December 9, 2024
A Letter to Our Community:
Choir’s journey began in 2021 with one big question: What would the financial industry look like if the people we listened to represented all of the world we walk around in, instead of just those already at the top?
With sadness, pride, gratitude, and hope, we write to let you know that Choir, our conference certification services, and our Voices™ platform will close on December 31, 2024. Sadness at closing this heart-forward, industry-changing organization; pride at the accomplishments of both Choir as an organization, and the accomplishments of Choir’s Voices™ Members; gratitude for our community, clients, and partners; and hope in the knowledge that though this door closes, others open for ambitious changemakers to keep moving forward.
We’ve always been candid with you about the opportunities and challenges of running a startup in the DEI space. This open letter is no different.
The Impact
Choir’s Conference Diversity Certification™ established the first industry standard for diversity and representation on conference stages, and anti-harassment practices at events. Clients shared that our data-driven approach helped to translate good intentions into real results, increased the diversity of agendas - with positive feedback from attendees - and sparked company-wide conversations about diversity and representation.
Choir’s Voices™ platform connected underrepresented professionals with opportunities to showcase their expertise – speaking on stage at conferences, contributing to business books, guesting on podcasts, and being quoted in newspaper and magazine articles.
Voices™ members told us about the many ways those speaking roles and media quotes benefited their businesses and careers. Others shared that Choir’s speaker and media training resources made them feel well-equipped and prepared for those opportunities.
The reason we started Choir - and the impact we are most proud of: We connected hundreds of brilliant people of color, women, and nonbinary financial professionals with conference organizers and journalists seeking their expertise. We know that their voices made conference agendas stronger and media stories more interesting. We are committed to continuing this impact by offering a modified, public* version of our Voices database for anyone to use at hellochoir.com/voices from now through mid-2025.
So, Why is Choir Closing?
TLDR version: Startups are risky. Disrupting the status quo is difficult business.
The long version: In what comes as no surprise to anyone involved with DEI initiatives, Choir has seen a significant drop in industry demand for diversity initiatives in the past two years. Specifically, there has been less interest in allocating dollars toward DEI initiatives, particularly regarding racial diversity efforts.
In addition to reduced demand, other - more personal - factors arose in the past year; both Liv and Sonya have less time available to devote to running the business of Choir today than when the company first launched. Building and growing all of Choir’s products and services was an ambitious feat for our small - yet mighty - team. Yes, we are business owners - but first and foremost, we are human! Given our reduced availability, we came to the difficult conclusion that we no longer had the bandwidth to provide clients and Voices members with the excellent experience they deserve and expect.
Can We Pass You the Baton?
This work did not begin, nor does it end, with Choir. Many of you are also working to make financial services more inclusive, and more representative of the world around us. While this chapter closes for us, we hope our progress serves as a stepping stone for other people.
For those of you shaking up financial services for good, we will be here to cheer you on and help in any way we can. And if you, or an organization you know, would like to formally partner to continue building what we started, let’s chat!
One Final Ask
Change is possible when companies are held accountable and do the work beyond statements of allyship. We ask each of you to keep pushing company leaders to pursue inclusion, diversity, and innovation over the comfort of the status quo.
This work is not over. It has only just begun.
Your Friends,
Sonya Dreizler & Liv Gagnon
Choir Co-Founders
* Note: The public version of Voices™ will not include phone numbers or email addresses but will link to any included public profiles such as LinkedIn or company websites.