For months, our message has been one of Covid-19, being mindful of our own hygiene, our shared efforts to take care of our communities and families, and our commitment to one another and our clients.

There has certainly been hardship and complications and also grief, but we’ve also seen hope, we’ve seen progress, and we’ve seen the best of our teams with clients and in that quintessential Bain spirit and energy.

However, this past week the world in which we live and work cracked … once again; our world cannot seem to break the scourge of racism. The ugliness and the disregard for decency, concern, and understanding was back in force for the world to see … because too many look at skin color and ignore the human being. Words hurt, exclusion hurts, and it is clear that actions hurt, including the loss of life in the most egregious of ways. The protests around the world share that pain. We have colleagues, Bainies, who feel this pain in ways many of us will never comprehend.

Each of us share the anguish that we feel for our world and our colleagues. Ten days ago, we held our diversity summits virtually – for BGLAD globally and for LATBA and BABs and a group of Asians at Bain leaders in North America. All were highly engaging, with a hopefulness for the next chapters within Bain and bold aspirations as we seek more in terms of advancement of shared agendas both inside and outside of Bain. We will come back to those agendas – and we clearly need to do more but for now, we must all listen more, not seek to rationalize through our own experiences but rather through the lens of those who are hurt and frightened for themselves and their families. We must support each other and you have our commitment as an organization to continue to listen and act in reaching a place where “A Bainie never lets another Bainie fail” continues to guide us all in our actions, our words, and our beliefs. We know racism is wrong and has no place in Bain & Company.

It is not just the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery near Brunswick, GA or George Floyd in Minneapolis or Breonna Taylor in Louisville or the phone call regarding Christian Cooper in New York Central Park that have our attention. Other names are unfortunately imbedded in our minds and are associated with tragedy and certainly not unique to the USA; we see violence in countries around the world. Racism, hatred and ignorance shout through the images.

We are also seeing the broader calls for economic and social justice across our globe and any number of other social movements (and the COVID crisis has only exacerbated those calls.) This is touching the world and each of our geographies has their points of anguish and worry. We are still global and those points of anguish move rapidly across borders. We are conscious and concerned for our teams across 60 offices and our offices.

We are all asking ourselves what we as Bain can do to change the course of what is happening. As a firm, we believe in using our collective voice and talent for change with our clients and also speaking as an institution. We are certainly doing this in our response to the COVID virus as we align teams with clients for impact. We have lent our voice over the decade to legislation and change for our LGBTQ community. We are active with global IP rallying data around the power of inspiration in achieving gender diversity and parity. We are active in our communities with organizations for change. We will apply teams and resources across all these levers to do more around racial inequality. You have our commitment.

Please be mindful and let’s take care of one another.

On behalf of the Global Operating Committee and our Bain values,

Manny Maceda
Worldwide Managing Partner