Susan Story, CEO, Southern Company Services, accepts the award for Top Company for Diversity-Management Progress.

Anré Williams, president, Global Merchant Services, American Express, accepts the award for Top Company for Employee-Resource Groups.

John Veihmeyer, chairman and CEO, KPMG, accepts the award for Top Company for Talent Pipeline.

Edward M. Hurley-Wales, newly named vice president, diversity and inclusion, accepts the award for Top Companies for Working Families

IBM’s Rod Adkins, senior vice president, systems and technology group, accepts the award for the 2011 Top Company for Global Cultural Competence.

John Strangfeld, chairman and CEO of Prudential Financial, accepts the award for Top Company for Community Development.

Kaiser Permanente’s Chuck Columbus, chief human resources executive and senior vice president, accepts the 2011 Special Award for Top Company for Executive Development.

DiversityInc gave out special achievement awards to eight companies that are best at ERGs, global diversity, executive development, talent pipeline, community philanthropy, work/life and diversity-management progress.

How do you keep your best employees? Find out one way to make them feel important at no cost.

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How can you channel passion for creativity with the fight for civil rights into a successful career? Actor Jonathan Del Arco shares his story.

A panel of civil-rights experts and lawyers, led by DiversityInc CEO Luke Visconti, told an audience of CEOs and senior executives that anti-affirmative-action activist Ward Connerly fails to recognize the damaging extent of past racism or that contemporary institutionalized racism is pervasive and powerful. They spoke after Connerly addressed the audience.

Are we ready for a so-called “colorblind society”? Anti-affirmative-action activist Ward Connerly wants to ban the use of race- and gender-based affirmative action in college admissions and hiring. DiversityInc CEO Luke Visconti leads a panel of civil-rights experts and lawyers refuting him at our March event.

Bob Moritz shares a personal story of being “a minority” and advice for taking advantage of rich pools of talents from multiple countries.

For companies to have the competitive edge, recruiting and retaining the best talent is the clearest path to business success, said a panel of chief diversity officers during DiversityInc’s learning event in Washington, D.C.