Taylor Bennett Foundation

Taylor Bennett is committed to equal opportunities at work. Our mandate is quite simply to find the best person for a job. We oppose discrimination on grounds of age, gender, sexuality, disability, religious belief, race or ethnicity.

In public relations and corporate communications, people from black and minority ethnic (BAME) backgrounds are under-represented. One reason for this is that talented BAME people are rarely encouraged to consider working in this field or provided with the skills and knowledge to do so.

We set up the Taylor Bennett Foundation in 2008. The Foundation provides 10-week training programmes for BAME graduates, during which trainees are paid a training allowance, to encourage them to make a career in communications. All Taylor Bennett employees contribute time to the Foundation, including mentoring and discipline-specific training sessions, and are assessed on their contribution each year. So far around 170 graduates have been through the programme and over 80% are now working in the communications industry.

Taylor Bennett and the Foundation have gained external recognition, winning several awards: a Lord Mayor’s Dragon Award for Social Inclusion in 2010; the 2012 Business in the Community ‘Race for Opportunity’ Collaboration and Partnership Award; a Highly Commended award in the LondonlovesTalent Diversity and Mentoring category run by online business site LondonlovesBusiness; and, in 2015, a Special Recognition award at the inaugural PRCA/PR Week Internship Awards.

The founder of the Taylor Bennett Foundation, Heather McGregor, was awarded a CBE in Her Majesty The Queen’s Birthday Honours List in 2015 for services to business, with particular reference to employment skills and diversity in the workplace.