Unapologetic Innovation with Latraviette Smith-Wilson, Chief Marketing & Equity Officer at Horizon Media

On the AllVoices Reimagining Company Culture podcast, we sat down with Latraviette Smith-Wilson, Chief Marketing & Equity Officer at Horizon Media, to dig into driving innovation through equity and inclusion. Latraviette D. Smith-Wilson, Horizon Media's Chief Marketing & Equity Officer​, recently joined Horizon from Essence Communications, Inc., the leading and only 100% Black-owned media, technology, and commerce company at scale dedicated to Black women and communities, where she most recently served as Chief Strategy & Engagement Officer.

The conversation moves past the usual talking points. Instead of treating equity-driven innovation as an HR theme, Latraviette Smith-Wilson treats it as an operational discipline that sits in the daily decisions managers make about people, priorities, and trust. Below, the takeaways HR leaders, employee relations specialists, and executive teams will find most useful.

The discussion below pulls on several threads from the episode and connects them to current research and what AllVoices sees across hundreds of People teams.

What Equity-Driven Innovation Looks Like in Practice

Equity-Driven Innovation is one of those words HR teams use freely, but the on-the-ground version is much messier. In the conversation with Latraviette Smith-Wilson, several patterns showed up that mirror what McKinsey research on diverse leadership performance also highlights about effective people work. The gap between the slide-deck version and the daily practice is where most programs fall apart.

The data backs the case. HBR analysis of talent strategy in transformation shows that organizations treating equity-driven innovation as a real discipline outperform peers on engagement, retention, and the cultural metrics that matter most over a multi-year horizon. Companies that treat it as messaging see short-term lift and long-term decline.

For HR leaders building DEI programs, that means starting with the everyday touchpoints where equity-driven innovation either lands or fails: hiring loops, onboarding, manager 1:1s, and performance conversations. These are the places where intention turns into experience, and where employees decide whether they trust the company enough to stay, speak up, and do their best work.

The pattern across high-functioning HR teams is consistent. They write fewer policies, run more pilots, and spend more time in conversation with managers who are actually doing the work. That discipline is harder than rolling out a campaign, but it is the difference between equity-driven innovation as a phrase and equity-driven innovation as a result.

How HR Teams Make Equity-Driven Innovation Operational

The shift from concept to operation is where most teams stall. Two questions usually surface in workshops with People leaders.

Where should equity-driven innovation live in the org?

Ownership matters. Programs that sit only with HR rarely get traction. The strongest organizations pair central ownership in HR with distributed accountability across people managers, with a feedback loop into leadership. Company Culture can help build the capacity to run that distributed model without losing visibility, and gives the People team a single place to track what is actually happening.

What does success look like in 12 months?

Most teams need a one-year mark with concrete outcomes: a measurable change in diversity scores, a defined set of policy and process changes, and named owners for the work. Without that, the program drifts and budget questions become harder to defend. The honest version of a 12-month plan also includes two or three things you tried and decided not to repeat.

What Actually Works When You Lead Equity-Driven Innovation

Three patterns repeat across People teams that get this work right. The principles cut across industry and company size.

Diversify who shapes the question

Innovation gets stuck when the same five people frame every problem. Bring different lived experience into the framing, not just the execution.

Treat equity as design constraint, not aftermath

Equity reviews at launch are too late. Bake equity questions into discovery, prototyping, and decision gates.

Measure who benefits

Innovation that helps a narrow audience while leaving others worse off isn't innovation, it's accumulation. Track impact across user segments.

These three principles also depend on the underlying culture. Without a baseline of equity at work, most operational changes get rejected by the organization's immune system. Build the foundation first.

Where Employee Relations Fits Into Equity-Driven Innovation

Whatever the topic, employee relations sits underneath. Equity-Driven Innovation programs that ignore the ER reality get blindsided by a case that should have been resolved early. AllVoices builds investigations management and HR case management so HR teams can connect the surface-level work on equity-driven innovation to the deeper work of resolving issues, tracking patterns, and acting on what employees raise. The two are tightly linked: when employees see issues handled fairly, they trust the rest of the work too.

How ER data informs Equity-Driven Innovation strategy

Issue patterns, response times, and resolution outcomes give HR a clearer picture than survey data alone. When the ER data is integrated into Employee Engagement workflows, leaders can see how equity-driven innovation translates into the lived experience of employees who raise concerns, and what to do about it. The teams that move fastest tend to review case themes monthly and feed those insights into the broader people strategy, instead of treating ER as a separate, reactive function.

For a real example, see TrueCar's growth story. The same pattern applies: connect the strategic intent of equity-driven innovation to the operational rhythm where ER, HR, and managers actually meet employees.

Frequently Asked Questions About Equity-Driven Innovation

What is equity-driven innovation?

Equity-driven innovation is product, process, or policy innovation that intentionally accounts for who benefits and who is left out. It treats equity as a design input, not a check at the end.

Why does equity matter for innovation?

Companies with diverse leadership outperform peers financially, partly because they design for broader audiences. Innovation built without equity reflects the blind spots of its creators.

How does HR support equity-driven innovation?

HR shapes who is in the room, how teams are built, and what voices get heard. The hiring rubric, the promotion path, and the performance review are all equity inputs to innovation.

Can equity slow innovation down?

Sometimes, briefly. The tradeoff is durable innovation that serves more users versus fast launches that need rework. The slower path usually wins over a multi-year horizon.

How do you measure equity in innovation?

Look at who is on the team, who is represented in research, who benefits from the result, and who is harmed by it. Equity audits at every gate make the work concrete.

The Bottom Line for HR Leaders

Equity-Driven Innovation is not a posture. It's a set of decisions, repeated over time, by people who control budgets, promotions, calendars, and the daily experience of work. The HR leaders who get traction stop treating this as a campaign and start treating it as ongoing operational practice. That reframing matters because it changes how you measure success and where you put your energy week to week.

That shift requires data, follow-through, and a clear point of view. McKinsey research on diverse leadership performance and the broader research community make the business case clearer every year. The companies that act on it consistently win on retention, culture, and outcomes that show up on the financial statement. The ones that keep treating the work as branding tend to lose ground quietly, then noisily.

The conversation with Latraviette Smith-Wilson is a useful reminder that the work is doable. None of it requires a huge HR team or a massive budget. It requires clear thinking, consistent execution, and the willingness to adjust when the data tells you to. Pair that mindset with the right tooling and the right partners, and equity-driven innovation stops being aspirational and becomes a measurable part of how the business runs.

Want to see how AllVoices supports HR teams running this work? Book a demo.