Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

The Ad World Is Racing to Reframe DEI As a Second Trump Era Looms

DEI has been misinterpreted as it became politicized, and the ad industry is determined to reclaim the message

P&G's Eric Austin (L) on a panel with Queen Latifah (R) at the 2024 Adcolor conference in Los AngelesAdcolor
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By Ryan Joe

ADWEEK House is headed to Las Vegas on January 8! Our house is your house to unwind, recharge and network during the industry’s largest consumer tech moment. RSVP.

Multicultural members of the marketing and advertising industry were shaken not just by Donald Trump’s general election victory, but also by how he won—through huge advances across nearly every cohort, including Hispanics and Gen Z, who are themselves the most multicultural of all American generations.

Despite diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives peaking after the 2020 murder of George Floyd and retracting due to right-wing blowback, it is Trump’s acolytes who have ironically become more diverse.

Many attendees at the Nov.

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Ryan Joe

Ryan Joe is the editor in chief of Adweek. He has been covering data-driven marketing and advertising for over a decade, striving to make its complexities understandable and accessible. He started out as a reporter for the Haymarket publication DMNews in the early 2010s, then moved to AdExchanger where he worked for nearly eight years, covering the industry as investment shifted to digital advertising. He ended his tenure at AdExchanger as managing editor, jumping to Business Insider in 2021 to help lead its scoop-driven coverage of the ad industry. Joe is a graduate of UCLA and Columbia.

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