Angela Chitkara
Researcher and Consultant at The World in 2020 Project
The world is finally catching up to Angela Chitkara. When the former journalist started urging diversity and inclusion in public relations back in 2016, she did not exactly find a receptive audience; one executive trashed her disruptive research as “fake news.”
Her message: Agencies that virtue-signal about diversity but don’t create substantial change to back it up are putting themselves at risk. Once the Harvard Business Review published her findings in 2018, the industry realized it had to listen, no matter how uncomfortable her prescriptions.
After the events of this year, Chitkara’s work seems positively prophetic, and it’s gaining a wider audience. “PR companies want innovation but they can’t handle disruption themselves,” she said. “If agencies aren’t diverse and inclusive, how can they possibly provide strategic counsel?”