There Must Be Action...Mellody Hobson

"...corporate America is on notice. You can't just talk about issues. There must be action. Talk is cheap." 

--Mellody Hobson, Co-CEO & President, Ariel Investments

On Tuesdays, womenatliberty.com provides #LeadershipTuesdays, a platform for a variety of voices and resources to develop, encourage and strengthen women leaders. 

Mellody Hobson has been a leading and consistent voice on racial inequality in corporate America and its unwillingness to be accountable for making meaningful change. In a frank conversation with the @TheEconomist's Anne McElvoy, Ms. Hobson speaks about how corporations can be braver on race and hold themselves accountable for the change that is needed.

Mellody's talk is required viewing for all leaders working for change as it relates to diversity and inclusion, and racial equity. Check out, "How can business be braver on race?"

Follow #LeadershipTuesdays on Twitter at @LeadershipTues to see daily posts with resources that help you develop and strengthen your leadership skills.

#LeadershipTuesdays: "Do or Do Not"...Mellody Hobson

"We don’t want to just admire problems, we want to try to find solutions to them. So, you have to truly believe that the world is changing and that you want your customers represented inside of your company, and you want to have different types of people and brains to come up with new and creative ideas. You have to truly believe that leads to a better outcome. ...Yoda said ‘Do or do not, there is no try.'”

--Mellody Hobson, President, Ariel Investments

On Tuesdays, womenatliberty.com presents #LeadershipTuesdays, a platform for a variety of voices and resources to develop, encourage and strengthen women leaders. Mellody Hobson, President of Ariel Investments, gave a courageous TED talk in March 2014 about an experience she had in 2006 of being mistaken for the "kitchen help" when she showed up with then Congressman Harold Ford for a lunch meeting at the offices of a highly regarded New York publication. Your first reaction is to chuckle and then you give a heavy sigh and side eye because you know that her experience is not funny at all.

Although Mellody has broken the glass ceiling and achieved success, she recognizes that other minorities and women are not being given the same opportunities to excel in their fields and reach the highest echelons of corporate power. With an authentic and courageous voice, she continues to champion diversity even though this is not her main gig. She actually runs an investment firm and sits on the board of a few firms including Starbucks and JP Morgan Chase. She says it’s time for less talk and more action. More of 'this is what we have accomplished' versus 'this is what we are trying to do'.

To watch her talk at Fortune's Brainstorm Reinvent conference in Chicago, go to our home page at womenatliberty.com. Or you may also view it here.

Follow #LeadershipTuesdays on Twitter @LeadershipTues to see daily posts with resources that help you develop and strengthen your leadership skills. Happy #LeadershipTuesdays.

Leadership Tuesdays: The Truth About Color Blindness...Mellody Hobson

“Researchers have coined this term “color blindness” to describe a learned behavior where we pretend that we don’t notice race. If you happen to be surrounded by a bunch of people who look like you, that’s purely accidental. 

Now, color blindness, in my view, doesn’t mean that there’s no racial discrimination, and there’s fairness. It doesn’t mean that at all. It doesn’t ensure it. In my view, color blindness is very dangerous because it means we’re ignoring the problem… this subject matter can be hard, awkward, uncomfortable — but that’s kind of the point… 

If we can learn to deal with our discomfort, and just relax into it, we’ll have a better life."

--Mellody Hobson, President, Ariel Investments & Chairperson of the Board, DreamWorks Animation

Every other Tuesday, WOMEN AT LIBERTY provides Leadership Tuesdays, a platform for a variety of voices and resources to develop, encourage and strengthen women leaders. In March 2014, Mellody Hobson gave a courageous talk on race. A quote from her TED talk was featured on this very blog. Starting with "The Numbers Do Not Lie", Ms. Hobson spoke eloquently and frankly about the lack of diversity in leadership positions in U.S. corporations.

I believe that she nailed it when she stated that talking about race is like stepping on the third rail in a subway station. If it doesn't kill you, you will surely live with the aftershocks of the conversation for a long time. Rosalind Brewer, CEO of Sam's Club, a division of Walmart, experienced this in December 2015 when she stated in an interview that she encourages and expects diversity within her organization. And she said that she also expects it in the organizations of the suppliers that do business with Sam's Club. In a national television interview, she talked about an incident where a supplier brought a team to make a presentation to her senior management team and the supplier's whole team consisted of only white males. She said that she thought that that was "interesting" and she made a point to have a conversation with the supplier's leadership about it to determine their position on diversity. We'll talk more about this situation later this month, but suffice it to say she was roasted by certain groups in the press and those groups threatened to boycott Walmart because she dared talk about the lack of diversity that she still sees and experiences.

