An Open Letter to the Cicerone Community

Dear members of the Cicerone community, 

Historically, the Cicerone Certification Program has avoided explicit political expression in our various public voices, believing that to do so would distract from our apolitical mission of spreading beer knowledge to a wide audience. However, current events have taken this issue beyond politics. Beer is the drink of the people and we believe it should be the drink of ALL people. That goal cannot be achieved in silence. 

So to begin, let us be unequivocal: as an organization, we denounce the killing of George Floyd and many similar incidents which are sadly too numerous to mention in this brief statement. We support the mission of the Black Lives Matter movement. And we pledge as an organization to work actively against racism as well as other forms of discrimination by gender, sexual identity, national origin, creed, and religion. We believe that hate has no place in our society and that diversity specifically benefits our industry. Going forward, the Cicerone Certification Program pledges to be more vocal and proactive in furthering a mission of inclusivity and diversity in all its forms.

We acknowledge that “good intentions” have done little to bring real change in the past and that we need to be more intentional going forward. We have begun to identify some things that we will work to change about our own operations. These include:   

1) Imagery. We want the images used on our website and advertising materials to show the broad diversity that we hope for in the beer industry. 

2) Engagement. Going forward, we commit to expanding our outreach to more organizations, and to bolstering the ways in which we work with these organizations to include more substantive forms of engagement. Furthermore, we commit to collaborating with diverse businesses in the beer industry when we perform exams, public courses, and events in the United States and internationally, with the goals of increasing awareness of and driving revenue to their businesses, and enhancing access to beer education for their employees and customers in their community.

3) Content. We’ve determined that we need to take a hard look at our content, especially with regard to our exam questions. We are actively performing an internal review and will solicit external feedback, then we will determine next steps and develop an implementation plan. 

4) Access. The inter-related issues of income, internet access, and credit card access make it difficult or impossible for the 11% of American who live below the poverty line to participate in the Cicerone program.  We commit to assessing the needs of this group and examining opportunities in order to find mechanisms for expanding access to the Cicerone program.

We hope and believe that these points represent a start in helping to create more diversity in the beer industry. But our final commitment to our community is openness and transparency. We invite your input and commentary on anything you think that the Cicerone Certification Program can do to further the cause of racial justice and overall diversity in the beer industry.  

To ensure that we listen well and make progress toward the goals we have stated, we've created a specific email address for any messages related to these topics. If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions, please reach out to us at inclusion@cicerone.org. 

Signed,
The Cicerone staff