PR talks about diversity. It keeps missing us.
Derrick Sanders is an integrated communications strategist.
For six years I have walked into PR rooms and counted. Not because I wanted to, but because I had to. It’s a habit you develop when you’re almost always the only one who looks like you. Not just the only Black man. The only Black person. Period.
I’ve talked about it with friends. I’ve felt it in every room, every agency, every client meeting, but I had never brought it into a professional space where the industry itself could hear it. When I finally did, hundreds of people responded, including senior communications leaders, agency founders and early-career professionals, all saying the same thing: They heard me, they saw me, they felt it too. The ones just starting out wanted someone who looked like them to follow.
The numbers don’t lie
PR is a woman-dominated industry. 65.6% female, the gender conversation has rightfully taken center stage. However, white women remain the dominant demographic, and that gets left out.
The industry has been talking about diversity for decades, and when I brought this conversation to LinkedIn, hundreds of people across the industry confirmed it. Black men are still at 3%. The question isn’t why. The question is what that’s costing the brands we’re supposed to be serving.
This is a brand problem, not just a diversity problem
PR is fundamentally about cultural resonance. It’s about getting the right message to the right audience at the right time. Black men disproportionately shape the culture that brands are constantly chasing, including music, sports, food, fashion, language and consumer behavior at a scale that far outpaces our representation in professional spaces.
What we bring to this industry isn’t just perspective. It’s cultural fluency that can’t be learned in a textbook or captured in a trend deck. We grew up code-switching, reading rooms, understanding subculture and mainstream culture simultaneously, knowing what resonates before the data confirms it. That instinct is rooted in cultural movements that have shaped the last three decades, from hip-hop to streetwear to the language now driving brand voice across social media. It came from lived experience, not a brief.
I minored in psychology, not by accident. PR and psychology are built on the same foundation: understanding how people think, what moves them and how narrative shapes perception. Black men bring both the academic framework and the lived experience to do this work at the highest level. That is a strategic competitive advantage, and right now brands are leaving it on the table every single day.
When Black men are excluded from campaign development, not just the review or the final approval, but the strategy session where ideas are actually built, campaigns miss. Not always from malice. From a gap in perspective that nobody is filling.
The pipeline isn’t the whole problem
Here’s what the diversity conversation gets wrong: It treats hiring as the finish line.
For many Black men, the barrier isn’t even retention. It’s awareness. PR was never presented as a career path in the communities where we grew up. When you don’t see yourself represented and no one in your circle works in the field, you don’t even know to pursue it. The pipeline doesn’t just have a leak at the top. For some of us, it never reached our neighborhoods at all.
For those who do find their way in, the challenges compound. Black men leave at disproportionate rates, not from lack of ambition or skill, but because they enter rooms where no one looks like them and carry the weight of being the only one without anyone to show them what comes next.
There is a critical difference between mentorship and sponsorship. Mentors advise. Sponsors advocate, pulling you into rooms and opening doors that talent alone can’t unlock. Real leadership goes even further: It teaches, invests and walks through the door with you. Black men in PR need leaders who are willing to be accountable for our growth, not just our presence.
The industry doesn’t just have a pipeline problem. It has a mirror problem. If the next generation of Black and POC men considering PR can’t see themselves reflected in leadership, they won’t stay long enough to become it, and the cycle continues.
What comms leaders can do right now
This problem requires intention, accountability and honesty.
Audit your talent pipeline specifically for Black and POC men. Broad DEI numbers can mask specific gaps. Break your workforce data down by race and gender separately. If Black men are missing from midlevel and senior roles, that is the gap to address, not just your overall diversity percentage.
Put diverse voices in the room at the strategy stage, not just review. Too often, diverse perspectives are brought in as a gut-check after the brief is already written. If a campaign targets Black or POC consumers, Black and POC communicators should be in the room when the strategy is built.
Build real sponsorship programs with accountability. Name the sponsors. Set the goals. Track the outcomes and create visible pathways to leadership so the next generation can see what’s possible.
This invisibility isn’t unique to Black men. Latino, Asian and other POC men navigate the same rooms and silence, bringing the same lived cultural intelligence and the same ability to read where mainstream culture is heading before it arrives.
The industry isn’t just missing Black men. It’s missing an entire category of strategic thinking. Brands are paying for that absence in campaigns that follow trends instead of setting them.
The stakes
The industry has made progress. But progress is not the same as inclusion, and inclusion is not the same as impact.
McKinsey found companies in the top quartile for racial diversity are 13% more likely to have above-average returns. Harvard Business Review found diverse companies are 70% more likely to capture new markets. You cannot reach diverse consumers without diverse talent building the strategy. That is not a values argument, it’s a business one.
Until Black and POC men are consistently in the rooms where campaigns are built, strategies are approved and clients are counseled, the industry will keep chasing culture instead of leading it. The perspective, the psychology, the lived experience — it’s all here. It has always been here.
To the Black and POC men already in this industry carrying that weight: I see you. Keep showing up.
To the comms leaders reading this: The talent is here. The question is whether you’re ready to make room for it.
The post I’ve been the only Black man in the PR room for 6 years. Here’s what that’s costing you. appeared first on PR Daily.
