Anna Holmes

The gatekeepers, the managers, could do well to constantly push themselves to broaden their idea of who’s in their talent pool, to actually look beyond the Ivy League grads who get all the plum internships in New York and to try and diversify their staff, both in terms of gender, but also in terms of ethnicity. Having a fancy degree from a fancy school and working at a high-profile publication is not an indicator of how good of a writer or a reporter or a thinker or an editor somebody is. There’s a lot of great talent that doesn’t come through those traditional pipelines that needs to be discovered and nurtured. It’s really exciting
to know that we’re in a world right now where one doesn’t have to have gone to a certain school or live in a certain place in order to find a readership and success. Managers and executives and gatekeepers have to make a concerted effort to go find those people. Sometimes they come to you, but that doesn’t mean you can sit back and snap your fingers and have a diverse staff.