Over these past days we have had difficult conversations, listening, learning, and determining the most appropriate and impactful actions for us to take in response to recent events as well as the larger societal and systemic injustices we are confronting as a country. It's incredibly important to us to make it clear that Her Campus Media stands with the black community, supports Black Lives Matter, and is rallying behind this fight for justice.

We can and must do better. This is an active, evolving, ongoing conversation that requires us to act in both the short- and long-term. While we continue to listen, learn, and seek to improve, at this time, Her Campus Media has taken the following action: 

• Her Campus Media has made donations to the below nonprofit organizations with the goal of providing financial support to fight these injustices:

• Black Lives Matter

• NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund

• The Jackie Robinson Foundation

• We have been and will continue to be covering, and supporting our audiences and communities across Her Campus, Spoon University, College Fashionista, and the InfluenceHer Collective in, this fight for justice via resource-based digital and social content, including information on petitions, nonprofit organizations, guidance on how to protest safely, and highlighting college students who are fighting for justice, with a commitment to sharing more Black voices on our platforms going forward. 

• We have replaced the ad space on our sites, and will be keeping it this way through June 14, to make space for listening and pause this week so as not to overshadow what is most important. The ads currently on our sites, should people click on them, drive to the donation page for Black Visions Collective.

• We will be making an effort to spend with Black-owned vendors and contractors to support our operations, and have begun researching companies that may be a fit for us to work with.

• We will also be donating free advertising space on our sites to Black women-owned businesses and pro-Black Lives Matter nonprofits. We are glad to be able to use our platforms in this way to help amplify and support these businesses and nonprofits.

• We are actively evaluating Diversity & Inclusion consultants in order to engage an experienced individual to lead in internal training/seminars for the founders, for the leadership team, and for the company as a whole. The goal is to help us all gain the critical understanding of how race, power, and privilege impact our company and ourselves and how we can better address these issues through improved internal and external practices and behaviors.

• We remain committed to strengthening the representation of Black people and people of color on our team. When our relatively small team expands again, we will work to use our hiring process to incorporate EDI values in how we recruit, evaluate, and hire applicants.

Importantly, this is about long-term effort and investment, not just a flurry of actions that will take place this week. The list above should not be thought of as exhaustive but instead as just the start. We will be continuing to make sure that this is a priority that informs our content, events, programming, campaigns, operations and more on an ongoing, long-term basis and that this commitment to justice is embedded in our company and its operations going forward.

We stand with Black Lives Matter and while heartbroken, we hope that together, Her Campus Media will be able to contribute meaningfully to working towards a just and humane society.