Most of Daily Kos’ 47 employees gathered this week in Oakland. Most of the staff works remotely, so this is our annual chance to get together, meet each other or see old friends, learn about the company’s successes, and plan for the future.
This is truly an amazing group of people, fewer than 50, yet building an operation that reaches tens of millions of people (no exaggeration). So with all the non-Bay Area folks flying home today, it seemed like a good time to share some of those accomplishments.
DIVERSITY
One of our key operational goals is to have a staff that reflects the demographic composition of the Democratic Party coalition: browner and more female. While we haven’t quite met our goals, we’ve made great strides in the past two years. Here are our latest stats, including a new hire starting in a couple of weeks:
| 20 |
| 14 |
| 34 |
| 27 |
| 15 |
| 6 |
Of our eight departments (News, Elections, Activism, Community, Technology, Social Media, Data and Business), four are led by women, though both the CEO (me) and President are men. Of those ten senior positions, two are led by people of color, including the entire company (me, again!).
I decided to take a look at staff reporting to women, and once you take out the ten people in senior leadership, it was 14 reporting to women, and 24 reporting to men. That doesn’t include “middle management”, and it certainly doesn’t include Neeta’s army of community assistants or Susan’s contributing editors, which together number in the dozens.
One reason for the disparity is the tech department—a field famous for being heavily bro-dominated. But even there we buck the trend. Our technology team is 12 people strong, five of them women and three four of them people of color. Tech teams everywhere would kill for that kind of diversity (at least the enlightened ones).
We also have a strong LGBT contingent on staff. So while we haven’t quite met our goals (40 percent people of color or better), we’re worlds better than we were just a couple of years ago. And while it’s nice to see that diversity on paper, I can’t tell you how amazing it is to have it on staff, what that wealth of experiences and points of view bring to the organization. I can’t imagine doing it any other way, and I honestly can’t figure out how other organizations do without it. We are exponentially better at doing what we do because of it.