How we evaluate diversity leadership

After reviewing hundreds of public nominations for the Top 50 in Digital Health: Diversity Leadership award, we are proud to announce the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Wellist as the deserving honorees of 2017. They each truly embody leadership in diversity, having continually shown their commitment to hiring, supporting, and building diverse teams to tackle the most pressing problems facing healthcare today.

We know that having a diverse team creates a positive and more inclusive culture—and benefits the bottom-line through a lower turnover rate. Disruptive Women in Health Care, a longtime Rock Health friend, provides a platform for provocative ideas in healthcare focusing on the subject of diversity. Rock Health partnered with Disruptive Women to determine the honorees and develop criteria to better measure companies’ commitments to diversity.

To truly embrace diversity means fostering a culture of inclusion, equity, and accountability. To choose honorees among the hundreds of organizations nominated for the award, it was imperative to look beyond numbers and into what organizations do to build and sustain a diverse workforce through their purpose and mission. The criteria used to evaluate diversity was based on the following efforts:

1. Recruiting a diverse workforce

2. Fostering, sustaining, and retaining a diverse talent pipeline

3. Opportunities for advancement to the C-Suite

4. Participation in the community

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation supports a wide array of research and programs which are working to achieve better health for all. Diversity and inclusion are core values of the organization, reflected in their leadership and the numerous efforts they support to provide opportunities to minorities and women within their organization.

Wellist’s founder and CEO, Ashley Reid, has maintained a strong commitment to fostering diversity and acceptance amongst their team, staying true to the company mission to address human needs. The team itself is made up of a diverse workforce, including gender, age, and race diversity. Outside of the office, Wellist participates in a number of efforts to increase diversity within their community.

We’re honored to work in healthcare alongside such outstanding and upstanding organizations. We thank the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Wellist for being shining examples of diversity leadership for companies in healthcare and beyond.