Paul Ford II’s company, Deity LLC, is set to take its first clients in September. Photo by Claire Runkel.
LILY O’CONNOR | STAFF REPORTER | lkoconnor@butler.edu
At Butler, Paul Ford II is a senior entrepreneurship and innovation major. Outside of the classroom, he is a visionary. While still in the early stages, his diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) consulting firm, Deity LLC, will work to reimagine the DEI industrial complex.
Ford describes his business as “a DEI consultancy, specializing in cross cultural collaboration and strategic development.”
He is passionate about taking businesses that lack diversity and an understanding of DEI, and helping to transform them into inclusive communities. Ford believes that a diverse, equitable and inclusive workforce and staff is the key to reaching different markets and better serving consumers.
“Diversity is the spectrum of humanity through which we all exist,” Ford said. “Equity is the focus on providing provisions based on what people need. Inclusion is the extent to which people feel as if they belong to a community or an organization.”
Deity will allow companies to hire Ford and future Deity employees to give insight on why DEI is essential to businesses and how they can incorporate it into their everyday business practices. Through his firm, Ford hopes to make DEI more accessible to smaller businesses and companies.
“I’m aiming to support companies that might not have the resources to hire full time DEI staff,” Ford said. “It’s actually more cost effective for them to work with consultants for a limited time than to have someone on standby at all times.”
In June 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down race-conscious admissions policies and in July 2023, six states passed anti-DEI legislation, with two more following by the end of 2023. In the wake of these legislation changes, Ford was a student presenter at the National Conference of Race and Ethnicity. Additionally, he was actively the DEI intern for Pacers Sports and Entertainment so he decided to commit to the mission of furthering DEI practices.
Although Deity will not be taking clients until September 2024, Ford has been developing this business since October 2023. It was incorporated, or registered with the state as a business entity, in January 2024.
In late February, Ford was accepted into the Venture for America (VFA) fellowship, a two-year entrepreneurial fellowship that supports and guides startup leaders and founders. Starting in August, Ford will be sent to one of the 13 cities VFA operates in to start the fellowship.
When he starts taking clients, he plans to focus on strategic consulting in the corporate sector. With the VFA fellowship, he hopes he can expand to hire employees, move into the social and state sectors and add employee assistance program offerings.
As of right now, Ford is focusing on the internal components of Deity, such as doing research to make sure he understands the corporate space that he is entering. He joined the Indy Equity Collective, a business that supports companies in DEI education, to gain understanding of the current DEI landscape.
He will also be speaking at two DEI events at Butler, the DEI storytelling workshop for Lacy School of Business (LSB) students on April 10 and the Diversity and Small Business Symposium on April 12. The events will promote his business and help him enter the DEI industry.
Ford credits Anthony Murdock II, an entrepreneurship and innovation professor and member of Butler’s advisory board for the Hub for Black Affairs and Community Engagement, and LSB career advisor Randy Brown as key mentors in guiding and advising him during the creation process of Deity and his time at Butler.
Murdock has known Ford since before Butler, but became close when Ford started at Butler and joined Bust the B.U.B.B.L.E., the organization that Murdock founded in 2014. Murdock said he is amazed at how confident Ford has become throughout the years. He said that Ford’s passion for DEI and confidence is what will make Deity successful.
“[Ford] balances humility and confidence very well,” Murdock said. “His demeanor is so soft spoken, but when he does speak, he doesn’t waste a word. That balance speaks to his nature as a servant leader, but also the need for his business in the market.”
Brown said he is excited for Ford and thinks that Deity and the VFA fellowship are the perfect opportunities for him to be able to take what he has learned at Butler and use it to make a change. Three years from now he hopes Ford continues to be proud of the fact that he started a business from the ground up.
“Paul has an entrepreneurial spirit,” Brown said. “I think he always knew that he wanted to start something on his own. He’s tried and explored different things as he’s gone through college, but I think that pull to be an entrepreneur has always been there.”
Ford’s ultimate vision is to bring fresh, new ideas to the realm of DEI as a business and then incorporate those within businesses. He sees the conflict and controversy surrounding DEI, especially following the summer legislation changes, but also sees the people who are looking for more and better ways of implementing DEI.
“I think right now people are targeting DEI as a practice, but DEI exists larger than that,” Ford said. “It exists as an ideology. I think that, even if the practice is controversial, we should all be able to agree that these ideas have space in our society, that we should come to a consensus on how they can be implemented.”
