Our Message To You Right Now

We equally value the health and well-being of everyone in our global community.

We believe in equality and justice for all.

Racism is a virus.

We stand with all those who have been oppressed, terrorized, or marginalized because of their race, ethnicity, color, gender, sexual orientation, or disability.

#blacklivesmatter

Today, this week, this month, this year… is not the first time we’ve thought about the answer to “What are you going to do?” As a company, we’ve given deep consideration to these issues for some time.

Our content and curriculum reach millions of people. We consider ourselves accountable to change the hearts and minds of the individuals we influence. That means to fight racial and social injustices, we must do the hard work of making intentional decisions that shape our work every single day. And that we use our intellectual property and distribution channels to influence the thinking of our audience.

Some of the actions we’ve taken:

• Last year, we took an honest look at the diversity of our team. We didn’t like what we saw because it was clear we were missing opportunities to be a better, stronger company. We instituted a clear equity-based hiring policy and strive to live up to it. We’re proud that we’ve made tremendous progress over the past year in making our team more diverse, and we’ll continue to focus on this so that our team is more reflective of the community we serve.
• Over the last two years, we created clear internal guidelines on representing diversity in our curriculum, through both language and images. At PN, diversity is not a “nice to have,” it is a non-negotiable. Our educational content for health and fitness professionals includes explicit discussion of racialization, oppression, poverty, inequitable access to food (in ways that are racialized), homophobia/transphobia, and other social determinants of health such as trauma and ability. Because we educate professionals who work with the general public, we believe we have the responsibility to represent the needs of all people. And our expectation is that this affects positive change.
• We have clear policies on anti-oppressive language and nonviolent communication in all aspects of our organization. And we were one of the first organizations in the nutrition and fitness space to have an explicit policy on inclusive language. We don’t generally publicize this because it’s not about publicity; it’s a sincere intention to ensure no group feels excluded or marginalized. We certainly haven’t achieved perfection here, but we’re making a conscious effort to continually progress and improve.
• We have a clear institutional feedback loop for change. We continue to educate ourselves in anti-oppression practice. And we take very seriously any oversights brought to our attention.

Do we still have gaps? Yes. Maybe gaps we don’t even see yet. But our commitment is to live our company values and be held accountable by our team members and customers, and anyone who feels marginalized by our actions or inactions.

This is where we stand.