All In Promise

ROLE:
Founder, 2020-2024

In the wake of the brutal murder of George Floyd, and during a particularly challenging period for the world, I spent some time reflecting on my experiences as a founder, building and leading teams.

I came to the optimistic conclusion that many startup/scaleup founders want to do the work to create a fairer world, one where all talent can succeed no matter where they come from.

This led to the formation of the All In Pledge, alongside a group of brilliant collaborators and partners from across the tech ecosystem.

What did we do?

We create a pledge for founders and exec teams to commit to prioritising DEI work early in their journey, in order to even the playing field across the UK workplace. Our belief was that if we can catch companies on their way up as they grow, we can have meaningful impact over the long term.

The pledge was accompanied by a simple framework for where to put in the action. And also a community for peer support.

We did some tremendous work. We had 70+ companies pledge which covered 1,000s of employees. We ran some high impact events and workshops which genuinely got people re-thinking how they were building their cultures.

But unfortunately the interest waned over the years and we kept encountering the age old challenge of “I don’t have time for this”. It started feeling like pushing a rock up a hill (we were never chasing the rock down the hill in teh first place to be honest. It was always a struggle).

In the end we decided to shut shop so each of us could focus on creating impact in other domains.

We tried. And I will keep trying. Thanks to everyone who joined us on the journey.