Agency founder steps aside to let agency begin to heal amid controversy
Effective immediately, Glenn Dady, a creative director for The Richards Group, will assume full responsibility for all agency operations, creative oversight and new business efforts for the agency. Announced late last year as Stan Richards’ successor, Dady is a 40-year veteran of The Richards Group.
Concurrent with this shift, Richards will step away from all operations.
“If this was a publicly held company, I’d be fired for the comments I made. But we’re not public, so I am firing myself,” said Richards. “Our employees, first and foremost, deserve that.”
Reiterating what he said directly to employees earlier this week, Richards added: “I made a mistake. The biggest mistake of my life. One I will never be able to adequately explain or take back. All I can say is that I was wrong.”
Additionally, the agency is solidifying plans to proactively address it. Within the next few weeks, The Richards Group has committed to executing six key initiatives, designed to ensure diversity, equity and inclusion within the agency:
- Create a new position to influence agency decisions regarding diversity, equity and inclusion
- Execute a formal commitment to specific representation across all disciplines and leadership
- Audit current policies to ensure that they are equitable to all employees
- Conduct bias training for every one of our employees
- Review all current work to ensure that it is culturally relevant
- Commit to tracking our progress
The goal of these changes and initiatives is to enable The Richards Group to learn, heal and ultimately recover as a stronger, better agency.
Dady emphasized his respect for Richards as part of a statement issued earlier this week:
“In the over four decades I have had the privilege of working at The Richards Group, the agency has never been party to nor tolerated racism in any form,” said Dady. “We exist to endear brands to all people. Like all businesses and organizations, we have a lot of work to do to further societal change. As the person now responsible for all the operations of The Richards Group going forward, I commit to doing everything in my power to stay focused on that goal. We can only ask for forgiveness and promise to learn and be better.”
