“Social Justice Activist Tamika Mallory Takes on Panini America’s Lack of Diversity in Leadership

What motivated you and Reverend Michael McBride to write a letter to Panini America regarding their lack of black leadership? As racial justice leaders, it’s not unusual for concerned individuals and community members to contact us with grievances. It came to our attention that Panini America, a sports card and memorabilia trading company has little to no Black leadership, although 75% of the athletes whose imagery they use for their products are Black. We think that’s unacceptable and must be remedied immediately. So we brought our teams together to strategize.

Why do you believe it is important for a company like Panini, which heavily relies on black and brown athletes, to have diversity in its leadership team? We will not accept another company profiting off of Black people and Black talent without Black people in the company’s leadership. It’s nothing more than exploitation. Panini America’s roster is close to 75% Black athletes from the NFL, MLB, UFC, NBA, and FIFA. It’s ludicrous that any company profits off of the majority of Black athletes but employs no Black people in its executive leadership. According to the website Zippia, which connects people to job opportunities and rigorously analyzes publicly available data about companies, Panini America only has 10% African or African American employees but none hold positions of leadership, in contrast to 75% of athletes on their sports cards and memorabilia who are Black, and represent the most profitable merchandise.

In the event that Panini does not address the issue of black leadership, how do you plan to mobilize the NBA, NFL, FIFA, and other athletes to boycott the company? We hope Panini takes our concerns and requests seriously and sets an example for other corporations in similar situations moving forward. But if they ignore our concerns, we will not hesitate to organize our considerable roster of notable athletes, athletic managers, and representatives, our friends in media, the arts and entertainment, and more to illuminate the massive inequity at Panini’s executive level. Until Freedom and Black Church PAC have been organizing around issues of racial inequality at the highest levels. We have many ways to put public pressure on a company – we’ve done it many times before with great success and are ready to escalate this campaign when necessary.

How do you respond to critics who argue that the focus should be on individual qualifications rather than race or ethnicity when it comes to hiring leadership positions? This is what we’d like to know – what exactly are the qualifications of senior-level positions at Panini? What is the matriculation process for Black and Brown employees, and all employees, to be promoted to senior-level positions? Why are Black and Brown employees NOT moving up? What is their hiring process? What efforts have they made to diversify their job search outreach? 

In terms of whether a candidate’s race or ethnicity matters – it seems to very much matter – to white people. What we see by the numbers is that Panini has chosen a culture and identity – almost across their executive landscape they’ve chosen the white race. Their sporting goods and trading cards use the talent, appearances, and intellectual property – more than 75% – of Black and Brown folks, yet that community is completely erased at the corporate level.