Verna Myers traces her calling as a diversity advocate to more than 50 years ago when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. It was the day before her eighth birthday. Even at her young age in Baltimore, she understood the sacrifice King made and what he stood for.
"I wanted to live out that dream," Myers said. "I wanted it to be true."
Myers began her career as a Harvard-trained lawyer at a Boston law firm in 1985 as its only Black attorney. She later became the deputy chief of staff for the attorney general of Massachusetts and then founded her own business, advising companies such as Microsoft and Bank of America on issues including race, ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation. In 2018, she took on a new challenge — becoming vice president of inclusion strategy at Netflix.
The Los Gatos, California, company earlier this month released its first inclusion report, revealing that 47% of its global workforce are women and 46% of its U.S. employees are people from underrepresented racial or ethnic groups. But Myers says more work needs to be done. She spoke to The Times about the efforts Netflix is making to create stories, and to support and hire a workforce, that are inclusive.
