Post by Kevin S. Beckford

Yup ~ wish I had thought of this idea 😉😉 NOTE: I'm curious if anybody else has experienced this. Comment below if you are comfortable or DM me if you to want to keep it private. Over the years, I’ve had multiple companies do this to me: they engage me in extensive senior-level interviews, listen to my ideas… and then implement them without hiring me. In one case, a company president even invited me to a dinner meeting (after hiring a less-qualified white candidate) just to ask me more about my own ideas — because the person they hired “couldn’t get it done.” 😱😳 I want to be clear: this can happen to anyone. But it happens disproportionately to people from marginalized groups. Research shows there’s a persistent “glass ceiling” for ethnic minorities in leadership roles — invisible barriers that tighten precisely when people of color approach senior positions (Zhang et al., 2025). Another study revealed that “being White” is often treated as part of the prototype of a leader, which means equally qualified Black and Hispanic candidates are often judged as less “leader-like” (Rosette et al., Wharton). And the numbers tell their own story: Latinas make up just 1% of C-suite executives in corporate America (Lean In & McKinsey). When companies use the interview process as an idea-harvesting funnel while refusing to value the person — that’s not just bad ethics. That’s dehumanization. “Harvesting my ideas while rejecting my personhood — the ultimate form of disrespect as a human being.” ~ Kevin Spencer Beckford ⸻ Sources / Further Reading • Zhang et al., Racial Minorities in Strategic Leadership: An Integrative Review (ScienceDirect) — link • Rosette, Leonardelli & Phillips, The White Standard: Racial Bias in Leader Categorization (Wharton) — PDF link • Lean In & McKinsey, The State of Latinas in Corporate America — link https://lnkd.in/eJqz_adY