Rick Jackson, the Republican billionaire running for Georgia governor on a promise to ban DEI in state government and public education, founded a nonprofit to promote the 2021 Workplace Initiative urging Georgia CEOs to invest in DEI, measure progress, examine racial pay gaps, adopt race-conscious hiring practices, and “take race into consideration” in the workplace.
Jackson, the billionaire health care founder of Jackson Healthcare and its network of small companies, including Jackson Physician Search and Jackson Therapy Partners, has said he would be President Donald Trump’s “favorite governor,” modeled his campaign on the president, and said he has never encountered a Trump policy he didn’t like. Trump, meanwhile, has made ending DEI in the United States a key part of his second term, issuing an executive order shortly after taking office to eliminate it from public services, universities and other sectors. His administration has also taken a tough stance against DEI in court.
In addition to his for-profit companies, Jackson is the founder and CEO of goBeyondProfit, a Georgia-based nonprofit. The charity describes itself as “a free resource for Georgia business leaders interested in translating corporate generous efforts into business strategies,” adding that Jackson has “long held the belief that business can and should be a force for good in the world.” In 2021, goBeyondProfit launched a DEI initiative focused on “keeping race in mind” in the workplace, including a series of videos for CEOs to learn the “do’s and don’ts” of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Telly’s award-winning video series, designed to help businesses implement DEI initiatives, remains active on the nonprofit’s website.
One of the videos promotes critical race theorist Ibram The initiative also features experts who believe doing nothing on DEI is “cringe-worthy” and uses slavery and segregation to address racial issues in the workplace.
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Among those experts was then-Jackson Healthcare DEI executive Matthew Harrison, who touted in a DEI program video how the percentage of new positions hired by “people of color” at Jackson Healthcare increased from 9 percent to 25 percent after the company implemented the diversity measures discussed in the program’s instructional video.
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Jackson’s business track has a history of DEI-friendly messaging and efforts, which could complicate one of his core campaign pitches: that he is the candidate best equipped to eradicate DEI and restore merit-based policies in Georgia. Jackson’s platform said he would ban DEI programs in state government, public universities and classrooms, while his campaign message vowed to “ban DEI craziness” and “criminalize reverse discrimination.”
“We need to ban all the stupid DEI craziness and criminalize reverse discrimination,” he recently posted on social media.
Fox News Digital reached out to Jackson’s campaign, Jackson Healthcare and goBeyondProfit for comment, including asking whether Jackson was aware of the Race in Mind initiative, whether he approved DEI materials at the time and how he aligned the nonprofit’s past race-centered workplace efforts with his current anti-DEI campaign platform.
“Rick hires like the Georgia Bulldogs: only the best players get on the field, and as governor he will ban reverse discrimination,” a Jackson campaign spokesman said in response to questions from Fox News Digital.
The campaign added that “many of Georgia’s most successful and conservative business leaders” have been “program ambassadors or members” of goBeyondProfit, citing Chick-fil-A’s involvement and that of Home Depot founder Bernie Marcus until his death.
In 2021, as the social justice movement reaches its climax following the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd and others, Jackson’s goBeyondProfit launches Race-Centered Leading Thriving Workplaces, a DEI initiative that includes a Telly Award-winning video series to help CEOs learn about DEI of “do’s and don’ts” and making “impactful changes” in the workplace.
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The goBeyondProfit video series features DEI experts, including former Jackson Healthcare executive Harrison, urging CEOs and their companies to invest in DEI, measure progress, examine racial pay gaps and adopt race-conscious hiring practices to increase workplace diversity.
Hundreds of demonstrators protest outside President Donald Trump’s rally at Macomb County Community College in Warren, Michigan, April 29, 2025.
(Getty Images)
In a video, Harrison described the “Rooney Rule” hiring policy he implemented at Jackson Healthcare after taking over talent acquisition in 2019, saying the company increased the percentage of “people of color” hired into new positions from 9% to 25% in one year.
“I personally took over talent acquisition here at Jackson Healthcare in June 2019 and put it in place and within a year we saw an increase in the number of people of color we were hiring for new positions. From 9% to 25%, that was the only thing we changed,” Harrison said.
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Another speaker in the DEI video series discussed the importance of tying DEI metrics to employee evaluations, encouraging “taking proactive steps and being anti-racist,” as discussed in the book Kendi encourages CEOs to read, imploring “employers to conduct regular pay equity reviews for employees,” and urging executives to make financial investments in DEI efforts, saying companies need to “walk the talk” on DEI efforts.
The speaker addressed issues of race in the workplace through the lens of slavery and Jim Crow, calling slavery “America’s first race-based economic system” and arguing that “remnants of slavery” still exist “even in American workplaces.”
“Oddly enough, America’s workplace is the place where we should be having more of these conversations, but ironically it’s the last place we’re likely to have them,” Harrison added in one of the videos. Meanwhile, elsewhere in one of the videos, Harrison described how Jackson Healthcare used outside vendors to initiate a “series” to prevent it from being viewed by employees as “this HR task.”
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A related goBeyondProfit blog post written by Harrison and another DEI expert in the video series encourages executives to take implicit association tests to measure subconscious bias and create a “bias buster” list of biases they know about, including those involving “gender, sexual orientation, race or color, weight, age, etc.”
The revelations about Jackson’s company’s DEI past aren’t the first time the issue has dogged his campaign. Fox News Digital reported in March that Harrison, who wrote a paper on “colorism,” said in a 2020 podcast interview that Jackson Healthcare and its leaders “understand and see the importance of diversity, equity and inclusion in our workforce.” He even praised Jackson for inspiring “a learning experience about race” during the interview. Meanwhile, Fox News Digital also reported last month that a Jackson-based company focused on health care workers produced a trove of material mocking the Republican “Beauty Act.”
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The DEI effort comes as the brutal Georgia Republican gubernatorial primary is wrapping up, scheduled for next Tuesday, followed by the general election in November.
At times, the primary focus has been on which candidate can inherit the mantle of President Donald Trump’s fiercest ally. Georgia Lieutenant Governor Bert Jones has been officially endorsed by Trump, who recently warned voters during a rally call that while others claim to support him, “I support a guy named Bert Jones.” Jones’ campaign has called Jackson “Never a Trump supporter” and a “liar,” often citing his past funding of many of Trump’s political opponents, such as Jeb Bush.
Jackson, meanwhile, is trying to run as a Trump-style outsider, pledging to be “Trump’s favorite governor,” donating $1 million to Trump’s MAGA Inc. as he launches his campaign, mimicking Trump’s approach to launching the campaign with a celebratory elevator drop and telling local media that he can’t name a single White House policy of the Trump administration that he doesn’t like.
Jackson blasted Jones as part of the political establishment while likening another of his primary primary rivals, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, to the biblical figure “Judas” for his disloyalty to Trump during his campaign for the 2020 election.
Original source of the article: Georgia’s Republican governor hopeful vows to ‘ban DEI’ in state, but his own nonprofit urges CEOs to invest in it
