Wall Street analyst to walk from DC to NYC to promote corporate equity measures
Cid Wilson is no Che Guevara. A longtime top Wall Street analyst with a wide network of contacts in the financial sector, Wilson, the president and CEO of the Hispanic Association on Corporate Responsibility (HACR), is generally more comfortable fighting his battles in boardrooms than on the streets.
But since Sept. 17, when he set off on a 240-mile walk from Capitol Hill to Wall Street, Wilson has cast aside his usual smooth tactics in favor of old-fashioned protest. What is fueling his steps? The urgent need that he and a powerful group of allied organizations see to rise up against the sustained assault in recent years on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in corporate America.
“We said, let’s put our bodies on the line and send a strong message that we’re going to walk step by step, mile by mile, from Capitol Hill all the way till we get to Manhattan, New York City, because we know that diversity, equity and inclusion is not only the right thing to do, it is smart business,” Wilson said.
Wilson’s journey, dubbed the Walk to Wall Street, kicked off Sept. 17 with a rally on Capitol Hill and will culminate in New York City’s financial district on Oct. 11. Participants are invited to join Wilson for segments of the route, which will go through Baltimore; Wilmington, Delaware; Philadelphia; and Trenton and Newark, New Jersey, including rallies along the way.
“We’re walking for all the communities that have been historically underrepresented,” Wilson said. “We’re walking for our allies, and we’re walking for the companies that have stood for diversity, equity and inclusion and haven’t wavered or pushed back, and for the ones that are looking for that reinforcement. Reinforcement is on the way.”
Fire of litigation
Since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down affirmative action in colleges in June 2023 – ruling that schools cannot explicitly consider race in the admissions process – companies throughout the country have been stepping back from efforts to grow a more diverse workforce. While the Supreme Court decision does not materially affect DEI programs in private workplaces, it has ignited a fire of litigation by right-wing activists seeking to extend the court’s race-blind stance on education to corporate diversity and inclusion policies. Dozens of prominent companies are retooling their diversity programs in the face of the growing expectation that the conservative-dominated Supreme Court will eventually take up the issue.
The legal and rhetorical battle threatens to undo decades of efforts by employers to take race and other factors into account in hiring, in the interest of countering historical inequities in their workforces. It also represents a distressing turnabout from the $340 billion that companies committed in the wake of the murder of George Floyd in 2020 to improve racial equity in their ranks.
“Watching companies roll back their commitments to DEI has only reaffirmed that prioritizing staff of color and LGBTQ+ people was a temporary fix and performative,” said Rebecca Latin, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s justice, equity, diversity and inclusion department.
“The mere fact that companies are saying they value DEI, but are actively removing full-time dedicated staff support and funding for DEI initiatives, indicates intentional efforts to recruit and retain employees of color and LGBTQ+ people are no longer a priority. Organizations removing DEI from their priorities proves that we must continue to advocate for inclusive workplaces and for access to resources to break down barriers to create equitable access to the American dream for us all.”
The Walk to Wall Street initiative is far from the only way HACR and its partners – among them the National Urban League, UnidosUS, Asian American Business Development Center, Disability:IN, Global Black Economic Forum, SER Jobs for Progress National, Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers, Leadership Education for Asian Pacifics, Association of LGBTQ+ Corporate Directors and the Women Business Collaborative – are pushing meaningful change and equity in the workplace.
But in contrast to the groups’ customary quiet efforts at persuasion, the walk is designed to draw attention, not only to the need to reinstate DEI programs but to expand opportunities for people of different backgrounds and abilities to rise within companies. To that end, Wilson is calling for companies to rethink the way they conceive of their workforces. Instead of pushing employees to fit into a cookie-cutter image to succeed, he says corporations should expand their vision of what successful contributors look like.
Altering the conversation
On the last day of the walk, Oct. 11, Wilson plans to make his way to the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan and down to Wall Street for a final rally. Each stop, the organizers say, will highlight specific challenges and opportunities related to diversity and inclusion, and each is designed to engage local communities and leaders. Organizers say that while no companies have signed on as public supporters of the effort, a number of firms are privately encouraging employees to join in as they wish.
The drive behind the walk, which has been mapped by Wilson’s staff to keep him off highways and take him on smaller roads over four weeks, is to alter the conversation around diversity, equity and inclusion, which has been attacked so vociferously in recent years that its very abbreviation, DEI, has become anathema in some corporate circles. Even companies that have not otherwise changed their policies are quietly renaming diversification and inclusion efforts.
That is the reason that Wilson insists on putting the term diversity, equity and inclusion front and center in discussions about the Walk to Wall Street initiative, which will take place during National Hispanic Heritage Month.
“There are those that want us to go back to the opposite of diversity, equity and inclusion – homogeneity, inequality and exclusion,” Wilson said. “I’m very vocal in saying, ‘No, we’re not going to change these terminologies. We’re going to call it for what it is.’ You need diversity, you need equity and you need inclusion. And I’ll even add a fourth, and that is, you need intentionality.”
By intentionality, he is referring to the sort of deliberate decisions by corporate leaders to hire, promote and sponsor people from diverse backgrounds, the kind of decisions that shaped Wilson’s own path to the top.
Discrimination at the top
Born in Washington Heights, the Black and Latin American immigrant community at the tip of Manhattan made famous by the Lin-Manuel Miranda musical “In the Heights,” Wilson’s journey to Wall Street was far from easy. Wilson, who identifies as Afro Latino, was raised in New Jersey by immigrant parents from the Dominican Republic who, he said, taught him “not to forget where I’m from.” He graduated from Ohio State University, majored in economics and got his break working in the mailroom of the investment bank and stock brokerage firm Paine Webber.
There, Wilson said, he might have languished, but for a senior vice president at the company, a white man of Jewish background who took an interest in him.
“He gave me a chance. He allowed me to flourish,” Wilson recalls of the man, now deceased, whom he calls a model for the sort of sponsor that young people of diverse backgrounds desperately need to succeed in corporate environments.
“He allowed me to rise from the mailroom to success as a top-ranked financial analyst.”
Despite his success, Wilson said he faces discrimination to this day.
“I’ve lost count how many times I’m in a suit, looking just as professional as everybody else, and people ask me, ‘Where’s the restroom? Where’s valet parking? How do I make reservations at this place?’” Wilson said. “I mean, it happens to me so often. I look at the person and I say, ‘Do I look like I work here?’”
Such searing recollections will be on Wilson’s mind as he puts one step in front of the other on his long walk, he said. He has been training, and he has several pairs of walking shoes broken in. He knows his team will be there to back him up along the way. With every step he takes, he said, he hopes to bring corporate leaders along on his journey.
Image at top: The Walk to Wall Street kicked off Sept. 17 in Washington and will conclude Oct. 11 in New York. Pictured on the first day are, from left: Matthew Matos, manager, corporate memberships, for the Hispanic Association on Corporate Responsibility (HACR); José Molina, HACR program manager, learning and development; Alexander Cena, chief programs officer, Leadership Education for Asian Pacifics; Katalina Carrillo, HACR manager, finance and operations; and Cid Wilson, HACR president and CEO. (Courtesy of Hispanic Association on Corporate Responsibility)
