No black women panelists at Business Insider’s flagship conference in eight years

Yashar Ali of The Huffington Post writes that there have been no black women among the 683 invited panelists at Business Insider’s main conference “Ignition” in the past eight years.

Ali writes, “In the eight years that the conference has been held, it has featured 683 panelists. That group does not include a single black woman, according to a list of panelists published online by Business Insider and reviewed by HuffPost. It is not clear if some panelists were not listed on the website, and Business Insider spokesman Mario Ruiz did not respond to a HuffPost question on the matter.

“Ruiz also did not reply to multiple messages asking to confirm whether there had been a single black woman on any of the Ignition panels over the years. He told HuffPost the company aims to invite women of color every year, ‘including this year inviting Uber chief brand officer Bozoma Saint John, who was unable to join us.’ Saint John did not respond to a request for comment.

“SiriusXM Radio Director of Progressive Programming Zerlina Maxwell said on Twitter that she was ‘not surprised’ by the lack of black women among panelists.”

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Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.