Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion

At Booz Allen, we know we can only attract and retain the best people by providing them with opportunities to develop, value them for their contributions, and foster a sense of belonging. This is why we fully integrate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) considerations into our firmwide plans, processes, and systems. Diverse, inclusive teams are innovative, curious, and adept. They understand our client mission needs and are instrumental in developing creative and effective solutions for clients. Accordingly, we invest in our employee value proposition to remain an employer of choice in a highly competitive talent marketplace. DEI is a vital part of our purpose, values, and culture, and it infuses every aspect of our business and approach to people leadership.

In FY23, we evolved how we structure our DEI efforts and govern ourselves on these critical initiatives, and continued implementing our three-year DEI Strategy & Action Plan. The two goals of our strategy are to have firmwide representation in senior leadership (senior associate through executive vice president) that is consistent with overall workforce representation, and to foster an equitable and inclusive environment for all employees.

DEI Action Plan

While our DEI Strategy is firmwide, our different business sectors execute its commitments. Each sector has a data-driven DEI Action Plan, using inputs like employee survey results and workforce data. A designated executive leader in each sector uses progress indicators to align the sector's efforts against the firm's overarching DEI goals. Then they work with sector leadership and a DEI sector council made up of employees of all levels to refine and activate their plan. We are already seeing positive results from this approach, such as more diverse representation in promotions and higher employee engagement and belonging scores.

One of Booz Allen's DEI goals is to grow our pipeline of diverse senior leaders by 10%. As of March 31, 2023, we are halfway there, having increased that pipeline by 5%. To sustain this progress, we actively review succession slates to assess the diversity of the pipeline, and we require diverse interview teams for all roles principal and above. We are also exploring different ways to provide high-impact, high-visibility opportunities for employees to ensure leaders recognize their strengths.

Self-evaluations are part of the annual review process for employees at the senior associate level and above. Starting in 2023, this assessment asks leaders to address a new area: How have they contributed to DEI over the past year? Adding DEI into the self-evaluation process embeds DEI as a management priority and sparks conversations about what leaders can do to empower our people to change the world for the better.

For example, our Talent Acquisition team expanded its use of technology to optimize our job listings with more inclusive language to attract more candidates. We also aligned our Global Business Resource Groups' (BRG) and Networks' fiscal year plans with our DEI Strategy to ensure greater business impact, as described in the Employee Engagement section.

As we look to FY24, we are testing and scaling our Belonging Initiative, which uses behavioral science principles to help leaders authentically connect with their employees and strengthen a sense of belonging across teams. The initiative engages leaders to encourage employees to weave specific inclusive behaviors into their everyday workflow. The early results of the initiative are promising—after engaging in the behaviors, employees showed a statistically significant increase in their sense of belonging. We are also launching DEI-related people goals focused on belonging and inclusivity for all business leaders, and we continually seek to optimize our people processes through an equity lens.

Unstoppable Together

Through Unstoppable Together, we aim to create a more secure, equitable, and resilient world both for Booz Allen employees and in the broader community. This signature program builds deeper understanding of the complex issues facing the modern workforce. All Unstoppable Together material is publicly available, including the podcast, which examines current workforce topics, and magazine, which describes how we deliver on our DEI Strategy. In response to employee feedback and to democratize access, we evolved the 2023 Unstoppable Together summit from an annual multiday event to a series of quarterly mini-summits. Each mini-summit is hosted by one of the firm's business sectors and ties to business priorities. By adding a simple dial-in option in 2023, we increased accessibility and participant engagement the discussions.

Booz Allen is committed to advancing small and diverse businesses as an integral part of our supply chain and DEI Strategy. As stated by our CEO, “From our executive team through every leadership level of the firm, and as part of our long-term business strategy, we are committed to promoting the utilization of small and diverse business team members, partners, and subcontractors across every socioeconomic classification. Our small and diverse business partners share our commitment, complement our capabilities, and collaborate with us on new opportunities that will transform the future.”

We are continuing our journey toward a world-class supplier diversity program by promoting opportunities for small businesses and companies, such as those owned and managed by women, people of racial and ethnic minorities, veterans, members of the LGBTQIA+ community, individuals with disabilities, and other historically underrepresented groups. We know that we are able to better serve our clients with collective ingenuity, and more resilient supply chain, growing our business through the expertise, perspectives, and experience provided by diverse businesses.

With supplier diversity as a central focus in our global supply chain sourcing efforts, we continue to expand our footprint, performance to date, and collaborations. We are thrilled to share that for the second year in a row, Booz Allen has exceeded $1 billion in spending with small and diverse businesses across more than 1,000 suppliers. In FY23, approximately 40% of our supplier spend in areas where we can reasonably influence supplier selection¹ was with businesses owned by members of historically underrepresented groups. This is more than double the technology industry best-in-class average of 19.2%.²

We are very active in our industry and partner with independent advocacy organizations and councils focused on growing the reach of the groups they support, such as the National Minority Supplier Development Council, the National Veteran Small Business Coalition, the National LGBT Chamber of Commerce, the Women's Business Enterprise National Council, and Disability:IN. We participate in the National Minority Supplier Development Council's Centers of Excellence Certificate Program (COECP), which is dedicated to creating economic parity for minority businesses. The COECP focuses on minority businesses with revenues between $5 million and $30 million. We are currently providing executive coaching to two minority-owned businesses through the COECP.

Booz Allen has an industry-recognized Mentor-Protégé Program that has generated over $18 million in revenue for our protégé companies. We seek out small businesses that share our values, are passionate about our clients' missions, and will grow through our mentorship. To learn more about the work Booz Allen is doing with the Mentor-Protégé Program, visit our website.