Amy Waninger

Iveliz Crespo (they/them) is a Senior Global Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Advisor at Reed Smith LLP. Reed Smith is an international law firm dedicated to helping clients navigate their businesses through complex disputes, transactions, and regulatory matters. The firm spans 30 offices with 3,000 people, including 1,700 lawyers.

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“Modeling Transparency” Full Episode

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[00:00:11] Announcer: This is including you the new series from lead at any level. Including you features stories from chief diversity officers and other executives who are creating inclusive cultures in their organizations. Our goal is to show what’s working in companies just like yours to give you the tools you need to keep pushing for progress in your own workplace.

We want to create belonging and opportunity for everyone, including you, and now here’s your host, Amy C Waninger.

Amy: Welcome to including you. My name is Amy C. Waninger. I’m the host of including you and the CEO of lead at any level. My guest today is Iveliz Crespo. They’re a senior global diversity equity and inclusion advisor at Reed Smith.

[00:01:00] LLP. Reed Smith is an international law firm dedicated to helping clients navigate their businesses through complex disputes, transactions and regulatory matters.

The firm spends 30 offices with 3000 people, including 1700 lawyers Iveliz, welcome to the show.

[00:01:18] Iveliz: Thank you for having me. I’m happy to be here.

[00:01:21] Amy: I am thrilled to have you. When I was doing the research for the show, I found something really interesting on the Reed Smith website that I want to talk to you about.

But before we get to that, I want to ask you, why is diversity equity and inclusion, such an important initiative for Reed Smith. They’re obviously putting a lot of energy and a lot of investment behind it.

[00:01:41] Iveliz: Yeah, absolutely. I think one of the things that I think is important to start off with is that, this isn’t something new for us.

We’ve had a DEI program for over 20 years. So, the commitment is something that is deeply ingrained within our organization. It’s ingrained in our core values and throughout every single department at the firm, We know

[00:02:00] that diversity equity and inclusion makes us a better law firm. We also know that it strengthens our services that we provide to clients and then advances our relationship, these clients, and also our stakeholders, and I think lastly, it really sets us apart from other law firms.

[00:02:17] Amy: So, you really looking at a long-term sustainable competitive advantage with your DEI programs internally and externally, right? I think that’s fantastic, and this is a drum that I keep trying to beat for people who say, I don’t know why we need to invest in this, I don’t know why we need to do this, now, now it’s too late. 20 years ago was probably the right time to start it. I alluded to this on your website, on the regional website, you have like many companies would publish an annual report. Reed Smith publishes a DEI annual report, and I wanted to ask you a little bit about how long have you been doing that?

Where does it come from and what kind of results have you seen from doing that?

[00:02:59] Iveliz: Yeah, I know that it predates me. I’m not exactly sure how long we’ve been doing it, but definitely for several years. And part of why we do that is that, we’re doing all of these amazing things. They’re great, they’re innovative, they’re thought-leading but what we want to do is not just create change within our own law firm. We want to change the industry, and in order to do that, we need to model transparency, and so part of why we share that information is, as an incentive to other law firms, to people across our industry to really challenge them right.

To improve their practices and create a better profession for us all.

[00:03:38] Amy: And so, are you seeing that you’re moving the needle with that? are you seeing other law firms get on board with this level of transparency or is it more of a, is it more of a I’m imagining like a middle school dance, right? Where one person goes out and dance and then all the other people are going to in the back going well, we’ll wait and see if they fall.

[00:03:55] Iveliz: I think we’ve seen, certainly seen success, right? We’ve done things, we’re

[00:04:00] one of the law firms to do several things first and we’re seeing more and more law firms really adopt these kinds of initiatives. So, I definitely do think that we are all moving into the direction where people are caring more and more about these things, and one, yes, I want to say Reed Smith is certainly taking a lead, but a lot of that also has to do with the industry overall, we’re seeing this big push from clients, from the bar associations. We’re seeing this big push from, academia and law schools, and so I think all of that is culminating into a really area to innovate, to do things that we haven’t done before. Because as we’ve seen, despite all of these efforts, our numbers, as an industry, haven’t really improved over the last 20 years, and so I do think that, modeling transparency is key. We want people to know what we’re doing and how we’re attacking these issues.

[00:04:51] Amy: And when you talk about the transparency, you have your numbers, your representation, numbers, your participation numbers, how the

[00:05:00] demographics are distributed throughout the company, and what your benchmarks and your targets are for those numbers, and you’re reporting annually to all of your stakeholders that you mentioned, your clients, your employees your industry partners, all of that.

What those numbers look like for you as a company? What kind of response have you gotten internally, externally from posting those numbers?

[00:05:23] Iveliz: I think by and large, our clients are always impressed with how transparent. I’ve heard a number of our main clients are, or a number of our clients, opine and talk about how, our report really sets us apart.

that’s, it’s one of the most comprehensive reports they’ve seen come out of a law firm. So, I do think that it’s been well received, at least on the client end. I think internally, we use that as a marketing, and so I know that many different departments use that to send to their clients, their contacts, recruits people that we’re trying to hire whether they’re in like entry-level or lateral or even at the partner

[00:06:00] level, and so I do think that it’s been well-received, it does a great job of kind of outlining all of the amazing things that, and really, I think in my opinion helps us set ourselves apart.

[00:06:12] Amy: so in your report, you highlight a women’s network that seems to have real prominence in this work. Can you talk a little bit about that?

[00:06:21] Iveliz: Absolutely, our winners network is actually unique. The women’s network, sorry called winners. It’s actually unique because it’s separate from our DEI program and there are several reasons for that, predominantly historically, we know that the issues that have impacted women across the globe look very different so we have a separate program that’s really designed. To look at that issue, not just within the U S but also globally, which our DEI program does as well. But we knew that because of the issues that women face in the legal industry that we needed to put renewed and extra focus on that.

So, they are two separate programs who work very closely together, obviously because we’re all championing for the same issues. But we do

[00:07:00] know that the issues that are impacting women look a little bit different and so they need a different approach.

[00:07:07] Amy: And that’s just one of several ERDs or networks that you have, right?

[00:07:13] Iveliz: Yes. That’s a group that specifically focused on women. We also have, in addition to that program, we have a set of business inclusion groups and those are groups that really target specific populations to help improve our policies, practices, our recruiting efforts and help drive inclusion and create a space where people can feel like they belong.

[00:07:35] Amy: So similar to, women’s issues are a little bit different in different places in the world.

Culturally speaking, I know that you have your global organization with a network for LGBTQ employees, LGBTQIA plus employees, and culturally, that can be a little tricky globally, right? Because in some places, just the identities themselves are not only marginalized, but in some cases, criminalized, how are you addressing

[00:08:00] that as a global organization?

[00:08:02] Iveliz: Absolutely, I think, we take the firm position that we are one law firm, and there are cultural nuances in every single office, but one of our priorities is making sure that, inclusion exists in all of our offices, and so we, we make sure that we know that LGBTQ folks have a firm understanding that they are included.

When we have instances where someone may be traveling to an office that maybe not as accepting, we have a process and a practice in place just to make sure that person feels supported and knows that irrespective of where they are, they’re still a part of a Reed Smith family and inclusion to us is paramount.

And so it’s something that we highly prioritize. And again, those approaches look different across our offices, like any approach for any given group across our offices. But it’s something that I’m proud to say that, inclusion at the heart of it is what we prioritize.

[00:08:54] Amy: I’ve heard it said that diversity is different everywhere, but inclusion is the same around the world.

[00:09:00] Iveliz: I really liked that quote. I’ve actually don’t think I’ve actually heard that yet, but I really do like that quote.

[00:09:07] Amy: I like that you have a feedback loop into policies and practices from your networks, because I think a lot of times companies miss that step, they want to have these sorts of grassroots efforts, but they don’t really take the initiative to create advisory responsibilities for those networks or to listen to the feedback from their networks.

Can you talk to us a little bit about policies that have changed because of that engagement because of that advisor?

[00:09:29] Iveliz: Yeah, absolutely. I will touch on that, but I also want to highlight that it’s something unique that we do is that for every single business inclusion group, we have a member of our senior management team pointed to each group. So, their goal really is to take all of that information, and enact it into policies practices, share that with senior leaders at the firm, and we’ve seen that be successful in a number of ways. Think most recently our pronoun policy that we recently rolled out and that was an initiative really led by our LGBT business inclusion group called prism.

[00:10:00] and they really worked hard along with members in HR to really create that policy and implement that policy firm wide, and so I think that’s one of the areas where, I’ve seen that relationship really work really well. Selfishly it’s something that I benefit from right. As somebody who is non-binary and uses they, them pronouns, and it’s it, to me it’s made a very big difference in the lives of not just LGBT folks, but also. Working in a global law firm, ideally being able to identify pronouns is something that we’ve seen a lot of people benefiting from not just people of the LGBT community.

