented parents. If elected, Evans said, she plans to work with Brown to fight against what she calls federal overreach from the Trump administration. 'The strength of our country is its diversity and when that's under attack, that's something we should all be caring about,' she said.
CNN
19-07-2025
- Politics
- CNN
She left her federal job because of Trump. Now she's running for office to fight his policies
Becoming a federal prosecutor was a longtime professional dream for Erika Evans, one she achieved nearly four years ago. But Evans soured on her job as an assistant US attorney in Seattle this year soon after President Donald Trump returned to the White House. She cites the Justice Department rolling back diversity initiatives and defending Trump's push to end birthright citizenship. 'It just like felt like, 'Oh my goodness, this is not the Department of Justice that I know,'' Evans recalled. 'We were getting notices to report on colleagues doing diversity work in the office, and that if we reported it within 10 days, we wouldn't be in trouble,' she said. 'Crazy, crazy things.' She quit in March. Now, she's running to become the city attorney in Seattle. Evans is among what some Democratic groups identify as a growing trend: Former federal officials alienated by Trump's remaking of the federal government deciding to run for office themselves. Those groups are actively recruiting current federal employees as well as those who were fired or left voluntarily, betting that they will make good messengers against Republicans. Ryan Crosswell testified before Congress about resigning from the Justice Department's public integrity division over the agency's move to drop corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams. He is now running for the US House, one of several Democrats vying to unseat Pennsylvania GOP Rep. Ryan Mackenzie in what is expected to be one of the most competitive House races next year. 'I'm uniquely motivated to do this because of the pain that's been caused by this administration,' Crosswell told CNN. A recent CNN poll found Democrats are far more energized than Republicans about the midterm elections. Seventy-two percent of Democrats and Democratic-aligned voters surveyed by SSRS for CNN said they were extremely motivated to vote in next year's midterms, compared to 50% of Republican and Republican-aligned voters. There's no central list of former federal workers seeking elective office. But officials with Run for Something, a PAC that recruits and supports young progressives running for state and local offices, say more than 50,000 people have signed up to seek office since Election Day last year, a number that outpaces the group's first three years of recruitment combined. Amanda Litman, the group's founder and president, says the potential candidates she talks to feel 'a desire to do something specific and practical to push back against Trump.' Interest among Democrats in running for the US House also has climbed, with candidate filings from Democrats at the Federal Election Commission outpacing those from Republicans. Not all the individuals filing statements of candidacy with the FEC will follow through with the fundraising and campaign activity to mount a serious bid. But the early Democratic advantage mirrors a pattern seen in the 2018 midterms, when 527 Democrats compared to 338 Republicans reported active House campaigns with fundraising activity in the first six months of that election cycle, according to FEC data. In the end, Democrats flipped more than 40 seats to regain the House majority in that election. At the same time, Trump's second term has seen a wave of job losses among federal workers, as his administration seeks to dramatically shrink the workforce and reorganize or shutter federal agencies. Tens of thousands of federal workers have been laid off or targeted for layoffs, and more cuts are expected after the Supreme Court this month cleared the way for mass firings to resume. Tina Moeinian, a 37-year-old in Littleton, Colorado, said she was let go from her job as a Department of Veterans Affairs mediator in February as part of a wave of terminations of probationary employees pushed by the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency. Although Moeinian is a nearly 10-year veteran of the federal government, a recent promotion had resulted in her probationary status, she said. A few weeks later, she decided to join a Run for Something training to learn more about seeking office. She was rehired by the VA in April, but Moeinian has since decided to pursue a seat for a nonpartisan position on her local school board this fall as another outlet for her interest in public service. The firing, she said, 'felt like a wakeup call to serve in a different way.' Another group — Emerge Action Fund, which recruits and trains Democratic women to run for office — decided this year to reach out to federal workers who might be exploring new careers. One training session specifically for federal employees in April drew 40 participants. The group's training covers everything from how to get comfortable asking people for campaign contributions to the best way for first-time candidates to share their personal stories with voters. 'There's a place for you,' Virginia state Sen. Danica Roem, an Emerge alum, told participants during the session attended by federal workers and observed by CNN. 'As candidates who have experience in the federal workforce, you know what constituent service is because you do it every day,' she added. 'You've already been the ones doing it. You already know how it works from the inside.' Evans, 35, is one of the candidates who has undergone Emerge's training. She's now running to become the first Black person to serve as Seattle's city attorney in the 150-year history of the office, she said. Her campaign platform includes creating units focused on fighting hate crimes and discrimination in housing, along with tackling wage theft, which she said builds on her past work undertaking civil rights prosecutions at the Justice Department. Those concerns are deeply rooted in her family's history, Evans said. Her late grandfather, Lee Evans, who medaled in the track and field competition at the 1968 Olympics, was among the athletes who protested racial inequality in the United States at the Games by donning a Black Panther-style beret and raising his fist to the air during the medal presentation. The elder Evans wasn't the first to do so at those Games. Two other Americans – 200-meter medalists Tommie Smith and John Carlos – famously made the salutes during the playing of the national anthem during their medal ceremony. Once that happened, she said, other Black athletes including her grandfather received threats from the Ku Klux Klan, pledging to 'shoot you dead' if they also demonstrated. Her grandfather did so anyway as he received his gold medal in the 400-meter race. An Associated Press photo from the time shows him atop the medal podium, flashing a broad smile as he protested. 