Penguin Random House Audio spearheaded the new bi-annual Audio Narrator Mentorship program to discover a diverse range of new talent and help actors new to audiobook narration polish their craft and learn about the industry. The inclusive program was designed to reflect the diversity we see in the world daily in the audio space by giving actors in underrepresented communities an opportunity to break into the audiobook world. 

From the 1,680 applications, the six month program welcomed its 15 mentees. The cohort actors from around the world, including the U.S. and U.K., Canada and Singapore, nine of whom have already been hired to narrate audiobooks for Penguin Random House Audio before the program has concluded.

Since 1997, we have partnered with Read Ahead in New York City to match public school students with Penguin Random House employee volunteers for one-on-one mentorship. Read Ahead is dedicated to helping students unlock their full potential through mentoring relationships, fostering the social and emotional skills that are essential for academic and life-long success. Penguin Random House volunteers offer one-on-one support to NYC public school mentees in grades K-5 throughout the school year, helping them develop their love of reading, confidence, and skills to thrive in school and beyond.

Starting this year, we’re excited to expand the program to all of our U.S. employees through a virtual mentorship program hosted on Zoom. Student need is greater than ever this year, with the added challenges of COVID-19 and remote learning, which have had a significant impact on school communities. We’re honored to continue our partnership with Read Ahead and provide their students with engaged PRH mentors from across the country.

Our employees across the territories are leading teams, such as the Sustainability Subcommittee in the United States and the Environment Team in Australia/New Zealand, to make grassroots efforts to combat climate change. In the United States, the Sustainability Subcommittee is an employee-led group of engaged colleagues who are dedicated to positively affecting the environment. In tandem with our corporate efforts, through awareness campaigns and events, the Subcommittee aims to have a positive impact in our communities and the environment where we work and live.

Our Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial team in Miami kicked off its first year of corporate volunteering in 2019 with hands-on activities at main community organizations, including Miami-Dade County parks. Our employees planted 200 native plants at a county park to attract butterflies and other important pollinators, and also decorated a rainwater barrel with characters from our most popular children’s books to capture rainwater to irrigate the plants.

To further our efforts in the fight against climate change, the team in Miami collaborated to pack and sort donations for United Miami Way of Miami-Dade following the destruction Hurricane Dorian inflicted on the Bahamas.

Dinner on the House is an annual employee volunteer experience designed to serve those who may need a helping hand during the holiday season. Every year, our employees travel to the City Harvest Food Rescue Facility in Queens to fill 1,500 boxes with holiday meals for families-in-need.

The Global Walk is an annual, company-wide fundraising event held in New York City, which supports local nonprofit organizations that align with our commitment to social responsibility and giving back to communities in need. Past fundraising recipients include The Legal Aid Society, Project HOPE, Girls Write Now, i, Too, Arts Collective, and Barbershop Books, among others. Over the past five years, employees have raised more than $240,000 for our beneficiaries.

Run by the Climate Group, Climate Week NYC is a place for the world to showcase amazing climate action and discuss how to do more. We supported the weeklong event with our Sustainability Subcommittee holding a series of events and learning opportunities for our colleagues. We had the opportunity to participate in our ongoing company-wide sustainability efforts with activities such as a PRH Green Book Club in-house author event, a mug drive to reduce single-use cups, and Green Mindful Moments, which are short themed company posts that provide tips for ways we can exercise more conscious, sustainable practices in our day-to-day work lives.

To celebrate Earth Day in 2019, our Sustainability Subcommittee hosted the first-ever Penguin Random House Green Week. Green Week aims to bring a greater awareness to ways colleagues can live greener, more sustainable lives. The group organized events and activities that were devoted to areas such as environmental conservation, composting and food waste, recycling, and how to get involved and take action locally, as well as programs to help reduce the use of plastic, paper, and energy.

This year, our Sustainability Subcommittee reimagined Green Week for a virtual setting to inspire colleagues to learn more about how to conserve our natural resources, take action locally and at home during this period of social distancing, and provide resources for how to live a greener life. Through an author event and daily green-living tips, our employees directly received actionable resources and information to positively impact our world and environment.