[00:10:36] Amy: this is one of those policies or one of these initiatives that I think people overlook or they discount because they say it’s too niche, and it’s a lot like when you have disability inclusion or accessibility, it’s not just the people that are targeted by those policies or that are most vocally advocating for those policies that benefit from them, and so I remember working on global teams where

[00:11:00] I didn’t know who I was talking to or who was going to be in a meeting because I wasn’t familiar with, the naming convention. So, the gender conventions of naming in different cultures in different countries, or for people who don’t have, the luxury of the visual cues, right?

Maybe they use screen readers to network with people or, they’re using screen readers on LinkedIn. They may not know who they’re talking to, or, you know what the person’s pronouns are just by sight, and then of course we don’t know just by sight, what someone’s pronounced might be anyway.

and so it’s just a good reminder that, these policies or these initiatives, don’t just benefit the strongest advocates. They really benefit everyone and make it a lot easier to do business with anyone.

[00:11:43] Iveliz: Absolutely, and I think that’s, that’s why I like to use that example, because the benefit has been felt across the firm across different demographics.

[00:11:53] Amy: And I’m sure it helps too for you, for other members of the LGBTQ community to feel seen and valued right?

[00:12:00] by your firm. It’s not that you’ve just been swept aside. It’s not that you’re, I hate the word tolerance or tolerated.

You’re not tolerated. We don’t just let you be here out of the goodness of our hearts. We really value your contributions and really value who you are as a whole person. Can you talk a little bit about that? What that means?

[00:12:17] Iveliz: Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s very true is that, at Reed Smith, it’s certainly for me, I hold many different identities that, in one way or another are marginalized and have been historically excluded from various spaces, and I certainly feel valued, seen, heard and like I have a chance to be successful right at Reed Smith. But that’s really a Testament to how we value diversity.

We recognize that within every single person, there are multiple identities going on, and all of those identities converge, to create the people that we’re working with impacts values, impacts how we approach issues, how we tackle client matters, and so I think we have really

[00:13:00] learned the value of it and it’s something that shows in all of our practices, from how we prioritize staffing client matters to how we prioritize the allocation of work which is something that we’re working on now and I’m very proud of that because I think, it’s something that really does set us apart.

[00:13:18] Amy: You mentioned that you are working on this allocation of work and how you assign that. Can you talk a little bit more about that? About what’s next and what you’re still what’s still left to d for Reed Smith?

[00:13:29] Iveliz: Yeah, absolutely,  we’re hiring new people. So, I think that’s the first step, is recognizing that we need to really put some resources to this.

and the reason we’re doing that, it’s not like Reed Smith is alone in this work allocation journey. This is an issue that is impacting many law firms and many legal departments. And we know from research in the industry that this is one of the barriers that prevents people of color people with disabilities, LGBTQ folks, women from really

[00:14:00] advancing within the profession, and so it’s something that I think many different pockets within the industry are really working hard to address, and we’re no different, right? We realized that, internally we need some expertise here. So, we’re bringing in some new folks we’re designing a new program. We’re revamping our policy and practices around how that’s done.

All with an eye to make the process more inclusive, to remove those barriers that we know exist and to make that process more equitable and fair, right? For everyone involved. Because we know right when we start making those changes to make the process more fair, inevitably, every single person benefits.

[00:14:36] Amy: And when you talk about work allocation within the law firm, are you talking about who gets the high profile projects? Who gets the client-facing work versus the back office stuff. Is that the kind of work allocation you’re talking about?

[00:14:48] Iveliz: Yeah, we’re talking about access to those quality assignments, access to assignments that are going to give people, client FaceTime. Those are things that are incredibly important, right? As well as like work

[00:15:00] allocation and credit allocation. Who’s getting credit for those matters that we’re bringing in, and those are also things that we’re looking at. Because we know there’s a lot of bias that goes into that as well, and so in addition to, the types of work people are working on, we’re looking at the types of credit people get for the work that they’re working with.

[00:15:16] Amy: That’s the important point because I don’t know what the cases at Reed Smith and I’ve heard from other law firms that unless you’re a partner, you don’t necessarily get credit for bringing in revenue generating work, and that exacerbates the pay disparities that exist for historically excluded and historically marginalized people, but it also drives away people that might otherwise be, eligible for promotion or  eligible for career pathing within a company or within a firm because it takes so long to recoup, the expense of your education or to, feel like you’re really being valued by the firm. So I’m wondering, is that part of it as well?

[00:15:58] Iveliz: Absolutely, and I also think a

[00:16:00] lot of it has to do with bias, affinity bias. So, it’s not just, differences in tenure it’s also counteracting what we know happens in every organization. Which is that people tend to give work and credit differently depending on who the people that they’re giving that work in credit to are.

So, some people have more access to opportunities simply because of things like affinity bias, which makes sense. We tend to gravitate and trust people who are like us. And that impacts a lot of opportunities in the workplace, and so thinking about a more equitable way to give out those assignments is also something that is incredibly important. Because we know that if we leave it up to even the best intention to folks, we might still be susceptible to bias. So, creating a more equitable process, one that mitigates bias is something that is a top priority for us.

[00:16:50] Amy: Yeah. And it does two things, it makes it equitable for the people that need getting those opportunities, it I guess three things, it gives guidance to the people who want to do the right thing, but don’t know how

[00:17:00] but good policies also don’t leave bad actors, a place to hide, and it’s really easy to find people who have malicious intent or who are trying to skirt the responsibility of doing the right thing.

[00:17:12] Iveliz: It’s also an efficiency thing, in addition to all of those things where yes, it’s good for business. Yes, it’s good for morale. Yes. It’s good for us because we fully believe in these things. It’s also a matter of efficiency, right? It helps streamline the delegation of work in a more efficient way rather than just relying on, giving out this work to continuously giving the same work to one person, it helps expand people’s ability to work on different matters. And it creates a more efficient process for us.

[00:17:42] Amy: And I would imagine it also helps with succession planning because then you’ve got people who are cross trained and who have, had higher stakes projects and higher stakes work over their careers built up to that point.

[00:17:52] Iveliz: Yeah,

[00:17:53] Amy: so it’s winning all around. Is there anything else you want to share with our listeners, with our viewers about what you

[00:18:00] think is the secret sauce at Reed Smith? That’s really moving the needle for you.

[00:18:03] Iveliz: Yeah, I think for me, one of the things that I really appreciate is one, our program is pretty expensive.

But what I like most is that we recognize that it’s not a one size fits all approach. We’re not afraid to innovate, and while diversity, equity and inclusion are often lumped together. We are Reed Smith very much know that those are distinct concepts, and so we need to approach each differently, and so we have different metrics.

We have different ways and different programs really to address each one of those things, and I think that is what makes us successful, right? Because we’re not solely focused on diversity. We’re not solely focused on inclusion. We’re looking at equity and we’re asking those hard questions. And I think that is what really makes us successful is that we know it’s not a one size fits all approach and we’re not as scared to innovate and try to fix these issues.

[00:18:57] Amy: I think it’s fantastic that you’re doing this so

[00:19:00] systemically, but also in ways that impact each industry at the intersections of all of their identities. I think that’s so important.

Iveliz: Absolutely.

Amy: Iveliz, thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate you, and I look forward to seeing more great work and next year’s annual report from Reed Smith.

[00:19:16] Iveliz: Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me.

[00:19:21] Amy: That’s it for this week’s episode of including you join me next week when my guests will be Jorge Quezada from Granite Construction.

Kira Kimball (she/her) serves as the national Chief Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Officer for Marsh McLennan Agency. Marsh McLennan Agency (MMA) provides business insurance, employee health & benefits, retirement, and private client insurance solutions to organizations and individuals seeking limitless possibilities. With nearly 9,000 colleagues and 160 offices across the United States and Canada, MMA is one of the largest brokerage operations in North America.

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“Execution Frameworks” Full Episode

Full Episode Transcript

[00:00:46] Amy: Welcome to including you. I’m Amy C. Waninger, with me today is Kira Kimball. Kira serves as the national chief diversity equity and inclusion officer for marsh McLennan agency,

[00:01:00] MMA provides business insurance, employee health and benefits, retirement and private client insurance solutions to organizations and individuals seeking limitless possibility with nearly 9,000 colleagues at 160 offices across the US and Canada, MMA is one of the largest brokerage operations in north America. Kira, welcome to including you.

[00:01:23] Kira: Thank you so much, Amy, for having me today.

[00:01:27] Amy: Now I am so excited. I liked it when I know somebody from a past life, I love to share that in my interviews with my audience, because I think it’s, I think it’s neat to know how people know each other, if they know each other, you and I actually met in the before times at a conference, a business insurance magazine did a diversity and inclusion conference in Chicago and you and I met there, correct?

[00:01:50] Kira: We did, several years ago, in fact and that was really Amy when MMA was just beginning our journey.

[00:01:57] Amy: Oh, that’s fantastic. And so, I know, cause I was at

[00:02:00] the conference, there were a lot of turbo boosters for people who were just getting started. There was a lot there about the business case for diversity and inclusion and why it’s important in the insurance industry, and for those who don’t know my background, I worked in insurance for about 12 years. So, this is something I’m very passionate about. It’s hard to get me to shut up about the insurance industry sometimes, but I noticed when I was doing some research for the show, Kira that your role is relatively new as the national chief DEI officer, and I’m wondering what was the impotence behind creating this role? That’s a big investment for a company to make what’s MMA looking to solve?

