Building on Ernst & Young’s successful 2012 Black History Month Executive Roundtable in Oakland, the firm hosted more than 500 professionals, community leaders and students during an expanded 2013 Black History Month roundtable series in Oakland, Los Angeles and Seattle this February. While each event offered unique elements, all featured compelling panel discussions about the career progression and personal achievements of black professionals, as well as diversity and inclusiveness business strategies.

Each roundtable was moderated by an Ernst & Young current or retired partner, including Risk Partner Marcus Odedina in Seattle; Ernst & Young Americas Inclusiveness Officer Karyn Twaronite (pictured above) in Oakland; and retired Midwest Region Managing Partner and Vice Chair Tony Anderson in Los Angeles. Roundtable panelists represented leading West Coast businesses such as: Joanne Harrell, Senior Director of Public Affairs and US Citizenship at Microsoft; Kelvin E. Council, CFO of Boeing Commercial Aviation; Gregory Adams, President of the Northern California Region Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, Inc. and Kaiser Foundation Hospitals; and Craig Robinson, Executive Vice President and Chief Diversity Officer of NBC Universal.

“Our Black History Month dialogue in Oakland was remarkable, and I’m so thrilled that business and community demand for these discussions inspired us to create an event series,” said Ernst & Young’s Karyn Twaronite. “Within our organization, I’m consistently reminded of how our black professionals are building a better working world, and these cross-company events made it clear there are so many more success stories to celebrate throughout our businesses and communities — yet we must tell these stories if we want to replicate and multiply them.”

Reflecting on different career journeys

No one’s career starts at the top, and the panelists offered motivating and inspirational stories about their journeys into leadership roles and the C-suite, as well as their unique experiences as black professionals. For example, Kaiser’s Gregory Adams told the Oakland audience that despite growing up in the South in the 1960s and personally experiencing discrimination, “It never defined who I was or who I was going to be.”

During the Seattle roundtable, Microsoft’s Joanne Harrell shared her own stories and perspectives on her success and personal achievements, emphasizing the importance of feeling “centered, comfortable and confident.” Boeing’s Kelvin Council stressed that focusing on performance and technical competency plays a key role in having a successful career. 

Finding common ground in taking risks, learning from mistakes

Each panel provided different takeaways, yet one recurring theme was that taking risks throughout your career is a necessary step to growing professionally. For example, during the Los Angeles roundtable, NBC Universal’s Craig Robinson shared how he is pleased that he pushed through his concerns about taking a job in Columbus, Ohio, a city he had never been to before and was not particularly interested in. “Not only was the opportunity excellent for my career, but it turned out to be the best five years of my life,” he said.

When the Seattle discussion turned to career-shaping opportunities and lessons learned, Boeing’s Kelvin Council commented that, “Everyone makes mistakes, but it is the professional who is willing to take ownership and find a solution who leverages challenges as opportunities to grow professionally.”

Ernst & Young LLP retired partner Tony Anderson noted that this thinking goes to the core of being authentic. “You have to allow people to be who they are at work — not 50%, not 75%, their whole selves. Only then can people truly provide their diverse views, improve the decision-making process and help your organization realize the true value of diversity.”

Building your brand, your network and your board

Another shared theme of the roundtables was the importance of building your personal and professional reputation and continually growing and fostering your professional network. At the Los Angeles roundtable, NBC Universal’s Craig Robinson summarized it well: networking is a quality game, not a quantity game. On the other hand, Kaiser’s Gregory Adams recommended to the Oakland audience that finding a way to disconnect is important, because you can’t bring your true value if you are always connected. He walks an hour and a half a day to unplug.

Finally, the Seattle panelists emphasized how critical it is to establish professional mentors and personal accountability. Boeing’s Kelvin Council suggested building a personal board of directors to rely on for regular, candid and meaningful advice. Microsoft’s Joanne Harrell added that she focuses on being accountable for herself rather than investing time in comparing her work to that of others.

