Ariel Investments President Mellody Hobson on Thursday called out the finance and business community for failing to make strides in diversity. “The answer that we often get is, ‘We’re working on it’," Hobson said at the New York Times DealBook Conference in New York. The response is fair, she explained, "unless you’ve been saying it for a very long time." Executives in the finance and corporate worlds pay lip service to hiring more women and people of color, but they fail to assess their progress like they would judge their success toward a sales goal, she said. Hobson, who is on the board of directors at companies including Starbucks Corp. and Estee Lauder Cos., said finance firms often have marketing materials that include "one woman or one person of color bobbing in a sea of white men." Read the original story from Bloomberg.