LEADERSHIP
AT THE TOP
Makes the Difference for EEO and Diversity Effectiveness
BY JOHN M. ROBINSON AND DR. PATRICIA T. TAYLOR
John M. Robinson and Dr. Patricia T. Taylor served as chief and deputy chief
of Intelligence Community (IC) Equal Employment Opportunity and Diversity
(EEOD) in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Their office was
created to provide policy guidance to and collaborate with EEO and diversity
leaders in all 16 IC agencies and components.
For more than any other
part of government, diversity
in the intelligence community (IC)
is a mission-critical imperative.
To combat increasingly complex
threats to national security, the
IC must develop a work force that
“looks like America,” can operate
in a global-threat environment
and reflects diversity in its broad-est context—that is, not focusing
solely on race, gender and people
with disabilities, but expanding the
definition to include employees
with diverse heritage and ancestry, foreign-language capabilities,
cultural backgrounds, orientation
and ideas.
The Office of the Director of
National Intelligence (ODNI)
consolidates the myriad intelligence from each division in the
U.S. government. The Office of IC
EEOD, meanwhile, oversees and
sets policy guidance for all 16 IC
agencies and components, as well
as EEO and diversity services for
ODNI. It is the first real consolidated effort to establish policy for
diversity within the IC.
Until the establishment of the
ODNI, data on IC diversity had
been sparsely collected over the
