Risha Grant describes herself as “diversity personified” — a Black bisexual entrepreneur who started the first diversity-focused communications firm in Oklahoma in 1998. Over the years, as Grant’s consulting business grew, she added clients including NASA, Google, and Harvard University; was booked for speaking engagements 70 to 80 times a year; and watched her 2023 book, Be Better Than Your BS: How Radical Acceptance Empowers Authenticity and Creates a Workplace Culture of Inclusion, rise to No. 2 on a Wall Street Journal best-seller list.

Then came 2025 and the U.S. administration’s executive order directing federal departments to terminate DEI activities. The anti-DEI backlash that followed was “a shift that came so hard and so fast, I couldn’t wrap my brain around it,” Grant told Convene. “It decimated my business. In the last year and a half, I’ve spoken about five times.”

Across the industry, speakers quickly moved to scrub the letters “DEI” from their profiles, replacing it with terms like “inclusion” and “belonging.” Grant’s business had always been about inclusion, she said. “I was always about trying to pull everybody in, to create a cohesiveness that allows all of us to have the same opportunities for growth, for mentorship, for contribution.” But Grant found it impossible to dissociate herself from the term “DEI.” “I’ve been doing [diversity and inclusion work] for 30 years now, and my digital footprint goes back too far to try to hide it.” And, Grant said, she stands by her work.

Weighing New Risks

Grant’s experience reflects the upheaval that has continued to reverberate throughout the business events industry over the last 18 months, as corporations and associations canceled diversity-related speaker contracts, reconsidered conference content, and, in many cases, pulled back from their commitments to DEI.

The pressure heightened this year, after the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) filed a reverse-discrimination lawsuit against a New Hampshire beverage distributor that hosted a “Women’s Forum” in 2024. At the employer-sponsored event, 250 of the company’s female employees spent two days at a hotel and casino, participating in networking, teambuilding, and panels where speakers discussed challenges faced by women inside the historically male-dominated wholesale beverage distribution industry.

In February, the EEOC sued the beverage distribution company on behalf of a male employee, claiming the women-only event had discriminated against him and the company’s other male employees. As of June, the case was ongoing.

While the lawsuit involves an employee program, not an association conference, the case has become a closely watched signal of the Trump administration’s continued approach to DEI-related initiatives. It has caused concern among associations and meeting organizers that similar events could create legal risks for their organizations — something addressed in a March 26 webinar by Jeffrey Tenenbaum, the managing partner of the Washington, D.C.-based Tenenbaum Law Group. The group advises nonprofits, including trade and professional associations, and hosts a series of “Ask the Association Attorney” webinars.

For nonprofits offering DEI-related programming at conferences and webinars, as well as for special-interest groups organized around race, gender, and other characteristics protected by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, “none of that should violate current law,” Tenenbaum said. That’s because “those activities generally don’t involve the nonprofit’s employment policies or practices, and, as such, are not covered by Title VII,” he told Convene. But many nonprofits have pulled back their DEI initiatives, he added, not because they are necessarily illegal, but because they create business, financial, and reputational risks, including the risk of negative reactions from members, sponsors, or advertisers, exhibitors, and/or attendees, and of being potentially targeted by the Trump administration.

‘They’re Not Going to Let Us Hire You’

Grant has experienced that aversion to risk firsthand in conversations with former corporate clients, who have told her: “We loved you. Our employees loved you. But if we hire you and somebody starts looking you up online, they’re not going to let us hire you because of DEI.”

She understands that companies are regulated and that many of them receive federal funding, Grant said. But regardless of what the government says, companies “have so much power to create a corporate culture that embraces everybody. It is as simple as: ‘At this company, everybody is respected and everybody has what they need to succeed.’” And, she said, “I feel like so many of those companies did not step up and say that thing.”

‘I Did It for a Reason’

In grieving the loss of the business that she had built for 30 years, “I went through an identity crisis,” Grant said. “But I realized, coming through all that, that I truly believe in what I put in the world. I truly believe in what I built. I did it for a reason.”

She went back, she said, to a question she’d been considering before everything crumbled. “How do we take DEI and not say ‘DEI’? How does it become a lifestyle that just means we’re being the best we can be as people? That’s what I really think the world needs. And that’s the message I’m standing on right now.”

Grant and her partner Arielle Davis are co-founders of Zerlo Network, a media company that provides content development, production, and other services. The network will also serve as a platform for Grant, who has recorded four seasons of the show, “Be Better Than Your BS with Risha Grant.” Its format draws on Grant’s background as an athlete and coach and features conversations between Grant and entrepreneurs, leaders, creatives, and others.

As she was creating the show, Grant was inspired by the determination of the women she spoke with to fight through the challenges they face, she said. “It gave me just the internal boost I needed to say [to myself]: ‘You’ve got to get back up.’”

The Power of Safe Spaces

When she speaks, “it truly is about all people and what all of us can do — not just white people, Black people, Hispanic people, or gay people,” said speaker and consultant Risha Grant. But in her view, the goals of inclusion and creating meeting spaces where people who share particular identities and challenges can get together to talk on their own are not mutually exclusive, she said.

“There is always going to be the need for space where people of color, for LGBTQ+ people, to talk without people taking notes and whispering,” she said. “As much as we want to act like our workplaces, our neighborhoods, and our communities are better, we still have a lot of work to do. Saying the wrong thing around people who don’t believe as you do is scary.” In those spaces, “people can listen to one another in a way they don’t listen to people they don’t trust,” she said. “You can call each other out and say, ‘Oh, you are so wrong.’

“I think what comes out of these meetings, if you have the right people in charge, is solutions,” she said. “How can our voices be stronger together? How can we approach the issues we have with our company in a way that helps them accomplish their goals, and where we also feel like we are doing what we need to do to create a better environment?”

Barbara Palmer is Convene’s deputy editor

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• Learn more about Risha Grant at rishagrant.com.
• Watch recorded “Ask the Association Attorney” and “Ask the Nonprofit Attorney” webinars.