Update on Inclusion and Diversity at Goldman Sachs, Including New Aspirational Goals

The following email was sent today to all Goldman Sachs people globally from David Solomon, Chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs.

Update on Inclusion and Diversity at Goldman Sachs, Including New Aspirational Goals

Attracting and developing a diverse workforce is essential to help our firm advance sustainable economic growth and financial opportunity. Progress on diversity will enhance our ability to execute our strategy and deliver for our clients. As I reflect on the events of the past several months, the intensity of our focus on accelerating our journey in ensuring a truly inclusive and diverse Goldman Sachs has only grown stronger.

Last year, the firm set forth aspirational goals and a comprehensive action plan to increase diverse representation at all levels and create an even stronger culture of inclusion for all of our people. The positive results we have achieved since, including more diverse representation for our 2020 campus analyst class – which comprises a majority of women for the first time, and our highest representation of Black talent in the Americas and Asian talent globally – and the Managing Director Class of 2019 – our most diverse to date – demonstrate the power of setting aspirational goals and holding ourselves accountable.

In addition, we have made strides as part of our ongoing efforts to sustain an inclusive work environment for all of our people. For example, the firm introduced enhancements to our benefits and wellness programs to enable our people to better manage the commitment to their careers while starting, growing and supporting a family, and launched the pronouns initiative, which increases awareness of the variety of pronouns by which people identify. Starting from September, we will commence training our more than 7,000 managers to empower them to serve as inclusive “leaders who coach,” so that they can better support their teams’ development, growth and performance. You can learn more about these and other efforts on the Inclusion and Diversity site on GSWeb. 

We have more work to do, and will keep up our efforts to reach the aspirational goals we established last year. In addition, in coordination with the Global Inclusion and Diversity Committee and Human Capital Management, we have identified two additional important areas of focus where we have now set new aspirational goals – enhancing the diverse representation of our vice president population and significantly increasing our hiring of Black analysts:

• We are aiming to achieve, by 2025, representation in our vice president population of 40 percent women globally; 7 percent Black professionals in the Americas and the UK; and 9 percent Hispanic/Latinx professionals in the Americas.
• Building on our existing aspirational goals for entry-level analysts and associates – and continuing our long-term relationships with Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) – we will double the number of campus analyst hires in the US recruited from HBCUs by 2025.

This will mean bolstering existing initiatives and launching new ones across hiring, development, promotion and retention focused on these populations, while sustaining our existing programs focused on other diverse populations. To be clear, these goals do not limit our ambition to be an employer of choice for all diverse professionals.  We continue to focus on using a data-driven and targeted approach to identify actions across all diverse communities to drive progress.

When Goldman Sachs makes a commitment, our teams do what they do best – we focus on what is necessary to make meaningful progress, we support each other, and we keep ourselves accountable. Along the way, we will maintain our emphasis on fostering an inclusive work environment for all of our people. Ensuring each of us can bring our authentic selves to work each and every day benefits all of us.

David