About our guest author: Melody Starya Mobley’s experiences as the first black woman serving as a forester for the USDA are remarkable: both for the firsts she embodies and for the years of abuse and oppression she experienced within that system.
Now, Melody shares her personal stories to create positive change for groups historically excluded from accessing American natural spaces.
With the few federal protections that exist currently being stripped away, it’s more important than ever for stories like these to be told. To read more of Melody’s writing, visit her website.
Image credit: Kirth Bobb
I always say, “You value most where you put your resources.”
We must reach people we hope to recruit at the youngest age possible to foster interest and passion about jobs where they’re currently underrepresented. This is true of forestry, of course, but these specific examples can apply to any career field.
Strategies for Elementary School
- Produce simple coloring books or coloring sheets with natural resources themes, such as trees, animals, and timber harvesting. Or download free resources like this coloring book by the Grand Canyon Conservancy.
- Explain your organization’s mission to guidance counselors at area schools with high populations of BIPOC kids. Demonstrate your passion about being inclusive in your organization, and work with school counselors to teach students about your field.
Strategies for Junior and High School
- Offer scholarships to attend annual meetings in your field, such as the Annual Society of Foresters Meeting. Once they’re there, assign staff to partner with them and explore your organization’s contributions.
- Offer summer jobs to kids of color. The USDA Forest Service offers internships and summer jobs to high-performing kids. If you work for another organization, develop a similar program and encourage participation from schools with high BIPOC populations.
Look for opportunities to go into all schools with a high population of people of color to share your message: awareness of opportunity and excitement about the work are the first steps in recruitment.
Once students graduate, it’s time to start thinking about how to recruit them as they enter their next life stage—whether that’s higher education or entering directly into the workforce.
Strategies for Young Adults
- Hold hiring fairs in urban areas and use direct hire authority—this ability to tell someone they’re hired directly after their interview removes many potential access barriers for people of color.
- Advertise in and write articles for newspapers, magazines, and newsletters with a primarily BIPOC readership.
- Offer scholarships, cooperative education programs, and other support to kids of color especially at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and schools with solid natural resource programs, veterinary programs, and agricultural programs.
And, as we know from looking at my past experiences within the USDA Forest Service, it’s important to continue support for marginalized groups once we’ve successfully recruited them: we must work to keep them safe and secure so they can thrive in their careers.
Strategies within the Workplace
- Assign a Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion full-time responsibility for achieving all aspects of diversity, from recruiting to inclusive language for every organization article or publication.
- Achieving a diverse workforce is everyone’s job. Develop and renew passion about your organization’s diversity policy. Each employee must know its content and their evaluation should have a criterion addressing contributions to diversity.
- Implement a program of direct hire for qualified people of color. Many of these recruits can’t afford to wait through a six-month (or longer!) hiring process.
- Consistently staff booths at conferences with high BIPOC attendance. For example, NAACP, Annual Black Mayors Conference, Minorities in Agriculture and Natural Resource Related Sciences (MANRRS), and MINorities in FOReStry (MINFORS).
- Ask organization leaders to help recruit people of color wherever they go. If recruitment and retention are organizational missions, leadership should actively pursue it throughout their capacity.
- Send your employees of color to represent your organization. When they staff booths and make speeches at conferences, their visible presence shows potential recruits they won’t be the only person of color—and that your organization offers advancement, promotion, and positions of authority.
- Train some senior staff to be formal mentors for each person of color hired, to help them navigate organizational structures so they can realize that potential.
Successful recruitment takes all of us.
No recruitment effort will be fully successful on its own; we must implement a variety of strategies to attract and retain foresters and other natural resource professionals of color. When something doesn’t succeed, survey potential recruits to find out why they didn’t choose careers in forestry (or your program of interest).
We also can’t discount the role of existing support institutions: Black churches, for instance, have historically been places of connection and organization for Black communities. Involving Black churches in recruitment efforts can help youth learn about fields they consider off-limits, overcome traditional barriers to entry, and successfully leverage their support networks to help increase retention.
“You value most where you put your resources.” — Melody Starya Mobley
Engaging with youth of color throughout their education and then continuing that support through their adult professional careers greatly increases their ability to achieve and to meaningfully contribute to previously inaccessible fields.
Read more of Melody’s writings
on her website.