Portland nonprofit Partners in Diversity named Jenny Kim its new executive director.
Kim is a long-time nonprofit leader and has also worked in high tech sales. She landed in Portland in 2001 and the city quickly became home.
She takes over Partners in Diversity from Mari Watanabe, who retired after 11 years at the helm. The group works to help business attract and retain professionals of color.
Partners in Diversity, an affiliate of the Portland Metro Chamber, has roughly 400 member organizations, whose employees can access PiD programming. That includes quarterly networking events, called Say Hey, which help professionals of color build community; and Breakfast for Champions, which brings together HR and diversity, equity and inclusion practitioners to learn and connect.
Kim plans to build on the success of existing programs and evaluate additional ways PiD can support community building in Portland.
How did this role land on your radar? I’ve always been a fan of Partners in Diversity. Like a lot of people I knew about Partners in Diversity from Say Hey. I’ve always encouraged people I know, professionals of color, who come into Portland to go to Say Hey and network and get introduced as an honoree. I got approached by Mari and I had other friends who suggested I consider this position.
You’ve got a background in both corporate and nonprofit work, what does that bring to this role? The mission of Partners in Diversity is helping organizations to thrive in business by hiring and retaining professionals of color. So you have to understand that business perspective, the business reasons why it’s important. A lot of our clients are corporate executives or organizational leaders so we need to have a way that we can engage and talk to them at that level in their language.
Tell me about your work with Korean American Coalition. The organization is headquartered in Los Angeles and has nine chapters around the country. I was acting as the ED and the national president in 2020. That was a really tough year for any civil rights and advocacy organization. Between the general election, which was very painful for a lot of people with voter suppression and misinformation that we were fighting, as well as the pandemic. And 2020 was the Census year. As leader of KAC I was one of the steering committee members for the Census for what they call hard to reach populations. Between the Census, the voter engagement and the pandemic it was incredibly emotional and mentally draining. After that year I resigned and stepped off because I felt like I needed it for my personal mental health and well-being.
What made you step back into community work? What I understood was that the work that Partners in Diversity does is so critical. And unfortunately, this concept of diversity and inclusion has become a politically charged concept. And the reality is diversity is a fact, it’s not an argument. We need to understand as a city, as a community we need diversity of thoughts, diversity of experiences, diversity of ideas. It makes us stronger and from a business perspective that’s how you’re going to get more clients, that’s how you are going to get more benefits, that’s how you’re going to sell more products and services.
DEI work within companies was a big focus in 2020, 2021 but as we get further from the summer of 2020 and the social justice reckoning it spurred and as the economy shifts, the pendulum seems to be swinging the other way. How do you take on this role with that backdrop? I am very aware of where we are. I think the reality is we have to be mindful of the political landscape as well as what is happening around us and around the world. But, I think the work is so critical. It’s about community. It’s about what made Portland so great. We had this vibrant community where people want to come here to visit, to work, to live. We need to do a better job at not only bringing in new talent but retaining them. We’re brainstorming right now about how we can show up in spaces for each other, especially for people who don’t feel like they are being supported in their job.
You talk about building on the group’s successful programs, what programs do you see adding? My education background is biomedical research. I’m a data person. And in business it’s numbers, that’s how you prove your point or show patterns to justify spending. We have an opportunity to work with Portland State University on a research project about how Portland organizations and the DEI strategies and engagement projects and processes that they put together, what the leadership thinks about how things are going versus what the employees think. They are hoping to interview 2,000 professionals and we’re hoping that we can participate together. We are going to work with Partners in Diversity members and have an opportunity where they can bring in house these types of research projects.
Do you see taking these programs to other cities? Partners in Diversity in its mission statement, and when we talk about Say Hey, it’s always Oregon and Southwest Washington. We have been approached by members and Say Hey attendees in Vancouver and Southwest Washington that they would like to have a more cohort experience there. That is something we are exploring. We have a Say Hey happening in February in Corvallis. And we are planning one in Bend.
Jenny Kim
Executive Director, Partners in Diversity
Previous: Strategy consulting, national president and executive director of Korean American Coalition
Boards: Chair, Racial Justice Council on Housing and Homelessness for Gov. Kotek, commissioner for Home Forward, trustee for Legacy Good Samaritan Hospital Foundation, national board for the Korean American Coalition
Favorite Portland restaurants: Nimblefish, Jeju
Favorite podcast: Radio Lab
Currently reading: “Horse,” by Geraldine Brooks; “Cutting for Stone,” by Abraham Verghese
Favorite Oregon outdoor activity: Hiking
