The six CEOs and eight senior executives at our event demonstrated how their personal passion and commitment to diversity have become a critical factor in making strategic business decisions. In many cases, this helped gain traction within senior leadership and generated measurable results in workforce diversity, while sometimes improving market share.

The two-day event featured two panels with six chief diversity officers—one focused on best practices for executive diversity councils and the other on using compensation to drive diversity-management results. Additionally, DiversityInc Senior Vice President and Executive Editor Barbara Frankel presented exclusive advice on what companies need to do to improve their DiversityInc Top 50 rank.

Watch all the presentations from this event via the players below or view our YouTube playlist. Videos of all the speakers will be posted throughout the day.

Also, be sure to save the date for our upcoming 2013 DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity Announcement Dinner, April 23–24, 2013.

How New York City Drives Diversity Results
R. Fenimore Fisher, Deputy Commissioner, Chief Diversity & EEO Officer, City of New York
How does the City of New York drive diversity metrics and results? Find out from a world-class diversity expert.

Diversity in the Workplace: Leadership Counts
Jorge Benitez, Managing Director – North America, Chief Executive – United States, Accenture
This CEO really values work/life issues. He tells us how he includes spouses and encourages family priorities.

Panel: Best Practices on Executive Diversity Councils
Debbie Storey, AT&T; Rhonda Crichlow, Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation; Michelle Lee, Wells Fargo 
Three companies with the best practices—and results—on diversity councils talk about CEOs chairing the councils, setting goals and accountability.

Building a Strong Diversity Brand
John Bryant, President and CEO, Kellogg
The CEO of Kellogg tells us why his company has invested so much over the last two years in its diversity-management efforts.

Workplace Diversity: The Personal Connection in Leadership
Forest T. Harper, CEO, INROADS 
The son of migrant workers, who went on to be a top Pfizer executive, talks about how INROADS helps Black and Latino college students become corporate leaders. Click here to download the presentation slides.

Corporate Diversity at the Top: Q&A With Luke Visconti
Steve Howe, Area Managing Partner – Americas, Ernst & Young
The U.S. head of Ernst & Young discusses how corporate values drive business decisions at his firm

Diversity & Inclusion: Accountability & Your Business Future
Thomas F. Zenty III, CEO, University Hospitals
The CEO of this Cleveland hospital system tells us how outreach to Blacks and Latinos is driving hospital growth.

Workplace Diversity: Using Leadership to Save Lives & Talent by Creating Inclusive Workplaces
Dr. Eliza Byard, Executive Director, GLSEN (the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network)
The head of the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network (GLSEN) tells you about young lives saved through the help of corporations like yours.

Panel on Diversity Metrics: Using Compensation to Drive Results
Maruiel Perkins-Chavis, Marriott International; Joy Fitzgerald, Rockwell Collins; Chad Johnson, Sodexo
Three companies with the most effective diversity metrics tell you what’s on their diversity scorecards and how they link goals to compensation.

Corporate Diversity: A Personal Story of Why Corporate Values Matter
Michelle Lee, Executive Vice President and Northeast Regional President, Wells Fargo
This exec shares her remarkable story of how and why she became a banker and the challenges she faced as the only young, Black woman in her management-training program.

DiversityInc Benchmarking: Tips on How to Move Up on the DiversityInc Top 50 List
Barbara Frankel, Senior Vice President and Executive Editor, DiversityInc
See our tips on the best ways to answer questions on The 2013 DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity survey. Click here to download the presentation slides.

The post 8 CEOs Prove the Intersection of Diversity, Engagement & Innovation appeared first on DiversityInc.

Now 23 years old, Soetan is a product manager with a large retail pharmacy chain in the Chicago area. She credits her current position to a multi-year business-management internship she received through INROADS.

“I stumbled upon it while looking for college scholarships on Fastweb online,” she recalls. Soetan notes that it’s pretty rare for a 16-year-old girl to find a paid internship, let alone one that provides such in-depth talent development.