“The Seattle event was yet another validation that translating the tremendous potential of black professionals into positions of power requires both personal passion and sponsorship,” said Ernst & Young’s Marcus Odedina. “This series was largely possible because of our Black Professional Network and similar groups, and I applaud their efforts to bring this learning and networking to the community so we can close what is too often a gap between black potential and power.”

For others considering investment in a D&I event series, Neal Sornsen, Ernst & Young’s San Francisco Bay Area Major Accounts Coordinating Partner, added, “The cross-company planning and participation in this series resulted in meaningful relationship building that advanced D&I initiatives and furthered our joint business goals. I joined many firm partners in hosting and engaging in several events from beginning to end. The events may have taken place in the West, but I am confident their impact extends across the US andbeyond.”

* This article features contributed content and has not been fact-checked or copy-edited by DiversityInc.

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Black History Month is a time to commemorate achievement. DiversityInc provides a list of the important dates and relevant demographics you need to know.

“Negro History Week” was established in 1926 by Carter G. Woodson, an NAACP leader, educator and historian, to recognize the central role Blacks played in the development of the United States. The second week of February was chosen to coincide with the birthdays of abolitionist Frederick Douglass and President Abraham Lincoln. In 1976, the federal government expanded the celebration to Black History Month.

Download the Black History Month Timeline and Black History Month Facts & Figures by clicking the images below.

 1600s – 1700s

• 1619 Dutch ship brings 20 Africans to Jamestown, Va., the first enslaved Africans in the U.S.
• 1793 Eli Whitney’s new cotton gin increases demand for slaves
• 1793 Congress passes Fugitive Slave Act, making it a federal crime to assist a slave trying to escape

1800s

• 1808 Congress bans importation of slaves
• 1820 Missouri Compromise bans slavery above the southern border of the state
• 1831 Nat Turner leads largest slave rebellion prior to Civil War
• 1849 Harriet Tubman escapes to Philadelphia and subsequently helps about 300 enslaved people to freedom via the Underground Railroad
• 1857 In Dred Scott v. Sanford, U.S. Supreme Court declares that Blacks are not citizens of the U.S. and that Congress cannot prohibit
• slavery
• 1859 John Brown leads raid of U.S. Armory and Arsenal at Harpers Ferry, W.Va.
• 1861 South secedes from Union and Civil War begins
• 1863 President Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring “all persons held as slaves within any State or designated
• part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free”
• 1865 Civil War ends
• 1865 Thirteenth Amendment is ratified, prohibiting slavery
• 1868 Fourteenth Amendment is ratified, allowing Blacks to become citizens
• 1870 Fifteenth Amendment guarantees that right to vote cannot be denied because of race, color or previous condition of servitude
• 1870 Hiram Revels becomes first Black member of Congress
• 1896 U.S. Supreme Court rules in Plessy v. Ferguson that segregation doesn’t violate the 14th Amendment’s equal-protection clause as long as conditions provided are “separate but equal”

