The T. Howard Foundation will recognize several industry leaders and companies committed to increasing diversity and inclusion as part of its 30th anniversary Diversity Awards Dinner on May 17 in New York.

T. Howard is expecting more than 625 attendees for the event at Manhattan’s Cipriani Wall Street, themed Opportunity is Everything and hosted by Tamron Hall,  president and CEO Jo Pamphile said. The foundation will present its Corporate Excellence Award to packaged goods company Procter & Gamble; its Diversity Advocate Award to Charter Communications senior VP and chief diversity officer Rhonda Crichlow; its Executive Champion Award to ABC News president Kim Godwin and its Executive Leadership Award to Revolt Media and TV CEO Detavio Samuels. 

As part of the dinner festivities, the T. Howard Foundation expects to announce the placement of more than 150 college-age people of color into internship programs with entertainment companies, Pamphile told Multichannel News. She also addressed some of the challenges the media and telecommunications industries still face with regard to equity and inclusion. Here’s a lightly edited version of the interview.

MCN: As T. Howard celebrates its 30th Diversity Awards dinner, how far has the organization come in helping the industry achieve its diversity efforts?

Jo Pamphile: First, we’re just not celebrating 30 years of the Diversity Awards Dinner, but it’s also a celebration of how the industry has demonstrated its resilience through a difficult time with COVID. Through the support of our board during that period we were able to sustain the organization, and the turnout for our last dinner [in September 2022] was like a reunion. Now that we are through that, I’m very much dedicated to looking at the landscape and figuring out what we need to be doing that we’re not doing now.

MCN: Where is the industry now with regards to diversity, equity and inclusion post-COVID? Has the industry lost any ground in its efforts due to the pandemic? 

JP: I think it’s doing fairly well, all things considered. From where we sit, we are getting more demands and requests for diverse talent, not only in internships, but also in terms of job postings to help build positions. We’re also fielding more requests for diverse candidates to fill upper-level management positions. It’s still going to be a challenge and it's not fixed yet, but the opportunities I feel are more out there now. I also think it's driven by the reality that the market is multicultural. 

MCN: Along with upper management positions, where do you see the greatest growth area for employment for diverse candidates? 

JP: I see the greatest growth in the booming tech industry. There are a lot of jobs, but it’s a place where those opportunities are not necessarily going in favor of people of color. We recently launched a diversity tech initiative because we have to be there — we have the talent and we’re looking to build an ever-bigger talent pool. My concern is that there are jobs out there that exist in tech that we don’t even know about because it’s such a fast-moving industry. I feel our challenge is that we have to make sure we’re keeping up.

MCN: This year’s event is being held in May after last year’s dinner in September. Will you look to make May the permanent date? 

JP: No. Ultimately we want to move back to March beginning next year. It’s harder to do the dinner during this time of the year because there’s so much going on, particularly with our recruitment cycle, which has to start in September. The demand for interns is very competitive, so we have to have adequate time to prepare. 

The T Howard Foundation will honor ABC Entertainment, Charter Communications, ViacomCBS and the National Basketball Association as part of the diversity organization's Virtual Awards Event taking place on Sept. 30.

The "Power of Partnerships and Commitment" event, which takes place six months after the diversity organization’s annual fundraising dinner was cancelled due to the coronavirus outbreak, will feature video presentations of the honorees the organization was slated to celebrate in March, according to T Howard president Jo Pamphile. 

T Howard will present its Executive Leadership Award to ABC Entertainment and Disney Plus Executive VP of Talent and Casting Ayo Davis, as well a ViacomCBS executive VP, Global Public Policy and Government Relations DeDe Lea; its Executive Champion Award to Charter Communications Executive VP and Chief Marketing Officer Jonathan Hargis; and its Diversity Advocate Award to National Basketball Association Cares Ambassador Jason Collins. 

The event will also feature appearances by such artists as Tracee Ellis Ross, Trevor Noah, John Leguizamo and Grant Hill, according to the organization. 

“We were fortunate -- when we shut down we had pretty much reached our fundraising goal,” she said. “Our supporters stood by us through everything so we felt that we needed to continue the celebration and recognition of our awardees in a virtual format.” 

A year after a Spring Snowstorm forced a postponement of the 2018 T. Howard Diversity Awards Dinner in New York from March to May, the organization is gearing up for sunny skies at its event this week.

The diversity organization, which helps place college-age people of color into internship programs with entertainment companies around the U.S., is expecting more than 700 attendees for its 26th annual fundraising dinner on Wednesday (March 27) at Cipriani Wall Street in New York. The event will celebrate industry leaders and companies committed to increasing diversity, including Starz, which will receive the organization’s Corporate Leadership Award, and the cast of ABC’s comedy series Fresh Off The Boat, which will be honored with T. Howard’s Diversity Advocate Award.

In addition, T. Howard will present Executive Leadership Awards to three female executives. T. Howard Foundation president and CEO Jo Pamphile spoke with Multichannel News about the event as well as her thoughts on the industry’s diversity and inclusion efforts.

