Can you share an example of a DEI initiative that was rolled back in your organization? What was the rationale behind the rollback, and what were the consequences?

We had a mentorship programme aimed at pairing junior employees from under-represented groups with senior leadership. It started strong but got rolled back after about a year. The reasoning came down to bandwidth and inconsistency. "We couldn't guarantee equal quality of experience across teams," one exec admitted in a review call. Some mentors were engaged; others just showed up. It created more tension than trust in certain pods. What followed was worse than silence. Without the structure, we lost visibility into where new talent was struggling. "It felt like the floor dropped out," one mentee told me privately. We tried to replace it with optional peer groups, but those lacked executive support. The rollback didn't just end a programme. It signalled that support was conditional. And once that signal hits, it's hard to rebuild from it. Structure matters, but consistency is what gives DEI work its weight. Without it, it's just a campaign.