1900s

• 1900 William H. Carney becomes first Black to be awarded Medal of Honor
• 1909 NAACP is founded
• 1940 Hattie McDaniel becomes first Black to win an Academy Award
• 1947 Jackie Robinson becomes first Black to play Major League Baseball
• 1950 Ralph J. Bunche becomes first Black to win the Nobel Peace Prize
• 1953 Willie Thrower becomes first Black to play quarterback in the National Football League
• 1954 In Brown v. the Board of Education of Topeka, U.S. Supreme Court rules that racial segregation in public schools violates the 14th Amendment
• 1955 Two white men who confessed to murdering a 14-year-old Black boy, Emmett Till, for allegedly whistling at a white woman are acquitted by an all-white jury
• 1955 Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat on a bus to a white man in Montgomery, Ala., leading to the Montgomery Bus Boycott
• 1957 Little Rock Nine integrate Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas
• 1960 Four Black students stage famous sit-in at a whites-only Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, N.C.
• 1961 Freedom rides begin from Washington, D.C.
• 1963 Four young Black girls are killed in the bombing of a Birmingham, Ala., church
• 1962 James Meredith becomes first Black student to enroll at the University of Mississippi. Violence prompts President Kennedy to
• send in 5,000 federal troops
• 1963 More than 200,000 people march on Washington, D.C., in the largest civil-rights demonstration in U.S. history; Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gives his “I Have a Dream” speech
• 1964 President Johnson signs Civil Rights Act of 1964, giving the government more power to protect citizens against race, religion, sex
• or national-origin discrimination
• 1965 Malcolm X, former minister in the Nation of Islam and civil-rights activist, is assassinated
• 1965 Thousands participate in three protest marches from Selma to Montgomery, Ala., for Black voting rights
  President Johnson signs Voting Rights Act of 1965
• 1967 Thurgood Marshall becomes first Black U.S. Supreme Court justice
  In Loving v. Virginia ruling, Supreme Court declares law prohibiting interracial marriages to be unconstitutional
• 1968 Dr. King is assassinated
  Johnson signs Civil Rights Act of 1968, which prohibits discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of housing
• 1972 Shirley Chisholm becomes first major-party Black candidate to run for president
• 1983 Vanessa Williams becomes first Black Miss America
• 1984 Reverend Jesse Jackson becomes first Black to make serious bid for presidency
• 1986 First observation of Dr. King’s birthday as a national holiday
• 1990 Douglas Wilder of Virginia becomes first Black to be elected governor
• 1991 President George H.W. Bush signs Civil Rights Act of 1991, which strengthened laws on employment discrimination
• 1993 Dr. Joycelyn Elders becomes first Black Surgeon General

2000s

• 2001 General Colin Powell becomes first Black Secretary of State
• 2009 Barack Obama becomes first Black president

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“When Colin Powell, one of our Freedom Award recipients, came through the museum, he said he and his wife could hardly make it … because they almost broke down in tears,” recalls Robertson. “It causes you to reflect on how far we’ve come … and the tremendous amount of pain, suffering and death that it took to get us where we are today.”

For many, discovering Black history becomes a personal journey toward understanding one’s self and society. It causes profound introspection—and this experience can occur in hundreds of museums across the nation, from Washington, D.C., to Detroit to downtown Los Angeles.

“Instead of Black History being recognized one month out of the year, it’s something that needs to be recognized throughout the year,” says Robertson. “And I think [Black history museums] are particularly significant because you must remember that so much African-American history, so much history about the civil-rights movement and the accomplishments of African Americans, are not studied in our schools.”

Not only are individuals taking tours through Black history museums for the educational experience, corporations are getting involved as well because Blacks, Latinos and Asians make up nearly 34 percent of the nation’s work force, according to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. And corporate leaders need to be more knowledgeable about and sensitive to the cultural backgrounds of employees to recruit, develop and retain all talent.

As a result, organizations, including several on The DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity list, are financially supporting these institutions, sitting on their boards and utilizing their facilities for diversity training and annual meetings to take diversity management to the next level. To read this story in the DiversityInc February 2010 digital magazine, click here.

National Civil Rights Museum

The National Civil Rights Museum chronicles major episodes of the civil-rights movement, from the early 1600s when African slaves first arrived, to the Civil War, to the formation of Black organizations, to the passage of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments and, later, the Voting Rights Act and integration of Little Rock High School. Attracting about 200,000 visitors annually, including Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu and former President Bill Clinton, the Lorraine Motel was originally owned by a Black couple and was “one of the only places in the ’60s where African Americans could go and not have a problem checking in,” says Robertson. Two of the most popular exhibits include the interactive Montgomery bus, in which visitors are ordered to “move to the back of the bus,” and Room 306, known as the “King” room.

“You’re vicariously transported back in time when you’re standing looking into the room where Dr. King spent his last day,” says Robertson. Listening to gospel singer Mahalia Jackson’s “Precious Lord,” Dr. King’s favorite song, visitors look out the motel-room window to the boarding room across the street where James Earl Ray’s fatal shot was fired.

