Top Executives In Corporate​​​​​​​ Diversity

In a new era of D&I, these champions of corporate inclusion have developed a mix of inventive, novel strategies to recruit, retain, elevate, and embrace diverse talent and demonstrate a culture that values the individual, which will ultimately make corporate America more creative, competitive, and, yes, profitable

- Derek T. Dingle

IT IS ONLY FITTING THAT DIVERSITY AND inclusion gain a full examination in the year that marks the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., the nation’s modern founding father who used the civil rights movement to unyieldingly advocate for equality in all societal sectors.

King’s galvanizing arguments, agitation, and influence, among other seminal actions, led to passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Voting Rights Act of 1965, and President Lyndon Johnson’s enactment of Executive Order 11246 some 53 years ago, which called for the end to discriminatory hiring and promotion practices in the workplace and made “Affirmative Action” a much-debated part of the corporate lexicon for years. That policy was originally designed to correct the past inequities that stifled the progress of African Americans and as a result, created the flow of the first wave of black executives. Over the decades corporate leadership would eventually shift to “diversity” as a means of quelling internal dissent and broadening the access and opportunity apparatus to expand the focus on other underrepresented groups, including women, people with disabilities, veterans, and the LGTBQ community.