Impact Interview: Sara Porritt
Name: Sara Porritt
Role/Function: VP Chief Diversity & Inclusion Officer, Omnicom Media Group and host, Hear Us Roar podcast
What She’s Currently Working On:
For my 9-5, I’m currently working on building a strong bridge between our people and culture and our work product through the lens of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion.
As far as my 5-9, I’m excited to be wrapping up season 2 of my podcast Hear Us Roar focused on spotlighting female Asian American trailblazers and rule-breakers. With all of that going on, what I’m most looking forward to is welcoming a baby boy into my life this November! Joe and I couldn’t be more thrilled.
1. What was the “aha” moment that sparked your interest in social impact?
Having been a professional R&B singer for 15 years of my life, I never thought of myself as the best of the best, but I always knew that I had a lot of heart and a lot of passion for music — which not only gave me a leg up, but a real purpose to pursue this dream.
One of my first aha moments happened early on in my music career when my parents, out of love for me, expressed their concerns about the path that I had chosen because no one who looks like me had made it in the R&B world.
Instead of feeling discouraged, I felt empowered to change that. Call it naïveté or call it courage, I wanted to kick down doors, start conversations and help other young Asian American women with a passion for music to feel like they could successfully traverse this journey that I had chosen to embark on so many years ago. That one aha moment led to so many more. This is a big part of the reason for why I proudly champion DE&I today, so that I can encourage others to speak up and dream big.
2. How did you break into the social impact space?
Ironically, I’m a hard-core introvert who is a serial hand raiser. Throughout most of my career in media and advertising, I juggled music at the same time which often came at the sacrifice of having much of a social life. When I started to advance up the corporate ladder and music became a less prevalent part of my day-to-day, I knew that I still wanted purpose and social impact to live at the heart of what it was that made my waking moments special.
That’s when I started to get a lot bolder at work in bringing elements of charity, mindfulness and cultural enrichment into my own corporate life while inviting others to join in and co-create these efforts. I’m lucky to have worked for, and been surrounded by, such amazing leaders and mentors who saw the value of what I was doing for the greater good of our corporate culture and encouraged me to keep going. This is what made my transition to DE&I possible.
3. What most excites you about the social impact space right now?
I’m excited by the fact that purpose and social impact is no long a nice-to-have, but a necessary and expansive element of any good corporate structure and culture. It’s freeing and empowering to know that I'm leading a DE&I movement that is not siloed within a select few aspects of people and culture but has truly grown to be a lens through which Omnicom Media Group evaluates every aspect of what we do—from how we foster a sense of belonging, to how we eliminate bias from data, to all the ways we’re choosing to be thoughtful and inclusive with our investment decisions. While there is no end point to efforts around DE&I, just as we may never fully eliminate human suffering, every incremental step change in the right direction, even with occasional setbacks, makes the whole effort so valuable and meaningful.
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