[00:02:35] Kira: It is a big investment, and I would say around 2018 or so our CEO, Dave S lit with MMA went through an unconscious bias workshop and it was really eye opening as it is for many of us who participate in that type of learning, and that really sparked his interest in terms of looking at the opportunity for marsh, McLennan agency, and so around that

[00:03:00] time, prior to me meeting you, Dave was excited to start a DNI council at the MMA enterprise level, and that’s really where we began this work, and I was fortunate enough to have a spot on that council and began leading and convening that group, and so for the past, three years until September we’ve been a volunteer group and we have really been inspired and empowered to do this work as a volunteer army, if you will, and in September, the leadership with an MMA said, this is important enough to our organization and frankly, as to our industry, that we really want to have a leadership role, have accountability for the strategy, the vision, and really the execution and the outcomes. So that’s how this position came to play. And so, I was put into this role and like I said in September, and my goal

[00:04:00] really is to help transform our organization. In the insurance industry, we are really the back backbone, if you will, of society, and I’ve been involved in so many changes within how business gets done and protected, and we also know it’s a great industry. It’s filled with vibrancy, it’s filled with innovation, great problem solving, and it’s a wonderful industry to be involved in. So, we need to get more people who represent different identities in our communities involved, and that really has everything to do with what we hope to transform in our organization.

[00:04:41] Amy: You brought up the notion of accountability, and I’m really glad you said that because I think a lot of times when you do have volunteer or grassroots volunteer efforts in big companies, especially, it’s very easy for them to be brushed aside. It’s very easy for them to for the progress to be very innermittent, and for them

[00:05:00] to wonder does anybody really value this work? and I think. The accountability piece is so crucial because just like any other initiative that we would have in a company of this size, if there was going to be a total quality initiative or a lean initiative or an ethics initiative, it wouldn’t be volunteer. There would be metrics around it. It would be, there would be accountability. People would be held to that. Can you tell us a little bit more about what you’re tracking and how you’re tracking it in terms of accountability for the organization?

[00:05:27] Kira: Right now, since we are early on our journey, when you know, a little over three years, looking at our culture is really critical because we know as we begin to really get intentional about diversifying our talent and having balanced, represented talent.

We’ve got to create that culture of inclusion and feelings of belonging or else, folks who represent different communities, they may not feel that they can be themselves here. So, we’ve worked really hard on culture. So, some of the ways that we

[00:06:00] measure that would be through engagement surveys and really understanding how our colleagues through many different lenses feel about coming to work at MMA.

Do they feel involved? Do they feel valued? So really trying to look from a cultural perspective first, making sure that each region has a DEI council. Standing up colleague resource groups and making sure that they’re accessible from all points of our geography. We have here’s a hard statistic, 87% of our colleagues, Amy have gone through an unconscious bias workshop, not through an LMS check the box, but actually a two hour peer to peer facilitated workshop, and now we’re switching our gears to allyship for our next round. So, our measurables right now have been more about how we ensuring we’ve got a framework for delivery, how are we making sure that our culture

[00:07:00] is sound for inclusion and belonging? and that’s probably where we started some of the more tactical things with regards to talent acquisition, as an example, making sure all of our talent acquisition folks are trained on unconscious bias, how it could can show up in the interview process or the offering process, if you will.

So those are some of the spaces as we are beginning our journey that we’re looking to make sure we have some good outcomes.

[00:07:31] Amy: Excellent. And you mentioned frameworks, and this is something that I find interesting about the work that you’re doing at marsh is, some companies have a very top-down approach to their DEI initiatives.

Some have a very grassroots approach, they’ll have homegrown employee resource groups, home grown business resource groups, and you do both, you tackle it from both directions, but then you also have this middle group that works in each

[00:08:00] region. Can you talk a little bit about the structure that you’re using to make sure that this work gets done company-wide? and how that’s helping you move through this process.

[00:08:08] Kira: Framework is critical. It’s one of the best practices, I think, to make sure that organizations have a solid way to deliver this work for the biggest impact. So certainly, our CEO and executive leadership are odd in, this is a conversation that our CEO has with regional leadership and making sure that DEI is on their agenda.

So that’s from the, and then in terms of driving this from a colleague direct perspective in each one of our regions across the US and Canada, we have a regional DEI council. So the MMA enterprise to United council sets forth vision and strategy, and it has been in place again for about three and a half years, and then each one of the regions is connected to one of those national

[00:09:00] leaders in the region. So, they can execute the strategy and the vision in a way that is meaningful for them because Amy, you and I know geographies are different, across the country in Canada and what might be a big goal in one region.

For example, the west might be different than in the upper Midwest. We’re where I sit in Sioux falls, South Dakota. So, we really want to empower the regions, and many of the regions actually have location, and in fact, Sioux falls and Fargo, they haven’t joined local DEI council. So really creating that framework where knowledge strategy tactics can be cascaded and it can also bubble up, and I’m a huge fan of the grassroots effort and really believe on colleague driven initiatives, and that’s really where a lot of the change can happen. But we know that our leaders are decision-makers, those who hold a lot of authority and power and

[00:10:00] resourcing, they need to be doing this work as well, so this both and framework is really critical for our success, and it’s also empowered a lot of individuals to get involved who are passionate, many of whom are underrepresented colleagues, and it gives them opportunities to own opportunities to develop more professional skills, create visibility, if you will, and really own changes and transformation in our organization, and that’s what gets me excited. So probably we have about 170 or so colleagues involved in our regional DEI councils and our colleague resource groups are part of this framework and structure as well.

[00:10:49] Amy: Can you talk a little bit about those colleague resource groups? Which ones do you have? what was your sequencing on those? and how did they contribute to your vision for DEI at marsh?

[00:10:56] Kira: Absolutely, with MMA, our colleague resource groups are centered

[00:11:00] on some important C’s culture, helping to build our culture, helping to educate about the CRGs culture. Commerce is an important part of this growing business, career, using CRGs is an opportunity for professional and career development if you will, community, how do we impact our community? Part of why MMA came together is because we are like-minded agencies that really believe we’re stewards in our community as well. So how can MMA from a DEI perspective impact our communities and finally communication. So those were the grounding ways that differentiate a CRG and from maybe just an employee group, a support group, if you will, or a book club.

So, the CRGs are very organic. They bubble up by colleague interests. My office is not going to say we’re going to start a CRG cause we really want to empower our team members.

[00:12:00] So our six-year G’s center around the LGBTQ plus community women, black and African-American, Latin X and then military families and veterans.

And we have chapters that are popping up in different markets, where we have colleagues again, based on colleague interests, passion and desire to center conversations on those six different CRGs. And then there’s always opportunity for a colleague to start another CRG. So again, these aren’t necessarily the CRGs that I said, we need to have these series.

They’re colleague driven, and then my office tries to help with some resourcing for them, but certainly their regional leaders are excited to support them as well, and each of our six year CRGS has an executive sponsor that, helps to elevate the conversation among leadership, create

[00:13:00] visibility, remove barriers, but those five C’s, Amy really center what we believe CRGs can accomplish, and they are big drivers of helping us educate, change our culture and think differently about our talent.

[00:13:18] Amy: Well, you mentioned at the beginning that you do you measure your success through employee engagement surveys, have you seen a change yet? Or are you starting to move the needle in the right direction on employee engagement and representation? Or is that something that you’re still you’re still waiting to see results from?

[00:13:32] Kira: I think we’re seeing some good movement around culture, as I indicated, that’s a place that we’ve started, and, that feeling of inclusion and belonging has been critical. And we were recently awarded a top workplace recognition, which is pretty exciting for us because that is all driven by colleagues completing the application. So

[00:14:00] that is probably a hallmark for us, a measurement for us to say our colleagues are excited about working here because they helped us get this recognition.

So, from a culture perspective, I think that is moving in a good direction. We know we have opportunities though, to start thinking differently about talent and talent are balanced talent, represented talent, and really Amy at all levels. It’s not simply about bringing in new talent that represents diverse communities, but making sure that all talent have access to rise and their careers and that career pathway is meaningful for them.

So that’s something that we’re rolling up our sleeves on and our talent team. It’s really getting intentional about career pathing and what those opportunities look like, and that’s so critical because you and I both know when we grow in our career, we grow in

[00:15:00] our wealth accumulation. We grow in our ability to say we grow in our ability to access that vacation or save for college, whatever that might be, and that’s really where social justice can happen in the workplace. That impacts our folks to go out into the communities and live a life that may define as thriving and successful.

[00:15:22] Amy: I love that because, I’ve often told young people don’t sleep on insurance as a career. Because the insurance industry has provided really good middle-class jobs for a hundred years or better.

