• by Larissa Faw , March 18, 2021

Thesis CEO Ryan Buchanan is attempting to bolster the diversity of the agency’s Oregon headquarters with SINE, a new social mobility network aimed at helping color and low-income rural communities. 

Buchanan had attended a networking event in Portland and realized that most of his local business community peers were White and male like himself, he explains. He decided it was time to get “intentional” about creating a more inclusive workforce and challenge his own company and fellow business leaders to play an active role in fostering diversity, equity and inclusion in their own companies.

SINE -- Survival Is Not Enough -- supports college graduates of color and low-income rural graduates in Oregon and Southwest Washington by providing access to vocational and wealth-building resources. The goal is to attain social mobility and future leadership roles.

Participants will gain access to career-development workshops, coaching, graduate program assistance, fellowships and more. There is no cost to join, but some of the requirements to remain eligible include commitments to paying down student debt, saving or investing a minimum of $50 a month, contributing to a retirement account, voting in elections, and serving on a committee board or nonprofit.

The program also seeks mentors and corporate sponsors.

SINE serves as an expansion of the Emerging Leaders (EL) internship and mentoring program cofounded by Buchanan in 2016. The program was designed to create pathways to leadership for aspiring students of color. Since then, Emerging Leaders has placed nearly 400 interns at more than 100 partner companies in the Portland area, including Nike, PGE and Wieden+Kennedy.

“Through our own DEI initiatives at Thesis, we’ve learned that many young professionals of color still have a number of hurdles to overcome, even after they secure a great job,” says Buchanan. “SINE provides community-based resources to help them rise over those barriers and continue their path to leadership roles and an economically stable future.”