BUSINESS
Who is Michael Giordano, what is his professional background at Disney?
The senior executive at The Walt Disney Company who has recently come under scrutiny for making controversial statements about the company’s hiring practices.
Michael Giordano has worked at Disney for over a decade and currently holds the position of Senior Vice President of Business Affairs.
Prior to joining Disney, he served as a Business Affairs Executive at the talent agency WME and as Director of Business Affairs at CBS Entertainment. His LinkedIn has recently been made private, making it difficult to find out the rest of his work history.
What did Giordino say about Disney’s hiring practices?
In a video released by the right-wing group Project Veritas, Giordano is seen speaking candidly about Disney’s alleged discriminatory hiring practices against white males. He claims that he has been told by contacts in Disney’s human resources department that the company is not considering white men for certain roles.
According to career website Zippia, 55% of The Walt Disney Company employees are women, while 45% are men. The most common ethnicity at The Walt Disney Company is white (57%). Disney’s own statistics suggest the vast majortiy of the people in executive positions are white men (73%), just like Giordano.
“Certainly there have been times where… there’s no way we’re hiring a white male for this,” Giordano is quoted as saying in the video.
He also expressed concern that his own career advancement at Disney has been limited due to the colour of his skin and gender, stating “as far as Disney is concerned, I’m a white male, and that’s not who they’re looking to promote at the moment.”
The truth of these statements cannot be ascertained and are actually quite old, surfacing in 2023. No action has been taken by or against Disney.