DPAA — the global trade marketing association connecting out-of-home media with the advertising community — announced Monday that it has created a Diversity and Inclusion Advisory Board. The board’s mandate is to develop programs and recommendations to help out-of-home companies boost minority representation across all executive levels.

Barry Frey, DPAA president and CEO, said, “As an industry, we can always do more to educate and inform as a means to increase diversity among our ranks, which numerous studies have shown leads to greater creativity and innovation. This advisory board will guide us in how to most effectively drive diversity and inclusion in out-of-home. This may take the form of internship programs, workshops, education, development of guidelines … whatever this esteemed board believes is needed to most effectively accomplish the goal. It’s the right thing to do for society, and the right thing to do for business.”

Members of DPAA’s Diversity & Inclusion Advisory Board are:

• Jose Avalos, VP of IOT and GM of Visual Retail at Intel and member of DPAA’s board of directors
• John E. Harmon, Sr., IOM Founder, President & CEO of the African American New Jersey Chamber of Commerce
• Kevin Johnson, CEO of Mediacom Canada and speaker at DPAA’s upcoming Video Everywhere Canada Summit on July 15
• Monique Nelson, Chair and CEO of UWG, the country’s longest-standing multicultural marketing and advertising agency
• Naren Patel, founder MediaForAll, a U.K.-based organization that encourages and mentors BAME (Black Asian Minority Ethnic) talent in the media business, and ex-CEO of Primesight, a leading U.K. Outdoor advertising business
• Anush Prabhu, Chief Strategy Officer of Mediacom U.S.
• Heawon Yoo, SVP Marketing, Lightbox OOH Video Network