For years, the podcast industry has carried a quiet but persistent perception: that while the medium has expanded rapidly, the voices most consistently elevated and monetized have remained overwhelmingly white and male.
I joined PRX in 2021, when, as a nation, we were still reeling from the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tamir Rice, and countless others. At that point, I had spent over a decade in academia, completed doctoral research on multicultural strategies and racialized organizational spaces, and worked as a consultant and executive coach with Fortune 500 companies and organizations preparing for IPOs—often supporting their equity and leadership development efforts. Joining PRX at that moment felt electric. PRX had long been known as a technology innovator and as an organization committed to democratizing audio by lifting up marginalized voices. This was my opportunity to bring strategy, learning and development, executive coaching, and organizational growth work into a space that genuinely believed in the transformative power of audio.
Equity has to be built and nurtured.
Since that time, I’ve had the incredible opportunity to bring strategy, learning and development, executive coaching, and a mix of strategies to grow our organization from where we were when I joined to where we are now on our equity journey. Recognizing that equity work is equal parts relational and structural. A part of that journey has been to think about how the programs, convenings, and learning environments we create and host can be more equitable and accessible to the communities we lift up and support. I have had the amazing opportunity to work with our training team, led by Vice President of Content Stephanie Kuo, to design workshops and learning experiences that uplift creators and knowledge holders across the podcast ecosystem. We worked hand in hand to set standards for how we would show up and incorporate voices from every corner of the podcast ecosystem.
Similarly, we did this work with our podcast garages in San Francisco and in Boston. Thinking through how we create and how those studios and training programs operate, where everyone is going to be invited, comfortable, and able to learn in a way that is going to elevate their craft
The microphone is democratized, but the platforms are not.
Now that we are over 20 years in the podcast game, we are just starting to see the beautiful diversity of creators getting the chance to step onto stages and platforms that they previously had not had the opportunity to know. According to recent research by Sounds Profitable, multicultural creators in podcasting are outpacing White creators by up to 2X. But this did not happen by chance. To disrupt a system, we needed to be intentional about the invitation, the space we prepared, and the experience once they arrived. We need a careful strategy to uplift these integral voices.
Because while the microphone has become democratized, the platforms have not. From distribution to marketing to monetization, all remain deeply uneven.
Those with money to invest in marketing teams and full-time production have fundamentally different experiences and opportunities than those building shows while navigating systemic barriers, caregiving responsibilities, underfunded communities, and or structural discrimination.
That is not to say the road to start on is easier for one or the other, but it is to say that we must be aware of how the system perpetuates itself and who is marketable, and we, as an industry, must reckon with that!
Building an Industry That Reflects Real Life
Equity in the podcasting space requires asking difficult, uncomfortable questions. While I believe our industry faces an onslaught of challenges, including audience growth, AI creation, and visual bias amid the uptick in video accompaniment, we need to be ready to address the question of whose stories shape culture and whose voices inform public discourse. How are we incorporating stories that are beautifully nuanced with the human lived experience? What are we willing to invest to ensure that the best quality has the best opportunity?
If equity is truly the objective, our systems must be designed to reflect it. At PRX and in partnership with Sounds Profitable, we are examining our work and our areas of influence with that principle in mind.
Through our collaboration, we have intentionally taken a structural approach. We redesigned the submission process to prioritize diverse creators, recognizing that traditional calls for proposals often reproduce existing inequities. We want the strongest work, and we believe that centering equity is how we get there. These goals are not in conflict; they are mutually reinforcing.
We also interrogated the spaces we invite people into—not just for physical accessibility, but for cultural and psychological belonging. We cannot be prepared to welcome the diversity we seek and not be prepared for them to arrive. That requires us to prepare differently, using best practices from disability advocates and equity practitioners, and simply asking what panelists need. This step is integral to the longevity of this strategy. We don’t want diverse voices for one event; we want to create a new industry standard.
Selection systems and accessible environments must work hand in hand. Diversifying invitations without aggressively interrogating where, how, and under what conditions people participate risks tokenism. Designing inclusive and accessible spaces without changing selection processes leaves the same voices at the center.
Lastly, we reconsidered timelines. We expanded the window between acceptance and event participation because time is a valuable resource. We know that short timelines privilege creators with capital, flexible schedules, and institutional backing. That can book a flight with minimal notice (at the associated price point) without worrying about missing work or finding care for loved ones.
These are small design decisions with outsized impact – and they are replicable.
New Partners
Sounds Profitable exists thanks to the continued support of our amazing partners. Monthly consulting, free tickets to our quarterly events, partner-only webinars, and access to our 1,800+ person slack channel are all benefits of partnering Sounds Profitable.
- Point To Point Marketing designs and executes meaningful audience development strategies for podcast, broadcast, streaming, and ticketed events.
- Media Bodies: Podcast & Programmatic media buying at scale
- The Amplified Voices Podcast Network (AVPN) provides listeners with programming focusing on social justice, cultural insights, entertainment, news and information that directly impacts Black audiences.
Want to learn more about partnership? Hit reply or send us an email!
