Diversity Woman Magazine

FALL 2015

Leadership and Executive Development for women of all races, cultures and backgrounds

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We Mean Business > d i v e r s i t y w o m a n . c o m Fa l l 2 0 1 5 D I V E R S I T Y W O M A N 27 classroom, and gave me my lunch. Wally patted me on the head and said, "Have a good day, son." I went back Tuesday, and on Wednesday, and then on Tursday, my father decided to pick me up from school. Tat's when the diference began. Prior to my father picking me up, everyone as- sumed that Wally and Laura had adopted me from India. DW: Many chief diversity officers have a personal story about how they got into the field. What's yours? TS: I began my professional career at Hewitt Associates, which was an HR out- sourcing consulting frm based in Lincoln- shire, Illinois. It was a very homogeneous environment. I was one of fve people of color that they brought into management from the outside during that time. I was a unit manager for the operations group in customer service, and I was one of the top-ranking African Americans in the organization. One day, around 2008, a woman, Juanita Robinson Brown, came to me and said that she had started an Af- rican American business resource group. She said, "Tyrone, I need you to come and spend some time with our other leaders. You're the highest-ranking African Amer- ican male. Tey need to see you, touch you, feel you, etc." I resisted at frst, be- cause as a child my parents told me never to fnd yourself in a non-revenue-gener- ating role, because when times are hard, those jobs are typically eliminated. Tey also told me never to assimilate with more than one or two blacks because your white counterparts will feel you're trying to overthrow the government or incite a riot. Well, I fnally gave in and went to a black history program. She asked me to address the group. I came into the room, and there was fried chicken, orange pop, and watermelon. It was just like every stereotype about black culture. I walked them through the evolution of the histo- ry of blacks in America and the evolution of diversity, and I said if we really want our colleagues to have a true experience, we need to make sure we do it from a cul- tural perspective. Let's take a deep dive into who we are and celebrate that. I have a musical background so I used that skill to create a Hewitt chorus. We put a posting out to all the employees. We had over a hundred some odd employees respond, and 98 percent of the group was white. Our black afnity group said we could not have an all-white choir doing the black history program. My response was sure we can, because if, indeed, after working 8 to 10 hours a day, they are go- ing to come into the basement and learn how to sing gospels and Negro spirituals and anthems and hymns in front of their peers, that's all right with me. We put on a great program. DW: Was there any fallout? TS: No. In fact, our CEO, Dale Giford, got up and said, "Whoever put this pro- gram on needs to be part of my execu- tive committee." I picked up the phone and gave him a call, and we had lunch. He said, "We've got this thing called di- versity, and we want you to lead it." My response was "hell no." It was not rev- enue generating, and I didn't want to be the poster child for diversity—because I was black didn't mean I knew anything about diversity. But you typically don't tell a CEO no. He asked me why, and I said because there's no one in the top echelon of the organization beyond me that looks like me. I'm not sure it will be a success. I didn't want to be part of a "build a better Negro program" for Hewitt. I did not want to be that excep- tional person who only came in when they were having issues with black peo- ple. So he said, "I want to reserve the right to come back to you on this." DW: And did he do that? TS: Yes, he came back a few months later. He had hired a director of diver- sity and said, "We have a strong strategy but we need you to operationalize the diversity. You have a strong operations background. If you come over and op- erationalize the work and you don't like it, we'll put you back into business after two years." I said, here's the deal. Tere are three things: One, if indeed we're commit- ted to this, and you want to drive this, I think you need to be the executive busi- ness sponsor. He said, yes, I can do that. Next, I said, we need resources. We need people, we need money, we need budgets. He asked, how much? I actually made the number up. I didn't know. I just said $2.8 million. I had just processed an invoice to a client and that number was in my head. He said, you got it. Ten he said, so what's last? I said, well, if we're a consulting frm and we have these issues, our clients are having the same issues. If we can turn this into a revenue-generating function, then I'm your guy. I wanted to make sure that I was able to be adding value to the organi- zation's bottom line. So we did it. We had a great deal of suc- cess. We had zero percent turnover of women and people of color for two years, we had a 50 percent increase of diverse middle managers and above, we had three women on our board of directors, and we had four or fve women reporting to our CEO. DW: You seem to be passionate about D&I.; What does it mean to you? TS: I believe this is my mission in life. Tis is not a job for me. Tis is my mis- sion. Tis is a ministry. DW I did not want to be that exceptional person who only came in when they were having problems with black people.

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