I sent out a press release today challenging the top 20 global PR firms and the top 20 global corporate communications divisions within the top global corporations to a new goal for all: for each to hire at least 12 executives of color into their firms.

This challenge is a very reachable goal and would be a tipping point in diversity in our profession. It is also not charity, but a business goal shared by every major organization in the world.

Let's see if our profession can rise to the challenge versus continue to make excuses for why it is not possible. I also clearly defined that an executive in a PR firm must be a SVP or above and an executive in a corporate communications division must be a senior director or above.

Leaders in our profession for more than 50 years have created internship, fellowship and recruited professionals of color into the entry levels of our profession, but then they complain when these intelligent and passionate recruits of color leave only a few years later.

They leave because they never see the top leadership of any kind who look like them and after being told there is a zero tolerance for prejudice and discrimination of any kind in their organizations, they experience just the opposite.

Continuing this faulty strategy is simply insanity and naive. Over the past 23 years I have worked in the profession I have heard excuse after excuse as to why we have only a few executives of color in our profession. By the way, I hear this from my peers, the greatest minds in our profession: CEOs of leading global PR firms and CCOs of top global corporations.

Ironically, this issue is nothing new. In 2006, the advertising world (which owns most of the global PR firms and provides advertising and PR for most global corporations) was facing its biggest diversity crisis with NYC Council hearings on the lack of diversity in the profession and threats of lawsuits from several organizations and individuals.

And it was not the first time, as the industry had similar threats years before. In 2006, the 4As, the powerful advertising trade organization, hired a top crisis PR firm to help it through the crisis. It happened to be my old crisis PR and reputation management firm, MGP & Associates PR, which sold its assets the end of 2013.

I was recruited to represent the 4As by the great, now sadly deceased, Ed Ney, who was the former CEO of Young & Rubicam (Y&R) advertising. He was also one of my mentors for many years early in my career. Ed was also a long time board member of the 4As.

Before I was hired, Ed and I would often talk about his great friendship with Vernon Jordan. Back in the early 1970s Ed Ney of Y&R and Vernon Jordan, then at United Negro College Fund (UNCF) and other great minds came up with a classic tagline: A Mind is A Terrible Thing to Waste. When I was about to work with the 4As in 2006, Ed told me one thing before we ever got started, "Lead with your courage and strong intellect mixed with emotional intelligence Mike. They need to hear the truth." I did just that and I do so today with the PR community.

I have counseled many others in regard to racial crises, prejudice and discrimination in the past. Here is my strong piece of counsel. This is much more heart work and less head work. You must truly embrace emotional intelligence to find a solution. Being defensive as someone in a leadership position, especially those who are white, will only make your excuses or incomplete solutions seem empty and take you backwards and not forwards.

When a past client dealing with a racial crisis asked me how he could change his prejudice and discriminatory ways I told him this: close your eyes, imagine your daughter wedding in the future, imagine her husband as handsome, loving, from a great family, intelligent and graduate from a great college and with a great job -- now, imagine he is black. He opened his eyes and gasped in shock. I told him until you can open your eyes with a smile and an emotional response equal to your daughter marrying a white man, we have a lot of work to do on your heart.

Yes, a mind is a terrible thing to waste. Let's work on our hearts to achieve our goal for many more executives of color in public relations and corporation communication. My challenge is very doable. We also have a lot of heart work to do to achieve the goal.

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Mike Paul runs Reputation Doctor LLC in New York.