“The Nomad” is a fortnightly published series where I talk to expat PR and Comms professionals, then delve into the insights which inform and help other people to live or to do business in an intercultural world.
“It was last year when I was on holiday in Granada, Spain. I remember being on a viewing platform looking at the Alhambra at sunset and having a moment of realisation where I thought “The time is now”. That was when I wanted to really pursue a second career and wholly dedicate myself to something that aligns with my purpose. It was just a very special moment. I’d say that was the most memorable because it was a bit of a leap of faith to completely go into DE&I.”
After 18 years of working in Public Relations with frontline client service experience, Matt Foster is currently Ogilvy’s first dedicated director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. Previously, Matt’s specialism was healthcare communications, with a focus on virology, specifically HIV and hepatitis. Branded by The Drum magazine as “an activist in adland”, Matt currently sits on the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising’s (IPA) Talent Leadership Group and the European Association of Communications Agencies’ (EACA) DEI Task Force.
I speak to Matt on a Wednesday, and the sun is glazing outside. He’s wearing a blue patterned shirt, rolled up and smart. With large square glasses in black acetate. He projects this kind of grounded yet playful energy, magnetic and multifaceted. I know I’m in for a beaming ride and a sincere conversation.
“Proud”, “Queer”, “Multiracial” and “Equity” are several keywords that stand out from our conversation. He talks about his current and previous work with a passion that radiates through the screen. I ask him if it’s ever become emotionally taxing, particularly for someone like him, with an identity like his, because it’s personal. He admits the work can be “highly charged”. But the burning desire to ensure fairness and social justice has always been there. In an industry where there’s so much flowery talk and not so much concrete action, someone with a genuine interest in driving equity and fairness doesn’t come around very often. Matt Foster is one of them.
How did you get into PR and Comms?
I did a MA in marketing communications, but I didn’t know where I wanted to work within comms because there are lots of different sectors and areas. But then life happened to me and my mother got sick – she was terminally ill with a rare form of brain cancer. I kind of learned the language of neuro-oncology and ended up in healthcare, communications and healthcare PR not having really had much of a science background before. It was a mixture of deliberately wanting to work within comms not knowing where, but then something happened to me in my personal life that nudged me in the direction, particularly of health care PR.
What drew you to the field of DE&I?
I don’t feel like I can pinpoint a specific time when the area became attractive to me. What I can say is that I’ve lived my whole life as a mixed-race, multiracial and queer person; I’ve lived on three continents – I was born in Asia, spent a lot of my childhood in East Africa, in Kenya and then went to school here in the UK and Europe; I’ve had cultural influences which impact how I express myself in the world, so that has always been my reality. I think maybe it’s more accurate to say that DE&I was more drawn to me than the other way around.
How do you reflect on your journey so far?
My main point is that it’s not a straight line. The idea that you can follow a steady trajectory just isn’t true. I’ve spent 18 years in public relations and during the last eight of those years, I was also simultaneously gaining experience in DE&I and trying to create opportunities for me to grow my confidence and capabilities. I’m now in my second career, but I’d say though that I feel I am exactly where I want to be. I like the direction I’m heading in.
The advertising, PR, and creative industry, in general, has a diversity problem. What are the challenges?
There are many challenges and we could probably talk forever about them. They are both macro and systemic in terms of the environment and also micro within the industry and organisations. Essentially, for me, PR, comms, advertising and other kinds of marketing disciplines, for a very long time, have historically been an enclave for the privileged, and that privilege has kept a lot of people out. There hasn’t been much diversity. It’s only relatively recently that we have tried to pry open that bubble and make the industry more accessible to more diverse talents. We need to tap into new talents and try and remain competitive. For example, Gen Zs have very different expectations about what an organisation should be, do and represent. The challenges are quite large because the whole environment and all the systems need transforming.
What about personal challenges?
