Marcus Cooper has the kind of role that requires balancing competing pressures every day. As Director of Global Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at Zendesk, his job is to scale GDEI work toward a leader-led model across people, products, and customers. That means counsel and thought leadership for senior leaders, alongside the operational work of building a function that works across many countries with different histories, expectations, and definitions of fairness. His conversation on Reimagining Company Culture explored what global DEI strategy actually looks like when it has to run inside the realities of a multinational company.
Marcus's framing was useful because he resisted simple answers. Global DEI is not US DEI exported to other markets. It is also not local DEI run independently in every country. The companies that get this right find the layer of universal commitments and the layer of local adaptation, and they design the operating model to handle both at the same time.
Why Global DEI Is Harder Than Most Frameworks Admit
Global DEI runs into immediate complexity. Different countries collect different demographic data, sometimes legally constrained from collecting any. Different cultures have different definitions of underrepresentation. Different markets have different expectations of what employers should and should not be involved in. McKinsey's Diversity Wins research shows that the relationship between diverse leadership and financial performance holds across geographies, but the practical work of building it requires different tactics market by market.
Deloitte's research on belonging reinforces the point. The universal goal of belonging cuts across cultures, but the path to belonging differs based on local norms, history, and population dynamics. Marcus's argument was that ignoring those differences produces strategies that work nowhere, while honoring them produces strategies that work everywhere.
What Global DEI Strategy Actually Requires
How do you handle data when different countries have different rules?
Marcus described a pragmatic model. Track demographic representation at the level legally allowed in each country. Use perception data (climate, belonging, fairness) where demographic data is restricted. Combine the two for a global picture that respects local law and still produces meaningful insight.
How do you adapt programs across cultures?
By distinguishing universal commitments from local programs. The universal layer might be commitments to fair hiring, equitable pay, and inclusive culture. The local layer is the specific programs, ERGs, and engagement channels that fit the population and culture in each market. Companies that try to standardize the local layer end up with programs that feel imposed rather than relevant.
What Actually Works in Global DEI
Principle 1: Build leader capability, not just leader awareness
Most global DEI training is awareness-focused. The companies that move further invest in leader capability to actually change hiring, calibration, and feedback practices. Unconscious bias training is necessary but not sufficient. Behavior change is what produces outcome change.
Principle 2: Localize without fragmenting
Local autonomy is essential, but it can devolve into fragmentation if the central function does not provide structure. Marcus argued for clear global standards on outcome metrics, with local flexibility on the path to those metrics. That balance keeps the strategy coherent without making it culturally tone-deaf.
Principle 3: Use signals across systems
Global DEI strategy benefits from connecting signals across hiring, ER, engagement, and exit data. AllVoices' anonymous reporting and DEI hotline tooling lets HR teams maintain consistent reporting channels across countries, which is essential when local environments may make traditional channels less safe to use.
Where DEI Strategy Fits in the People Stack
Global DEI sits inside broader investments in diversity, equity and inclusion and human resources. The teams that build effective global DEI integrate it with engagement, ER, and talent strategy. Inclusion, equity, and harassment work all run on the same underlying data infrastructure when done well.
How HR measures global DEI progress
The mature pattern is to track a small global outcome set with local nuance. Hiring conversion equity by demographic. Promotion rates across cohorts. Pay equity by job family. Voluntary attrition by demographic group. Inclusion sentiment by region. The combination is what tells leaders whether the strategy is working in places they cannot directly observe.
Frequently Asked Questions About Global DEI Strategy
How do you start global DEI when the function is brand new?
Start with hiring and pay equity, because those tend to have data infrastructure already in place and produce visible results. Build out engagement and ER work as the data foundation matures. Resist the temptation to launch many programs at once. Focus produces compounding outcomes.
How do you handle pushback from local leaders who say DEI is a US concept?
Frame the strategy around outcomes everyone agrees with: fair hiring, equal opportunity, inclusive teams. Avoid US-specific terminology where possible. Show that the underlying goals translate across cultures even when the labels differ.
What about companies operating in countries where DEI work is politically contested?
Tighten the language. Focus on universal commitments to fairness and merit. Adapt programs to local context without abandoning the underlying intent. Companies that get this right have moved DEI work without making it disappear.
How important are ERGs to global DEI?
Important, but only when properly resourced. ERGs that depend on volunteer labor in stretched local populations often burn out. Companies that fund ERG work, give leaders development paths, and connect ERG insights into business decisions get more out of them.
How do you measure whether global DEI is improving?
Watch outcomes, not activities. Representation by level over time. Promotion equity. Pay equity. Voluntary attrition gaps. Inclusion sentiment. Activities are easy to count and easy to confuse with progress. Outcomes are the ground truth.
How do you build local DEI capability when central HR resources are limited?
Through trained partners and clear playbooks. The companies that scale global DEI without massive central teams invest in local HR business partners who can adapt central commitments to local context. Clear playbooks reduce the lift on each market. Periodic central alignment keeps the work coherent. The pattern is decentralized execution with centralized strategy, not the reverse.
How do you sustain global DEI through leadership transitions?
By building it into operating systems rather than personal initiatives. Strategies that depend on a single sponsor tend to falter when that sponsor moves. Strategies embedded in goals, metrics, and processes survive transitions and produce continuity. The shift from sponsor-dependent to system-dependent DEI work is the maturity step most companies eventually have to take.
The Bottom Line for HR Leaders
Marcus's experience scaling DEI across a multinational organization makes a useful argument. Global DEI strategy needs to be both unified and local. The unified layer protects coherence. The local layer protects relevance. Companies that pick one and abandon the other end up with strategies that are either irrelevant or fragmented. The companies that hold both at once end up with DEI work that produces outcomes across very different markets.
The deeper point is that DEI is global capability work. The companies that build it as a real capability (with leader development, data infrastructure, and outcome accountability) end up with workforces that look more like the markets they serve and stay longer once they arrive. The companies that treat DEI as an annual report exercise see the gap between their words and their numbers continue to widen.
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