Faces of NPR: Keith Woods

Faces Of NPR showcases the people behind NPR--from the voices you hear every day on the radio to the ones who work outside of the recording studio. You'll find out about what they do and what they're inspired by on the daily. Today we feature Keith Woods, Chief Diversity Officer.

The Basics:

Name: Keith Woods

Title: Chief Diversity Officer

Twitter Handle: @KeithWoods

Where you're from: New Orleans, Louisiana

Where are you from?

I was born in New Orleans and lived there until I was 35 years old and moved to Florida. I went to Dillard University for undergrad and then Tulane for graduate school.

As the chief diversity officer, what is your number one goal?

Well, it's not a single goal. What I've been trying to do since I've been at NPR is to help create an organization where matters of diversity are everyday work for everybody, where we're constantly trying to grow the diversity of our staff to match the country in the moment. And that we're trying to make content that both speaks to these diverse audiences, but also speaks authentically and knowledgeably with and about people.

So with that, how do you measure your success?

Well, I'll give you a kind of an easy example of that. When we organizationally really tried to focus on the diversity of staff, we worked for years to try to get a rule in the organization that said that every finalist pool had to have racial, ethnic, gender diversity and every hiring committee had to have the same. By the time that rule became a rule in January 2020, the practice at NPR was well-established. So you want to have an organization in which the things that we value are not driven by rules, but by the culture and the practice of the organization. So success to me is when things happen because we value them and not because there are rules. We are talking about these issues not because there's a crisis, but because it's the way that we live as an organization and I feel everything from STAR [Start Talking About Race sessions] and what Whitney Maddox has done with STAR, to those hiring committees and the hiring practices of the organization are evidence of success in some of those spaces.

How do you keep up with this constantly changing landscape? How do you stay up to date and make sure you're making sure you're staying inclusive in order to lead an inclusive organization?

Well, I have to remember for myself that I am both working in this space and living in this space at the