Not always in the right way. I will say that, it’s not always been the most inclusive industry. It’s not always been the most accessible industry, but I think as we start to put a focus on culture industry-wide and within individual companies. I think there’s a lot of really great opportunity there for people to have careers of purpose careers with longevity, careers, with impact. There are very few industries that can have

[00:16:00] the same level of impact that the insurance industry can, and it’s there’s so much, there are so many people there who are purpose-driven, it’s not just a place to do great work that is

[00:16:14] Amy: to do your best work. It’s not just a place to do fun work, which I know people roll their eyes when I say, oh, insurance work is fun work, but really, marketing, IT, human resources. All of the backend stuff you can do and that you can do anywhere. You can do an insurance, but there’s some really cool stuff going on in insurance, right? With actuaries, with underwriting the producers and, the brokerages that are really making things happen for people who are trying to live out their dreams of home ownership, their dreams of owning and operating a business, the dreams of expanding a business or investing in commercial real estate, and so the more we can do that outreach from within the industry, the more we can grow our economies, but the more the insides of our organization

[00:17:00] look like the communities that we’re serving, the better able we’ll be to serve those communities as well.

[00:17:07] Kira: So agree on that. It is really critical for us to reflect in terms of our employee base, not just for MMA, but for the industry as a whole, that reflects our communities and reflects individuals who are wanting to start their own business, construction from whatever that might be.

So, it is really critical. And when we think about the changes in demographics, we think about the changes in buying power gen Ze’s, who are coming in and really, it’s table space stakes for them, for diversity, equity and inclusion and purpose, which you’ve talked a lot about. We need to do these things because it’s good for business, it’s good for our employer brand, but we also know it’s the right thing to do. So, there are multiple reasons to say yes to doing a work of DEI from the industry’s perspective, and your comments about

[00:18:00] what a great industry to get involved and to grow your life in a way that’s meaningful for you. For those individuals who want to be in production, the sky’s the limit in terms of opportunity that a person can create for themselves and us thinking differently again, as an industry about core talent is and taking more intentional paths to diversify that talent, that’s what’s really going to help us ignite this transformation, and also within diversity when I’m talking about unconscious bias and teach about it. When I say, if I hired a whole bunch of people were like me, we’d be great strategists, but we would be crappy at details, project management and timeline.

So, thinking about the value of diversity in organizations, it really next levels us for innovation, creative problem solving and solution generating, and as a business differentiator and with ESG now looming and

[00:19:00] the importance of doing that work diversity, equity and inclusion is part of that formula.

[00:19:07] Amy: Can you explain a little bit more about what ESG is, especially in the context of the insurance industry, because that’s a relatively new term that people may not be as familiar.

[00:19:15] Kira: Yeah, E environmental and compliance and thinking about our carbon footprint, social, how do we show up and into the space of diversity equity inclusion that is a lot of the S if you will, and G for governance, you know how our organizations is impacting, and how it is structured is really critical on how we make decisions and where our values might be. So, when we think of a new folks are probably more aware of corporate social responsibility, and that really goes hand in hand with ESG and sustainability, if you will and organizations who want to differentiate themselves from a business perspective and an employer perspective. These are things that organizations are starting to

[00:20:00] lean into. The other thing is Amy. When we think of partnering with businesses and our suppliers and our vendors and our centers of influence.

When businesses are seeking partners, some of their requests for proposals are including tell us a little bit about your DEI journey or your commitment to ESG. What does that look like? So, this type of corporate responsibility work and social impact work is becoming part of business and business questions that organizations are being asked.

[00:20:34] Amy: I think it’s really important for people to understand that the insurance industry, while perhaps lagging behind some of the other industries in these areas really is. I’ve seen a lot of initiatives coming out of different companies, large companies like MMA and some of the big carriers, smaller regional companies, even, small agencies and I know that there is a perception because I’ve worked in the industry for

[00:21:00] so long. I know there’s a perception about what insurance is and what it looks like, and I’m not going to say that’s all false. It’s not all false but there is movement in this area and it is a great place. A great place to work, a great place to have an impact.

But also, there’s real opportunity for people who want to make change and who wants to leave their mark on an industry to step in and say, look, here’s what I’m seeing elsewhere, here’s what is happening in the market outside of insurance, here’s, what’s happening in tech and in banking and in philanthropy and higher education, right?

Because the thing about insurance is it touches all those other things. If the players in the industry don’t keep up on what’s going on outside the industry, then they won’t have market share anymore, basically. So, for those who are thinking about career changes, it’s a great way to get in and say, look, I’ve got all this experience in another industry, and here’s how it might serve might serve the insurance industry, but also just really give you a place to, to have a real

[00:22:00] impact economically, socially, globally, as well as within your company.

[00:22:04] Kira: I love, you, you can get to the heart of why I’m in this work, because it is for impact. It is for change making and not just in our organization, but we really want to lead, and to your point, other industries are doing this work, and when we work with our clients, it’s not unusual for some of our service teams or production teams, consultants, working with that client to talk about our DEI journey and to ask them what their journey looks like and to exchange best practices or pitfalls to avoid.

So, we are really starting to have more of these conversations with our clients, for the exact thing that you’re talking about, because other industries are doing this work, the associated general contractors comes to mind. And from a national level, they have something called a culture of care, which has everything to do with a diversity equity and inclusion and

[00:23:00] creating a psychological safety and making sure that.

When we think about women in that industry, there’s great opportunity there. And how can I make sure that I can show up as a woman who can drive that forklift or manage that job site and learning from different industries can be really helpful. I’m with you. I want to make an impact and that allows us to.

Impact our communities, for positive change for all people, and I, that’s why I’m here in this industry because of what you’re talking about. We touch all different organizations and businesses, and if we can lead from the front and have these conversations with our clients, and I’m always so honored when I get pulled into a conversation to learn from them or to share our best practices and just inspire folks to do this.

[00:23:51] Amy: So what’s next for MMA, now that you’re in your role, you’ve been in your role about coming up on a year now my sense of time is all screwed up because of COVID

[00:24:00] and square years, the calendar doesn’t make sense to me anymore, but you’ve been in the role almost a year, and you’ve had the CRG set up for a while You’ve had the DEI council what’s next for MMA in this?

[00:24:11] Kira: My hope is really now that we’ve done a good job with setting up our culture. We’ve gotten affirmation in so many spaces from colleagues around inclusion that we can really get purposeful about thinking differently about talent. So, some new partnerships that we have who are helping us be better, we’d be the national African American insurance association.

The association for professional insurance women. We have women in our organization, but are they elevated to decision-making and resource wheeling positions? The link of USA is a new organization in our industry and you can follow them on LinkedIn that centers the LGBTQ plus community, and one of my colleagues in our Southeast region is just establishing an Asian American insurance network.

[00:25:00] So, these are some places where we need to get intentional again, to meet different talent, because if we go the same paths and I think of myself as a leader, when I’m recruiting or have recruited, I’ve had to learn different pathways, Amy, in order to expand my network in my reach, if you will.

So that’s what I’d like us really take an intentional and have some I’ve asked the regions to consider partnerships in their regions. That might make sense for them. If it is a chapter of the national African American insurance association, or maybe its inroads or the crystal Ray net, which are amazing organizations across the United States that work with underrepresented high school students or college students to introduce them to our industry.

So that’s really my call to action for our leaders is to get intentional about developing different networks and attracting different talent.

[00:26:00] Amy: I love that you say networks because as that’s where my work started, was trying to get people to diversify their networks, and so they can see their industries, see their companies, see their own work from multiple perspectives, identify barriers that exist for others that don’t exist for them and then start to make change.

Kara, thank you so much for joining me today on including you. I’m so glad that we got a chance to reconnect and I look forward to what’s next at marsh.

[00:26:26] Kira: Thanks so much for the conversation today, Amy.

[00:27:19] Amy: That’s it for this week’s episode of including you join me next week when my guest will be evilest Crespo from Reed Smith, we’ll be talking about modeling transparency in the legal industry.

Ralph Smithers (He/Him) is the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Community Relations Leader for Encova Insurance. Encova provides workers compensation and other commercial insurance, as well as auto, home, and life insurance for individuals. Encova employs 1200 associates and serves clients in 29 states. The company is based in Columbus, Ohio.

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“Community Outreach” Full Episode

Full Episode Transcript

Welcome to including you. I’m your host, Amy C. Waninger. My guest today is Ralph Smithers, Jr. Ralph is the diversity equity, inclusion and community relations leader for Encova insurance Encova provides

[00:01:00] workers’ compensation and other commercial insurance, as well as auto home and life insurance. For instance. Encova employees about 1200 associates and serves clients in 29 states.

The company is based in Columbus, Ohio, and Ralph is a dear friend of mine going back several years. Ralph, welcome to the show. I am so glad to have you

It is as an absolute pleasure to be here.

Thank you so much. So I’m curious, because I know you’ve been in your role for several years now, and let’s be Frank.

The insurance industry is not always on the cutting edge of progress in terms of how we manage, how companies get managed. Let’s just, I think that’s fair to say. So when Encova started this work or as they continue this work, what drives. The need for this and in Encova what are the, what’s the why behind diversity and inclusion in Encova.

