Longtime marketing executive Antonio Lucio joined the SBJ ALL IN virtual conference yesterday to discuss various issues surrounding diversity and inclusion. Lucio, a former top exec with Facebook, HP and Pepsi, talked about the need for diversified leadership and what trends he's bullish on. Excerpts are below.
- On the need for diversified leadership: It is undoubtedly true that if you have a company that believes in the business imperative of a diversified, highly inclusive and equitable workforce, it's going to be significantly easier for everyone. If you have diversified boards of directors, if you have a diversified C-suite, and if you have diversified departments, things are going to be easier for you. Having said that, when you looked at the numbers, there is not a lot of diversified boards. There are not a lot of diversified C-suites.
- On the most-important part of diverse hiring: When it comes to diversity, inclusion and equity, I think everybody's in violent agreement on the what and the why. Where the rubber meets the road is in the how, and importantly, in the who. Who are the people that need to move to ensure that you achieve the type of results that you want to achieve?
- On improvements in recent years: What I'm encouraged by is that, over the last several years, we have ... as an industry, done a much better job of increasing the pipeline. And by the way, all sorts of best practices out there, we just have to pick and implement, whether it is partnerships with historical black colleges and universities, or making strategic alliances with universities ... that will give you a significantly more diverse population set.
