Latest / The Diversity Career Podcast with Fexingo: Inclusion, Equity, and Underrepresented Professionals / How a Consulting Firm Retained Black Women Through Sponsorship
Transcript
- Lucas: Luna, I want to talk about a number that stopped me cold when I saw it: 68 percent. Luna: That's a retention rate, I'm guessing? For Black women at a consulting firm? Lucas: Exactly. A mid-tier strategy consultancy — about two thousand employees, headquartered in the Midwest — looked at its own data and realized that three years after hiring, only 68 percent of Black women were still at the firm. For white men, the same number was 92 percent. That gap is a pipeline leak, and it's not about recruiting. It's about who stays and who advances. Luna: And I'm guessing they tried mentorship first. Most firms do. Lucas: They did. They had a formal mentorship program for five years. Every Black woman was assigned a senior mentor. And it barely moved the needle — retention went from 66 to 68 percent. So the head of diversity, a woman named Angela Reyes, asked a blunt question: 'What do our Black women need that mentorship isn't giving them?' The answer, after sixty exit interviews, was sponsorship. Not advice. Advocacy. Luna: That distinction is everything. A mentor tells you how to navigate the organization. A sponsor uses their political capital to put you in rooms where decisions are made. Lucas: Right. So the firm designed what they called the 'Sponsor Accelerator.' Each Black woman at the manager level or above — that was about forty people at launch — was paired with a partner-level sponsor who had profit and loss responsibility. Not just a senior person who liked diversity. Someone whose bonus depended on revenue. Luna: That's key. A sponsor who can actually say, 'I need her on this client account because she's the best person for the job.' Not just, 'I think she should get a development opportunity.' Lucas: Exactly. And the firm trained those sponsors. It wasn't just a match and hope for the best. Each sponsor committed to two hours a month of active advocacy — that included sending the sponsee's name for stretch assignments, having a quarterly check-in with the engagement manager to discuss performance feedback, and formally nominating the sponsee for promotion at the annual review committee. Luna: Two hours a month. That's not a huge time investment, but it requires intentionality. How did they track whether sponsors were actually doing it? Lucas: They made it visible. Each sponsor filled out a quarterly 'sponsorship log' — a single page that listed three things: what assignments they'd advocated for, what feedback conversations they'd had, and whether they'd raised the sponsee's name in a promotion meeting. The logs were reviewed by the firm's executive committee. If a sponsor missed two quarters, they were reassigned. Luna: And the results? You mentioned the number moved from 68 to something higher. Lucas: Over three years, retention of Black women at the firm went from 68 percent to 91 percent. Representation at the senior manager level doubled — from six people to twelve. And for the first time, the firm had a Black woman make partner through the program. Luna: That's a concrete outcome. But I wonder — did they see any pushback? The 'why do they get special treatment' argument? Lucas: Angela told me that came up in the first town hall. A white male senior manager asked why there wasn't a sponsorship program for everyone. And her response was straightforward: 'If you can show me a demographic group at this firm that has a 24-point retention gap compared to the majority, I'll build a program for them too.' No one had a counter. Luna: I like that. It frames it as a data-driven fix, not a favor. And it forces the organization to look at the actual disparities. Lucas: The other thing they did that I think is replicable: they built the sponsorship into the partner's performance review. Partners were evaluated on four metrics: revenue, client satisfaction, team development, and inclusion. Sponsorship counted toward the inclusion metric. If a partner didn't have a sponsee or wasn't logging activity, they couldn't get the highest rating on that dimension. Luna: So they made it a performance expectation, not a volunteer activity. That's how you get real accountability. Lucas: Right. And the program also addressed a subtle problem: when a sponsor left the firm. Because partners do leave. The program had a 'sponsor succession' protocol — within thirty days, the sponsee was reassigned, and the new sponsor was given a full brief on the history. That continuity mattered. In the old mentorship program, if a mentor left, it could take six months to find a replacement, and sometimes the relationship never restarted. Luna: So the program design accounted for instability. That's thoughtful. A lot of diversity programs fail because they're fragile — they depend on one champion. Lucas: Exactly. And the cost? The program added about half a percent to the firm's total compensation budget. Mostly in time — partner hours that could have been billable. But the firm calculated that replacing a senior manager costs roughly two hundred thousand dollars in recruiting, lost productivity, and training. By saving twelve senior managers who would have left, the program more than paid for itself. Luna: That's a solid business case. And I think it challenges the assumption that inclusion work is expensive. This was cheap relative to turnover costs. Lucas: It's also worth noting what they didn't do. They didn't set a quota for promotions. They didn't tie sponsor bonuses to hitting a specific number. They said, 'We are going to create the conditions for equity, and then we'll measure the outcome.' The outcome took three years. That patience is rare. Luna: You know, this episode reminds me of something I've been thinking about. If we've helped you think through a career move or a diversity strategy at your own company, and you want to support the show staying ad-free and listener-supported, you can buy us a coffee at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. It genuinely helps us keep doing deep dives like this. Lucas: Yeah, and it's a small way to keep the podcast independent. We appreciate anyone who chips in. Now, back to the sponsorship model — one more detail I found fascinating. The firm also created a peer network for the sponsees. They met monthly, without sponsors, to discuss challenges and share strategies. That network became a de facto support system, and it produced some of the most honest feedback the firm had ever gotten about microaggressions on client sites. Luna: So the sponsorship program didn't just create upward advocacy — it also created a safe space for collective problem-solving. That's a secondary benefit that probably improved retention even more. Lucas: That's the part Angela said surprised her most. She expected the sponsor relationships to be the main driver. But the peer group turned out to be equally powerful. Women would say, 'I thought I was the only one who experienced that comment from a client.' Suddenly it wasn't an individual problem; it was a pattern the firm could address. Luna: And the firm did address it? They changed something based on that feedback? Lucas: They did. After the group reported that several Black women were consistently being assigned to 'internal strategy' roles rather than client-facing ones — which hurt their promotion chances — the firm changed its staffing process. Now, every staffing decision for manager-level roles has to be reviewed by a diversity committee. It slowed things down by about a week, but it broke the pattern. Luna: So the sponsorship program led to a systemic change in how work is allocated. That's the kind of ripple effect that makes a program sustainable. Lucas: Exactly. And that's what I'd want listeners to take away. Sponsorship isn't just about helping one person get promoted. It's about revealing the hidden barriers in how work gets assigned, how performance is evaluated, and how opportunities are distributed. If you fix those, you fix the pipeline for everyone. Luna: And for anyone at a company thinking about starting something similar, what's the first step? Angela's approach of starting with data and exit interviews seems smart. Lucas: That's exactly where she'd say to start. Look at your own retention numbers by demographic. If there's a gap of more than ten percentage points between any group and the majority, you have a leak. Then interview the people who left. Ask one question: 'What would have made you stay?' If the answer involves opportunity, access, or advocacy, you don't need a mentorship program. You need sponsors. Luna: It's a clear diagnosis. And the fix — while not easy — is straightforward: identify your senior leaders who have real power, train them to be advocates, and hold them accountable. That's a blueprint any firm can adapt. Lucas: And that's where I'll leave it. Next episode, we're going to look at a company that took a completely different approach — they used data to identify pay disparities across gender and race, and then they made adjustments publicly. That's a whole different set of challenges. But for today: sponsorship works, but only if you design it with teeth. Luna: Looking forward to that. And for our listeners, if you have a story of a sponsorship program that worked — or didn't — we'd love to hear about it. You can reach us through the Fexingo website. Thanks for listening.