We have been partnering with the Story Factory since it opened in 2011. A not-for-profit creative writing center for marginalized young people aged 7 to 17, the Story Factory hosts a comprehensive program of workshops that helps build literacy, confidence, and creativity. We have helped publish various anthologies and collections over the years, and our employees volunteer to help edit, design, and typeset the novellas and poetry chapbooks that emerge from the Story Factory’s yearlong programs. In 2020, we were delighted to publish The Coconut Children by Vivian Pham, a graduate of the program. To learn more about the Story Factory, click here. To learn more about our partnership, click here and here.

DK is passionate about helping young people to gain the skills they need to shape and achieve their aspirations. Working with a variety of organizations in the UK, including the National Literacy Trust, the Young Academies Group, and Speakers for Schools, DK has held interactive workshops to give school children aged between 5 and 18 years old who come from a variety of backgrounds an insight into a career in publishing and the joy of working with books. These workshops include tours around the DK office in London, talks by colleagues to students about how they got into publishing and what their jobs entail, and setting tasks whereby the children actively participate in the making of a book, giving them a fuller understanding of the publishing process.

Every year, hundreds of our colleagues volunteer their time and take to the streets of London or the countryside in Essex and Grantham for The Walk, a Penguin Random House tradition, to help raise money and awareness for different charities and nonprofit organizations. In 2019, 550 colleagues collectively walked 4,700 miles and raised more than £12,300 for the National Literacy Trust. To learn more about our 2019 event, click here.

We are committed to climate and environmental protection, and that includes encouraging our colleagues to participate in global movements. As millions of people around the world participated in climate strikes by walking out of their homes, schools, and offices to join in the action for change, our offices in the U.S. and Canada supported our employees who wanted to participate in their local strikes, and they were not required to use paid time off to participate.

An energetic team of volunteers from our Sydney and Melbourne offices stepped up to Clean Up Australia. In Melbourne, our volunteers met at Markham Reserve to help clean up a nearby creek, while the Sydney team took on a challenging site at Primrose Park. Together with Bushland management staff, we gathered and hauled all manner of garbage and furniture, collecting two truckloads and 20 bags loaded with 200 kilograms of garbage. After a successful day, we celebrated with an afternoon tea in the park provided by the Green Team.

An annual event since 2014, the Penguin Hotline runs during the holiday season and is staffed by employee volunteers. Hundreds of employees are on call to help recommend books to anyone trying to find the right title for someone on their holiday list, and the Hotline is “publisher-agnostic,” meaning recommendations can come from various publishing houses. In 2019, the Penguin Hotline also featured various best-selling Penguin Random House authors including Celeste Ng, Jasmine Guillory, and Emma Straub, who personally answered requests. The Hotline also partnered with LitWorld, a nonprofit that addresses global literacy and human rights; we donated $2 for every reader request, up to $10,000. We donated to the Maryland Zoo in Baltimore, in support of the zoo’s conservation efforts to protect African penguin habitats. To learn more about Penguin Hotline, click here.

Our fifth anniversary as Penguin Random House in July 2018 provided an unprecedented opportunity to unite around the globe to get more books into the hands of more readers. Through a special anniversary global book donation, we offered every Penguin Random House employee worldwide a selection of free books to donate to any philanthropic or nonprofit organization of their choice. Thousands of our employees joined the campaign, and we were able to provide more than 72,000 books to children and adults in need. Recipient organizations included schools, libraries, hospitals, rural development NGOs, and organizations that serve homeless and incarcerated individuals.

Every year on World Book Day colleagues across the U.K. come together to celebrate the power of reading with children in their local communities. In 2020, we had our largest ever single volunteering effort, as more than 500 colleagues volunteered in literacy-vulnerable areas. We hosted interactive sessions with more 6,000 people in more than 221 schools, nurseries, and community settings including prisons and homeless shelters including storytelling with little ones and a ‘reverse book club’ with adults. To learn more about our volunteer effort, click here.

