Yesterday the Vimeo team gathered virtually for an open forum on racial injustice in America. We asked over 200 employees to share the one word that best expresses how recent events have made them feel.
As I watched this word cloud form, and as I watch the raw emotion playing out in streets across America, I feel each of these words deeply. What is happening is not ok. It is clear that as businesses and business leaders, we have to step up. Frankly, we should’ve stepped up long ago.
Let me be clear about where Vimeo stands. We stand unequivocally in support of the Black community and of protesters exercising their right to free speech. The recent murders of Black Americans Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd are the result of pervasive, institutionalized racism. The forces that led to these deaths — and the many before them — aren’t new. The only thing that’s changed is that there has been enough collective outrage to prompt much needed action.
But those are just words, and public statements are easy to make. It’s much harder to move the needle. I believe the best way we can have an impact is to channel what we do best as a platform, and focus it on lasting ways to affect change. That starts with an honest commitment to do better.
Here is Vimeo’s commitment:
First, we’ll do better in amplifying Black voices. For 15 years, Vimeo has been a community of storytellers. As we’ve experienced during this pandemic, video has the power to move people, create empathy, connect us, teach us, and expose truth. So you’ll see us apply our platform to proactively amplify Black voices and stories that promote racial justice.
Second, we’ll do better in bringing diversity to all levels of our workforce, our leadership and our user base. Black representation within Vimeo is too low, so we’ll increase our efforts to hire and develop Black employees. As part of that, we’ll listen to the anger, fear, trauma and frustration of our Black community, as well as their dreams and aspirations. We’ll educate ourselves on the entrenched roots of systemic racism in America, and we’ll identify and mitigate the effects of bias in our policies and operations.
Third, we’ll do better in putting our money where our mouth is. Our parent company IAC has endowed their Fellows program with $25M this year – our single largest philanthropic effort to build leaders from underrepresented communities. And we’ll continue to evolve and seek out ways to balance inequities. Not only through donations to nonprofits on the front lines of this movement —we are partnering with IAC and their portfolio of companies to maximize our dollars and our impact—, but also through the business choices we make every day.
That’s not all we’ll do, but it’s a start. And we’ll do it with purpose and intent, so it’s not a one-off that fades as quickly as a social post. Finally, we’ll be transparent in sharing our progress, and increase our accountability to the broader world.
To our community: thank you for your voice, for sharing it with us and for trusting us with its power. We are with you, and we know we’ve got work to do.
Sincerely, Anjali