Thanks. Thanks for saying that, Amy, and I’m glad you said that. I w I was thinking it, but you said it, and I think the reality is. In

[00:02:00] order for our company to have a future ready workforce that is ready to respond to the dramatically changing demographics in our country, where we are expected to become majority minority in our country by 2042.

And every time someone does more research, it gets sooner. It was 2045. When I first started looking at that when you consider that generation Z is already majority minority. So your fresh talent pool is gonna look a lot different than say, 20 years ago or however long you want to go back.

Maybe even not that long. It becomes urgent to make sure that we are positioning ourselves so that we can not only have a future ready workforce, but to be able to relate to our customers, even if our colleagues don’t reflect the diversity of all the communities we’re in our customers will and have a good foundation to be able to talk to our

[00:03:00] customers, relate to them, respond to their needs respect, whatever sensibilities they have, as far as, making that important transaction, then we’re going to have trouble in the future.

You know, that is so true and that’s one of the reasons that I tell companies, you can’t really sit on this any longer. This is an urgent need now. And I know, from talking to you before that Encova has some key performance indicators around this, around what you want your workforce to look like, act and behave can you tell us a little bit more about how you’re measuring success in this area? For some people, I think it can feel squishy or intangible.

Sure. And there’s certainly a lot of intangibles in this, but I would say that the driving objective that I’ve always looked at facing this work is to make sure that our workforce reflects the diversity of the communities we serve.

Now, we have offices in places that aren’t very diverse.

[00:04:00] So we can’t have unrealistic expectations about what we can do there. But here in Columbus we are the fastest growing metropolitan area and city in the region. Columbus has been the largest city in Ohio for years, but our metropolitan areas about the takeover.

And that’s coming at the expense of other parts of the state and one of the things that’s really interesting, we’re expecting in Columbus to have an increase in our population of 1 million by 2050. Which isn’t that far away it’s abstract, I can go back that far in my career.

And I was, in, in the workforce for a few years, so it’s abstract, but it’s really not that far out, but we in Columbus we have seen upwards of 82% of the new people coming to Columbus being born outside of the United States. That’s our talent and I used to say this, especially to our the CEO that was

[00:05:00] present when I was first came into this role. If we are in the fastest growing city, in our largest state. We really have to be dialed in to all this, because I believe, nowadays in an insurance, being a insurance industry veteran yourself you understand that when things start going bad, we start looking at our loss ratio. We start looking at or underwriting.

We start looking at our marketing. We start looking at all those traditional factors to see how things are going. But I am convinced that in our industry, as well as all industries. That DEI is going to be another diagnostic if a company is not performing as it should be, because if you don’t have the talent, if you can’t get access to talent, if you can’t appeal to the customers that are out there, then you’re going to start to falter and I think DEI is going to be a diagnostic, it’s going to go right up there with all the other financials.

[00:06:00] I completely agree with you. I think that this is so important and I know that in the past, there’s been a lot of stigma around words like quotas, but what we’re talking about, isn’t quota so much as representation and making sure that the inside of your company matches the outside of your company, so you can continue to do business and I think when we focus on numbers, We track the numbers, but we focus on why those numbers are important. We can probably bridge those gaps a little bit faster. Don’t you agree?

Absolutely. In fact I get it. I had a chance to talk to a group earlier this week and it got to make a few points. So first of all, I here in Ohio for the first time in recorded history, we had a higher death rate than birth. So trends are accelerating. That’s the first time that’s ever happened in Ohio and it’s happened in a few other states as well. So I always stress that and especially when that question about quotas comes up, because it does come up. That’s the association that a

[00:07:00] lot of people have about this work and I just stress that one, Diversity equity and inclusion benefits everyone and it’s not a matter of, or it’s a matter of more no one is going to get displaced. Population changes in birth rates are taking care of that. A lot of what’s been driving the great resignation.

I don’t know this for sure, but I’ve seen a few things that suggest that. The baby boomers moving into retirement has been a big factor in this. And that’s something that I know I was looking at some of our data, five years ago, I knew it was going to be pretty dramatic. So no one is going to get displaced.

It’s going to be a matter of having to deal with the available talent and the available customers and if you don’t choose to respond to that, then you know, you might have trouble.

Yeah, there are so much opportunity. Not just in the insurance industry, in a lot of industries, there is so much opportunity to go around and really, it’s not about people

[00:08:00] fighting over jobs. It’s about companies fighting for people right now, especially, and I know one of the things that you’ve done retaining employees is so important when you’re talking about a tight labor market. One of the things that Encova has done has been to launch employee resource groups. You guys did that about four or five years ago, I think, and I was wondering if that has helped with your retention and how that has played into your success at Encova.

Yeah. Our resource groups at, Encova are the heartbeat of our DE and I efforts being a department of one, I really lean on our leaders to help, and they do, it’s a labor, it’s a passion play, it’s a labor of love, and I’ll tell you what, I’ve heard this many times many times where I’ve had people say, being part of this group is what gets me up in the morning. It’s what keeps me here. They look for, with the resource, before resource groups, you tended to only connect with people in your immediate department and maybe a handful of stakeholders outside of your immediate work group. Whereas

[00:09:00] this has helped people, especially when you consider that we have, certain populations that are so underrepresented, this is allowed connections to occur across our enterprise and, we’re really spread out. We’re more spread out now than ever. We only have maybe a third of our population here in Columbus and maybe another, but less than a third in Charleston, West Virginia, and then when you start spreading out, when you’re doing. Claims, adjusters, marketing folks, all of the other people that make an insurance operation go, we are really spread out. So even those department level connections, especially with COVID are not quite the same as they used to be, but the resource group connections are drawing people together.

People are fighting a higher purpose oftentimes in the work and the experiences that they get and all, ultimately, I think it contributes to allowing people to find a way to be a part of something that’s bigger than themselves.

So all of that success that you’ve had with those employee

[00:10:00] resource groups, was that what you anticipated would happen?

Like what was the goal when you started them to begin with? Because again, you were ahead of the curve on this, especially in your industry.

Yeah. That’s a great question. So, I’m going to use this as an opportunity to give you a shout out, Amy. I, before I came into this space, I was a full blown hardcore insurance person. I’m a charter property, casualty underwriter among other titles and designations. And I remember when we were really trying to get this off the ground, there was this great article in CPCU magazine written by none other than Amy Waninger about resource groups, what their purpose is, how they’re structured, what they’re intended to do and that turned out to be such a helpful resource for me to help communicate what we were trying to do. Both for our associates who really had no idea and our leadership. So, I did want to give you a shout out for

[00:11:00] that. So

thank you.

So, the goals that, that we have, we I consulted with any person that did this work, who would have lunch with me or coffee.

I bought a lot of coffee and bought a lot of lunch. Most of it out of my own pocket to really learn and brains from anyone who would sit down and talk with me, and we established a high level pillars of what we were hoping to charter our resource groups around, and I’ll give a shout out to Honda.

We actually. I have a big Honda plant, not too far away, and they actually had a model that we mostly adopted our plan from, and the goal was is that, we didn’t want to have this, not a club. We, we didn’t want to have clubs don’t really have we wanted our groups to serve the business.

So we, we wanted to create networking was one objective. And I’m going to try to make sure I remember all this networking service to the community professional development.

[00:12:00] And I can’t remember the third off the top of my head, but I’m going to remember it as soon as we’re done, I’m sure. But personal professional development, networking service to the community.

And also, I guess the other one, I just remembered what it was contributing to the business operation. So an example of that is we had the national urban league conference here. Back in 2018, right? When we were first launching our resource groups and we had members of our African American resource group accompany our talent acquisition team to the urban league expo so that folks can speak to their own experience about the company and be able to help those that are trying to figure out if insurance is something that they want to do could maybe get a friendly face and maybe someone they might be able to relate to.

Countless examples of that. Our LGBTQ group has been instrumental in helping us review and get some of our policies changed and help us increase our corporate equality index score. We’ve had a working parents

[00:13:00] group has done things like having a virtual graduation ceremony to help recognize our young people our  young stakeholders who are parents of our associates, or I’m sorry, the kids of our associates when COVID shut down all the graduation ceremony. So, you go through all of those different things. So that definitely added a lot of texture and quality networking and overall sense of belongingness.

I think that’s all fantastic. I love the connection that you make. And I know your role specifically focused, not just internally, but also on community relations and community impact from within Encova.

And I noticed too, because I follow you on social media and I follow pretty closely my insurance friends, people are taking notice of this outside of, Encova. I have seen your picture on, I don’t know how many stages recently holding different trophies and awards and plaques and certificates of

[00:14:00] excellence, and I was wondering if you can tell us just a little about I think you got one just this last week, didn’t you?

Yeah, thank you, Amy. I appreciate that. First thing I’ll say is that I had been very fortunate, very blessed. I’ve been able to be recognized for different things and sometimes. It’s like getting a purple heart.

