Kwasi Mitchell’s bold leap to leading DEI strategy at Deloitte

& Kwasi Mitchell became Deloitte’s first Chief Purpose Officer in 2020, with leadership of the organization’s diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) strategy added to his portfolio in 2023. Now, as Deloitte’s Chief Purpose & DEI Officer, Mitchell leads Deloitte’s efforts on sustainability and climate change, equity including DEI and supplier diversity, trust including responsible business practices and trustworthy and ethical technology, and social impact& for Deloitte’s more than 170,000 US employees.& But he initially attempted to turn down the opportunity.& “My reservations weren’t that I didn’t want to help our people, because clearly that’s the thing that won me over—and by ‘our people,’ I mean all of our people. My hope was that I’d have a more traditional career path because generally, in our organization, you have practice leadership roles for a while, and then you elevate into roles of this nature,” Mitchell says.& “I just felt that taking a role of that nature right out of the gate would shift the course of my career and that I would end up in a situation where I wasn’t viewed as a practice leader but as a person who was a talent and DEI leader.”& And while his decision to take...