Today, womenatliberty is featuring a FastCompany article on its timeline that discusses how you can tell if your company really is serious when it comes to diversity and supporting women of color. Women of color are some of the most under-represented and underpaid groups when it comes to presence and visibility in senior leadership positions in corporate America.

Check out: Three Ways To Tell If Your Company Supports Women Of Color by By Sava Berhané. To read some of Mellody Hobson's other quotes that were featured on this blog, click here. For more information on Leadership Tuesdays and WOMEN AT LIBERTY, click here.

#LeadershipTuesdays: Awareness Is Not Enough...Mellody Hobson

Regarding problem of minorities not being represented at the highest levels of senior management and in management positions in certain U.S. industries like technology,  Mellody Hobson said:

“Awareness is not enough. What are you going to do about it? We've admired this problem for long enough!” 

--Mellody Hobson, President, Ariel Investments, 

Being Color Brave, A PwC Talk with Bob Moritz, PwC US Chairman and Senior Partner

Mellody Hobson speaking at Being Color Brave,
A PwC Talk with Bob Moritz

Every other Tuesday, WOMEN AT LIBERTY provides a platform for a variety of voices and resources to develop, encourage, and strengthen women leaders. On July 13, 2015, Mellody Hobson, President of Ariel Investments,  sat down with the U.S. Chairman of PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC), Bob Moritz, to talk about the lack of diversity that exists for minorities in the senior leadership and workforces of U.S. corporations. Mellody Hobson first spoke on this topic in March 2014 at a TED Talk entitled, "Color Blind Or Color Brave".

Although Mellody Hobson has broken the glass ceiling and achieved success and respect in her field, she recognizes that other minorities and women are not being given the same opportunities to excel in their fields and reach the highest echelons of corporate power. With an authentic and courageous voice, she told her story of humble beginnings and her climb to corporate success as one of the most respected women of color in Corporate America. 

This talk between Mellody Hobson and Bob Moritz is important because they openly talked about race and some of the problems that America is having because of its racial issues. Both Mellody and Bob gave advice on how we each can make changes within our own environment to improve relations between the races and provide more employment and leadership opportunities for women and minorities.  

 

To view this very important conversation between Mellody Hobson and Bob Moritz, click here. For more information on Leadership Tuesdays or WOMEN AT LIBERTY, click here.  

--Nona O., Founder, WOMEN AT LIBERTY 

Leadership Tuesdays: The Numbers Do Not Lie…Mellody Hobson

"Now race is one of those topics in America that makes people extraordinarily uncomfortable. You bring it up at a dinner party or in a workplace environment, it is literally the conversational equivalent of touching the third rail. There is shock followed by a long silence. 

Now, I know that there are people out there who'll say that the election of Barack Obama meant that it was the end of racial discrimination for all eternity, right? But I work in the investment business and we have a saying, 'the numbers do not lie.' ...There is significant quantifiable racial disparities that can not be ignored in household wealth, household income, job opportunities, health care. I [talk] about this issue of racial discrimination because I believe that it threatens to rob another generation of all the opportunities that all of us want for all of our children no matter what their color or where they come from. And I think it threatens to hold back businesses. 

So, I think it's time for us to be comfortable with the uncomfortable conversation about race. Black, White, Asian, Hispanic, male, female, all of us. If we truly believe in equal rights and equal opportunity in America, I think we have to have real conversations about this issue. We can not afford to be color blind. We have to be color brave."*

-Mellody Hobson, President, Ariel Investments; Chairman of the Board, DreamWorks Animation SKG
*This quote is an excerpt from a TED Talk Mellody Hoboson gave on March 20, 2014

Every other Tuesday, WOMEN AT LIBERTY provides a platform for a variety of voices and resources to develop, encourage, and strengthen women leaders. Today's Leadership Tuesdays' post is a courageous talk on race given by Mellody Hobson, President of Ariel Investments, at a TED Conference in March of 2014. Her eloquent discourse regarding an experience she had in 2006 of being mistaken for the "kitchen help" when she showed up with then Congressman Harold Ford (D-Tennessee) for a lunch meeting at the offices of a highly regarded New York publication will make you chuckle because it seems unbelievable. But, yet it is true. As one of only two African American Chairpersons of a publicly traded company (the other person is Ursula Burns of Xerox) she is less well known than a Beyonce or even Oprah Winfrey. However, Ms. Hobson is a highly accomplished, Princeton-educated young woman.

Her talk is both relatable and relevant. She makes a business case for businesses making diversity one of its core values and part of its competitive strategy. She also makes a human argument for why we cannot wait for the next election or another year to confront the issues of race and racial discrimination in America.

To listen to today's feature, click here. For more information on Leadership Tuesdays, click here.