“It should be the law that you must pass through the National Civil Rights Museum before you’re allowed to vote,” writes a 42-year-old white man who had returned from the site. Having toured the museum and stood in Room 306, where the Dr. King spent his last day, he continues: “I was not prepared for this experience. I was not prepared to see a Klan outfit. I was not prepared to break down in tears … nor was I prepared for the anger that rushed through me.”

The National Civil Rights Museum also attracts corporations such as Minneapolis-based Best Buy. For several years, the company has anchored its three-day transformational leadership-development program in the museum, inviting thousands of its retail managers to Memphis. (The program has recently been expanded to all employees.) After touring the museum, the retail giant holds a series of employee workshops and discussions. The company reports that programs such as this add to its bottom line by instilling cultural awareness and tangible diversity leadership skills into its work force.

Other retailers, such as JCPenney (No. 35 in the DiversityInc Top 50), are involved in a giving program that allows consumers to shop online, and a portion of each purchase is donated to their favorite cause, including the National Civil Rights Museum.

Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History

In Detroit’s cultural district, the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History offers the largest Black history museum in the world. For the past 45 years, it has provided learning experiences, exhibitions, programs and events, such as the Africa World Festival, that explore Black history and culture. The 120,000-square-foot museum, which attracts about 200,000 people each year and includes more than 30,000 artifacts and documents, is located in one of five cities considered “gateways to freedom” for tens of thousands of slaves seeking refuge in Canada, making it an appropriate home to the Blanche Coggin Underground Railroad Collection and Harriet Tubman Museum Collection. While numerous temporary exhibits, ranging from the influence Joe Louis had on America to the celebration of Black women’s hats and head coverings, are on display, the core, permanent exhibit is “And Still We Rise.” This interactive, multi-level journey begins in prehistoric Africa, moves to the middle passage of a slave ship and then goes to present-day Detroit.

“The reaction that we often get is that it’s overwhelming,” says President and CEO Juanita Moore. “When people go through the slave ship, they’re moved to tears. Sometimes people have to come out of the exhibition space to gather themselves. It’s a moment of great reflection. It’s a place to pay homage. But it’s also an opportunity to get introspective and learn.”

Currently, the museum’s curators are collaborating on a project about the deindustrialization of Detroit and its impact on the Black community with Michigan State and about 30 corporations. And over the years, the financial support of corporations and foundations such as Ford (No. 47 in the DiversityInc Top 50), AT&T (No. 4), Target (No. 44), PricewaterhouseCoopers (No. 3) and others have helped the Wright Museum continue to enhance its educational and historical experience.

“History feeds the spirit and the soul,” says Moore. “You understand that bad things have happened before and it passes.”

National Underground Railroad Freedom Museum

The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, based in Cincinnati where the Underground Railroad operated extensively during the Civil War, is dedicated to telling the story of the struggle for freedom, both historically and in modern times. The museum’s narratives focus on the antebellum activity, in which enslaved Blacks fled to freedom and were often helped by sympathetic whites who were “conductors” along the Underground Railroad’s informal network of escape routes and safe houses.

“The Ohio river was a major commercial artery as well as a crossing point for slaves,” says Chief Communications Officer Paul Bernish. Bordering on a slave state, “the same issues that divided the nation at that time divided Cincinnati. We had abolitionists and pro-slavery people living right next to each other. You had free slaves working and you had escaping slaves hiding … so from a historic standpoint, this is an ideal location for the museum.”

The 158,000-square-foot, three-pavilion museum’s largest exhibit, “From Slavery to Freedom,” covers the nation’s history of slavery of all people from the 1500s to the Civil War and includes the economic, social and cultural underpinnings of slavery. The most popular exhibit is a two-story slave warehouse, originally built in Mason County, Ky., that held upwards of 70 people.

“For most that come here, it’s a stark and dramatic confrontation with the history of slavery in America,” says Bernish.

