By: Dr. Bentley Lorene Gibson
My governor's name is Keisha! On November 3, 2026, Georgia voters elected Keisha Lance Bottoms, the first woman to lead our state, Georgia's first Black governor, and the first Black woman ever elected governor in American history. As a little girl riding through Buckhead, the most exciting part of the drive was passing the Governor's Mansion. At 6 years old, she remembers thinking:
"I want to go in there one day." (Governor elect Keisha Lance Bottoms)
Well, GEORGIA spoke! And like the song says, take her Thru Dere! This win was personal in my house. Most mornings I have to wake my daughter up, but this morning she was already awake, shouting, "MOM, WE WON!" For my little Black girl, Keisha was not the only winner. She felt she won too. I also celebrated with my dad, who was born and raised in Ocilla, Georgia, and was among the students who integrated the Irwin County schools in 1966. My dad lives with dementia, but politics has always been his favorite topic, and on our phone call we celebrated together. Three generations of my family felt this win. Representation matters.
A Name Like Keisha Can Still Cost Someone a Job
In a landmark study, economists sent employers identical resumes, changing only the name. White sounding names received about 50% more callbacks than Black sounding names, and Keisha was one of the names tested. It still happens. A 2024 study of 83,000 applications to Fortune 500 companies found the typical employer favored White sounding names by about 9%, and the most biased by about 24%. Now the bias is being automated. A 2025 University of Washington study found that when AI hiring tools showed strong racial bias, people followed the AI's picks about 90% of the time. The good news: bias dropped 13% when people first took an Implicit Association Test. And the legal risk is real. In *Mobley v. Workday*, applicants allege Workday's AI screening tools discriminate based on race, age, and disability. A federal court let the age claims proceed as a nationwide collective action in 2025, and in June 2026 a judge allowed key bias claims to move forward. One election does not erase name bias in companies, institutions, or governments. But Georgia chose to counteract it, and that is a move in the right direction. Meanwhile, America keeps diversifying: White Americans who are not Hispanic fell from about 76% of the population in 1990 to 57.5% in 2024. Eliminating DEI does not eliminate bias, and bringing back performative DEI will not fix it. Leaders need to ask whether they hire on qualifications or assumptions, starting with names, and whether they measure what actually works. That is Decision Precision.
Diversity is not the risk. Failing to adapt to it is.
My governor's name is Keisha. Now the question is whether your organization will make room and create a safe space to thrive for the next one. Find out where you are vulnerable with our Free Organizational Risk Screening or book a discovery call below.
Sources
Associated Press. (2026, October 29). Keisha Lance Bottoms navigates challenges of Black women battling political barriers. WRDW. https://www.wrdw.com/2026/10/29/keisha-lance-bottoms-navigates-challenges-black-women-battling-political-barriers/
Bertrand, M., & Mullainathan, S. (2003). Are Emily and Greg more employable than Lakisha and Jamal? A field experiment on labor market discrimination (NBER Working Paper No. 9873). National Bureau of Economic Research. https://nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w9873/w9873.pdf
CBS News Atlanta. (2026, November 3). Keisha Lance Bottoms to make history as Georgia's first woman governor. CBS News. https://www.cbsnews.com/atlanta/news/georgia-governor-election-2026-results-rick-jackson-keisha-lance-bottoms/
Economic Policy Institute. (2025). Racial and ethnic disparities in the United States: An interactive chartbook. https://www.epi.org/publication/disparities-chartbook/
Kline, P., Rose, E. K., & Walters, C. R. (2024). A discrimination report card. American Economic Review, 114(8), 2472 to 2525. https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/aecrev/v114y2024i8p2472-2525.html
Legal 500. (2026, July 9). Recent developments in Mobley v. Workday: California court allows key AI hiring bias claims to move forward. https://www.legal500.com/intelligence/united-states/employment-and-hr/recent-developments-in-mobley-v-workday-california-court-allows-key-ai-hiring-bias-claims-to-move-forward
NPR. (2024, April 11). White sounding names get called back for jobs more than Black ones, a new study finds. https://npr.org/2024/04/11/1243713272/resume-bias-study-white-names-black-names
Reuters. (2026, November 3). Top takeaways from the US midterm elections. Fidelity. https://www.fidelity.com/news/article/us-economy/202611031906RTRSNEWSCOMBINED_KCN3WF004-OUSWD_1
Reuters/Ipsos. (2026, November 3). Nine things on US voters' minds ahead of midterm elections. Kitco. https://www.kitco.com/news/off-the-wire/2026-11-03/nine-things-us-voters-minds-ahead-midterm-elections-according
University of Washington. (2025, November 10). People mirror AI systems' hiring biases, study finds. UW News. https://www.washington.edu/news/2025/11/10/people-mirror-ai-systems-hiring-biases-study-finds/
USAFacts. (2025). America in facts: Population. https://media.usafacts.org/m/56f7fa7cbf9d5138/original/USAFacts_2025_DIGITAL_Population.pdf
About the author: Dr. Bentley Gibson, PhD, is a cognitive and developmental psychologist specializing in implicit bias, and the founder of The Bias Adjuster. Her published research includes studies on the early development of racial bias in children (Journal of Cognition and Culture).
