About Us

Parity.Org is the leading impact organization unlocking diversity in leadership, where the gap is the widest. We’ve helped hundreds of companies worldwide–from Airbnb to Nasdaq to Ralph Lauren to Best Buy and beyond–quickly level the playing field to ensure that all employees have a shot at success.

While many organizations have been working on leadership diversity for decades (with slow or negligible progress), our uniquely pragmatic approach works, and works fast.  Organizations that take our ParityPLEDGE, implement the best practices outlined in our ParityMODELs, and leverage the PARiTA analytics platform, find that diversity follows as a matter of course–no quotas or deadlines needed.

Because when the playing field is truly level, it’s anyone’s game.

Our Mission:

To increase representation of women and people of color in organizational leadership, 

where the gap is the widest.

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The Representation Gap

Although white men represent just 38% of the workforce, they hold 61% of C-Suite positions, and 85% of Board positions at large and mid-sized companies. 

McKinsey 2022 & EOEC 2020

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The Perception Gap

Women and people of color are consistently perceived as having less “leadership potential” than their peers–even when they are outperforming those exact same colleagues on evaluations of current performance. 

Yale Insights 2021

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The Access Gap

Minority job applicants are far less likely to get interviews when it is apparent on their resumes that they are people of color. Companies are more than twice as likely to contact them when they have “whitened” their resumes–and this is true even at companies that claim to value diversity. 

Harvard, 2017

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The Pay Gap

Just 3 years after graduation, 75% of men are paid more than their female classmates from the exact same programs at the exact same universities. Men with Georgetown accounting degrees, for example, make $155K three years post-graduation–a whopping 55% more than their female classmates. Similarly, Black and Hispanic workers earn less on average than their white peers of the same education level; Black workers with advanced degrees, for instance, earn 18% less.

The Wall Street Journal 2022 & Economic Policy Institute 2019

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The Exposure Gap

Women and people of color are more likely than white men to be assigned office “housework” tasks as opposed to the more high-profile assignments that tend to fuel career advancement. And fewer than a third of Black professionals say that they have access to senior leaders at work, compared to nearly half of white professionals. 

Harvard Business Review 2018 & Coqual 2020

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The Advancement Gap

For every 100 men who are
promoted from entry-level to manager, just 87 women are promoted, and just 82 women of color. As a result, men significantly outnumber women at the managerial level, creating an unbalanced candidate slate when senior leadership positions become available. To make matters worse, when there is only one woman on a slate of four finalist job candidates, the woman statistically has a 0% chance of landing the job. (Yes, you read that correctly.)

McKinsey 2022 & Harvard 2016

The business case for change...

Companies with diverse management teams generate an average of 45% of their revenue from innovation, compared to just 26% of revenue from those lacking diverse leadership.

Boston Consulting Group 2018

Companies with ethnically and culturally diverse leadership teams are 35% more likely to see above-average profits, and those with diverse Boards are 43% more likely to see above-average profits. 

McKinsey 2020

Companies with 30% female leadership enjoy a 15% boost in profitability compared to similar companies with no female leadership. Having three or more women on the Board is correlated with a +10% Return on Equity (ROE).

Peterson Institute 2016 & MSCI 2017

Board of Directors

Dina Schenk

Executive Director & Ex-Officio Member of the Board, Parity.Org

Dina is a marketing and branding executive and servant leader with 25 years of experience, largely within the nonprofit, education, EdTech, and healthcare sectors. Known for blending the objective and data-driven aspects of demand generation with the more creative and nuanced principles of building a compelling brand, she has helped to fuel exponential growth for the organizations she has served.

Dina previously served as Chief Marketing & Growth Officer and then President of Parity.Org. As President, she recommended and spearheaded the transition of Parity.Org to a 100% volunteer-run organization, and now serves the organization as its volunteer Executive Director. 

Cathrin Stickney

Founder & Executive Chair, Parity.Org 

Founder & CEO, PARiTA

Cathrin has more than 25 years of experience as an executive and thought leader in the healthcare industry, having held senior operating roles and served as an advisor to investors, tech companies, as well as State and Federal governments. 

After mentoring and supporting the careers of numerous women throughout her career, Ms. Stickney founded Parity.Org in 2017, in an effort to address corporate gender imbalance on a larger scale. In 2020, she expanded the Parity.Org mission to include people of color. 

In addition to serving as CEO of Parity.Org, Ms. Stickney is currently an Adjunct Professor at NYU, teaching a course she wrote on The Making of an Entrepreneur, and developing a new course on Diversity in Business. She also advises early-stage tech companies on their strategic growth and business models. In 2021, she was selected by Business Insider as one of the Top 100 People Influencing Business.

Mark Gorenberg

Managing Partner, Zetta Venture Partners

Mark has been in venture capital for more than 25 years. His firm, Zetta Venture Partners, is not only committed to gender parity; but is the first firm to include a no-sexual harassment clause in all of their term sheets.

Amy Kennedy

Education Director, The Kennedy Forum

Amy is the Education Director of The Kennedy Forum where she pursues partnerships and collaborations that emphasize evidence-based research and programming to facilitate policy change in the areas of education and mental health. Her experiences as a mother and teacher have propelled her efforts and advocacy around social-emotional learning and mental wellness for children. Kennedy was the Democratic Party nominee in the 2020 elections to represent New Jersey’s 2nd congressional district.

Carolyn Magill

CEO, Aetion

Carolyn has been an operations leader at major healthcare companies like United Healthcare, Evolent, and Remedy. She is now CEO at Aetion where she delivers real-world evidence for manufacturers, purchasers and regulators of medical treatments and technologies. Under Carolyn’s leadership, Aetion and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are working together in a new research collaboration to use real-world data (RWD) to advance the agency’s understanding of and response to COVID-19.

Extended Team

Ankura Logo

Ankura

(Cybersecurity)


Aspen HR Logo

Aspen HR
(Human Resources)

Frank, Rimerman Logo

Frank, Rimerman
+ Co. LLP
(Accounting)

HubSpot Logo

HubSpot

(Marketing Automation)


Method Logo

Method Communications
(Public Relations)

Perlson LLP
(Financial Review)

Sidley Austin Logo

Sidley Austin
(Legal Counsel)

Tech 9 Logo

Tech9
(Website & Product Development)