One of the Freedom Center’s biggest benefactors, he says, has been Cincinnati-based Procter & Gamble (No. 25 in the DiversityInc Top 50). With a work force that’s 11 percent Black and mirrors its customer base, the consumer-products giant has not only been a corporate foundation donor, it regularly holds sales meetings at the facility and “often brings in suppliers to experience the museum,” adds Bernish.

America I AM: The African American Imprint

California Science Center in Los Angeles is home to the West Coast debut of America I AM: The African American Imprint. This 12-gallery traveling exhibition, presented by broadcaster and past DiversityInc event keynote speaker Tavis Smiley and sponsored by Walmart, includes numerous historical artifacts, including:

• The Door of No Return, from the Cape Coast Castle in Ghana, in which enslaved Africans passed through to board ships to North America
• Alex Haley’s typewriter, used to write “Roots”
• Malcolm X’s journal and Quran
• Frederick Douglass’s clothing and letter from Lincoln, which enabled him to recruit Black soldiers

America I AM: The African American Imprint encourages all people to connect in a meaningful way with the foundations of democracy, cultural diversity, exploration and free enterprise, which began when the first Africans arrived in Jamestown,” says Smiley. “By telling the stories of the events of the past, we can help the leaders of the future set the stage for active participation in the democratic process for years to come.

Want to Learn More?

• Civil Rights Memorial Center Located in historic Montgomery, Ala., across the street from Southern Poverty Law Center, the center offers images of iconic civil-rights leaders, a 56-seat theater and the Wall of Tolerance, where visitors pledge to take a stand against hate by entering their names on an interactive wall.
• DuSable Museum of African American History This Chicago museum has been dedicated to the collection, preservation, interpretation and dissemination of the history and culture of Africans and Black Americans for more than 46 years.
• Hampton University Museum & Archives Located on the grounds of Hampton University campus, the museum, which was founded in 1868, is one of the oldest in Virginia. It features more than 9,000 objects, including African American fine arts, traditional African, Native American, Native Hawaiian, Pacific Island, and Asian art.
• Idaho Black History Museum Housed in St. Paul Baptist Church in Boise, one of the oldest buildings constructed by Idaho Blacks, the museum presents exhibits and educational outreach, including workshops, literacy programs and music.
• International Civil Rights Center & Museum This newly opened exhibit and teaching facility, located in the historic F.W. Woolworth building in Greensboro, N.C., where four N.C. A&T freshmen set off a nonviolent sit-in 50 years ago, is a recreation of what the segregated South was like during the civil-rights movement.
• Museum of African American History in Boston Based in an African Meeting House, the oldest U.S. church built by free Blacks in 1806 has recently been restored, thanks largely to sponsorship from Walmart Foundation. It features stories of Blacks from 1638 through the Civil War.
• NAACP Interactive Historical Timeline Funded through a $500,000 grant from the Verizon Foundation, this newly launched online learning tool from the NAACP offers major milestones in Black history, biographies of legendary leaders in Black history and other educational resources. Verizon Communications is No. 22 in the 2011 DiversityInc Top 50.
• Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture Although the museum is currently being built on the National Mall in the District of Columbia, not far from what were once slave markets called “Robey’s Den,” a gallery can be found on the second floor of the National Museum of American History. And thanks to a $1-million grant of technology and expertise from IBM (No. 7), you can take a virtual tour at nmaahc.si.edu.

VIDEOS

1. DiversityInc CEO Luke Visconti and National Civil Rights Museum President Beverly Robertson
2. Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History
3. African American History Museum in Boston
4. Smithsonian National Museum of African American History series
5. National Underground Railroad Freedom Center

COLLATERAL MATERIAL

• PricewaterhouseCoopers: 10 Minutes on Managing Diversity
• PricewaterhouseCoopers: Confronting the Issue brochure
• PricewaterhouseCoopers: Impact fact sheet
• PricewaterhouseCoopers: Why Diversity Why Now
• WellPoint’s Black History Month poster

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