It’s a very interesting area to work in because, on one hand, it is very purposeful and meaningful; on the other hand, it can take its toll on you because of the area, the subjects and the people you interact with. You’re operating in a highly charged environment where people care deeply about aspects of themselves and their identities. You need to be careful and look out for yourself – I practice a lot of self-care. There are a lot of polarised opinions and the battle lines are drawn between people who are considered woke and those who are anti-woke. A lot of that is unhelpful because ultimately, we should all be trying to create a fairer world and I can only try and do that within my organisation. I’d say one more thing is that even within the DE&I community, there can be infighting. That’s difficult because you would hope that we would always be united against a kind of common opponent. Even within the DE&I community, there can be friction, conflicts and struggles which is something that I’ve only recently discovered, and trying to navigate that can also be tricky. To overcome these, I always try and remember my purpose and my values and believe in my inner goodness. It’s also important to come to this work having healed from experiences of marginalisation but not forgetting the lessons learned from them.
How do you measure the DE&I efforts?
You measure it with data and I’m not trying to make the question reductive. We collect and analyse data, and we choose what data to look at That represents whatever priorities we have, whether that’s representation, retention, a sense of belonging, success of certain policies, processes or systems that we have implemented. For instance, we have a successful flagship menopause policy that supports women in midlife that we feel helps to counterbalance some of the gender disparities we see within the workplace. We’re trying to measure responses to recent initiatives that we’ve put in place to help empower people to build their communities. All of these things can be measured. However, the tricky thing is mostly the reliability of certain data because employee surveys are voluntary. Asking someone to disclose their ethnicity or gender expression or sexual orientation is not mandatory. You don’t have to disclose those things – It’s a sensitive area. So there is still a job to do in terms of building trust so that people can freely share their data, knowing that it will be used for the right reasons, and obviously, the right reason is to benchmark, optimise the effectiveness or initiatives and to be able to chart progress.
Globalisation is a buzzword. I do think though that we’re living in a multicultural society where everything is still being viewed through the lens of the West. What is your view on this?
As someone who has spent time on three different continents, my perspective has always been very global. I find the Western lens very jarring. And often I find it can be very US-centric. When I think about the Western lens, I think about something that still holds quite a level of power because it’s been supported by centuries of empire-building and colonisation. All of which has been predicated based on Western supremacy, right? It’s interesting now to see how the West and particularly the US is responding to a different or a new world order where China, for instance, is rivalling its power and influence. It’s also interesting to see how China is being positioned by the West as a threat – an economic threat, a threat to security, a threat to the global order. Though I’m not here to discuss politics per se, I do think it’s interesting to see how the West responds when these power balances shift. Even though we are living in a more multicultural society, things are still viewed through a Western lens. However, I believe it’s really important for non-Western voices, particularly within the West, to be heard, to advocate for our own perspectives and to raise the profile of different cultural experiences.
In this day and age, the line between cultural appreciation and cultural appropriation seems ever more blurred. Throughout history, it’s always been a story of one culture borrowing from one another. We’re also living in a society where it’s important to be critically aware of that notion. How can we celebrate that intercultural society without reducing one culture?
This is a very interesting and complicated area. I don’t know if I have the definitive answer partly because I think the answer shifts depending on the context. What I do believe, though, is that there is a difference between cultural celebration and cultural appropriation. For me, it’s about value exchange. If you think about cultural appropriation in its most literal sense, we’re talking about, for instance, the Benin Bronzes and the Parthenon Marbles and statues within the British Museum. We are thinking of the spoils of colonialism and the riches of countries that were subjugated to colonial rules. Those cultural treasures were stolen from their people and were brought back to the country of the coloniser or sold across the world for profit. There are other forms of cultural appropriation though that are to do with less tangible things such as language, certain styles, or even certain types of artistry, which aren’t objects. Going back to that point of exchange, these things have value. So if you are in some way tapping into them, think about what value you are giving back to that culture. Is there some kind of exchange? Sometimes it can be a literal exchange of value as in money. Have you paid fairly for something that has been responsibly sourced? Are the funds going back to the community that you have borrowed from or that you’re trying to celebrate? In terms of less tangible exchange, I think a lot about how gay language has been appropriated. Everyone watches Drag Race – suddenly I hear words or phrases that were only spoken amongst my queer friends in mainstream media or on the street. What upsets me and when I feel it’s appropriation is when people don’t understand or realise where the origin of these words comes from. They have taken those words and those phrases for that purpose with no recognition of their origin. I do want people to celebrate queer culture, and I don’t hold on so tightly to the language that I don’t think other people should have the right to use it, but people should think about how they use it and honour where they come from. Much of queer language developed in response to our oppression by the mainstream and signalled strength and a means to survive. That should not be forgotten.
