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The woman overseeing the Academy awards has said she is “heartbroken and frustrated” by the lack of diversity in this year’s Oscar nominations and vowed to take “dramatic steps” to address it, The Guardian reported.

Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences president, Cheryl Boone Isaacs, said the academy needs “to do more, and better and more quickly” following calls for an outright boycott of the ceremony over the absence of non-white acting nominees.

Boones posted a statement to Twitter on 18 January, after both Jada Pinkett Smith and Spike Lee announced they would not be attending the awards night on 28 February.

Boone Isaacs – the first African American to hold the role of president, and the third woman – began by acknowledging the work of the 2015 nominees.

“While we celebrate their extraordinary achievements, I am both heartbroken and frustrated about the lack of inclusion. This is a difficult but important conversation, and it’s time for big changes,” she said.
“The academy is taking dramatic steps to alter the makeup of our membership. In the coming days and weeks we will conduct a review of our membership recruitment in order to bring about much-needed diversity in our 2016 class and beyond.”

This comes despite a record number of women and people from ethnic minorities running for seats on the board of governors at the Academy last year.

Among the 27 female candidates were director Ava DuVernay, who was said to have been snubbed by the academy when she was not nominated for best director for her Martin Luther King Jr biopic Selma.
Though the academy does not publish a list of its members, it is widely assumed the lack of diversity among academy members is reflected in the films and individuals nominated each year.

In 2012 the Los Angeles Times claimed more than 90% academy voters were white and more than 70% were male after the paper confirmed the identities of almost 90% of members.