Skip to main content

About Us

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

How We're Working to Promote Antiracism

In the test kitchen, in our content, and in the community.

At America’s Test Kitchen, we are in the business of teaching useful kitchen skills. Our mission—to empower and inspire confidence, community, and creativity in the kitchen—has never been more important. Good food brings people together around the table. And that table must welcome everyone.

Real change is essential and urgent. We know that more ideas and different perspectives make better content, and we’re committed to doing our part by telling a more inclusive story of cooking in America. We are actively engaged in the creation of conscious content and are committed to using our platforms to elevate outside voices. Here’s what we’re doing. (We will update this page as we make progress on these initiatives and roll out new ones.)

Diversity Council

In 2019, ATK formed our Diversity Council with representatives from across the company working to promote a positive culture of inclusion. We are expanding the efforts of our Diversity Council to increase recruitment, mentorship, and retention of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) employees. At the time of its creation, the Council was headed by America's Test Kitchen cast member and food stylist Elle Simone Scott. In 2021, she handed the reins over to Deva Djaafar, ATK's Executive Assistant and Office Operations Manager.

The Council meets regularly to set goals, generate company-wide initiatives, and drive meaningful change. Its subcommittees work in areas ranging from event planning to how we write recipes. Events such as Black History Month, Ramadan, Lunar New Year, Pride Month, and Mental Health Awareness Month have been marked with guest presentations, community outreach, and other activities open to all staff.

Building a More Diverse Staff

In June 2020, we announced an action plan to build a more diverse company and more inclusive culture. 

  • We set and achieved a goal to grow BIPOC representation within our organization to 25 percent by the end of 2021, and  we raised it to 27 percent in 2022. We are building on this progress and broadening our focus to  working to ensure that our workplace culture reflects a commitment to and understanding of diversity.

  • Our HR team has redoubled our efforts at partnering with outside groups to expand the pipeline for new hires. We’re working with Diversity Job Board, Equity at the Table, Hack Diversity, MassHire Career Center, MassHire JobQuest, Resilient Coders, and Year Up. If you’re looking for a job, check our current listings. If your organization wants to help our recruitment efforts, please contact our Human Resources team.

  • Our  entire staff and every new hire  complete unconscious bias training offered by She+ Geeks Out. The training provided the language and framework for recognizing our shortcomings and armed us with strategies for making internal change.

Improving Our Content

The stories we decide to tell and the ways we report them are important levers in practicing antiracism at America’s Test Kitchen. We are working to do better in the future and to update our archives to reflect current guidelines

  • Our copy team continually updates our style guide to ensure that our written content is sensitive and inclusive. One recent update is that, as of July 2020, we no longer italicize non-English words. Though our style guide is 50 pages long and incredibly detailed (you know us, right?), it's a living document; updates are ongoing and involve all our content creators—and you. See something about our writing style that you don’t understand? Email our copy team with your suggestions or questions.
  • Our copy team has completed a thorough  audit of the content on our websites. The goal of this audit is to ensure that our online content is inclusive and demonstrates respect for all cuisines. Specifically, we are removing or updating culturally insensitive language in our articles, recipes, and television episode titles and descriptions. For example, the America's Test Kitchen episode titled "Chinese Takeout, Revised" has been retitled as "Beef Stir-Fry and Scallion Pancakes." These dishes aren't just take-out fare, and they do not need to be revised by ATK. Similarly, our recipe for Perfect Latin Flan is now titled Latin Flan; Latin-style flan is a beloved dessert with many variations across Latin America, and we cannot claim that ours is the perfect version.
  • Our television team has hired linguistic experts to guide pronunciation of non-English words and is working to frame recipe segments in ways that are culturally sensitive and not white-centric. Our magazine, book, and review teams aim to add diverse voices whenever possible. Hiring more BIPOC staff is our top priority, but this will take time. Working with freelance experts is a way to make immediate change and help surface underrepresented voices on our platforms now.
  • Our magazine, book, and review teams are looking to add diverse voices immediately. Hiring more BIPOC staff is our top priority, but this will take time. Working with freelance experts is a way to make immediate change and help surface underrepresented voices on our platforms now. Contact us if you have an idea for Cook’s Illustrated or Cook’s Country, or if you want to write product reviews for us. 
  • Our editorial staff attended a  specialized journalism training that provided them with better tools for finding diverse experts and sources and reporting more inclusive stories.

Supporting Outside Voices

Through our magazines, social platforms, television shows, podcasts, videos, books, emails, and websites, we connect with millions of home cooks every month. We are committed to using these opportunities to support, advocate for, and amplify the voices and work of BIPOC content creators. Some specifics: 

  • Our podcast team is committed to telling inclusive stories with diverse voices and experts. We have been and will continue to actively recruit freelance BIPOC reporters for Proof. If you have a story idea, please contact the Proof team and please self-identify—we want at least 50% of our freelance reporters to be BIPOC. For Mystery Recipe, our children’s podcast, we are writing antiracist values and storylines into the content. We are also looking for more BIPOC voice actors. If you’re a voice actor who’s interested in working with us, please contact the Mystery Recipe team
  • Our social and video teams work with collaborators on projects ranging from IG stories to special episodes of our YouTube series. If you’re a video content creator and you’d like to partner with us, please reach out to our team.

Organizations We Support

In June 2020, we instituted the company’s first-ever charitable matching program. Our Diversity Council selects 3 BIPOC focused organizations each year to support.  We are offering a 1:1 match for employee contributions up to $500 and have so far raised more than $20,000 to support the work being done by these vital groups

For a list of other organizations that we work with and support, please visit our ATK Cares page.