DentsuMB Commits to Cultural Fluency, Tapping Tameka Linnell to Lead the Unit

When Tameka Linnell sat down to interview for an account planning role earlier in her career, the agency’s chief creative officer didn’t bother asking about her background or professional experience. Instead, he looked at her and said, "I heard you’re really smart. I feel like I should have married a Black woman." This was certainly not the only time Linnell has faced discrimination in the industry. When training for another account planning role, a mentor asked how she could possibly sit in a room full of white men and moderate focus groups. Today, Linnell is the senior vice president of cultural fluency at DentsuMB, which is a sector of the agency that works to identify diverse groups and tell their stories. The work goes beyond diversity and inclusion by embracing the intersectionality that comes from gender identity, sexual orientation, size, ability and language. According to Linnell, the goal is to understand that each consumer comes with “a collection of stories, not just one.” The network is working to deepen the conversation around diversity and inclusion–-which has been a clear focus across ad agencies in the past few years–-by creating tools that encompass intersectionality. Linnell’s goal for cultural fluency is to encourage the Dentsu International network, which consists of 66,000 employees and 16,000 clients, to constantly ask questions, check for bias and commit to understanding lived experiences on a deeper level. Building the toolbox Dentsu has seen other recent significant changes in leadership. Last year, the network appointed three chief equity officers across its network to handle different regions—Christena Pyle for Dentsu Americas, Pauline Miller for EMEA and Rashmi Vikram for APAC. Earlier this month, Kai Weidie became Dentsu Media America's first svp of diversity, equity and inclusion. Linnell will work closely with Kai Deveraux Lawson, who was appointed as DEI lead of Dentsu Creative in April, to gut check creative before it is even offered to clients.This means consulting Dentsu’s Creative Review Council on stereotypes and biases and prioritizing one-on-one interviews. Dentsu also uses the mobile ethnography tool Indeemo, which gathers real-time, qualitative mobile research in the form of videos, photos and Q&As from participants.“When we think about cultural fluency, it is not just about race and ethnicity,” said Linnell. “What are all the intersections that we’re looking at with people today? There are so many dimensions of the consumer that we have ignored.” Defining cultural fluency While diversity and inclusion is about crafting the internal team, cultural fluency focuses on messaging and creative work. Linnell compares the initiative to her experience to learning a new language: she studied Spanish throughout college, but it wasn’t until she traveled to Spain that she could really immerse herself in the language. “I always start with the question, ‘What do we really know about people?’” said Linnell. “It’s about being in peoples’ shoes. Not just doing a focus group, but going to their homes." In previous roles, Linnell has accompanied children with chronic health conditions to their doctor’s appointments and sat in an operating room of a baby having open heart surgery. While she acknowledges that there will always be blind spots, she stressed that cultural fluency is about adopting the technology and work flows that fill them in as much as possible. “I will never have the lived experience as someone else, but I can sure do the best I can to understand it,” she said. DEI Efforts Must Account for Neurodiversity