Corporate diversity: Amazon

Re: “Amazon’s leadership team is slowly adding diversity” [Feb. 9, Business]:

Shareholders aren’t going to pressure Jeff Bezos to speed up the pace of diversity because the performance of Amazon has been extraordinary. But since the mission of every corporate executive team is to maximize shareholder value, it’s hard to argue against having an executive team more representative of Amazon’s customer base.

White men cannot pretend to know how to maximize profitability from customers who are women of color and nonwhite men from all over the world. There is always a risk of increased conflict when increasing diversity, but this is easily remedied with a thoughtful plan for inclusion, which would be a small price to pay for a team that had the potential to really maximize shareholder value.

It’s irresponsible of Bezos, the CEO of Amazon for 25-plus years, to say diversification will happen slowly due to low turnover of top executives.

Kathleen Brush, Seattle

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