The founder and CEO of Pegasystems, Alan Trefler, made an opening statement at Pegaworld (the company’s annual conference) on June 2, 2020, and shared that statement on LinkedIn as well. In the statement, Trefler pointed to George Floyd’s death as a symptom of systemic racism going back centuries and called on everyone to consider their personal responsibility to end injustice. He did not specify what action they should take, nor any actions Pegasystems would be taking.
According to Boston Business Journal, Pegasystems was one of the top corporate charitable contributors in Massachusetts in 2019, having donated at least $100,000 to local charities that year.
On July 18, 2020, Pegasystems’ Global Inclusion and Diversity Leader Guy Pacitti made a blog post for Pride Month. In the post, he spoke in favor of the anti-racism protests across the US and world, and offered suggestions for how readers could foster inclusion and fight exclusion for LGBTQ+ people and other marginalized people.
Pegasystems has a social impact program, PegaCares, which gives employees two days of paid volunteer time off per year and the ability to direct Pegasystems’ donations toward organizations they volunteer with. PegaCares had its first Pega Global Week of Giving in 2020. According to the website, “hundreds of employees participated in dozens of volunteer activities during the week, supporting more than 40 nonprofits in multiple countries globally [and] Pega employees also directed tens of thousands of dollars in charitable donations through our peer-to-peer recognition platform.”