'He said that he smiled because he thought it would be harder to shoot someone that was smiling,' Evans recalled. His granddaughter recalled how the elder Evans shared stories with his family of his childhood in California, picking fruits and vegetables with his parents during summer vacations and 'getting cheated at the weigh-in scale.' 'That experience of injustice guided him,' she said. 'Those things just live in my DNA, of always standing up and fighting.' Evans faces three other candidates, including incumbent Republican Ann Davison. Davison, the first woman to hold the job, has touted support from prominent Democrats, including former Gov. Gary Locke, and has pledged to defend the city against what she describes as the Trump administration's unlawful actions. Evans, for her part, has scored the endorsement of Washington state Attorney General Nick Brown ahead of the Aug. 5 primary. The top two vote-getters, regardless of party affiliation, will proceed to the general election in November. Brown is among the Democratic attorneys general who have challenged some of Trump's most controversial policies, including suing to block the president's effort to deny birthright citizenship to the children born in the US to undocumented parents. If elected, Evans said, she plans to work with Brown to fight against what she calls federal overreach from the Trump administration. 'The strength of our country is its diversity and when that's under attack, that's something we should all be caring about,' she said.
Bloomberg
30-06-2025
- Business
- Bloomberg
JPMorgan Executive Says Politics Can't Hold Back Climate Agenda
Since Donald Trump's re-election, Wall Street has abandoned public climate alliances and toned down diversity initiatives. But US bankers want Europeans to know that's not the whole story. At London Climate Action Week, which ended on Sunday, representatives from JPMorgan Chase & Co., Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Bank of America Corp. and Citigroup Inc. were mingling with their European counterparts to discuss investment themes that have been vilified by the Trump administration.
Forbes
13-05-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Bea Ordonez Of Payoneer: Smart. Strategic. Unstoppable.
Bea Ordonez is the CFO of Payoneer, the financial technology company empowering the world's small and medium-sized businesses to transact, do business, and grow globally. Payoneer was founded in 2005 with the belief that talent is equally distributed, but opportunity is not. It is their mission to enable any entrepreneur and business to participate and succeed in an increasingly digital global economy. Since its founding, they have built a global financial stack that removes barriers and simplifies cross-border commerce. They make it easy for millions of SMBs and entrepreneurs, particularly in emerging markets, to connect to the global economy and grow their businesses. Bea and I recently had an engaging conversation about her wide range of career experience and how it has impacted her career, being a critical voice in diversity initiatives, driving growth in today's global economy, and more. — Ba Ordonez is someone who has been shaped by various international influences. She grew up in Tottenham, a neighborhood in London, England. Born to Spanish immigrants, she attended public schools in London and at 18 headed to university. She graduated from the University of Nottingham with a Bachelor of Law, and from there, has held roles in London, Bermuda, Florida and New York City. Her love of the law helped her understand her natural gift as a problem-solver. She always had an interest in finance, something that has served her well in her chosen field in terms of the real intersection between financial services, regulated financial services, and technology. At Payoneer, CFO Bea Ordonez is reimagining what leadership looks like—where purpose, performance, ... More and inclusion converge to drive global impact. Case in point: After working as a tax consultant and in the reinsurance industry, she earned her first CFO role in 1999 at G-Trade, a startup broker-dealer. Since then, she has held roles as Chief Operating Officer, Chief Innovation Officer, and Chief Financial Officer for various public and private companies in the financial services and fintech space. She currently serves as CFO of Payoneer, a mission-driven financial platform that serves more than 2 million small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and entrepreneurs, especially in emerging markets. The company covers a very diverse and broad geographical footprint and connects SMBs across the world to a rising and increasingly global and digital economy. 'When I talk about a mission, it's based on our view that talent is equally distributed, but opportunity is not,' she said. 'One of the ways in which opportunity is not equally distributed is in access to the financial system. We read about it here in the U.S., with unbanked consumers and so on, but on a global scale, access to the financial system is also not equally distributed. For small and medium-sized businesses and entrepreneurs globally, the ability to do straightforward things is critical to their business. To pay, get paid, and to manage their global operations—is both critical and complex. At Payoneer, we look to solve the complexity with a purpose-built financial stack designed to meet the needs of SMBs and entrepreneurs, and to make it easier for them to operate on a global scale.' As CFO, Ordonez believes it is the wide range of experience she gained before coming on board that has prepared her for her current role. 'That broad experience has positioned me to love what I do and to excel at what I do,' she said. 