The pronghorn is the second-fastest land mammal in the world, second only to the cheetah. But the pronghorn can sustain its speed for longer than a cheetah, according to Dia Simms, a co-founder of Pronghorn, an initiative focused on cultivating the next generation of Black entrepreneurs, executive leaders, and founders within the spirits business. Simms, the CEO of Lobos 1707 Tequila & Mezcal, called the name Pronghorn symbolic of the race to correct inequity in the spirits industry, which she described as a marathon, not a sprint.
“We have a lot of ground to cover, but we don’t have a lot of time. So we want to go far and we want to go fast,” she said.
Simms co-founded Pronghorn last year with industry veterans Erin Harris and Dan Sanborn as a way to templatize building diversity in any industry, starting with the spirits industry and the Black community. Last week, Pronghorn and the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States (DISCUS) announced a partnership that aims to increase hiring from within the Black community among leading spirits suppliers.
The initiative, led by Pronghorn and in partnership with DISCUS and DISCUS member suppliers, seeks to identify qualified candidates from within the Black community to fill positions from internships to the executive level in the spirits industry and associated roles. It’s part of Pronghorn’s mission to invest in 57 Black-owned founders over ten years and gain commitments from suppliers, distributors and retailers to fill 1,800 positions.
Those specific numbers come from a reverse engineering of the representation of Black employees and ownership in spirits: while Black Americans represent 12% of alcohol consumers across categories, they make up just 7.8% of the sector’s labor force and 2% of executives in the industry, according to Pronghorn’s research.
DISCUS, along with several of its members, is among the many organizations that have launched diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs in the past two years, aiming to define both immediate and long-term actions that DISCUS member companies will lead. The council will partner by sharing educational resources with its members and has received commitments from members to hire according to specific metrics, and work together instead of competing for diverse talent.
“We kind of take talent or steal talent from one another. There’s a small number of people that bounce around from some of the same organizations,” said Victoria Russell, Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer at Beam Suntory, who serves as vice chair of the DISCUS DEI committee. Russell and the committee are hoping this initiative will increase the pipeline of applicants as each company works towards meeting their individual DEI hiring goals.
“I think we understand as an industry that when you’re doing DEI right, it’s not about a game of musical chairs, it’s about building a bigger table,” said Simms.
Careers will be listed on the Pronghorn website, as well as on DISCUS members’ websites. To recruit new talent, Pronghorn is working with two minority-focused recruiters and collaborating with historically Black colleges and universities as well as other universities. Part of the work is making prospective employees aware that there are career paths available to them in spirits. A lack of diversity, equity, and inclusion is the number-one issue identified by women that prevents people from considering a career in the beverage alcohol industry, according to a Women of the Vine & Spirits report.
“Part of this is just really inviting people,” said Simms.
But retention is also a challenge when it comes to keeping employees from diverse backgrounds, according to Russell, who said the council has found the attrition rate for multicultural employees to be higher compared to other employees. Recently, a high profile example made news when a Black whiskey maker, Eboni Major, filed a lawsuit against Diageo for a hostile work environment and disparate treatment based on racial discrimination. (In 2021, Diageo North America became an anchor investor in Pronghorn.)
To address retention issues the DEI committee is sharing best practices for internal engagement metrics, versus representation alone.
“The recruiting piece is critical but the retention is just as important,” said Russell. “How do we ensure that when they come into these environments, is it inclusive, is it equitable and fair so that they are encouraged to stay in that environment?”
For DISCUS, starting a hiring initiative focused on the Black community was a way to address a large employment gap and develop tools to apply to other diversity gaps.
“It’s not that other communities aren’t important, but this is definitely where we see the greatest needs and opportunity, and we’ll lift those learnings and apply them as we can,” said Russell.