Speaking of queer people, we’ve seen drag queens attack in the US and transphobia run rampant in the UK – the country has dropped from first place to 17th in this year’s Rainbow Europe Map and Index. As we’re approaching Pride Month, what is your advice to brands to enact change and solidarity?
Brands have a role to play, but it isn’t just the responsibility of brands to stand up for marginalised communities. I do want to recognise that right now is a particularly scary time for us as queer people, especially our trans siblings, whose rights are being eroded not just in the States, but here in the UK. If you look at the YouGov and Stonewall reports, rising rates of homophobic, biphobic and transphobic hate crimes are now up by 33% in the last year, which is a tremendous amount. So if you think of this very fraught environment, I do want brands to play a part, but at the same time, maybe I’m quite forgiving. There is always a conversation about pinkwashing and brands that are tokenistic, and I don’t feel strongly if a brand uses the Pride flag and does little more. If a brand does that, I still think it does some good. There might be some kid in some far-out town or village in the middle of nowhere in England, who buys a sandwich from his local supermarket, and there’s a pride flag on it, and that might be the only way that he can feel part of a community. That’s the minimum brands can do. The caveat to this is that brands need to stand by our community and not remove their Pride branding or products if there is a backlash. The recent decision by Target in the US to remove lots of their Pride merchandise as a result of conservative criticism is an example of a brand that has failed our community, whereas brands like North Face have made public statements in support of us and are not withdrawing their Pride campaign this year.
However, the maximum that brands can do should they choose is going all in to truly stand up for our community. What can they do year-round to support projects that help elements of our community that are the most vulnerable and at risk? I think sometimes we talk about pinkwashing in a very binary way and I think we should be a bit more forgiving if brands choose to stand by us. Quite frankly, we could do with any help that we can get right now.
You touched upon languages and experiences. Languages have always been so fascinating to me because they shape how we think, act, and interact with others. You are fluent in Spanish, Tagalog and English. How does having that mindset of language/culture switching help throughout your career?
No one’s ever asked me that yet. It does have a big impact; I have always been good at languages. Since I was a kid, I’ve always been able to hear things once and repeat them. To me, a language is not just about getting the grammar right and having a good vocabulary; it’s also about understanding how certain cultures speak and express themselves – how quickly or slowly, how they might talk using certain intonations, how they might use idioms and phrases to express certain situations. There’s so much about language, which is more than just words on a page, it’s about culture and identity. I suppose my ability to speak other languages and my love for them have a direct correlation with my ability to mediate between different cultures. By that I mean, when you have what could be quite opposing views or different perspectives within a group because people are coming from different places, whether that’s culturally, ethnically, from a neurodiverse perspective and so on, how do you bring those differing perspectives together? How do you not rush over and harmonise them? That’s something that I have always been able to do without even realising. I did a test to rate my level of cultural adaptation (the Intercultural Development Inventory) and I scored in the top 2%, which didn’t surprise me. But I also realised that I’m not special, as it’s a skill that anyone can learn. I’d say my linguistic dexterity is an extension of my ability to mediate between different cultures and translate diverse perspectives.
Perhaps everyone needs their moment of realisation. Some people search for their purposes for a long time – some fumble, some succeed, and some move on. At first, I couldn’t quite put my finger on Matt’s aura – not because of the Zoom screen – then it started to make sense. The sense about someone who’s managed to grasp their purpose so dearly.
I ask him where he got his glasses from (Cubitts he says) and we say goodbye.
