Feature – Diversity


The pension industry’s record on leadership diversity is woeful. What, Mona Dohle asks, is needed to speed up the rate of change?


On a beautiful day in May, Christian Cooper, a senior biomed- ical editor, decided to go for a walk in New York’s Central Park to pursue his hobby of birdwatching. However, he was soon interrupted by a dog walker, who did not keep her dog on a leash, in contravention of the park’s rules. When he politely asked her to comply with the rules, she called the police on him, claiming that he was “an African-American man threat- ening her life”.


It is one of countless highly-profile examples of the discrimi- natory treatment black and other ethnic minority people face. The scene could also be applicable to the financial industry.


34 | portfolio institutional July 2020 | issue 94


Amy Cooper, the woman who called the police, was head of investment solutions at Franklin Templeton. This raises the question, if she was ready to call the police on an innocent person on camera, how did she engage with people from eth- nic minorities in a professional context? If Christian Cooper was a trustee or chief investment officer of a pension fund asking her a challenging question about the performance of one of the firm’s funds, would she reply with the same professionalism she would have shown to a white person? The Central Park incident sparked widespread public outrage


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