Source: Federal Bureau of Investigation FBI Crime News
Q. What were some of the early challenges to establishing the Office of Diversity and Inclusion?
Odom: One of the first things I did was to lobby to have diversity as a core value. Existing core values included respect, integrity, fairness, and compassion, among others. Initially, there was a little pushback, because some people thought diversity was encompassed in all the other values. Making diversity a core value elevated the office and made it relevant. Before, diversity was not thought of as mission-critical or really helping us to do better as an organization. We were able to demonstrate that diversity enhanced our ability to connect with the communities we protect and serve.
Q. The FBI has struggled to improve diversity, particularly among special agents, where 83.4% are white, 4.4% are Black, and 67% are men. The figures are slightly better for intelligence analysts and professional staff. How do you interpret that?
Odom: It is frustrating. Our workforce is not that diverse. But we’ve also got to think about how we measure progress. And one of our big projects is a barrier analysis that looks at the entire employee lifecycle—from recruiting to promotion—to understand where we have roadblocks. There are barriers where individuals, based on their race or gender or ethnicity, are not going through those gates at the same rate. Our recruitment of women and minorities special agents has gone up significantly, but they don’t all show up at new agent training. We’ve got to look at where we’re losing people and then see what we can do to improve that process.