Prudential Financial: You May Not ‘Get’ D&I—But You Have To

Creating a culture of diversity and inclusion means including everyone—personally and professionally. That’s the mindset Prudential Financial leverages to create its business case for diversity, explained Michele C.Meyer-Shipp, Vice President and Chief Diversity Officer of Prudential Financial. “For all of us to succeed we have to be able to market our services to diverse communities,” she said. “You might not get it but you have to.”

Altria: Is Diversity a Zero-Sum Game for White Men?

Diversity and inclusion: What’s in it for white men? That’s the question you as a diversity leader need to answer if you’re going to gain buy-in from your white, male senior leaders, said Nancy Adams, Senior Manager, HR Client Services/Diversity/AAP of Altria. She noted that it’s important to shift the conversation away from race and gender toward discussions about how inclusion benefits white men. “But there’s always a small minority of people who just see the world as a zero-sum game,” she says, and the challenge is getting through to them.

Toyota: Attention Straight, White Men—Diversity Includes You Too

Toyota Financial Services’ diversity leaders work hard to get their D&I message out—and a big catalyst for that effort is visible commitment from the company’s senior executives, such as CEO George Borst, Toyota Financial Services. “I had a man come up to me and say he joined the women’s group because ‘I have three daughters and I would want them to have the opportunities they wouldn’t have had if they had grown up in my day,” recalled Stephen Lewis, Corporate Manager, Diversity and Inclusion, Toyota Financial Services.

Cox Communications: How to Begin Diversity Outreach to White Men?

“Everyone has something to share, something to learn from each other,” said Rhonda Taylor, Executive Vice President and Chief People Officer of Cox Communications. Taylor notes it starts with opening up the dialogue around our differences and creating an atmosphere that allows employees to ask the hard questions and share their personal stories to make a connection.

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Sam’s Club executives Michael Moore, vice president, candy and tobacco, and Richard Ezell, vice president, fuel and auto, announced the winners. “Our goal of this case competition was to help ease the rising costs of education and give students the opportunity to build bridges for their communities. The Latino community—and the talent within it—is very important to Sam’s Club,” they said.

“The future workforce of this nation is in jeopardy, and the amount of talent that goes to waste is a crime,” said DiversityInc CEO Luke Visconti during the presentation. “There are a few programs, like Rutgers Future Scholars, and a few companies that are actually changing this statement by creating opportunity for young people who otherwise would never realize their full potential.” Visconti, who sits on the board of a Hispanic-serving institution, New Jersey City University, noted that he has a strong gratitude for the generosity of Sam’s Club.

The 2011 HSI Scholarship winning student teams are:

Otero Junior College: Vernon Ward and Georgia Gonzalez
This plan provided very detailed recommendations for targeting the Latino market via various outreach channels: providing budget, research and strategies for marketing, advertising and increasing traffic. This plan also touches on training and incentives for supervisors and managers.

California State University – Fullerton: Susan Carmona and Shaun Vasquez
This plan utilized ESRI Business Analyst Online, which is a demographic tool, to segment and identify key market segments with Latino consumers likely to shop at Sam’s Club. This team decided to use California as a market and develop a strategy that can be blue-printed for other communities.

Universidad de Puerto Rico Recinto de Carolina: Teddy Gonsales, Kaileen Nieves, Cabrea and Benjamin Del Valle Colon
The recommendations from this plan centered around utilizing Sam’s Club’s strengths, such as its market position and financial position and doubling marketing efforts to the Latino community through social activities.

University of California, Merced: Lauriano Bucio, Stephanie Badillo and Jocelyn Delgado
This plan recommended that Sam’s Club focus on: Brand Essence, Vision, Persona, Positioning and Proof Points, including voting, sports, cultural events and educational empowerment for the Latino market.

California State Polytechnic University, Pomona: Samantha Pearson, Brenda Trujillo and Kirren Dolan
This plan centered its recommendations on a Sam’s Club marketing plan and advertising campaign through leveraging technologies. This plan details advertising strategies, roll out and cost by month.

The Sam’s Club HSI Scholarship Competition asked teams of students to develop a marketing plan that would help Sam’s Club build its relationship with the Latino community. The plans were judged by a team of DiversityInc and Sam’s Club executives. More information on the Sam’s Club HSI Scholarship Competition, produced in partnership with DiversityInc, is available at www.hsischolarships.com.

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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

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