You get the recognition, but when you look at all the blood and sweat and tears that went into it, flip a coin, I’m glad to be recognized, but boy, I’ve got marks to show what that was all about. I’ve had a couple, I’ll share some of have a little more meaning to me, I was actually a recognized as an outstanding diversity champion by Columbus business first, this was three years ago now, and the folks that nominated me for that were from our LGBTQ resource group and I helping move some policies along that made a huge impact on our corporate equality index score. As well as just the overall quality life of our

[00:15:00] company, and that was hard. That, that was really hard. It wasn’t as if everything was going my way on that, and that one was almost like a purple heart in some ways where I felt like I suffered a little bit, but we were, being recognized was amazing. I also, and this is another one that means a lot to me.

I just recently got recognized by Ohio state, by the office of diversity inclusion at Ohio state. I think it was outstanding or distinguished community volunteer. I think that’s what it says. Forgive me. I actually received scholarships from the Ohio state office of diversity inclusion. When I was a student, I was a pioneer in that respect, such that most of my school’s paid for, and I have ever since that time, I was one of those students that, they say C’s get degrees and, I relate to that a little, and I was a student who just barely qualified for the program that I was in, and they gave me the scholarship and that scholarship

[00:16:00] actually grew over my time in school, such that I was able to graduate debt free and just completely appreciate that blessing.

So I made a commitment as a 20 something. It’s this one day, I’m going to pay all this back with interest, and I’m a friend of mine launched a scholarship called the bucking, the trend scholarship at Ohio state that was focused towards African-American males to help buck the trend of African-American males not graduated from college. We didn’t want to see anyone not make it through school because they didn’t have the resources. So, we started pulling our own resources together. About 10 years ago, I was invited to participate in that and we not only have provided over $20,000 worth of scholarships.

Largely out of our own pockets, but we’ve also connected with the students and we tell them all the time we, you know, instead of just handing them a check, we might have

[00:17:00] lunch or a gathering. We might connect on LinkedIn or what have you, and we tell them all the time. The scholarship is nice and it’s something that’s gonna really help you out right now.

But what we’d like to try to do is do some networking with you and that network is going to be worth many times more than your scholarship is so that, so I got recognized for kind of my work in that a couple of weeks ago have also been recognized as a oh, as an outstanding advocate from the Ohio minority supplier development council.

That meant a lot trying to move that along, and supplier diversity is a little bit outside of my regular lane, but I want to make sure that we’re trying to make an impact there with that, and then also. That the company has been recognized versus some other other things around the community certainly that I had, it had a big part in, so I’m really proud of that. But most importantly to me is the results. The awards are nice, but the outcomes are better.

Absolutely, and I think

[00:18:00] it’s nice when people notice the outcomes, right? To me, the awards are about somebody noticed the outcome, and when you have that kind of an impact repeatedly in your community, people are bound to notice the impact that you’re having, and I’m, so I’m always happy to see people recognized for their work. I’m going to be selfish and admit I’m extra happy when it’s people that I know. So just know that every time I see you holding one of those awards, it just, it warms my heart and it makes me smile and it makes me proud to be associated with somebody who’s doing such amazing things.

I feel the same, my biggest reward is getting to have a conversation with you. That definitely goes both ways, and I will say this, a lot of the work is thankless. Usually when you’re out there, you’re having to extend yourself a little bit.

You’re putting your neck out there. Usually, a lot of times you only hear about something if it goes wrong, you’re taking a big risk. You might be spending so much time on something that might be outside of your core work

[00:19:00] duties that maybe you don’t respond to an email or you miss something in the office. That’s the ongoing risk, but, to your point, it is quite a blessing to, to be noticed, and I don’t do anything for that purpose, but when you are noticed it, it means a lot. So, I appreciate you asking about.

Oh, of course. I’m glad to now your work, I know you got big plans for Encova but I wanted to talk about it was as we think toward the future you’re involved as an advisor to the Columbus partnership and that’s a, an association of central Ohio CEOs.

And I know that you’ve got some big plans there too. Can you tell us a little bit about what’s next? Not just for, Encova, but also for Columbus.

Sure. So, I’m one of several advisers better both from the corporate and the non-profit community to help talk to our leaders about formulating a strategy here in central Ohio to make

[00:20:00] diversity equity and inclusion our regional economic advantage, and it’s very exciting because the partnership has a tremendous track record of getting things done. Big things. Our most recent initiative was call it smart Columbus to try to get more ready for electric vehicles and things like that. So everywhere you go, you see a place to plug in an electric car and you see a lot of things getting ready.

So, the partnership is looking at trying to do the same thing in a DE and I, and this was just reported in our Columbus dispatch in our newspaper earlier this week. So, I could certainly share it, but there’ve been some of the brightest minds in the world doing research on this and most exciting things that we have going on in Columbus right now is that Intel is building a new plant here in central Ohio, which is expected to bring $10 billion worth of economic benefit to the region Everyone’s all dialed in ready, very

[00:21:00] excited about Intel and what that means with the chip shortages and everything. It’s gonna help a lot of things out, but the study that was done. Suggested, and if we can reach a state of equity, particularly with African-Americans with the efforts that are underway, that we could realize a new Intel plant every year it’s, this is the equivalent benefit.

So, $10 billion a year of the economic impact to our region. So, it’s really cool to be able to be in the room to see where all these deliberations and research and discussions are occurring, and to see that kind of get translated into that kind of economic result is very exciting, and Columbus is going to try to do its best to take the lead in that so that we can be a thriving, exciting place to live.

I think that’s incredible, and I want to say this another way, if I may, because I don’t want this to get lost on anyone in case they didn’t

[00:22:00] make this logical jump. If building equity in Columbus for the African-American community will generate $10 billion of impact every year. Then the reverse of that is the inequity in place right now is costing the community $10 billion per year, until that goes away. Is that fair to say?

Absolutely. In fact, I would argue that it might even be higher because, the $10 billion is presumed to be an ROI that comes in the form of, higher compensation and, those sorts of things.

I don’t know exactly what they study, if you look at all the other issues that are prevalent whether it be. We have opioid challenges. We have infant mortality challenges. You start looking at the stresses that go on the healthcare system. It’s quite possible. In fact I don’t know this for sure, but I believe it will probably, if we dug into it, we’d find out that we’re probably being weighed down more than

[00:23:00] that, just because of all the other bad things that happen when equity does not exist.

Yeah, and it’s interesting because we’re always asked, I think as diversity and inclusion professionals, we’re always asked for a business case around why we want to change something, and I always want to ask in response. I don’t usually, because I don’t want people to think that I’m a smart Alec, but I always want people to tell me what’s the business case for doing it the way we’ve always done it? What’s the business case for staying in this place? and when we look at an area like Columbus where we’re saying the economic drain of the status quo is 10 billion plus per year. The business case for change writes itself. We don’t need to make a case for it. We can just say, look, you’re spending billions of dollars unnecessarily and not just unnecessarily, but. To your own detriment, and I just, I feel like this is such important work that needs to be done, and the way you’re doing this in collaboration and in partnership

[00:24:00] with your region and not just within your own company, I think is. Both commendable and smart and necessary, but also in many ways, revolutionary. Cause I don’t know that a lot of mid-sized companies in mid-size cities are thinking this way, and so thank you, Ralph, really for the work that you do for the impact that you’re having, and thank you for being on, including you. I’m so glad to see you again.

It was an absolute pleasure, Amy. And I’m a huge fan of yours. I, every time you do a live stream on LinkedIn, every time I can, when I’m available, I’m trying to try to log in and make sure I see that, and really appreciate making sure that we push that business case because there are skeptics out there, and especially in the corporate world where we’re motivated by bottom line results and having been a finance major and having that mindset, it’s really cool to be a part of that and be able to relay, some of those

[00:25:00] things I’ve been able to learn through this journey.

So thank you. Absolutely.

[00:26:00]

Charles Watkins is the Chief Diversity Officer and Equity Partner at Kubicki Draper, a full-service law firm with over 200 attorneys serving clients in Florida, and the southern parts of Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi. In addition to his work with Kubicki, Mr. Watkins serves as the Treasurer of the National African American Insurance Association (NAAIA). He is currently securing funding for an endowed scholarship to help African Americans pursue careers in insurance.

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e003. Talent Pipeline (Full Episode)

Full Episode Transcript

[00:00:46] Amy: Welcome to including you. I’m Amy C Wanninger and I’m here with Charles Watkins. He’s the chief diversity officer and equity partner at Kubicki Draper, a full service law firm with

[00:01:00] over 200 attorneys serving clients in Florida and the Southern parts of Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi. In addition to his work with Kubicki, Mr. Watkins serves as the treasurer of the national African American insurance association or NAAIA. He is currently securing funding for an endowed scholarship to help African-Americans pursue careers in insurance. Mr. Watkins, welcome to including you.

[00:01:24] Charles: Thank you so much. I’m excited to be here and to just share ideas and thoughts with you.

[00:01:31] Amy: So I am thrilled to know that there is a law firm in Florida with 200 attorneys that has a chief diversity officer.

[00:01:41] Charles: I think by now there are more.

[00:01:43] Amy: A lot of times companies say we’re not really big enough to have a chief diversity officer. That’s for companies with thousands of employees.

