Barkley has hired Adam Miller as its director of diversity and inclusion, a new role at the agency.
The Kansas City-based shop reached into its own community to hire Miller, a Kansas State University graduate and Fulbright Scholar who comes to Barkley from the higher education world. He was previously a postsecondary coach at Kauffman Scholars and director of the Green Fellowship program at Teach for America, a role he was instrumental in elevating to a national level. He is active in the Kansas City community, promoting diversity through The BrandLab and as a board member of Big Brothers Big Sisters. Miller is also co-owner of The AV Collection, a virtual winery that leverages winemaking as a conduit to give back through various charities and drive inclusion in the wine industry.
At Barkley, Miller will be responsible for recruitment and helping to drive the four initiatives of the agency: Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging (DEI+B). Under those initiatives are four pillars, which are represented by groups within the agency: Our Work, which aims to integrate a DEI+B mindset into the agency’s ideas; Educate & Discuss, which seeks to break down concepts of race, culture, society and inequality; Diversity @ Barkley, which aims to increase diverse representation in the agency; and Inclusion and Belonging, where each partner’s value is celebrated.
“Recruitment is more than just offering a referral program. Attracting a diverse population of talent starts with creating a space for people to bring their authentic selves to work every day,” said Miller, “At Barkley, we will be reverse engineering the model of recruitment, retention, and culture.”
Barkley CEO Jeff King said, “By embracing everything that makes our partners who they are and what makes them unique to the world around them, we create the conditions and capacity to help creative, original thinking thrive. As an agency, we believe that equity and belonging are essential to the changes we want to make and the agency culture that we want to foster, and we believe that Adam is the person to help us make those changes.”
James Earl Jones, Lauded Actor and Voice of Darth Vader, Dies At 93
James Earl Jones, who overcame racial prejudice and a severe stutter to become a celebrated icon of stage and screen — eventually lending his deep, commanding voice to CNN, "The Lion King" and Darth Vader — has died. He was 93.
His agent, Barry McPherson, confirmed Jones died Monday morning at home in New York's Hudson Valley region. The cause was not immediately clear.
The pioneering Jones, who was one of the first African American actors in a continuing role on a daytime drama and worked deep into his 80s, won two Emmys, a Golden Globe, two Tony Awards, a Grammy, the National Medal of Arts, the Kennedy Center Honors and was given an honorary Oscar and a special Tony for lifetime achievement. In 2022, a Broadway theater was renamed in his honor.
He cut an elegant figure late in life, with a wry sense of humor and a ferocious work habit. In 2015, he arrived at rehearsals for a Broadway run of "The Gin Game" having already memorized the play and with notebooks filled with comments from the creative team. He said he was always in service of the work.
"The need to storytell has always been with us," he told The Associated Press then. "I think it first happened around campfires when the man came home and told his family he got the bear, the bear didn't get him."
Jones created such memorable film roles as the reclusive writer coaxed back into the spotlight in "Field of Dreams," the boxer Jack Johnson in the stage and screen hit "The Great White Hope," the writer Alex Haley in "Roots: The Next Generation" and a South African minister in "Cry, the Beloved Country."
He was also a sought-after voice actor, expressing the villainy of Darth Vader ("No, I am your father," commonly misremembered as "Luke, I am your father"), as... Read More