Janice Underwood will be stepping down from her role as the government-wide chief diversity officer (CDO) for the Biden-Harris administration and as the director of the Office of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (ODEIA) at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM).
Underwood will be heading to the private sector to join Disney as vice president of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Talent Outreach and Development.
“I want to thank Dr. Underwood for her service as a dedicated champion of diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility in the nation,” OPM Director Kiran Ahuja said in a statement. “Thanks to her leadership, Federal agencies are better equipped and supported as they advance DEIA and build a workforce that better serves the American people.”
“Employees bring their best to work when they feel supported and empowered, and Dr. Underwood has played a critical role in helping to position the Federal government as a leader in DEIA,” Ahuja added. “This work is essential in our ability to recruit, hire, and retain the best talent across the country.”
Underwood joined the administration in May 2022 as the nation’s first government-wide chief diversity officer. In her role as director of ODEIA, she supervised OPM’s technical assistance role in the government-wide DEIA initiative established by President Biden’s June 2021 DEIA executive order (EO).
As part of that EO, OPM’s Workforce Policy and Innovation team established a DEIA index in the 2022 OPM Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey (FEVS). Notably, the 2022 survey found that 69 percent of Federal employees report positive perceptions of agency practices related to DEIA.
The 2023 FEVS showed 71 percent of respondents reporting positive perceptions of agency practices related to DEIA – an increase of two percentage points from 2022.
“Everything we do funnels into raising that DEIA index because it really is the way that we in the Federal government for the first time are going to measure are we doing what we say we’re going to do,” Underwood said in an exclusive interview with MeriTalk last fall.
Underwood looked to increase that index performance through the establishment of the U.S. Chief Diversity Officer Executive Council (CDOEC), which launched in September 2022. The council was established to help implement and sustain a national strategy for DEIA across the Federal government.
Her office also released the inaugural DEIA Annual Report last year, highlighting progress made to advance DEIA efforts in the workplace.
In our conversation with Underwood, she said that technology is top of mind for her, as it “is probably the best example of workforce equity.”
“We have to make sure that we’re thinking about technology with a DEIA lens because ultimately, we don’t want to have unintended inequitable outcomes because we didn’t leverage technology in culturally affirming ways,” she said.