MCN:What is the focus for this year’s dinner?
Jo Pamphile: We have a convergence of messages — one of the strongest is the fact that all three of our Eexecutive Leadership Awards are going to three remarkable women. This is just wonderful progress for women, professionally speaking. Also for the first time we’re honoring a [TV show] cast: ABC’s Fresh Off the Boat. We tend to pay a lot of attention to Latino and African-Americans, but don’t give as much attention to another group of color, which are Asian people. In addition, Starz has been remarkable in its diversity both in front of and behind the camera. We are always focused on strengthening our message of diversity through the dinner. While it is a fundraiser, it’s also an opportunity to put that message out into the forefront.

MCN:T. Howard is now receiving funds from The Walter Kaitz Foundation. How will you look to use them?
JP: The area that we wanted to expand next year is our scholarships. We submitted requests for funding of the scholarships that we provide, and they also gave us additional funding as it relates to STEM [science, technology, engineering and math] students. Sometimes we have a tendency to overlook the fundamentals because we have a mission to help people to get jobs in the industry, but suppose those potential employees can’t get out of the educational process because of lack of funding? We want to help them launch a career, but we also want to help those that have done the right thing and finished high school and picked their area of interest. The biggest challenge for those students of color is how are they going to get access to the opportunities. If they’re not in school or they’ve dropped out for financial reasons, we’ve lost them. So being able to get scholarship dollars from the Kaitz Foundation is extremely helpful.

MCN:How would you rate the industry’s diversity and inclusion efforts?
JP: I think there’s room for improvement in every industry. The industry is in a state of flux as a result of consolidation, so it’s a very difficult time. But I know when I look at our numbers regarding our intern placements, over 100 alumni hires are getting hired every year, and that number is growing. This year’s dinner, we’ll put a spotlight on not only those alumni who were hired, but also those who have been promoted.

MCN:Are you worried consolidation might hamper future diversity efforts going forward?
JP: I would be remiss if it didn’t concern me, but you have to be able to adjust to the ebbs and flows of the business. You have to be resilient; I’m always looking for the positive aspects of everything. Consolidation has forced companies to be more competitive and to come up with new solutions to the business that may not have happened otherwise. They are also embracing diversity because it expands the market, so that works in our favor. You have to look at this as the glass is half full and not half empty, and you take it from there.

Leading Ladies

A snapshot of the T. Howard Executive Leadership Award recipients:

Christina Spade
Executive VP and CFO, CBS Corp.

Spade oversees all financial operations of CBS Corp. including treasury, tax, accounting, internal audit, information security and real estate. Prior to this position, Spade served as executive VP and chief financial officer and strategy for Showtime Networks since 2013.

Rita Tuzon
EVP and General Counsel, Fox Corp.

Tuzon leads the business and legal strategy for Fox’s sports and entertainment assets. She also oversees legal and business affairs for many functional areas, including corporate, distribution, digital, standards and practices, business development and content sales.

Susan Zirinsky
President and Senior Executive Producer, CBS News

Zirinsky is responsible for all news content for the CBS Television Network, CBS News digital platforms and CBS News Radio. Zirinsky, a former senior executive producer at CBS News, was named president and senior executive producer of CBS News this month.

The T. Howard foundation will finally get to celebrate the 25th anniversary of its Diversity Awards Dinner on Monday (May 7), after a March snowstorm forced organizers to postpone the event.

Having already reached record numbers in terms of attendees and revenue prior to its postponement, the event at Cipriani Wall Street in New York recognizes and celebrates industry leaders and companies committed to increasing diversity. This year, T. Howard honors AMC Networks with its Corporate Leadership Award and Univision Communications with its Corporate Excellence Award. 

Jo Pamphile, president and CEO of the organization that helps place college-age people of color into internship programs with entertainment companies around the country, spoke with Multichannel News about the event.

MCN: Put into perspective what the 25th anniversary of the T. Howard fundraising dinner means for both the organization and the industry.

Jo Pamphile: The 25th anniversary dinner marks 25 years of forging a way of not only being able to impact the industry from a diversity standpoint, but to gain supporters to buy into that mission as well. We have been able to do that basically through our programs and services. We have been able to develop our internship program through our very strict screening process to bring the best we can to offer the industry as internship opportunities with the objective that they will be qualified and eligible for hire. 

As a result of that commitment on our part to make that happen — as well as the industry’s response — we’ve been able to expand our programs and services tremendously. This past year we placed 174 interns; a big difference from the 35 in the summer when we started back 25 years ago.

MCN: What has transpired over the past 25 years within the industry that has allowed for such an increase in the employment of T. Howard interns?

JP: Well, I think the idea that these interns can be helpful to these companies is the key — this isn’t just a social obligation so to speak; they are contributing. The industry itself is growing and has expanded into multicultural markets, and a viable percentage of the revenue the industry generates comes from multicultural markets. So it does make sense that the representatives of those markets can make a contribution within the industry as well.

MCN: What can attendees expect to see during the 25th anniversary dinner?