Launched in 2006, the Student Design Awards aim to find the next generation of book cover designers. Giving students the opportunity to work with real cover design briefs firsthand, the competition asks participants to reimagine iconic book covers across the award’s three categories: Adult Fiction, Adult Nonfiction, and Children’s. The winner is awarded within our design teams as well as a cash prize of £1,000. To learn more about the award, click here. To learn more about our 2019 winners, click here.

We have been a longtime supporter of Shakespeare in the Park, one of the cornerstones of the Public Theater’s mission to bring performing arts to New Yorkers. Since 1962, more than 5 million people have experienced more than 150 free productions of Shakespeare’s work and other classical works and musicals. We have supported the Public Theater through monetary donations, as well as by distributing free books to theatergoers waiting in line for tickets. Throughout the years, this has become one of our most popular volunteering opportunities, and many of our bestsellers have been gifted to eager readers. To learn more, click here.

We celebrated International Literacy Day in 2018 by taking the opportunity to promote reading, writing, and creativity with 14 events spread over two days. We held a short-story competition to encourage in-house talent, and employees from DK India visited young cancer patients at a children’s hospital in New Delhi, spending time painting and drawing with the children, reading to them, and gifting them books in Hindi. We also donated office and writing materials to the Love Care Foundation and Aarambh aid organizations, both of which help underprivileged children.

Giving back is central to the Penguin Random House experience, and we have created a culture in which employees are encouraged to engage with their communities, both in and out of the office. In December of 2019, a time of joy for some but much need for others, a team of colleagues at Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial in Miami spent their lunchtime feeding those facing housing insecurity. They volunteered at the Miami Rescue Mission, making a donation to provide 250 meals.

With the mission to empower aspiring authors from all backgrounds in underserved communities nationwide, we partnered with the Authors Guild Foundation to produce a series of Writing Business Boot Camps across the country. From the end of 2018 to spring 2019, these six boot camps were free to participants due in part to an award from the National Endowment for the Arts, and we sent two employees per city to share their publishing and work experience with the writers. Local published authors helped lead each session, alongside representatives from the Authors Guild and Penguin Random House, bringing a variety of experience and knowledge to the program. To learn more, click here and here.

We recognize that creating an environment of inclusivity at our company is as important as publishing a diverse list of authors. We believe that understanding and recognizing the unconscious biases that underlie our beliefs and inform our decision-making is a fundamental first step to achieving this goal. In 2018, we partnered with Steps Drama, a global consultancy that promotes learning and behavior change, to tailor workshops based on real-life scenarios at Penguin Random House that would create a unique learning experience for employees. In 2019, our colleagues trained by the Steps Drama team took over to deliver the workshops internally. Uncovering Bias Workshops are held throughout the year.

We want everyone who works at Penguin Random House to feel like they belong. To help do so, in 2018 we formed a Diversity & Inclusion Council comprising employees from all areas of our business. The Council is dedicated to facilitating a company culture that fosters inclusion and equity, supporting a broad, wide-ranging spectrum of perspectives. The Council proactively makes recommendations for ways to enrich our culture by amplifying underrepresented voices and providing welcoming and open spaces that empower our employees to publish books that truly reflect the diversity of our world. Diversity & Inclusion Council members have also established Diversity Committees in each of our divisions. With more than 200 employees actively involved, many of these divisional committees have organized special task forces that focus on an array of topics to create a positive, engaging, and inclusive working environment.

The Penguin Random House LGBTQ+ Network was created in 2013 and aspires to create community among the LGBTQIA+ individuals at Penguin Random House by providing a supportive environment to all employees who share the common idea of nurturing workplace diversity, creating a forum for professional and social opportunities, and aiming to increase awareness of LGBTQIA+ issues, authors, and books.

An essential part of our social impact work is strengthening the relationships we have with our communities, and we know that reading is an essential part of a happy, full, and healthy life. For more than four years, Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial Mexico has maintained a partnership with the Juan N. Navarro Children’s Psychiatric Hospital of Mexico City–the only psychiatric hospital for children in all of Latin America—to collaborate in the recovery of the patients. A team of approximately 50 colleagues participates in weekly sessions with the hospital’s patients to help exercise the children’s imagination, understanding, and empathy through reading.