'The role of the CFO has certainly evolved. It has become a much broader strategic role, requiring a real in-depth understanding of what makes the business work operationally.' Ordonez has had a less conventional path to CFO–namely, that she first stepped into the role at 26 at G-Trade. She then transitioned to a broader operational role as Chief Operating Officer, where she learned how to interface with technology teams to drive outcomes that were going to ignite growth, unlock leverage in the company, open up new markets, and potentially launch new business lines and products. It is not lost on her that many people helped her to get to where she is. In fact, having such diverse work experience aligns with her approach to reach out to diverse colleagues wherever she's worked. 'I have always tried to cast a pretty wide net in any organization I have worked in,' she explained. 'I try to find the hidden gems in the organization. Maybe they think a little bit differently, have a perspective that is differentiating in some way. Intellectual curiosity is super important.' One aspect of her own curiosity is where the industry is headed in the coming years. As someone who has worked at the intersection of traditional regulated financial services and technology companies for years, she believes it is a trend that people will see more as consumers. Ordonez says we will continue to see that increasingly different parts of the value chain are enabled by different entities in the broader financial landscape – with tech companies, fintech companies and more traditional financial players collaborating to deliver an integrated and frictionless customer experience across a range of financial products and experiences. Payoneer has seen accelerating digital adoption by consumers, especially in emerging markets, while the pace of digitization of payments accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic as commerce became more digital and as marketplaces continued to evolve and innovate. Payoneer sits in the center of that ecosystem, looking to unlock the value for its customers. Central to making that ecosystem thrive are the people with whom Ordonez surrounds herself. At Payoneer, her work depends on relationships that cross the globe and span multiple time zones–the company has boots on the ground in more than 30 countries. In a single day, she might speak with colleagues in China, India, London, and New York. The work rapport she has with her colleagues, team members, and fellow leaders is critical and was one of the primary reasons why she took the job. 'Ultimately, for me, as it is for most people, as we get to this point in our careers, it's about the people that you work with and the mission,' she said. 'The vision of the management team and the leadership resonated with me.' Similarly, Ordonez has a clear vision for how she builds her team. She emphasizes the importance of not only measuring but also aligning with the team about what should be measured. That not only helps to create cohesion among the team but also drives the vision and strategic focus across the organization. It can be challenging for a big global company with numerous locations. To mitigate that challenge, Ordonez encourages celebrating success, acknowledging mistakes, and experimentation to get to the best outcome. 'In a big global company with disparate folks sitting in many global locations, measuring progress is as critical as celebrating success,' she explained. 'Equally, and almost as important, is acknowledging mistakes and failures. Not in a finger-pointing, blame-allotting way, but in a 'we took a data-driven approach to this particular challenge,' or 'we took this approach to solving this problem, expecting outcome A, and we got outcome B, let's think about what series of decisions got us there.' Something that we have worked on developing is a culture of experimentation. It's been incredibly impactful to understand how the thing that you do impacts the customer experience, the customer's behavior, and the value that you are unlocking for them. If you measure that, take data from that, and drive it back into the process, you find that a data-driven approach to decision-making is so critical.' As a leader, one value she prioritizes above most others is empathy. She says that building high-performing teams is possible only by being authentic and embracing not only who she is, but also who others are. It creates trust and collaboration. Ordonez's belief in empathy and authenticity translates into a drive to empower others as a result of what she experienced early on in her career. Often the only woman in the room when she worked in the capital markets space or at trading companies, she now recognizes that women have made important strides in the finance world, but also that there is a long way to go. 'The pandemic lowered labor participation rates for women meaningfully,' she said. 'We still have a long way to go from an income parity perspective. It's still important for us to be thinking along those lines. A few things we should all think about in supporting women and others in the workplace: providing visible role models for them. It's something that I would have loved to have had as I came up in my career, someone who looked a bit or sounded a bit like me in the C-suite as a role model.' To Ordonez, a strong team also ensures that people will be resilient in hard times. The fintech space is characterized by its volatility due to macro uncertainty, inflationary pressures, rising interest rates, geopolitical uncertainty, and many other factors. That's where diversity of opinion can help. 'In many ways, diversity is a natural resilience driver within our business more broadly, but you have to build resilience within your teams,' she emphasized. 'You have to acknowledge that you can't see around corners and work with the best data you have at your disposal. It's the data that can help you make the best possible decision-making, understanding that you don't know what's around those corners.' Speaking of what might be in store for the future, Ordonez does have words of wisdom for the next generation of CFOs. 'Intellectual curiosity is key,' she said. 'Keep learning and cast a wide net. You can learn a lot from people who are buried in all sorts of strange parts of your organization and understand an area that you didn't understand before. Take the time to understand elements of the business that can seem mundane and routine, but are the machinery that drives the car. Finally, take on more. I never said no to anything along the way in terms of new responsibilities or new things to do. I always took on more if there was an opportunity, even if there wasn't a clear path to what it would mean for me. You'll benefit from that diversity of opportunity.'