JP: What’s great is that we’ll be able to show off the success stories of our interns during the dinner. Our two co-emcees for the dinner are alumni of the program and work as on-air talent today as a result of having interned through the foundation. Anna-Lysa Gayle is a news reporter at the Washington affiliate of ABC [Sinclair Broadcast Group’s WJLA]; and Lawrence Jackson started out at Revolt TV after his internship before moving on to MTV, doing their Total Request Live reboot before getting scooped up by NBCUniversal and Snapchat, where he’s on a news program.

Also, we will recognize four colleges and universities that we work with because it all starts with the recruitment of interns. We’ll also look at those companies who have participated in our program and have addressed the issue of diversity. 

AMC has been a great contributor financially by supporting the dinner and has also been a member of the board of directors for several years. Actor Colman Domingo from Fear the Walking Dead will present the [Corporate Leadership] award to [AMC Networks CEO] Josh Sapan. Coleman is an actor but he’s also a writer, a screenwriter and has that distinction of being a diverse person within the industry, so we want to keep reinforcing the message of the effectiveness and success that companies are having with diverse people.

Univision has been for years a supporter of the foundation and a partner in a way that is helpful to us and meaningful to us. Robert Rodriguez, who is the founder and chairman of El Rey Network, is going to be making that presentation to [Univision Communications CEO] Randy Falco. We feel very strongly about demonstrating the fact that diversity is not only something that is attainable, but that it works.

MCN: What’s in store for T. Howard over the next 25 years?

JP: This is something we talk about all the time. I think the international internship idea is something I’ve talked about for some time and that may be looming closer to becoming a possibility than before, mainly because many of our board member companies have international markets. I can envision, say, a marketing team that’s working in London and is traveling back and forth — what an opportunity it would be if we could have an intern that’s working with them and traveling back and forth with them as well.

The other area that we are working very immediately in is technology. We’ve had in this year’s class about 20 tech students — engineers and technology majors. That is obviously a needed part of the industry, so we are really gearing up to meet that need.

The subject of diversity will take center stage this Wednesday (March 23) at the 23rd annual T. Howard Foundation Diversity Awards Dinner in New York. Juju Chang, co-anchor of ABC’s Nightline, will host the event, which recognizes and celebrates industry leaders and companies committed to increasing diversity. T. Howard Foundation president Jo Pamphile spoke with Multichannel News programming editor R. Thomas Umstead about this year’s event, which will award a Corporate Excellence Award to HBO, a Corporate Championship Award to ABC Entertainment and a Diversity Partner Award to Crown Media Family Networks and Microsoft. Pamphile heads a diversity organization that helps place young college-age people of color into internship programs. This year, the organization received more than 1,500 applications from college students of color for about 100 potential internship opportunities in 2016. Here are highlights of their conversation.

MCN:Heading into the dinner, do you believe the T. Howard Foundation is on the right track of accomplishing the diversity goals it set for itself and for the industry?

Jo Pamphile: We’re feeling that it’s sort of our time in a sense because, for one, diversity is in the news constantly. We believe we’re in such a good place with regards to our diversity efforts. Over the years, we have grown so much — we started as a summer program, and now we’re a year-round program. We have over 100 interns total this year, but we’ve expanded our reach beyond placing interns.

We now have a professional-development arm that we call our talent development program. What that program does is provide all the professional tutoring that the candidates will need for their positions.

We will also soon start a more aggressive eff ort to recruit diverse talent in the tech space. The industry is changing in that regard and the need for talent with those skills is growing. We feel that this is something that we have to do because the needs of our host companies are changing, and to keep up with that, we have to change, too. We will look to increase our recruiting eff orts to include engineers and [information technology] and digital media candidates.

MCN:Are you finding that more companies are reaching out to T. Howard to look for qualified persons of color?

JP: Yes. Our relationship with the industry has grown tremendously, not only in the number of companies, but in terms of the depth of services that we’re providing. Before, they may have just taken a summer intern but now they’re calling to help fill positions beyond entry-level.

When we talk about diversity, it’s easy to say you’re going to commit to it, and it’s another thing to actually do it. Companies want someone who really gets them and knows what they need, so for us it’s about knowing the skills requirement and the culture of their organization. There are young people out there who are talented, are willing to sacrifice and work the extra hours and do what it takes to be successful.

MCN:How did the organization come to choose its honorees for the event?

JP: I’ve had my eye on HBO for a long time, because their programming has been excellent in terms of diversity. When you think of HBO, you think of things like When the Levees Broke, produced by Spike Lee; and, most recently, the story of Bessie Smith (Bessie), played by Queen Latifah. They have always been innovative, and now we have the opportunity to honor them.

With regards to ABC Entertainment, who hasn’t heard of their “Thank God Its Thursday” lineup of Scandal, How to Get Away With Murder and Grey’s Anatomy? Who hasn’t heard of American Crime, black-ish and Fresh Off the Boat? We really look to honor companies like ABC that have a shared commitment to diversity on and off the screen.

We also have great guest presenters in John Ridley and Russell Simmons.

MCN:Overall, how do you see the industry’s diversity efforts?

JP: The doors are opening and I think that we’re no longer typecasting. It’s really saying we need to hire a person for this position, and if a person of color meets those requirements and is able to do the job, that person will get there.