As the leading career platform for Black, Latinx, and Native American students and professionals, Jopwell's mission is twofold: make a substantial, measurable impact on increasing Black, Latinx, and Native American representation in the workforce by connecting its community to exciting career opportunities at top companies and to facilitate a national dialogue about race in today's workplace.
One core belief at Jopwell is that "you can't be what you can't see." Historically, corporate stock photography has lacked representation and has been filled with cliches which have lasting negative effects. When a diverse professional is exploring a company's "Jobs" page and fails to find a person of color featured, it can be difficult for them to envision a future within that company. To solve for this, Jopwell launched The Jopwell Collection, an ongoing initiative to create original stock photography featuring diverse professionals in the workplace.
This past spring, Jopwell collaborated with one of its partner companies, The PGA of America, to co-create a new Collection, titled Golf: The Jopwell PGA Collection, Vol. 1, which promotes and celebrates diversity across the golf industry. This Collection is designed to not only increase the number of visual representations of Black, Latinx and Native Americans in golf but to also encourage diverse candidates to explore possible career paths in golf. Further, it is a resource to empower more companies and media outlets in the golf industry and beyond, to use imagery that is more representative of today's consumers in their sales, marketing, promotional and recruiting materials.
Jopwell and the PGA worked closely together to conceptualize and create the Collection of approximately 100 photos featuring diverse individuals playing golf and working in golf. It was important to both teams that the album specifically feature Black, Latinx and Native American golfers, PGA Professionals and other industry members who currently play and work at Santa Ana Golf Club and Twin Warriors Golf Club in Santa Ana Pueblo, New Mexico. From teaching and coaching to golf operations and executive management, the photos were shot with the intent to promote people across different areas of the company in their authentic work settings.
This intentional and thoughtful approach also speaks directly to the PGA's commitment to foster the development of golf consumers and a golf industry workforce that reflects the changing demographics of America. As an organization, the PGA values diversity and understands that America's evolving consumer population needs to see others that look like them working in the business and playing the sport if they are going to consider careers and/or participation in golf.
Golf: The Jopwell PGA Collection, Vol. 1 launched on July 17, 2018 and is free-to-download via Jopwell. To introduce and promote the Collection, Jopwell and the PGA shared the news and downloadable link with their respective communities via an email marketing announcement as well as across each organization's social media channels.
Jopwell's Cofounder and CEO Porter Braswell also announced the collaboration between the two companies via a post on LinkedIn. In the post, Porter highlights how important it is for companies to not only talk about how much they value diversity, but also show it. As Porter mentions, "companies often make their first impressions to prospective candidates, customers and clients through their imagery – it's an opportunity to say from the start that diversity and inclusion matters here."
The images from the Collection are also featured on Pexels, a stock photo sourcing platform, to expand the reach of the initiative. It is important to Jopwell and the PGA that these photos serve as a resource for a wide variety of media outlets, agencies, companies, and organizations to encourage greater representation in corporate imagery.
Since its launch in July, the Collection has received over 3.5 million image views and over 2,400 downloads. Widely commended, utilized and embraced, the Jopwell Collections have earned over 15,000 unique page views and 40,000 social media impressions, including over 500 shares. The images have been downloaded more than 3,500 times to date and have been leveraged by brands, bloggers, and media outlets including The New York Times, Thrive Global, Levo, NASDAQ, and HuffPo, among others.
The stock photo Collections have also been featured in top media outlets including Black Enterprise, Quartz and Complex Hustle.