Soetan started the internship during her first summer after high school and continued the program throughout her four years of college. After graduation, she was offered a full-time position with the company as an assistant manager.

“INROADS taught me how to network with the people I worked with, to dress for work and be professional so I could succeed in the real world,” says Soetan. “The program fostered me a lot in career development and getting necessary tools for the program.” These include both hard and soft business skills through training, networking opportunities, mock interviews, tutoring and mentoring.

A Mission in Talent Development

INROADS, founded by Frank C. Carr in Chicago in 1970, is a nonprofit organization that aims to develop talented underserved youth for success in business, providing them the necessary skills and opportunities to gain valuable internships, and eventually positions, with companies.

There is also an INROADS alumni network that provides current and former interns with an online and national community, offering a continued support system throughout their careers.

“It’s a strong leadership and development program focused on growing the competencies of these young people with a rigorous coaching process,” explains Maria Morris, executive vice president of global employee benefits for MetLife and chairman of the board for INROADS. MetLife is No. 50 in the 2012 DiversityInc Top 50 and has been a top 10 INROADS-sponsoring company since 2004. 

Currently under the executive leadership of president and CEO Forest T. Harper, who had humble beginnings himself as the son of migrant farmers in Florida, INROADS offers high-potential Black, Latino and American Indian students the tools they need to aspire and achieve leadership roles that otherwise would be unobtainable. Read Talent Development: From Migrant Workers’ Son to CEO for his story.

Talent Development Creates Opportunity

Cerileene Menendez Mendoza, who moved from her home in Puerto Rico to attend Assumption College, a small school in Massachusetts, says she never would have gotten her accounting internship at KPMG (No. 22) without INROADS. She says internships were typically reserved for students at much larger colleges.

“Specifically, INROADS prepared me for the interview and to develop cultural awareness and understanding for a corporate culture. They helped me become sure about myself and I was able to meet other students going through the same process,” she says. “INROADS’ network and peer-to-peer reviews provided really good feedback.”

Thanks to INROADS, Mendoza’s career took off after she graduated in 2011: After graduation, she was chosen as a Fulbright Scholar. Fulbright is a grant-based work-abroad exchange program from the Council for International Exchange of Scholars on behalf of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. Mendoza is now is the director of platonic venture capitalists for Toniic Mexico at New Ventures Mexico.

She also was featured in an edition of CNN’s Expansion, a business magazine targeting professionals in Mexico and Latin America, for her accomplishments when she was 22 years old, she says.

“INROADS helped me … to think about my skills,” says Mendoza. “I was able to gain exposure culturally to other parts of the world and in the United States. They showed me new experiences and career options I never considered.”

See also: Rutgers Future Scholars Enhances Talent Pipelines With Corporate-Student Outreach

Investing in Talent Development

The mission of INROADS is as relevant today as it ever was, according to INROADS alumnus Jeffrey S. Perry, whose initial internship with INROADS has come full circle.

Perry, who started as an intern for two years at an oil company and moved on to work at companies including Booz Allen Hamilton (No. 36) and another management consultancy, now serves as a board member for INROADS. In his current position as transaction integration practice leader for Ernst & Young (No. 6), Perry keeps the benefits of INROADS close at hand. There is a war for talent, and “INROADS helps us at Ernst & Young stay competitive,” he says.

The company places heavy emphasis on diverse recruiting and has multiple partnerships with colleges and organizations. It also hosts its own Discover Ernst & Young events to generate interest in the accounting profession among students. Learn more about the company’s recruiting strategies in Diversity Web Seminar on Recruitment: 5 Workforce-Diversity Strategies to Find, Engage & Retain Talent.

“It about developing very specific, targeted programs for the interns and leveraging INROADS access to alumni. It’s so we can progress talent to that next level,” says Perry.

For more information on INROADS and for a list of sponsoring companies, visit www.inroads.org.

The post Talent Development Creates Ability for INROADS Students to Succeed appeared first on DiversityInc.