And so I’m wondering if you can tell us a little bit about why was having this role important to your company and why are these initiatives important to your company?

[00:01:59] Charles: The

[00:02:00] best place to start is really with the fact that the culture at our company has always been an inclusive one.

I started at the company. I know it doesn’t look that way because I have this baby face. But 29 years ago, and I’ve been in the insurance industry for well over 35 years. And I was fortunate in that coming from the insurance industry, going into law, it came down to two firms and one firm was offering a significant, like more money than the firm that I’m at right now at that stage. But, you know what? I just didn’t feel comfortable with that culture. And that was 29 years ago and I felt there was a certain warmth, there was a certain inclusiveness I, there, they, even before I started working there, I could tell that they had

[00:03:00] plans for me, and what I should do and a pathway. So I chose this firm, even though I was getting a significantly less money. Good for me, lucky for me, I performed well, met their expectations and, by the end of that first year, I was able to make up the money that I lost. I’ve never really looked back at that, but I say that as a start because the firm has always been about what do you offer. How can you make yourself better and the firm better and they didn’t, they never cared about your race, your ethnicity, whether you’re a male or female, and I can tell you, 29 years ago, there were a lot less female attorneys in the insurance defense space, then there are now. I think back then the firm probably had maybe 35 or 38 lawyers maybe, and I think we were unique

[00:04:00] in this. Maybe we had six female attorneys, six, one that was a partner. Now I can tell you that the firm has 50 last time I checked something like 52% of the firm are women, of the attorneys in the firm are women 52%.and a number of them are equity partners like myself. So it’s always been. That culture and a number of years ago, as a firm, started to grow and get bigger and, we had more people coming to the firm. We recognized in order to keep our culture in order to keep what we like about this firm. We needed to establish a diversity committee and we needed to have somebody lead that, and that person was me.

So I became the chief. Diversity officer and you’ve put in place, several programs and several things to solidify what has always been in our ongoing culture.

[00:05:00]

[00:05:01] Amy: I love what you said about taking an offer that was less money because you thought the culture was going to be better and you saw yourself. You saw that they had a plan for you long-term you saw yourself working there long-term I think especially right now, when companies are really strapped for talent and they’re competing with employers that they’ve maybe not competed with in the past. And they may think in their minds, oh my gosh, talent’s getting so expensive.

But if you have the right culture in place, talent doesn’t have to be that expensive.

[00:05:38] Charles: Yeah, that’s true. Obviously money always plays a role in it, and that’s still, very important, but people want more things than just money. I had an individual who left our company or firm for a tremendous amount of money more. I’m part of the story

[00:06:00] here with in a diversity and inclusion, with diverse individuals and I use that term loosely because the way I look at it is that everybody is diverse.

Diversity and inclusion is about hearing and respecting all the voices. It’s not about excluding anybody, while they’re the majority is that they are not diverse. It’s not about that. It’s about everybody being at the table, but anyway, this individual left the firm a big national firm scooped him up, offered him a ton more money.

And a year later, the guy’s on the phone calling me and saying, Hey, Charles, if I wanted to come back, would you guys be interested? And I said, of course, but we’re not going to be able to match that salary. He says, don’t worry about that. I’ll put certain things in place and then we negotiated something that was good for him and good for us. But it’s a lot of times, it’s not just

[00:07:00] about how much money you can make. It’s about how you feel in your job. It’s about getting all the opportunities that everybody else will be allowed.

So you can plan your future. It’s a, it’s, there’s one word that really, ties up the whole diversity and inclusion and equity piece for me and it’s the word, famous song that Aretha Franklin sang years ago, R E S P E C T. It’s about respect, and if you think about just respecting every individual for what they can offer, and what they bring to the organization rather than looking at what the differences are and all that nonsense. Just what does John Brown offer? What does Mary Jane offer to the firm and what can we do for her or him to, enhance their careers? That’s all it really is. Everything else is just garbage in my mind.

[00:08:00]

[00:08:02] Amy: Now that you’re in this role, what are some of the things that you’re doing to make sure that these values are internalized and operationalized throughout the company?

[00:08:12] Charles: Sure. We could talk about that. We’ve done things like training programs on unconscious bias, we’re working on a new one that deals with microaggressions. We’re we’ve done because in the diversity piece you have to acquire people. So therefore, you have, sometimes you have to look at non-traditional hiring sources, right?

Not just go to the usual sources because there’s talent everywhere. That’s one thing that, that I think people are learning now that talent is not just in the Ivy league schools are, talent is everywhere, it’s just a matter of finding it unearthing it, choosing the right people for your organization because not everybody is

[00:09:00] the right, choice, but you want to have a diverse organization because, and this needs to be said more and more. I know it’s old, the statistics are old, organizations that have more diversity and certainly have diversity at the decision-making table, do better financially.

It, and the numbers are astounding. It’s like something like 35% better. If you’re in business, I would imagine you’re in business to make a profit. So there is no reason to not seek out talent that will help you grow your business and make more profit, especially as you’re looking forward in the 21st century and the world is changing and our country’s changing in terms of who the market is, are, and how you have to reach people and again, I want to emphasize, because I think a lot of

[00:10:00] people hear the word diversity and they just oh, that’s, that’s for, a people of a certain race.

Hey, sir, black and brown people are it’s for women or it’s for LGBTQ and those types of things. It’s for everybody, it’s about bringing everybody’s voices to the table so that when decisions are made, it’s a decision that brings more information not less there’s so much more I could talk about, but I know that your time is short,

[00:10:30] Amy: so I appreciate that and I think that I always say to my audiences, when I speak, nobody ever made a worst decision with more information.

Charles: Exactly

Amy: Right. So the more information you have, the better decisions you’re able to make. And if you expand where you get your information, you will get different, more information instead of more of the same information, which is how too many people make their decisions. They look for consensus, they look for confirmation, they don’t look for dissent. They don’t look for different perspectives

[00:11:00] and stop and say, what am I missing?

[00:11:02] Charles: Yeah my, I learned a lot from my dad, but one of the things that he said to me that I always remember is he said, son, everybody knows something that you don’t know.

Even the guy in the gutter know something that you don’t know, so that means if you think about it, that means, at that point still more inclusiveness, right? That point still listening now doesn’t mean they’re going to accept everything you hear, but you should at least have the information so you can make a determination

[00:11:39] Amy: that’s right. Make your decisions on purpose. Yeah, I love that. Anything else you want to share with our listeners and viewers?

[00:11:47] Charles: Not at this time. There’s I, like I said, there’s just a ton of things and, with the firm and how we’re getting along and how we’re trying to include people and plans that we have for the future.

[00:12:00]

[00:12:00] Amy: What are you doing now?

[00:12:01] Charles: We did a survey recently because part of what you should do as an organization is measure  your success, because, okay, you’ve working with HR and you’re now bringing in people who are different, you have programs to try to make people feel included. We’ve established some mentorship programs and things of that nature. So that people have an outlet other than, just their immediate supervisor, they can learn things and all those other things You have to have some understanding of, is this really working, right? You may think it’s working.

So you do a blind survey. And we had a significant number of people respond to the survey. Not everybody because I’m sure there are some people who figure it out. How blind is this survey? But we learned some things.

[00:13:00] Most of it was very positive. It was a confirmation that we were definitely going in the right direction, but we also learned some things, that were surprising to us and gave us pause to, to figure, okay, maybe we need some training in this area or training in that area.

As we go forward, but you always have to have a way of measuring your success and a blind survey, good old suggestion box that works, because sometimes you get great ideas. Sometimes you go, oh, okay. Trash. Yep. No, you get them, if you don’t have it, you don’t get them.

[00:13:42] Amy: Those perceptions are reality. So the person that submits them, and so you have to understand where that’s coming from.

[00:13:47] Charles: And then of course there’s also some team building things that we do. We created like a Spotify account where people can upload you know their music and, and it’s shared amongst the firm. And

[00:14:00] what that does is because we’re trying to have folks see that we’re much, we’re all much more alike than we’re different. Okay, and we try to have. Things like music. We can’t do food as much because of the whole COVID thing you can have people gather and all that, but we have music.

Probably later this year we’ll do something with recipes or something, but people, the more people do these things, we had a young picture contest and also I submitted a picture of myself when I was like 12 years old and, everybody has to guess who everybody is and all these things that’s build team and people begin to realize that, we’re not really that much different. There’s so much in life that we all share experiences that we

[00:15:00] share and experiences that make us more alike than different. Obviously, there are differences because of culture and upbringing and finances and all those things, but those things are external to who people are on the inside. Okay, so those are the, some of the things that we do to try to build team and so on.

[00:15:24] Amy: Thank you so much for sharing that with us. And I hope that the folks listening can take something away from this in terms of things that they can do in their own organizations to help push for progress and push for more inclusion and help get those.

Diverse viewpoints in the room when decisions are being made because of this is so important.

