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I am encouraged by the growing discussion on diversity within the chemical EH&S profession.

As you all know, ACS has taken a very strong position to improve diversity within ACS Publications (See Confronting Racism in Chemistry Journals Cynthia J. Burrows, Julia Laskin, et al. doi.org/10.1021/acs.accounts.0c00383). The Society has also worked hard to address diversity with its staff.

CHAS leadership is very diverse by gender. But, the Executive Committee has virtually no diversity by any other measure. Further, the EH&S profession is by and large not diverse. The profession is very under-represented among the several diversity measures.

Here are data taken from the June 2020 CHAS Demographics report which illustrate this point.

I recognize that many of us dislike providing gender/ethnicity/race information. However, we all recognize that you must be able to measure something to improve it. So, a very helpful (and easy) step is to go to your ACS profile and add the missing information. A goal is to reduce the No Response/Not Applicable to less than 10% of each category. Do it today and we can see what the data look like by the end of September.

The current discussion is useful with the goal of bringing more ethnic and racial diversity into both leadership and the profession.

It is easy to join the CHAS leadership; you make your interest known to the current Chair or Membership Chair and they will help you develop within the profession and the ACS. A goal is to have a visibly diverse group at the next face-to-face CHAS open meeting, whenever and wherever that happens.

I hope we can work together to meet ACS goals and improve our profession.