Diversity in Sports

On September 30, 2002, Johnnie L. Cochran, Jr. and Cyrus Mehri issued a ground-breaking report –“Black Coaches in the National Football League: Superior Performance, Inferior Opportunities”– revealing that black NFL head coaches were held to a higher standard than their white counterparts, and were consequently denied a fair chance to compete for head coaching jobs.

The report opened the NFL’s eyes to its teams’ unfair hiring processes. Within two months, the League had formed a diversity committee, headed by Pittsburgh Steelers owner Dan Rooney, and announced a diversity plan, which included the requirement that each team interview at least one minority candidate prior to selecting a head coach.  The requirement came to be known as the Rooney Rule, and it changed the face of head coaching in the NFL.

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Madison Avenue Project

The Madison Avenue Project was born from remarkable research commissioned about the lack of African-American executives in the advertising industry.  In 2009, we discovered that racial discrimination is 38% worse in the advertising industry than in the overall U.S. labor market, and that the “discrimination divide” between advertising and other U.S. industries is more than twice as bad now as it was 30 years ago. 

The study found that African-Americans suffered a shortfall of 7,200 jobs in the industry and were paid 20% less on average than their white counterparts with comparable experience and education.

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Women on Wall Street

The Women on Wall Street Project began as a joint initiative of Mehri & Skalet and the National Council of Women’s Organization to remedy the historic pay disparities impacting women working in the financial sector. Since its inception, the project has revealed a great deal about Wall Street’s failures to allocate business opportunities to its female financial advisors.

Beyond exposing this long-running inequity, we challenged some of the largest financial titans - and won. In 2007, we settled a class action lawsuit against Morgan Stanley & Co. for nearly $47 million on behalf of female plaintiffs who had alleged gender inequity in the distribution of accounts and other business opportunities. In 2008, we settled a similar case against Smith Barneyfor $33 million.  And in early 2011, we settled our third case, this one regarding compensation and promotion practices against Wells Fargo/Wachovia for $32 million.

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Voices for Corporate Responsibility

Fed up with corporate officers who skirt the law for financial gain, and inspired by the courageous employees who come forward to expose such actions, Mehri & Skalet launched Voices for Corporate Responsibility to create a community of professionals dedicated to ethical, responsible business practices. The project seeks to encourage corporate professionals to:

• Recognize wrongdoing in their own places of employment;

• Stand up against officer and director decision-making that is motivated by short-term interests or personal greed;

• Participate in regulatory and legislative reform that protects their right to address conduct that adversely impacts the corporation, shareholders, and consumers. 

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