NAMC Focus on Employment Equity and Cultural Fairness
Mission to provide culture fair employment tools to all people
Tammie Davies, founder of NAMC, has always had a heart for helping disadvantaged people succeed. This is a result, in part, to her Native American heritage. Tammie lived much of her life on, or near, her Iowa tribe’s reservation near White Cloud in Northeastern Kansas. Her family has played a fundamental role over the past 100 years in the sustainability and success of the Iowa Tribe government, businesses and events. From her uncle Harvey Frederick, who served multiple terms as Tribal Vice Chairman, Tammie learned the importance to the collective society of helping each individual succeed.
She also learned, from her observations of good people on the local reservations and in the disadvantaged areas of nearby cities struggling to gain and keep employment, that the methods used by companies to recruit, screen, place, develop, and promote employees were not fair. It was obvious to her that qualified minority individuals were often discriminated against in favor of less qualified members of the majority group. Tammie tried to help by assisting individuals find career guidance, complete schooling, and find jobs. She soon realized that a problem of this magnitude required systemic change in the tools and methods used to create the problem. This became her mission.
Founding of NAMC
In 2007, Tammie began work on a real solution to the problem of systemic discrimination in workplace decision making against Native Americans and other minorities. She worked with her husband, an I/O psychologist, to devise research and business plans for developing and implementing culture-fair and valid talent management systems to drive out workplace discrimination. As an initial step, they reviewed the existing research on Native Americans and test bias, and found that:
- In the previous 50 years, only 5 articles (out of thousands) had been published in HR or I/O research journals that addressed test bias against Native Americans.
- All standardized tests that had been professionally reviewed and were in current use for decision making were biased against Native Americans (Davies, Wadlington, and Frederick, 2010).
- In no case, had the existing bias against Native Americans been addressed by test publishing or consulting firms.
- There was no indication of any action by the EEOC or other Federal agencies to address existing bias against Native Americans.
Based on these findings, Tammie Davies founded NAMC as a means to fulfill her mission of providing fair and equitable data to workplace decision makers.
NAMC Research and Development Program
We conduct ongoing research with Tribal organizations, Universities, and businesses to continually improve the validity and fairness of human resource and career development tools for all minority groups. Please let us know if you would like to work with us on our research program.
