‘Anti-racist’ DEI firm appears to have falsely listed US government as client

EXCLUSIVE — A left-wing diversity, equity, and inclusion consultancy that has drawn the ire of Republican lawmakers seems to have falsely listed the federal government as a “client,” with one government agency flat-out denying ever working with the firm.

Janice Gassam Asare, who wrote a viral October op-ed in Forbes titled “3 Ways To Transform Your Workplace To Be More Equitable” that was slammed as racist by conservatives because it called on employers to “decenter whiteness” in the workplace, is the founder and principal consultant of BWG Business Solutions. That same New York-based DEI firm claimed until Tuesday that two of its clients were the Department of Energy and NASA, though the company has now quietly scrubbed its website after facing questions on these alleged relationships from the Washington Examiner and GOP senators.

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“NASA has found no evidence that BWG Business Solutions, LLC., is an active or former service provider for the agency, as the company name or any reasonable variation could not be located in the agency’s financial or procurement systems,” Gerelle Dodson, a spokeswoman for NASA, told the Washington Examiner. “BWG Business Solutions, LLC., removed NASA’s logo from its website.”

Meanwhile, DOE spokesman Chad Smith told the Washington Examiner, “After a preliminary review, DOE has not found any record of a relationship with the group in question,” adding that the department will soon respond directly to Sens. J.D. Vance (R-OH), Josh Hawley (R-MO), and Mike Lee (R-UT). The trio of senators wrote a letter on Tuesday to both agencies requesting information on whether they awarded contracts to BWG based on the firm’s promotion of the DOE and NASA as clients on its website. The lawmakers said the idea of taxpayer dollars flowing to BWG would be “gravely concerning.”

Until recently, BWG Business Solutions listed dozens of alleged clients on its website, including NASA and the DOE. Others included major companies such as Google, Amazon, PayPal, and Indeed. The Washington Examiner was unable to locate federal grants or contracts showing that BWG Business Solutions received money through the federal government — and the consultancy removed its entire alleged client list from its website on Tuesday.

Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP

Launched in 2018, BWG Business Solutions has a mission “to help equip organizations and institutions with the tools to remove systemic barriers that perpetuate inequities,” according to its website. The firm offers a training called “Decentering Whiteness in the Workplace” and others called “Why Your Unconscious Bias Trainings Fail: Addressing Systemic Inequities in your Workplace” and “Creating an Anti-racist Workplaces for All.”

In her Forbes article, Gassam Asare argued that “white dominant culture” is impeding “the advancement and promotion process in a number of ways” for companies, adding that the purported phenomenon “is often left unexamined and unchecked.”

“There’s no reverse racism, it’s just pure racism,” 2024 Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy said in November in response to the article.

“So sick of this anti-American hate and racism from corporate media and corporate America,” Mollie Hemingway, editor-in-chief of the Federalist, a conservative publication, also said at the time. “People who push such racism are bad people destroying the country.”

BWG Business Solutions and Gassam Asare did not return requests for comment.

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“If she misled about clients, perhaps to gain more work from government DEI trainings, that seems ridiculous enough, but what’s also ridiculous is the government spending taxpayer dollars for politically charged DEI training,” spokesman Pete McGinnis for the Functional Government Initiative, a right-leaning watchdog group, told the Washington Examiner.

“Government agencies should work on their agency’s mission, not use resources for controversial propaganda efforts,” McGinnis added.