That’s great. And as you, as we’re talking about this and I’m thinking about there’s an equity component to this too, right? Because there’s, we don’t want people’s demographics to determine their outcomes and I think that’s probably what’s behind the

[00:16:00] scholarship work that you’re doing. If I may be so bold as to guess it motivations there, but also. This is such a passion of mine because my belief is as long as black and brown people are underrepresented in the insurance industry, black and brown communities will be under-insured and closing that gap is critical to building wealth and intergenerational wealth in those communities.

So this is a particular, so box for me, so I might get down off of it and let you talk but why the scholarship and why is your firm? So strongly behind what you’re doing with NAAIA and with these

[00:16:36] Charles: Okay. I think you’ve hit on some of the issues already. I think generally, not even just amongst black and brown communities, but certainly exacerbated in black and brown communities.

Most people have no real idea about insurance. When the, when they hear insurance, they think automobile insurance, they think life insurance, I think some guy knocking on your door trying to sell you something

[00:17:00] or, going to the corner store and getting some homeowners insurance or something like that. Insurance, is so broad, it touches on absolutely every aspect of life and certainly every aspect of business. Okay. And in a state like Florida, where I’m from insurance is really king down here and so critically important and you can see the under representation of black and brown people.

And moreover, what’s happening with two factors, the great resignation. And even before the great resignation, there were just a ton of positions going on field and needed within industry. So you know that to me, spells opportunity for black and brown kids to get involved within this industry because the opportunities

[00:18:00] are there, right? Whether it’s in, IT or marketing or all the various aspects of insurance, I could go on and on management and historically people don’t ever say, I want to grow up to be an insurance guy or an insurance girl that doesn’t happen. They go out and they get a fine arts degree. And then, they realize that’s going to give me a good living. And then somebody, they interview for insurance job on Indiana up there. When, what we looked at was the RMI program at Florida state and Florida state has a co-op program with Florida and find you right. Which is probably the top historically black college and university and the state of Florida. So what we thought was because our, my program is number one in the country. If we were able to link with them

[00:19:00] with the organization, that I’m a part of national African-American insurance association. The Florida chapter, we could have a triumvirate of the school, the association and industry. So that would create a pipeline of great talent into industry through the scholarship and the scholarship would involve, of course mentoring from Florida state, which they already have a great program as well as from NAAIA and internships with industry so that way industry could see from an early stage, all the lights went off in here. If you give me a second, I can turn it back on.

With the internships, then they get a chance to really evaluate the kids at an early stage to, make decisions who they want and because these kids are coming from a top program, they

[00:20:00] really have an opportunity to, ultimately possibly reach C-suites right. We’re trying to get $1 million so we can have a fully endowed program. And with co-ops with what’s called the cure program, we can get as much as six to eight scholarships a year.

In perpetuity as you can tell that would create a real pipeline and answer some of the questions that industry needs. All they would need. All an insurance company would need to do is put a four year commitment. $10,000 a year. So it’s a total of $40,000. Of course, if they want to get more, I would accept that.

But 25 companies, $40,000, million dollars and we’re off and running and that’s a scholarship program.

[00:20:56] Amy: That’s incredible. And so for people who are listening to this or who are watching this, who are

[00:21:00] outside of the insurance industry, there are a couple of things I want to explain.

First of all, RMI is risk management and insurance. That’s a major or a school within the school. There are fewer programs, fewer RMI programs. Now I believe nationwide than they’re used to. In colleges and universities, is that correct?

[00:21:18] Charles: I think so. And it’s never really been very popular. I know St John’s and the New York area has a pretty famous one and clearly Florida state does too.

I’m sure there are some in California, probably one in Texas. It’s not an MBA where you can just go to almost any university and sign up for that.

[00:21:36] Amy: Yup. And here in Indianapolis, where I live Butler university has an RMI program. They’re one of the few here in Indiana that do.

But I also want to get back to this concept or this idea that you had, where like insurance is in everything and if you’ve not worked in the industry, you’ve led me to another soapbox, Mr. Watkins. So, if you’re not, if you’ve never worked in the insurance industry

[00:22:00] I want you to imagine for a moment that there’s this invisible web that ties everything together that makes all economic investment possible.

That every dollar you spend has been touched by insurance a thousand times before you even spend it. And that’s what we’re talking about here. When we talk about this notion that. There are just not enough people coming into the industry if we don’t maintain, so I guess we’re passionate about this, but if we don’t maintain insurance as an industry, if we don’t have people doing this important work, then commerce can’t happen.

People can’t start businesses. People can’t build homes. People can’t buy cars. There are so many things that will be. It’s one of those things that as long as it’s working, you don’t notice it, but if it stops working, our entire economy gets very risky very quickly.

[00:22:52] Charles: If you think of 2008, when we came close to a financial collapse,

[00:23:00] It was what’s the beginning of what saved our industry was propping up AIG.

Right, which is with $80 billion, which, you know, because they were involved in ensuring, all those mortgage. I forget what they call them now but the bad mortgages basically, and, if AIG had gone down, then that was going to start the domino effect. Of essentially shutting down our entire economy.

So yes, you’re absolutely correct, Amy. And you can call me Charles, by the way.

[00:23:40] Amy: The other thing about this that’s so critical right now is that the baby boomers are starting to retire. The industry is very baby boomer heavy in terms of the people in the industry today and something like 30 to 40% of the industry is retirement eligible. So, we just don’t have enough

[00:24:00] people to be underwriters and to be actuaries and to be producers and to work in the industry, and you were talking about marketing and it and HR, anything you want to do as a career you can do in the insurance industry and people don’t think of it. Cause it’s not sexy.

Working in Hollywood is sexy or working in tech is sexy and, oh gosh, I we can talk about this part all day, but I love what you’re doing because it solves a couple of problems. One, it helps employers see talent that they might otherwise overlook because these young kids coming out of college, don’t look like the people that they expect to see coming into their insurance companies. First of all, the second thing is it actually helps young people see all of the opportunities that are available in the industry and then you’re really building that bridge of helping not only helping them see the bridge, but helping them get across it and have people waiting for them on the other side to guide them through.

[00:24:55] Charles: And it’s a win-win because you’re bringing in people into the organization

[00:25:00] that know about insurance, you’re not bringing in. And I’m not disparaging fine arts in any way or shape or form, but I’m just using it as an example. You’re not bringing in a fine arts person who has no concept of what insurance is, and you’re going to essentially use the next two years to teach them.

All about industry so that they can be beneficial to your corporate corporation. You have an intern they’re already studying risk management. They come in and they’re already, they’re good to go. Th they know what it’s about and they know what they want.

And you in industry has had an opportunity to evaluate them because there were your intern, so I think it’s a real, win-win it answers that question about getting talent when there’s a talent shortage and it also brings in people who are diverse, which there definitely is a shortage of that in, in the

[00:26:00] insurance industry as well. So yes, that’s why I’m I am, I’m gung ho and all in about this because I see this as a real win-win situation, and so does my and so does my firm because obviously, my, my firm, we’re an insurance defense firm and, most of our clients are big insurance companies. So, it certainly behooves us as a law firm to be in support of things that support industry and it’s look, this idea came to me and other colleagues who are in NAAIA, as a result of seeing all the craziness that took place in 2020 and we wanted to do something that was positive, something that moved the needle and created real opportunities, in the African-American community.

[00:26:59] Amy: I think it’s fantastic, and I hope you get every penny you look that you seek and more, this is an issue that needs to be solved and big right there, like big solutions to this problem for big reasons, and I think every step that we can take toward diversifying the industry and, creating that pipeline and, helping people secure really good middle-class jobs by the way, because that’s what the insurance industry offers for decades, the insurance industry has been a solid middle-class job.

[00:27:33] Charles: Yeah, and it also is recession proof for the most part, because, as long as you have a business, as long as you have, like we were saying every aspect of life and, you rely on your insurance for all different kinds of reasons which are recession proof. It just really is, when was the last time insurance companies lose money because of bad

[00:28:00] management or there can be certain they get involved with too much litigation, things of that nature, but it’s never because their economy is not,

[00:28:13] Amy: It’s never market isn’t there. There’s always a market for insurance. Sometimes it’s almost market. Sometimes it’s a soft market, right? Sometimes there’s too much competition and prices don’t go down to an unsustainable level. Everybody needs insurance. And the thing is you always either need insurance or more insurance.

Charles: Right.

Amy: You never don’t need any

[00:28:34] Charles: exactly. You’re correct. You’re correct.

[00:28:38] Amy: And we need people to do those jobs. We need people to help us keep investing and to help keep us safe and keep our families protected so that we can retain the wealth that we generate through our businesses and retain the wealth that we build through our homes and the things that we acquire. This is so important.

Charles, thank you so much for your time today. Thank you for

[00:29:00] sharing this important this important initiative with us and I’m going to just reiterate that Kubicki Draper is looking for 25 companies. That want to support the insurance industry and want to support young historically marginalized talent, young black students to get into this industry and how can people contact you if they want to contribute to this cause

[00:29:20] Charles: just by my email, really [email protected]

[00:29:26] Amy: Okay. So we’ll make sure to put that in the notes and I sure hope that we are able to help you spread this message.

[00:29:31] Charles: Thank you for the opportunity.

[00:30:00]