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Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
Join us as we celebrate, spotlight and give back to the LGBTQIA+ community.
Learn how your favorite brands are backing up their beliefs with actions in support of the LGBTQIA+ community.
Be Proud by BP.
Let your pride shine in a collection for every gender expression. Ten percent of sales (up to $250K in 2022) supports Trans Lifeline's peer support and crisis hotline, run by and for transgender people.
Vans
In celebration of Pride, Vans is donating a total of $200K from the Checkerboard Fund at Tides Foundation to three organizations committed to advocating for and providing the space, access and community needed to uplift the voices of the LGBTQIA+ community.
The Phluid Project
The Phluid Project's Phluid Phoundation provides flexible funding to grassroots nonprofits at the frontline of equity for trans, gender nonbinary and gender nonconforming people, especially communities of color, granting $100K in the last six months alone.
COACH
The COACH Foundation continues to partner with the Hetrick-Martin Institute, Point Foundation and CenterLink: The Community of LGBTQ Centers to create supportive environments where LGBTQIA+ young people can thrive.
Little Words Project
This inspirational bracelet brand is donating 25% of net proceeds from its Be Yourself bracelet to Campus Pride, an organization that supports the LGBTQIA+ communities at colleges and universities.
Our Place
Twenty percent of the cult-loved brand's Full of Pride mug will go toward the Los Angeles LGBT Center's Pride Pantry to alleviate food insecurity in the LGBTQIA+ community.
TOMS
TOMS supports the LGBTQIA+ community year-round, partnering to build equity at a local level with organizations like COLORS, which provides free, unlimited and LGBTQIA+ affirming mental health services to youth.
P448
The innovative Italian sneaker label is donating $25K to NYC's Ali Forney Center, which protects LGBTQIA+ youth from the harms of homelessness and empowers them with the tools they need to live independently.
During Pride and throughout 2022, Nordstrom is honored to support the following nonprofits committed to LGBTQIA+ rights and inclusion.
Based in NYC, the Hetrick-Martin Institute provides community, basic needs, health, education and career services to thousands of LGBTQIA+ youth ages 13-24 every year.
Run by and for trans people, Trans Lifeline provides peer support for the trans community and is the largest provider of services to transgender people in North America, with phone support in both English and Spanish.
A leader in the fight for LGBTQ+ rights, the Human Rights Campaign envisions a world where every member of the LGBTQ+ family has the freedom to live their truth without fear and with equality under the law.
New York's Ali Forney Center protects LGBTQ+ youth from the harms of homelessness and empowers them with the tools they need to live independently. The organization has grown to become the largest agency dedicated to LGBTQ+ homeless youth in the country, assisting nearly 2,000 youth per year.
DIVERSITY, INCLUSION & BELONGING
We've long believed that we're all made better by the diversity that exists within our communities. Our values are centered on the notion of creating a place where every customer and employee is welcome, respected, appreciated and able to be themselves.
We've spent a lot of time exploring what diversity, inclusion and belonging (DIB) should mean at Nordstrom. Our research has included in-depth interviews and workshops with our leadership teams, a deep dive into data that helps us understand the makeup of our workforce, and meetings with employees across roles, business units and regions to gain insights and perspectives at the individual level.
We focus our DIB efforts under four strategic pillars:
In 2021, we made steady progress toward our goal of setting future-oriented leadership expectations and a shared culture that drives our business ambition. We are actively improving our strategy for listening to employees and working to ensure we're acting on the feedback we receive.
Check out these need-to-know Black-founded beauty brands that we're proud to carry.
One way we foster an inclusive culture is through our Employee Resource Groups (ERGs), which are employee-led, Nordstrom-sponsored groups open to all employees.
How did you create your diversity, inclusion and belonging goals? Who was involved in creating them?
We've done a lot of listening over the past few months, and we chose to prioritize the pieces of feedback we heard most frequently from our employees, customers, partners and communities. These represent the next phase in our journey to be a better, more diverse and inclusive company—not the finish line. Feedback from those key stakeholders played a big part in these goals, along with input from teams across the company—HR, Marketing, NMG, LP, Procurement and more.
How will Nordstrom execute against these goals?
To lead and drive this work, we've launched the Nordstrom Diversity Inclusion and Belonging Council. This group is co-chaired by Pete and Erik Nordstrom and Farrell Redwine, our Chief Human Resources Officer. The group is made up of a diverse mix of leaders from across our company and representation from our board of directors. The group will develop, implement and measure programs that drive our diversity, inclusion and belonging strategy.
Are you making donations to nonprofits that address racism and other issues facing Black communities?
In May, we made corporate grants to the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund as well as to the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation. We encourage our employees to give and will match their donations to nonprofits working to address these issues.
Our giving is focused on organizations that help families reach their full potential, and many of the nonprofits we support are focused specifically on underrepresented or marginalized communities, such as Rainier Scholars, Thurgood Marshall College Fund, the YWCA, the Posse Foundation and the American Indian College Fund.
