In partnership with Islington Council’s Black History Month programme and our continued commitment to BAME Equality, BIG Alliance Programme Manager Tom Browne chaired our first panel discussion on board diversity and more specifically the barriers and opportunities to increasing BAME (black and minority ethnic) representation.

We are all aware of the disproportionate impact of the virus on people from Black and Asian backgrounds, and there is a pertinent question about the degree to which such health inequalities existed before COVID, as they surely did, and whether COVID has just brought them into sharper relief. Likewise with digital inequality – has COVID merely highlighted the divide that already existed, or has it widened the gap?

We come together as a new campaign led by a group of senior and influential Black and BAME professionals and business organisations, drawn together by Red Lion Chambers and ELBA and make this statement of intent in response to the shocking events of 25 May 2020.

ELBA and BIG Alliance are from, and serve some of the most, diverse communities in the country – if not the world. We have been proud to talk about how our communities here reach out across an interconnected global community. Despite the quarantines and barriers thrown up by the coronavirus, we have remained connected to each other via the internet, social media, and our common humanity.