The Rest of the Hiring Story ...

It was a bit ago that I forwarded a Washington State EMD Tweet that had a picture of the new hires for the FEMA Integration Team at Washington state. In my forward I called out the fact that the team members, just hired, were not a very diverse lot. Five or six white guys who look a lot like me, but younger.

Today I had a quick conversation with one of those team members and he shared that two of the positions were offered to women, but they declined due to getting better offers elsewhere. So, while pictures tell a story, perhaps they are only worth 854 and not 1,000 words.

I do believe that recruitment is the issue and that we must become more deliberate in finding persons of color and others and attract them to our profession. The lack of existing workers who look like them, hinders our ability to attract these populations, thus we must work doubly hard to mentor and recruit.

Thank you Vernon Owens and Ken Hudson for believing me and joining our profession — many years ago.