Eric McDonnell, the man leading the effort to give every eligible black San Francisco resident a one-time $5 million payment, has built a lucrative career catering to the DEI needs of government agencies in and around San Francisco — and now he may benefit from his own reparations proposal.
Before he was tapped as chairman of the San Francisco Reparations Committee, McDonnell worked for the city in varying capacities, including as a contractor offering DEI training and executive coaching through his consultancy, Peacock Partnerships, according to communications and records obtained by National Review through Freedom of Information requests.
Should the committee’s final proposal be accepted by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors later this month, McDonnell and the other members of the committee all stand to receive reparations payments provided they meet the final eligibility requirements, the chairman told National Review, though he would not specify whether he personally meets those requirements.
But as a self-described “native son of San Francisco,” it appears McDonnell would meet the longterm residency requirement outlined in the committee’s draft proposal, which means that if he were to check one additional box — having attended a school that came under a consent decree or having descended from someone who was incarcerated for drug crimes, among other possibilities — he’d be in the money.
McDonnell describes himself on LinkedIn as a “People first Advocate, Strategist, Executive Coach, DEI Trainer, Keynote Speaker, In pursuit of positive impact in the world.” He has been working with San Francisco’s public defender’s office since February 2020, records show.
McDonnell emailed public defender Manohar Raju to pitch his services after the pair had a conversation about “executive coaching support” at several city events, including the Black History Luncheon and the City Hall Black History Month Kickoff.
In his email, McDonnell included a brochure for Peacock and explained that the “colors of the majestic peacock represent the beauty that is created by of [sic] diverse colors.”
“Independently, the colors present a spectacular and beautiful palate,” it adds. “We promote diversity of thought, actions and inclusion.”
The firm offers diversity, equity and inclusion training to help clients “create a workforce and culture of inclusion,” as well as management and leadership development, executive coaching, strategic planning and facilitation, and keynote speaking.
McDonnell ultimately secured an executive coaching contract with Raju’s office, which required him to meet with Raju twice a month to “provide strategic advice and consultation to support the implementation of Mr. Raju’s organizational leadership and development plans.” McDonnell’s coaching came at a rate of $250 an hour, or $6,000 a year.
McDonnell said that his arrangement with the public defender’s office is ongoing, but said in an interview that he doesn’t believe his work for the city could have contributed to him getting a spot on a committee tasked with crafting a proposal that, if adopted, would dole out public funds.
“If there was any attention given to my work in the community, it wouldn’t have necessarily been my work with the city,” he said, suggesting instead that it would have been his work at the United Way of the Bay Area, where he led a “community impact agenda” focused on “economic sustainability, education, safe communities, etc.”
McDonnell worked for the United Way of the Bay Area from 1997 to 2017, serving as executive vice president and COO. He later served as interim CEO for United Way of New York City from February 2022 to August 2022.
He got his start working for the San Francisco government in March 2011, as chair of the redistricting task force. He served in that role for a year, according to his LinkedIn.
Then, in August 2013, he joined the seven-member Recreation and Park Department Commission. The commission is “primarily a policy-making body, establishing the policies by which the Reaction and Park Department operates,” according to the Commission’s site. McDonnell was paid $100 per month for his role as a commissioner, according to data from Transparent California. Commissioners are appointed by the mayor to four-year terms. McDonnell worked as a commissioner until August 2021.
Taxpayers Foot the DEI Bill
While McDonnell downplayed his public-sector work in an interview, public-records requests reveal that his government-contract work has been particularly lucrative.
McDonnell made a whopping $17,500 from the Los Angeles school district in the 2014-2015 school year for just two, four-hour management workshops and two, four-hour employee workshops, according to contracts obtained by National Review. The school district chose to extend his contract into the following school year for another $17,500.
According to the Peacock website, McDonnell has also done work for the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office, the San Francisco Housing Authority, and the Oakland Unified School District.
While Oakland Unified School District did not have any record of having worked with McDonnell or Peacock, McDonnell said he worked with the district on the facilitation of a retreat for then-superintendent Tony Smith and the Board of Education, where he facilitated “strategic planning.” He also said he worked for the San Francisco Housing Authority as a subcontractor to facilitate “community engagement,” particularly with the local faith community. That work was commissioned by the then-head of the housing authority and was “abruptly ended” when he left the role before the project was completed. National Review was unable to confirm exactly how much McDonnell was paid for those jobs.
McDonnell said he did not submit his resume with his application to join the reparations committee. However, the application, obtained by National Review through a public records request, reveals McDonnell listed his time on the redistricting task force and as a San Francisco Recreation and Park commissioner under “civic activities” on his March 2021 application.
He also mentioned on the application that he was “currently providing strategic management consulting support — executive coaching, leadership development, strategic planning DEI training — to leaders and organizations in the non-profit, government, philanthropic, and private sectors,” though he did not specifically cite work within the San Francisco government.
McDonnell said he applied to serve on the committee because “as a native San Franciscan, having lived and experienced what I describe and has been described by others . . . as the tale of two cities, where there is clearly opportunity for some to experience wealth and wealth generation and then another city where there are the impoverished.”
“I grew up living in public housing and I experienced . . . the divide that is present and has been present in this city for as long as certainly I’ve been alive and arguably longer, as our reparations work has demonstrated,” he said.
He was named chair through a nomination process of the committee itself, once it was assembled, he explained.
He said his fitness for the role goes beyond his community work. “It first starts with being a black San Francisco native and therefore . . . I have lived experienced,” he said, adding that most of his professional life has focused on strengthening communities.
