Entrepreneur’s new venture targets DEI boost

A former Corporate Executive Board and edo interactive executive has launched a venture that helps organizations move the needle when it comes to diversity, equity and inclusion.

Jonathan Dyke is positioning FutureSelf Network as a membership group that conducts and shares made-to-measure research and is a sounding board and forum for best practices for companies looking to become more inclusive and reflective of their communities. After being COO of edo for more than four years, Dyke founded and ran payment card rewards company Spring Marketplace, which was acquired by Klarna in late 2019. Building on his experience of more than a dozen years at CEB, he turned his attention back to HR and workforce questions. Talking to executives, a refrain emerged from many that they felt isolated about how to best improve their DEI strategies.

“A lot of companies have a C-level or senior executive dedicated to this. Those people might have a lot of projects to oversee or they don’t know where to begin,” Dyke told the Post. “Everyone wants instant results but this is a multi-year strategy — and no one has a multi-year plan.”

Dyke’s value proposition is have FutureSelf add “more managerial maturity” to the efforts of those executives. For a flat fee of $45,000 per year — essentially an analyst-level position — the FutureSelf team, which today comprises a handful of people, will act as a resource for executives to prioritize and push forward the strategies that will work best.

“We’ll be the most productive person on your team,” Dyke said of the arrangement, to which three companies have signed on so far.

Joining Dyke in leading FutureSelf is Karl Kropp, head of product and chief research officer. Another veteran of CEB, which is now a part of global research firm Gartner, Kropp also was managing principal of an early-stage investor group and CEO of a health care-focused internet marketing company, among other things, before reconnecting with Dyke late last year.

Dyke began to sound out possible clients last fall and says interest is high and beginning to coalesce now that the holidays have passed.

“We have a very robust pipeline,” he said. “We’re rolling again now and just have to pin people down.”