ACADEMY'S DIVERSITY
REPORT IS IN
The Recording Academy will restructure its Board of Trustees, formulate formal diversity and inclusion goals for the board and, down the road, consider changing the voting process in the top Grammy Awards categories.
The moves are the implementation of recommendations set forth by the Recording Academy Diversity & Inclusion Task Force, which released its report today.
Convened in March 2018 and led by Tina Tchen, the task force made recommendations after examining issues of diversity and inclusion within the Recording Academy and the broader music community. The full report is here.
The Trustees voted in November to create a new system that will be implemented in January. Next year, 30 of the 38 Trustees will continue to be elected by the Chapters, and eight Trustees will be voted on by the overall membership, based on a vote among candidates on a slate chosen by a National Nominating Committee. The eight Trustees will be selected after the first 30 are elected.
The recommendation for the restructuring its Board of Trustees is to ensure that music creators from the broadest range of ages, backgrounds, genders, genres, crafts, and regions are fully represented within the organization’s leadership.
One of the goals for the board is to adopt a new structure that will make a priority of identifying and elevating a diverse range of music creators to positions of leadership.
The Academy will also continue to research the report's recommendation to change portions of the Grammy Award voting process to a ranked-choice system. The Awards and Nominations Committee decided against immediately implementing a ranked choice voting system for the four General Field categories after hearing a presentation in the spring.
One of the Task Force’s first moves was to bring parity to the secret nomination review committees that were 74% male from 2015 to 2017. The nomination review committees for the 61st Grammy Awards, handed out this year, were 51% female.
It has shifted back a bit for the 62nd Grammy Awards, as the current nomination review committee is 56% male. The Task Force was not involved in this year’s committee selection process, which took place as the Academy’s new leadership was transitioning in.
The Academy has set a goal of doubling the number of female voters by 2025.
In addition, the Academy has set a goal of doubling the number of female voters by 2025, which means bringing in 2,500 new female voters over the next five years.
The Recording Academy has already made progress toward implementing 17 of the 18 reforms set forth by the Task Force, including ensuring gender parity on Awards and Governance committees, publicly reporting on the demographic composition of its workforce across different levels of seniority, and increasing outreach to diverse communities, which include key initiatives for female producers and engineers.
"The mission of the Recording Academy is to serve and advocate for music creators from all genres and of all genders and generations,” said Recording Academy President/CEO Deborah Dugan. “We have recently made tremendous progress, and I’m proud to report that our leadership team is currently 50% female and that the 2019 Academy membership class is the most diverse in our history.
“However, there is still work to be done. We are deeply committed to continuing to implement the Task Force’s recommendations and building a community that is truly representative of our diverse and dynamic creators.”
The Recording Academy will be hiring a Diversity & Inclusion expert at the executive level, and three new professionals have been hired to support the current Senior Director of Membership Outreach.
Said Tchen, formerly Michelle Obama’s Chief of Staff and the CEO of Time’s Up, “We are also so grateful for the full cooperation and participation of the Recording Academy at every step, and are encouraged by the commitment to change they announced today.”
Dugan has invited the Task Force to reconvene in one year to assess the Academy’s progress, which the Task Force has accepted.