Read personal stories from two INROADS interns: Talent Development Creates Ability for INROADS Students to Succeed.

The president and CEO of INROADS, who spent 28 years at Pfizer (including his last role as vice president of capability development and stakeholder relations), started life as the son of migrant workers in Fort Pierce, Fla.

“My parents worked in the fields, harvesting vegetables and fruits … we lived in the projects, and from the top of the roof, I had two views, the drive-in theater and Cape Canaveral,” recalls Harper, who now heads the nonprofit that helps low-income students find and succeed in corporate internships. Most of those students are Black, Latino and American Indian.

For more on talent development and diversity in education, read Rutgers Future Scholars Enhances Talent Pipelines With Corporate-Student Outreach and PhD Project: Getting Diversity to the Next Academic Level.

The Power of Support

His family, friends and teachers recognized that the bright child and gifted athlete had a chance for a better life. He excelled at football and basketball, and as starting quarterback, he led his high-school football team to a state championship. Harper won a full scholarship to Morgan State University in Baltimore, but a serious knee injury put it at risk. The school let him in on a conditional scholarship: If the knee got better and he could play, he could stay.

He boarded a Greyhound bus for Baltimore, not knowing if he had a real future or if he would return to the fields. His knee got better and he made the team—and then he was injured again.

“Before I was hurt, I was at football practice and a tall gentleman in uniform came over to me,” Harper recalls. “He said: ‘Maybe I can talk to you about how you can leave Morgan State with two degrees, no matter what happens with football.’”

The gentleman was with the Army ROTC, and his suggestion and mentorship changed the young man’s trajectory. Harper went on to major in social work and then went in to the Army, where he achieved the rank of captain in the 82nd Airborne Division.

Harper loved the structure and opportunities of the military, but his family was having tough financial times, so he decided to seek employment in private industry. His first and only corporate employer was Pfizer, where he was hired as a salesman.

For more on veterans and talent development, watch Diversity Web Seminar: Veterans in the Workplace Webinar.

Recognizing Potential

“My district sales manager, Richard Matthews, asked me what my aspirations were. I said, ‘I would like to grow up and have your job.’ He said, ‘Then that’s what you’ll do,’” Harper recalls. “I owe him a tremendous amount for just being able to tell me I could reach for this. Leadership is not about you but what you do for your people.”

Harper spent almost three decades at Pfizer, becoming a senior executive with major leadership positions in sales, public affairs and public policy. He helped start the company’s African-American resource group and served as its president—and he was deeply involved in the company’s efforts to reduce healthcare disparities. He also was a member of Pfizer’s Global Diversity and Inclusion Leadership Committee. Along the way, he broke a few barriers.

“I was the first and only in eight different positions at Pfizer. I could do nothing about being the first, but I could always do something about being the only,” he says.

Harper spent two years as an executive on loan to the National Urban League and the Executive Leadership Council, which works to get Blacks into senior positions in corporate America.

Pay It Forward

In his mid-50s, Harper decided he wanted to share the business and leadership skills he had learned in corporate America with nonprofits, and his strongest goal was to mentor and educate students.

Thus the fit to lead INROADS was perfect. INROADS has found spots for more than 2,000 student interns with more than 200 major corporations. With nearly 24,000 alumni, Harper sees great opportunity for expanding the organization’s potential to help young people gain the first foothold to corporate success.

“My one-year plan is to work with the national board of directors and key stakeholders and ensure we have the financial stability to help our 2,000 students. I want to enhance the awareness and benefits of INROADS so we are no longer the best-kept secret in corporate America,” he says.

Beyond that? “Our goal is that companies tell us over and over that they value the partnership because it is a part of their overall talent blueprint,” he says, adding, “Talent is a continuing life cycle, not just a one-time thing.”

Follow INROADS on Twitter (@INROADS), Facebook and LinkedIn, or watch video interviews with INROADS alumni on YouTube. Read this profile in DiversityInc’s June 2012 digital issue.

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