Diversity, Equality & Inclusion – Colorado Ad Day 2021

Fostering Diversity, Equality & Inclusion in Advertising, Colorado Ad Day 2021. Session panelists from the left: Ivan Burwell, Sirena Rolfe & Alex Porter.

Location3 was proud to participate in the Fostering Diversity, Equality & Inclusion in Advertising session at this year’s Colorado Ad Day. Our CEO, Alex Porter, joined Sirena Rolfe, Director of Search at The Integer Group, and Ivan Burwell, CEO at Street Source Marketing, for a session focused on fostering diversity in the advertising world. Find reflections from the speakers and a link to watch the session below.

Sirena Rolfe, The Integer Group

Diversity is not only what you can see but what you can’t see. Avoid judgement, ask questions and listen.

The unfortunate events that happened over the past couple of years have heightened the importance of DEI across the world. At Integer, we are making strides in working closely with our clients and internal teams to understand the importance of DEI. We want to create a culture that normalizes DEI vs. making it a forced effort. As a panel participant on this topic, I was very excited to share my experiences and hopeful provide some tools to help the audience. As we all try to get better at DEI, I would recommend that you try to understand that diversity is not only what you can see but what you can’t see. Avoid judgement, ask questions and listen. You might be pleasantly surprised by what you learn.

Ivan Burwell, Street Source Marketing

Let’s exercise the courage and humanity to make cultural inclusion more of an immersive and sustainable goal that benefits us all.

The subject of diversity and inclusion is one that we have heard more frequently over the last (18) months, following the tragic death of George Floyd. While being diverse and inclusive is a goal that we as a society desire to achieve, we still have a great deal of work yet to accomplish.

Perhaps the challenge is, we don’t know where to start? Or, we might think that the task is so daunting that we are paralyzed by fear and uncertainty?

Despite our fears and discomfort, the goal of equity and inclusion is not only critical to solve, but essential for our society to truly survive and thrive. We must embrace culture and differences as core to our DNA. We must get to know the uniqueness between cultures and celebrate those differences as benefits verses impediments. I believe that diversity is about proximity, the further we are apart, the more difficult it is to achieve diversity and inclusion. Let’s exercise the courage and humanity to make cultural inclusion less of an academic pursuit, and more of an immersive and sustainable goal that benefits us all.

Alex Porter, Location3

Colorado Ad Day presented me with the opportunity to join an incredible panel to discuss Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion in the Colorado ad community.  This topic is one that was not being discussed two years ago, but because of world events, it came to the forefront for me and for Location3.

I was truly honored for the opportunity to share how Location3 has evolved our hiring practices and work in the community to become strong proponents of DEI initiatives.  I also took away some new information from my fellow panelists about how we can also influence our agency clients in their creative and budgeting to help promote inclusive advertising.

Watch the Session Now