Stephen Bediako OBE
Stephen Bediako OBE
Founder and Managing Director, Turning Basin Labs Inc.
Stephen Bediako OBE, founder and managing director of Turning Basin Labs, actively works to enact change wherever he is. “My parents are from Ghana, so I experienced all that comes with being migrants in the east end of London growing up,” he says.
Having reached a point where he wanted to explore issues in a different context, he turned his sights across the globe, finding California to be a place with huge inequality when it comes to work, and in 2019 he founded Turning Basin Labs. “I’ve done lots of work advising governments and foundations, but this was a chance to do something on the ground and build an organization that is doing the work directly, supporting the workers as people, not as commodities.”
Turning Basin Labs, which serves underprivileged workers such as people of color, women and the long-term unemployed, takes being a diversity staffing firm to a higher level. “We’re not only about helping our employers to hire diverse talent — we aim to support that talent,” Bediako says. For example, because of the high cost of living in this area, TBL will only place workers where they earn at least $20 an hour. The company provides additional career and development support to its workers, as well. And because TBL is a co-op, once they’ve delivered 120 hours to clients, they can start on a pathway to ownership.
TBL has also trained several of its workers to be researchers, giving them a measure of autonomy and creating new opportunities for them. “We want them to progress rather than locking them in particular roles. We want them to be skilled and hungry for more. It’s important that we value our contractors the way we value any other worker.”
Bediako was named an Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, or OBE, in the 2021 New Year’s Queen’s Honours for innovation in charity and social enterprise.
2023 DE&I Influencers List