How We're Working for Change

At America’s Test Kitchen, we are in the business of teaching useful kitchen skills. Our mission—to empower and inspire confidence, community, and creativity in the kitchen—has never been more important. Good food brings people together around the table. And that table must welcome everyone.

We know that more ideas and different perspectives make better content, and we’re committed to doing our part by telling a more inclusive story of cooking in America. We are actively engaged in the creation of conscious content and are committed to using our platforms to elevate outside voices. Here’s what we’re doing.

In 2019, ATK formed our Diversity Council with representatives from across the company working to promote a positive culture of inclusion. We are expanding the efforts of our Diversity Council to increase recruitment, mentorship, and retention of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) employees. At the time of its creation, the Council was headed by America's Test Kitchen cast member and food stylist Elle Simone Scott. In 2021, she handed the reins over to Deva Djaafar, ATK's Director of Facilities and Kitchen Operations.

The Council meets regularly to set goals, generate company-wide initiatives, and drive meaningful change. Its subcommittees work in areas ranging from event planning to how we write recipes. Observances such as Black History Month, Ramadan, Lunar New Year, Pride Month, and Mental Health Awareness Month have been marked with guest presentations, community outreach, and other activities. The Council’s programming and initiatives are open to all staff.

In June 2020, we announced an action plan to build a more diverse company and more inclusive culture.

We worked to increase the diversity of our workforce and we continue to engage in that effort. We are building on this progress and broadening our focus to ensure that our workplace culture reflects a commitment to and understanding of diversity, inclusion, and belonging.

Our HR team has redoubled our efforts at partnering with outside groups to expand our recruitment efforts. If you’re looking for a job, check our current listings. If your organization wants to help our recruitment efforts, please contact our Human Resources team.

Our entire staff completes unconscious bias training designed to arm us with tools and strategies for making internal change.

The stories we decide to tell and the ways we report them are important levers in practicing antiracism and inclusion at America’s Test Kitchen. We are working to do better in the future and to update our archives to reflect current guidelines.

Our copy team continually updates our style guide to ensure that our written content is sensitive and inclusive. Though our style guide is 50 pages long and incredibly detailed, it's a living document; updates are ongoing and involve all our content creators—and you. See something about our writing style that you don’t understand?

Email our copy team with your suggestions or questions.

Our copy team completed a thorough audit of the content on our websites to ensure that it is inclusive and demonstrates respect for all cuisines. Specifically, we removed or updated culturally insensitive language in our articles, recipes, and television episode titles and descriptions.

Our television team works with linguistic experts to guide pronunciation of non-English words and is working to frame recipe segments in ways that are culturally sensitive. Our magazine, book, and review teams are adding diverse voices throughout our publications.

Through our magazines, social platforms, television shows, podcasts, videos, books, emails, and websites, we connect with millions of home cooks every month. We are committed to using these opportunities to support, advocate for, and amplify the voices and work of BIPOC content creators. Some specifics:

Our podcast team is committed to telling inclusive stories with diverse voices and experts. We have been and will continue to actively recruit a diverse group of freelance reporters for Proof. If you have a story idea, please contact the Proof team. Our social and video teams work with collaborators on projects ranging from IG stories to special episodes of our YouTube series. If you’re a video content creator and you’d like to partner with us, please reach out to our team.

In June 2020, we instituted the company’s first-ever charitable matching program to selected organizations. We are offering a 1:1 match for employee contributions up to $500 and have so far raised more than $20,000 to support the work being done by these vital groups.

For a list of other organizations that we work with and support, please visit our ATK Cares page.