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Product cover image for Onyx Initiative: Expanding the Black Talent Pipeline

Onyx Initiative: Expanding the Black Talent Pipeline

Taja McLean, Ella Chilton, Wren Montgomery

Product #:W25574
Supplier:Ivey
Discipline:International Business, Sustainability
Setting:Canada; United States, 2021
Details:Case (PDF) • 11 pages • 2021-09-01

Subjects:

Equity financingFinancingBusiness managementLeadership and managing peopleInternational businessManagement

Industries:

Public administration and nonprofits

Geography:

North AmericaCanadaUnited States
Your Price:$9.71

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In April 2021, the co-founders of the Onyx Initiative (Onyx) were reviewing the progress of their six-month old organization. The co-founders had founded Onyx to expand the Black talent pipeline by offering a scholar program that connected Black students with mentors and offered them online professional development. The initiative had successfully accepted an inaugural cohort of 170 Black students and partnered with numerous corporate, community, and educational partners. Recently, corporate sponsors had approached Onyx with a request to expand programming to their US offices. The co-founders needed to decide if now was the right time for expansion, or if this would be spreading their new organization too thin.

Learning Objectives

This case can be taught in undergraduate- and graduate-level courses on sustainability, strategy, stakeholder management, ethics, diversity, and inclusion. It is designed to challenge students to explain current market failures leading to issues of systemic racism in corporate Canada. Students are encouraged to consider the role that culture, race, and historical injustices have played in the creation of the current political and socio-economic climate. For high-level contribution, students should draw parallels between methods of solving this issue and how these can be transplanted or modified to help solve other issues facing society today.

Students may choose to share personal stories or experiences to illustrate issues of race, and to further demonstrate that these topics extend beyond the case and directly impact students in the classroom.

Working through the case and assignment questions will give students the opportunity to
  • assess how different stakeholders impact corporations and the role corporations play in society;
  • assess the responsibility businesses have both to recognize how they might have been perpetuating racism and to combat racism; and
  • debate and advocate for specific methods with which companies can effectively integrate sustainability into their everyday business practices.
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Case Study: Onyx Initiative: Expanding the Black Talent Pipeline (English version) | Ivey Publishing