Elon Musk’s DOGE, the newly formed government agency aiming for drastic cuts across the U.S. government, has brought in an HR employment attorney and consultant who has spent the last few years teaching companies her “refreshing approach to diversity and inclusion” which include attempting to “redefine” DEI in a manner that she says is more consistent with Christianity and offers a “non-woke” version of HR practices, 404 Media has learned.
Stephanie Holmes is in charge of HR at DOGE, two people familiar told 404 Media. Holmes is one of many new faces at the agency, which has been rebranded from the United States Digital Service to “United States DOGE Service.” DOGE, which stands for the “Department of Government Efficiency,” has also brought in a series of employees from Musk’s other companies and asked government tech workers to show Musk’s aides their code. DOGE higher ups re-interviewed every existing employee of the US Digital Service immediately following Musk’s takeover.
A 404 Media review of Holmes’ previous speaking engagements, which touch on her perception of diversity and maintaining company culture, provide insight into what might be in store for DOGE and the federal government at large. Holmes’ association with DOGE has not been previously reported.
Holmes is the founder of an HR consulting firm called BrighterSideHR and the author of a document called the “True Diversity Toolkit,” published through the conservative Philanthropy Roundtable think tank that recommends employers define DEI as “diversity of thought” or “diversity of viewpoint” rather than through a lens of “critical race theory.” Holmes has spoken about her approach to diversity at the Federalist Society, Catholic University, and the conservative Catholic organization Napa Institute’s “Principled Entrepreneurship” conference, which has become a hotspot of conservative political organizing power.
Holmes told an audience at a Federalist Society event that she started BrighterSideHR to counter “progressive ideology” in corporate America.
“Working in the HR space and seeing the DEI efforts and progressive ideology that HR was pushing into corporate America was particularly concerning to me, and I didn’t see any other alternatives for employers in the HR space. I care a lot about these issues and saw a problem I wanted to help fix,” she said. “I left my job and started BrighterSideHR, an HR consulting company to offer an alternative kind of more values aligned space for employers.”
“I do workplace training, discrimination, harassment training, how to do workplace investigations,” she added. “It’s simply just a non-woke version, offering employers an alternative approach to diversity and inclusion.”
The BrighterSideHR website shut down in recent weeks, and now says it is “no longer active.” An archived version of the site says “We focus on employee conduct at the workplace as opposed to imposing a particular ideological viewpoint.”
At the Napa Institute’s conference panel on “Practical Steps for Dealing with DEI,” Holmes sat on a panel with former Trump administration official and current Heritage Foundation fellow Roger Severino. A moderator introduced the panel by saying “we’re here to discuss diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI, or as I like to put it, DIE. Many of us are quite aware of diversity, equity, and inclusion and how it has its roots really going back to Marxism.”
Holmes said on the panel that the “mainstream kind of leftist approach to DEI presents us with a lot to push back against.”
“It is really inconsistent with our faith and I also think that this presents us with an opportunity to not only say why we’re against this, why we’re opposed to mainstream DEI initiatives, but it’s important for us to be part of the conservation and to use it to say what we are for and why we have a positive vision and positive solution of DEI in a way that is consistent with our values,” she said.
She said she advises employers to “move away from defining diversity exclusively focused on employees’ race, sex, or other protected category,” and to instead focus on “bringing together employees with diverse backgrounds, viewpoints, perspectives, and beliefs to achieve common workplace goals.” She said employers need to also be “reframing the term inclusion to incorporate that in a way that’s more aligned with our faith.”
When asked whether any of the panelists “knew of a DEI program that incorporates Catholic values,” the Heritage Foundation’s Severino said “don’t use that word DEI ever again in a positive light. That phrase should be deemed toxic now.” Holmes said, however, that she has taught companies that they probably need to continue using the term because employees have asked for there to be a consideration of diversity at work.
Larger companies must “balance how to kind of umm, play the game essentially. So I oftentimes use the term ‘diversity’ and ‘inclusion.’ I do use the term ‘equality’ instead of ‘equity’ because I think that’s particularly problematic, but I also understand that sometimes it’s just not politically feasible within a company to fully implement different terms,” she said. “I sometimes use those terms generally speaking because it’s just too politically, too much of a political hot potato to do otherwise.”
The United States Digital Service did not respond to a request for comment.
