From left: John Veihmeyer, Susan Story, John Strangfeld, Carolynn Johnson, Michael Ward, Luke Visconti, Edward Hurley-Wales, Barbara Frankel, Chuck Columbus, Rod Adkins

DiversityInc recognized the unique achievements of eight companies at our Nov. 9–10, 2011, event in Washington, D.C. CEOs and senior executives of these companies explained why developing excellence in these areas is critical to their business goals and how and why they have personally been deeply involved in their diversity-management success.

The areas we honored—Community Development, Talent Pipeline, Executive Development, Global Cultural Competence, Working Families, Employee-Resource Groups and (two winners) Diversity-Management Progress—were chosen because they have a significant impact on corporate success and sustainability and because excellence can be demonstrated through measurable results. These companies are overall diversity leaders, as demonstrated by their positions on The 2011 DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity and 25 Noteworthy Companies lists, but in each of these cases, they have also shown extraordinary achievements. 

The winners are listed below. Click the links for more information on each company, why it won and the video of its leader’s acceptance speech:

TOP COMPANY FOR EXECUTIVE DEVELOPMENT: Kaiser Permanente

TOP COMPANY FOR GLOBAL CULTURAL COMPETENCE: IBM

TOP COMPANY FOR COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT: Prudential Financial

TOP COMPANY FOR WORKING FAMILIES: ADP (Automatic Data Processing)

TOP COMPANY FOR TALENT PIPELINE: KPMG

TOP COMPANY FOR EMPLOYEE-RESOURCE GROUPS: American Express

TOP COMPANY FOR DIVERSITY-MANAGEMENT PROGRESS: Southern Company

TOP COMPANY FOR DIVERSITY-MANAGEMENT PROGRESS: CSX