HUDL: How We’re Approaching Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

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Fighting against sys­temic racism and injus­tice is everyone’s respon­si­bil­i­ty, includ­ing ours.

In June, we made a com­mit­ment: we’re not just stick­ing to sports any­more. Fighting against sys­temic racism and injus­tice is everyone’s respon­si­bil­i­ty, includ­ing ours. However, we’re def­i­nite­ly new to this fight, and we have a long way to go to get bet­ter at it. 

We’ve worked over the sum­mer to put togeth­er and start act­ing on a plan, and we’d like to share our progress to keep you in the loop and to keep our­selves account­able. These three focus areas are just the start, but we’re excit­ed about the change they’ll bring — both at Hudl and in the broad­er sports community.

We’re starting with us.

The first step we took was to look inside our own house and com­plete our sec­ond diver­si­ty report. As Maya Angelou said, ​“When you know bet­ter, you do bet­ter.” And based on our results, we know we need to do a lot. 

Hudl is cur­rent­ly 71% male and 89% white. These num­bers don’t reflect the glob­al and diverse envi­ron­ment we want to cre­ate for our employ­ees — and they cer­tain­ly don’t reflect the diver­si­ty of our broad cus­tomer base of coach­es and ath­letes. But per­haps most impor­tant­ly, these num­bers indi­cate that we aren’t as wel­com­ing and inclu­sive as we could be. We need to change — so we’ve set some goals. The full details are in our diver­si­ty report, but here’s the quick summary:

  • We’re set­ting aggres­sive and spe­cif­ic quan­ti­ta­tive goals when it comes to the diver­si­ty of our work­force — and we’re going to active­ly incen­tivize and mon­i­tor reach­ing those goals so they don’t fall by the wayside.

  • We’re over­haul­ing our inter­nal recruit­ment, inter­view and hir­ing process­es. We’ll train our entire team on the real­i­ty of uncon­scious bias, imple­ment struc­tured inter­views for every open job and con­tin­ue to insist on a diverse pipeline of talent.

  • We’re cre­at­ing and for­mal­iz­ing more spaces and oppor­tu­ni­ties to cel­e­brate our diver­si­ty and cul­ti­vate a sense of belong­ing among our employ­ees — and to edu­cate our­selves and each oth­er on the issues. This includes cre­at­ing Employee Resource Groups (ERGs), fur­ther invest­ing time and resources into our Hudl Together task force, pro­vid­ing DE&I train­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties, and hold­ing month­ly round­table dis­cus­sions where every­one is wel­come to share thoughts and learn about a vari­ety of social jus­tice topics.

We’re putting our money where our mouth is.

Diversifying our work­force is an impor­tant step for us, but we’re also active­ly invest­ing in under­served and minor­i­ty com­mu­ni­ties out­side our own four walls. That means open­ing up our wal­lets — indi­vid­u­al­ly and as a company.

In the weeks between George Floyd’s death and Juneteenth, we donat­ed over $86,000 from our employ­ees, lead­er­ship, board mem­bers and investors to orga­ni­za­tions ded­i­cat­ed to dis­man­tling white suprema­cy and fight­ing for racial jus­tice and equal­i­ty. Among those were the ACLU, Black Lives Matter and the NAACP. 

We’ve also cre­at­ed a new grant pro­gram. Our first round of grants gives over $30,000 in Hudl prod­ucts and ser­vices to these three fan­tas­tic organizations:

We’re thrilled to be work­ing close­ly with them, and we’ll share more about our col­lab­o­ra­tions soon!

We’re joining forces with like-minded partners.

The work of dis­man­tling sys­temic inequal­i­ty and injus­tice can’t be done in sep­a­rate silos — like any good team, we’re stronger when we work togeth­er. And we’re lucky to have some heavy-hit­ters by our side.

In part­ner­ship with WeCOACH, we’re host­ing the sec­ond annu­al Breakthrough Summit this December — a free dig­i­tal lead­er­ship event to devel­op and cel­e­brate women in sports. Last year’s con­fer­ence was a smash hit, with fea­tured speak­ers like Jill Ellis, LaChina Robinson and Jen Welter. This year, we’re tak­ing it a step fur­ther and encour­ag­ing atten­dees to donate direct­ly to WeCOACH so they can con­tin­ue their great work.

We’re also excit­ed to be work­ing close­ly with TEAM, one of our grant award win­ners. TEAM works to edu­cate stu­dents on poten­tial career paths in sports out­side of being an ath­lete, and they place spe­cial empha­sis on STEM fields. We’re thrilled to cham­pi­on their work and pro­mote con­tin­ued oppor­tu­ni­ties for under­served youth with­in the sports tech industry.

We hope you’ll take this journey with us. 

We’re grate­ful to work in sports — an indus­try that under­stands the val­ue of a fair and lev­el play­ing field. As we move for­ward, we’re com­mit­ted to lis­ten­ing, learn­ing and adapt­ing our approach. This is just the start, and we have a long way to go. 

We’ll con­tin­ue to share updates on our progress, but we’re eager to hear what you’re doing, too. How are you pro­mot­ing DE&I in your orga­ni­za­tion? What con­ver­sa­tions are you hav­ing with coach­es and ath­letes? How are you using the pow­er of sports to unite your com­mu­ni­ty? Please con­nect with us at communitychampions@​hudl.​com and share your DE&I journey.

TEAM Inc.