February 5, 2020
Beginning on Martin Luther King Jr. Day and all through Black History Month, the Port of Seattle’s Office of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion is honoring members of our diverse community. We are highlighting members of the Port team who are inspired by Dr. King’s legacy and are working to transform the Port into a socially just organization.
Tina Boyd is the women and minority-owned disadvantaged business coordinator in the Port’s Diversity in Contracting program. She has worked with the Port for 24 years in various roles from marketing to accounting and the executive office. Prior to the Port, she worked in international banking and comes from a biracial military family. She has extensive experience working in diverse environments and, in her current role, ensures companies that contract with the Port reflect the diversity our of surrounding communities.
It’s hard to change a first impression. On my first day at the Port nearly 24 years ago, I got lost and wandered into the mailroom. I had worked in diverse environments up to this point and was surprised to see that every person in the room was an African American man.
Immediately, I questioned what was going on; positions in the mailroom, while filling an important role, are not considered prestigious or well-paid. Seeing this many African Americans in this role gave me the impression that the mailroom was the only place in the organization where people of color work.
As it turns out, the Port had more diversity in other departments than what I saw on my first day — and this has only improved over time — but this initial impression still stands out to me. It illustrates two important points about improving equity in an organization: 1) people’s perceptions matter and can inform how they think about the entire organization and 2) just hiring diverse staff isn’t enough. Organizations must work to make sure diversity exists in all departments and at all leadership levels. This means outlining clear paths to advancement and creating policies and procedures to ensure gains in diversity are being made.
In my current role, I support Port departments in hiring women and minority-owned businesses for a portion of our contracts. It’s not an easy job. Port staff often have a lot on their plates. When it comes to hiring contractors for important projects, people tend to hire companies they trust and have successfully worked with before. The challenge is to support staff as they think through why they trust some contractors over others and explore reasons that might hold them back when considering a firm that is run by a woman or by a person of color.
This is why I am so hopeful about the work of the Office of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (OEDI). One of the foundational aspects of this work is increased training on racial and other implicit biases and how to manage these biases in a diverse environment. We all have biases, so thinking and planning around how we can best manage them is critical in equitable decision-making processes.
When more staff are willing to challenge their biases, we can build up successful partnerships with businesses that reflect the diversity of our community. This improves both the external perception of the Port as an organization that promotes equity and, internally, it has a cascading effect. The more diverse contractors we work with that succeed in implementing a project, the more appealing it becomes to people in other departments to work with these contractors.
In addition to improving people’s perception, we also need to fundamentally change Port processes to ensure that businesses run by women and people of color have the tools needed to apply for available projects. In my opinion, the team that runs Fisherman’s Terminal has been leading the organization on this front. Delmas Whittaker and his predecessor Kenneth Lyles have included diversity in contracting metrics on their performance evaluations for more than 15 years — long before it was required. On top of that, they have consistently met or exceeded their department goals.
Finally, increased equity work at the Port means that more people like Senior Director of OEDI Bookda Gheisar will be out in the community meeting women and people of color who own businesses. Building these relationships will help us learn why these diverse groups are not bidding on our projects and improve our networks and systems.
If I’m disappointed by anything when it comes to the launch of this new office, it’s that we didn’t do this 10 years ago! We could have been so much farther ahead in this work. But as Dr. King says, “we must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.” I have infinite hope that our equity efforts will enhance Port operations and build an economy that provides opportunities and improved quality of life for all.
Learn about the Port's Diversity in Contracting program.