We're pleased to share that we'll double our charitable giving to nonprofit organizations that promote anti-racism, bringing that total to approximately $1M per year for the next five years.
To learn more about our charitable giving program, visit NordstromCares.com.
Is Nordstrom making donations to any local or national political campaigns?
We are not. Learn about our approach to political activity.
What does your employee representation look like today?
Our people are the foundation of who we are as a company. Attracting, hiring and retaining diverse talent enables us to be more innovative and better serve our employees, customers and communities. Each year, we issue an impact report that outlines our progress in many areas, including diversity, inclusion and belonging and corporate social responsibility. See a breakout of our representation from our 2021 impact report.
How much diversity do you have on your board of directors?
Our commitment to diversity at all levels of our company extends to our board of directors. We have 11 people on our board; four of them are women and three are people of color. Learn more about our board of directors.
What are you doing to attract and hire diverse talent?
We've set clear, measurable goals for ourselves: By the end of 2025, we will increase representation of Black and Latinx populations in people-leadership roles by at least 50%. Through our internship and other early-in-career programs, we will create opportunity for underrepresented populations with an aim of 50% representation.
Now that we've set these goals for ourselves, we're working across the organization to come up with plans that will get us there. That includes identifying the best way for us to find and connect with the diverse talent we need to hire to best serve our customers. In addition to being in the right places to meet the right candidates, we need to ensure our hiring managers are trained to identify and mitigate bias during the hiring and promotions process. We're rolling out updated learning in 2022 to address issues of conscious and unconscious bias.
How do I learn more about the Nordstrom internship program, eligibility and application process?
You can learn more and apply at careers.nordstrom.com.
How does Nordstrom hold its leaders accountable for creating a workplace that supports diversity, inclusion and belonging?
To be successful, our commitment to diversity, inclusion and belonging needs to be felt across all levels and aspects of our company. Our leaders play an essential part in bringing our culture to life. We're building diversity and inclusion into our leadership expectations, and we will measure our leaders on their performance in this area through our Inclusion and Belonging Index and feedback from their teams and coworkers up and down our pyramid.
Do you pay your employees equally, regardless of race or gender?
We have achieved 100% pay equity for employees of all genders and races. Nordstrom is also committed to pay parity, a way to measure and report on gender representation at all levels of the company. We're at nearly 100% pay parity for men and women, which reflects our strong female representation across the company. We will continue our efforts in this space to build our representation of women at all levels across the organization.
Do you have an anti-discrimination policy?
Yes. We are committed to an inclusive, supportive environment. Nordstrom doesn't tolerate discrimination of any kind. We ask that employees and customers let us know if they experience or observe behavior they believe is discriminatory or harassing so we can address it immediately.
How much business do you do with Black-owned companies or other underrepresented groups? Will you commit to doing a certain percentage of your business with these types of companies?
We can and will do better in offering Black-owned or -designed brands, along with those created by all people of color. We want to do this the right way so we can create meaningful and successful partnerships with these brands. We are committing to delivering $500M in retail sales from brands owned by, operated by or designed by Black and/or Latinx individuals by the end of 2025. We are also renewing our Supplier Diversity program, which will track and support diverse-owned suppliers across all areas of our business.
How do I learn more about and/or participate in your Supplier Diversity program?
We're in the process of renewing this program and setting long-term goals. We'll post more details about how vendors can participate in the program at a later date.
What are you doing to increase diversity in the collaborations you do with your private-label brands?
We need to improve here, and we're looking into opportunities to partner with diverse influencers on future Nordstrom Made exclusive collections. In 2020, we launched the BP. Be Proud collection, which was our first gender-inclusive collection, featuring a range of silhouettes for people of all gender identities. In 2021, we continued our progress with our partnership with Hilal Ibrahim of Henna & Hijabs to launch our first collection of designer hijabs. This is just the start—we're working on more collections and are excited to take feedback from our customers as we do that.
How do you partner with influencers and bloggers? What are you doing to make sure their views align with your own?
Our commitment to diversity and our zero-tolerance policy for discrimination of any kind extends to the partners we work with. We work hard to partner with influencers and bloggers who have similar values to us when it comes to important topics like racism and discrimination. When we learn of situations where those values aren't aligned, we immediately address it. Many influencers are part of networks that enable them to work with a variety of brands, including Nordstrom. We're working closely with those networks to ensure they're taking appropriate steps to make our values and expectations clear. Our goal is to work with a diverse mix of influencers, and we're making it a priority to develop a plan that will get us there.
What are you doing to make sure there's more diversity in your marketing campaigns (website, ads, catalogs, social media platforms, etc.)?
This has been a focus for quite some time. The amount of diversity we include in our marketing campaigns and catalogs exceeds the level of diversity we see in North America. We must better reflect this diversity in our styling, music, copy and ongoing social media conversations, including vastly improving representation in our influencer partnerships. We've also formed a Diversity Marketing Panel comprising Nordstrom employees representing a variety of visible and invisible identities. Their insights help shape our strategy, using identity and equity at every touchpoint.