Reparations Committee Conflicts
After two years of receiving payment for their work on the committee, which began meeting monthly in June 2021, all committee members will be eligible to receive reparations payments once the eligibility criteria are set in the final report next month, McDonnell confirmed.
Each member of the advisory committee has received a monthly stipend of $250, with an additional $250 paid out when they are present at the committee’s monthly meeting, a spokesperson for the San Francisco Human Rights Commission told National Review.
It wouldn’t be the first time McDonnell received taxpayer dollars for his DEI work. His business appears to have received a bump during the DEI bonanza that followed George Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis police officer. He officially began his executive coaching sessions with Raju in June 2020. “On another note,” Raju wrote in an email early in their professional relationship. “I wanted to begin facilitating some conversations around the tragic killing of George Floyd in the office. Do you have experience facilitating these types of conversations?”
McDonnell replied, “Yes, I Do have experience facilitating these types of conversations.. If you still need a facilitator, we can talk tomorrow.”
In July 2020, the pair worked to “produce an office Manifesto” to lay out the office’s “vision, values, cultural norms & behaviors.”
Raju prepared a list of commitments for the office to include in the manifesto:
We will remain committed to racial justice. We will advocate for changes that contribute to ending the mass incarceration system that has devastated our society for far too long. We will fight against unjust and racist immigration laws, defend all people regardless of their birthplace or immigration status, and fight mass deportation as vigorously as we fight mass incarceration.
In September 2020, Raju discussed “potentially bringing my potential new Director of Equity in to do some implicit bias work.” McDonnell told him that “implicit bias work is an excellent idea!”
Evidence shows implicit bias training doesn’t work and can even reinforce stereotypes. Iris Bohnet, a public-policy professor at Harvard Kennedy School, could not find “a single study that found that diversity training in fact leads to more diversity.”
Part of McDonnell’s work for the public defender’s office appears to be focused on helping the agency craft messaging around prominent, politically charged events.
Ten days after the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot, Raju reached out to McDonnell to ask if he was interested in “potentially facilitating an office discussion about the events at the Capitol?”
McDonnell wrote back with suggested language: “The insurrection that took place at our nation’s capital served as two painful reminders: our democracy is a fragile work in progress AND the realities of white supremacy and this country’s anti-Black racist foundation was on full display for the world to see.”
The statement goes on to tie the riots to “the deaths of countless black lives and the daily experiences of racial discrimination and micro aggressions” and concludes by inviting employees to attend a presentation on the day’s events in a “safe space.”
The presentation was facilitated by “experienced DEI Trainer Eric McDonnell” and included a video featuring Senators Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz and former President Trump alongside the title “Heroes of the insurrection.”
“Please seek the support that you need to help you process how you might be feeling,” the presentation added, alongside a telephone number for the San Francisco Employee Assistance Program. Emails indicate this was McDonnell’s idea because “these conversations can be emotional and triggering for some people.”
A month after the January 6 presentation, McDonnell reached out about nailing down a time for a meeting with Raju and the office’s Black Affinity Group.
In November 2021, Raju asked McDonnell to “recommend someone to facilitate session(s) around addressing micro aggressions, etc in the areas that we discussed as a follow up to the Racial Justice Conference that I attended.” McDonnell said he could facilitate the sessions.
An ‘Opportunity’ for San Francisco to Prioritize Racial Justice
As for his work on the reparations committee, McDonnell said the panel is working on “some refinement of some recommendations” that were included in its draft report in December. He said the final report, which the group plans to submit by the end of the fiscal year on June 30, will include additional recommendations as well as refinement of the eligibility criteria that was included in the draft.
The panel’s draft plan included recommendations to pay out a one-time $5 million payment per qualifying person. San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to accept the draft plan, though the acceptance of the draft does not mean the board will ultimately approve all of the proposals included therein. The board can vote to approve, reject, or change any or all of the proposals.
If even just 50 percent of the city’s nearly 45,000 black residents met the requirements for the proposed payments, the city would be staring down a $112.5 billion bill. For comparison, San Francisco’s entire budget for fiscal year 2022–2023 is just $14 billion. The budget for the entire state is $308 billion.
If every black resident qualified for the $5 million payment, the city would be on the hook for $223 billion — a cost of $263,000 for every non-black person in San Francisco, according to Steven F. Hayward, a resident scholar at the Institute of Governmental Studies at UC Berkeley.
And that’s without considering some of the other proposals included in the report, such as that the city supplement lower-earning recipients’ incomes to meet the area median income (AMI) of about $97,000, for at least 250 years. Another recommendation was to create “a comprehensive debt forgiveness program” for black residents to cancel student loans, housing loans, and credit-card debt in an effort to give “Black households an opportunity to build wealth.”
McDonnell defended the $5 million payment proposal, saying it is “necessary to invest in the capacity of black families to be sustainable here in San Francisco.”
“So, inclusive of housing, education, entrepreneurship, workforce development, health access. And so we believe that that is the level of repair necessary to stabilize and then allow and enable families to thrive. So that’s how we got to that number. And yes, I do support it,” he said
Asked whether he has any concerns about what the fiscal impacts might be on the city, McDonnell said, “This is an opportunity, as I and the committee see it, for the city to declare through its budgeting process, both current and into the future, a prioritization of a community that it has harmed over time. And so will there be implications? Yes.”
“I have no question quite candidly that the city is not going to commit itself to — as many folks who have reacted in an extreme case, in my opinion — [anything] that is going to bankrupt itself,” he said. “So is there a path to making good on these commitments? That’s part of the opportunity and challenge of this that we are asking the city to take on.”
He said the changes being made from the draft report to the final report do not take into account any of the backlash or concern about bankrupting the city.