New Racial Equity Initiative at Esri
Hi all,
You may have seen the recent email from Esri's Founder and President Jack Dangermond (a copy is posted below, and you can also find the social media posts on Linked In and Twitter). In response to the senseless and horrific killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and too many others, Esri expresses our solidarity with the Black community as well as our commitment to mobilize to bring the full power of GIS technology to bear in the fight against racial injustice. Clinton Johnson will be leading the effort at Esri, supported by a diverse "team of teams" (myself included), centered around the perspectives of our Black employees, users, and community partners.
Organizations around the world and especially in the United States are increasing their efforts to eliminate long-persisting racial inequities. Esri is here to help. We know these are complex, challenging, and multi-dimensional issue, and there is no quick fix -- but we know place and location are critical components of better-informed decision-making. Therefore, Esri is ramping up to deliver new and impactful resources to empower organizations to understand, plan, and take action. The goal is to enable our users by aligning technology configurations, solutions, and resources to help our customers, across all sectors, to solve one of the toughest challenges we face in the US and abroad.
Efforts are just beginning, but stay tuned for more information shortly on the release of what will be a new GIS resource Hub for Racial Equity (similar to the COVID-19 GIS Resource Hub you may have seen) with maps, data, and information to help individuals, organizations, and communities address racial inequities. We are committed to engaging folks on the ground doing this work, like yourselves, and community partners in this effort. If you have any feedback, ideas, suggestions, or questions around this initiative please don't hesitate to provide feedback to Clinton or myself in the thread below.
In solidarity,
Margot
