ELI LILLY AND
COMPANY
OUR PLEDGE TO THE COMMUNITY
Lilly and the Lilly Foundation stand united in our intent to create a more diverse, equitable and inclusive culture within our company and our communities. Lilly and the Lilly Foundation have created a Racial Justice Initiative to help drive meaningful change within our company and our community. As part of our community efforts, we commit to bringing people and organizations together to acknowledge racial inequity in its many forms and create a call to action for lasting change.
PLEDGE 1
Lilly pledges to further increase the current representation of African Americans from approximately 9% to 13%.
Focus Area: Workplace
Lilly has been working for more than a half-decade to build a stronger, more diverse culture and we’ve made progress, but we recognize there is more we can do. We pledge to further increase the current representation of African Black Americans from approximately 10% to 13% in our U.S. workforce to align more closely with U.S. demographics of the patients and communities we serve. This won’t happen overnight, but we have the strategies in place—and we’re accelerating progress—to get there.
2022 PROGRESS
Increased Black American talent from 9.6% to 10.2%.
Developed mandatory training for company leaders on how to develop an inclusive and psychologically safe employee culture.
Hosted annual Day of Solidarity program to uplift, inform, and celebrate the Black American experience for Lilly employees.
Expanded our partnership with Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) for recruitment; and hosted first HBCU Day at Lilly for nearly 30 future scientists.
Launched Propel—a development program, that will be offered three times in 2023, to connect Black, Latinx and LGBTQ employees to Lilly’s purpose and equip them with the tools they need to pursue their career goals.
We are a founding member of OneTen, a collective of U.S. corporations committed to hiring, training and advancing one million Black Americans to family-sustaining jobs in ten years.
Expanded Skills First @ Lilly to include paths to family-sustaining jobs in technology, manufacturing, finance, HR and more. To date, more than 70 people have gone through the program.
On pace to create 200 job opportunities for a talented candidate pool that has historically lacked access to higher education or professional jobs in the next two years.
2021 PROGRESS
Having diverse talent at Lilly is critically important to our innovation strategy and our ability to serve all patient populations. To reach the goal of increasing representation of Black Americans from approximately 10% to 13% in our workforce, over the last year we have focused on further and more fully incorporating principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion into our talent management system and practices.
We continue to stay focused on creating and identifying opportunities that will enable us to reach this goal. Some examples include:
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Lilly joined OneTen, an organization that will combine the power of other committed American companies to upskill, hire and promote one million Black Americans over the next 10 years into family-sustaining, also known as, “Good Jobs,” with opportunities for advancement.
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Lilly is actively developing programs to enable more family-sustaining jobs for Blacks Americans and individuals from other marginalized communities through its Skills First initiative—the goal of which is to eliminate the default bachelor’s degree for some jobs at Lilly.
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Lilly developed a Professional Apprenticeship Program, which provides individuals without college degrees access to roles at Lilly that they may not have had through traditional recruiting means. More than 20 people have participated thus far, with more cohorts planned for 2022 and beyond.
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Lilly developed and launched a new nationally registered Department of Labor Craft Apprenticeship Program, which will provide skill-based on-the-job training while earning a technical certification or associates degree at Ivy Tech. Job roles for this program are in our manufacturing sites and include maintenance mechanic, HVAC mechanic, instrument technician and welder.
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While Lilly had previously had a robust recruitment pipeline with many Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), we have expanded our outreach, establishing two new recruiting relationships with Morehouse School of Medicine and Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science. For the first time, we will be hosting an HBCU Day at Lilly Corporate Center in Indianapolis is Spring 2022. Students from six HBCUs where Lilly has not been as active in recruiting from will be participating.
PLEDGE 2
Lilly will double the national annualized spend with African American suppliers and vendors over the next two years.
Focus Area: Prosperity
Our Racial Justice Initiative aims to help drive equity—creating interventions and solutions to provide specific opportunities to level the playing field and create more equality. Within the company, one area we aim to improve is our supplier diversity, by doubling the annualized spend with African American suppliers and vendors over the next two years.
2022 PROGRESS
More than doubled our spend of $143 million to $358 million in two years with Black suppliers and vendors and engaged partners like the U.S. Black Chambers, Indy Chambers and many other new Black Business Enterprises to support the advancement of underrepresented businesses.
