National Association of Black Accountants hemorrhages event sponsors in wake of Trump’s ‘illegal DEI’ orders

The National Association of Black Accountants (NABA) recruiting event hemorrhaged sponsors, and some are blaming the shifting political tides.

A report from Bloomberg referred to the recruiting event, which took place from June 3-6 in Las Vegas, as “a litmus test of the impact of Donald Trump’s executive orders attacking what he calls ‘illegal DEI.’”

While the event managed to retain some of its high-profile sponsors, such as Deloitte LLP, Wells Fargo & Co., and JPMorgan Chase & Co., it lost a significant number of its big-name partners.

“More than two dozen named sponsors from previous years, including American Express Co., Meta Platforms Inc. and Walt Disney Co., were missing from the list this time around,” the Bloomberg report reads.

Additionally, attendance took a hit from previous years.

“Attendance was down from last year, when almost 4,000 students and industry professionals took part. Deloitte, the title sponsor, kept press out of the sessions it underwrote and declined to make featured panelist Lara Abrash, the chair of Deloitte US, available for interviews.”

NABA local chapter leaders, like Joshua Nwozor of the Boston chapter, are also struggling to find companies willing to sponsor local events. Nwozor explains that they have “gotten pushback” and “companies that used to sponsor NABA events say they don’t want to have their name associated.

Accounting, a profession that is struggling as a whole, has been predominantly a white occupation, with only about 2% of those in the profession being black.

“The political climate has made changing that a challenge for Guylaine Saint Juste, NABA’s CEO since 2021. She said that when she took the job, she felt ‘the organization had either lost or forgotten that it was created on the back of the social justice movement,’ and didn’t reflect the pent-up anger of the moment,” according to the Bloomberg article.