Doubled our spend from $37M to $74M with Black Business Enterprises in Indianapolis.
2021 PROGRESS
Lilly has increased its national spend with Black businesses by 50% in the past year and we are on track to meet our goal of doubling the annualized spend with Black American business enterprises in 2022.
In 2021, Lilly launched a Mentor Protégé Program to develop small/diverse suppliers by sharing Lilly methodologies and industry best practices thereby increasing their readiness for future business needs. The program serves as an incubator for diverse solutions to Lilly’s supply chain.
In 2022, Lilly will implement Supplier Diversity training for all management level employees, which will show the positive broader economic impact of creating a level playing field for small/diverse suppliers to compete and win business contracts.
PLEDGE 3
The Lilly Foundation and Cummins Foundation commit a total of $500,000 to the Indianapolis Urban League to invest in African American-owned businesses and entrepreneurship.
Focus Areas: Prosperity
The Eli Lilly and Company Foundation and the Cummins Foundation each have granted the Indianapolis Urban League $250,000 to establish an Entrepreneurship Center to provide impactful programming and support to African American entrepreneurs in Indianapolis. Through these grants, the Indianapolis Urban League will aid aspiring African American entrepreneurs in developing effective businesses, enable existing African American entrepreneurs to grow, and create jobs for minorities in Indianapolis.
2021 PROGRESS
In June 2021, the Indianapolis Urban League (IUL) Entrepreneurship Center was launched to assist entrepreneurs with developing, launching, sustaining, and growing minority small businesses in Central Indiana and surrounding counties. The Entrepreneurship Center provides future and current small business owners with access to in-person and virtual workshops, short-term industry recognized training credentials, individualized coaching, and support to leverage resources, maximize revenue, reduce costs, increase profitability, and create job opportunities.
The Lilly Foundation also awarded grants to support the creation and launch of the Business Equity for Indy Committee, a joint committee of the Indy Chamber of Commerce and the Central Indiana Corporate Partnership.
PLEDGE 4
Lilly invests $1 million to Lynx Capital Corporation for growth capital for African American-owned businesses.
Focus Areas: Prosperity
Lilly and the Lilly Foundation aim to invest in initiatives and actions to create more fairness and equity for African Americans. In 2020, the Lilly Foundation $25 million committed, and the Lilly company committed 25,000 employee volunteer hours to combat racial injustice and inequity. Lilly also pledged to invest in venture funds created by racially diverse and historically underrepresented business leaders that intended to identify, fund and support underrepresented founders focusing on healthcare and tech-related funds.
2022 PROGRESS
In October 2020, Lilly invested $1 million in LYNX Capital Corporation.
Lilly committed $118 million to Black and minority group member founded venture capital firms, including: Sixty8 Capital, Unseen Capital, Jumpstart Nova, Black Opal Ventures, SteelSky Ventures, Seae Ventures and The Pier 70 INPact Fund.
Lilly has also invested $300 million with Black-led fixed income investment firms, including: Loop Capital, Xponance, and Earnest Partners, $50 million with a Hispanic-led fixed income investment firm and $15 million with a Veteran-led fixed income investment firm.
The Lilly Foundation awarded $15.6 million toward promoting racial justice and community impact in the areas of education, support for the justice-involved, organizations that raise awareness of racial violence.
Exceeded 25,000 employee volunteer hour goal before the end of 2022, with more than 30,000 hours logged. Employees passionately supported our Racial Justice Commitment across the nation and with Indianapolis based nonprofits like Girls, Inc. (Indianapolis), Hope Center Indy, Inc. and Versiti Blood Center.
2021 PROGRESS
In January 2021, Lilly announced a $30 million limited partner commitment to the Unseen Capital Health Fund, a venture fund created by racially diverse and historically underrepresented business leaders. The fund is intended to identify, fund and support underrepresented founders of early-stage healthcare companies and those building solutions for marginalized communities.
In May 2021, Lilly announced an investment in Sixty8 Capital, an Indianapolis-based Black-owned, venture capital firm supporting Black, Latinx, women and LGBTQ+ startups. The firm’s goal is to open the door to these missed opportunities for diverse innovators and empower invaluable change within our communities.
2020 PROGRESS
Lilly invested $1 million in LYNX Capital Corporation in October 2020.
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