First and foremost, congratulations to Joanna Clark of Wells Fargo
for joining the prestigious gay and lesbian Center Board! The Center is a shortcut for the San Diego LGBT Community Center, an organization
started in 1971 in a closet (literally) when Jess Jessop opened a help line to assist the LGBT community. The "Center" was officially
incorporated as a 501c3 in
1973, the year when the American Psychiatric Association declassified
homosexuality as a mental disorder.
Today, the Center is the
nation’s second oldest (LA being the first) and third largest LGBT Community
Center. The Center has made a huge difference in the lives of tens of thousands
of people. Its 800 volunteers, its staff (40 full-time employees) and its 20
board members provide more than 50,000 service hours each year to a very
diverse community.
Joanna embodies diversity
four-fold
The
daughter of a Mexican mother, she is a
proud woman, a proud Latina, a proud self-identified lesbian, and the
proud second mother of her partner's daughter. To top it all, she is a very
successful professional. After a 15-year career at AT&T in various roles
within its Talent Acquisition organization, she joined Wells Fargo in
2011 where she is currently VP,
Recruiting Leader for Community Bank's Western Mountain Region and Shared
Services.
Attending a Diverse Leaders Program
Some companies only pay lip service to diversity. It's clearly not the
case of Wells
Fargo who nominated Joanna to attend the
Diverse Leaders Program very shortly after she joined. At the time, she
wrote a beautiful post on my blog on the reasons why she was selected:
"I was not selected as a woman who has been climbing the proverbial ladder
in a heavily female recruiting profession led predominantly by men, nor because
my mother, who was born in Mexico, immigrated here as a child in search for the
American Dream for her family. I was selected for neither of these
reasons although they would both be true. I was selected instead as a
self-identified lesbian and a high potential leader to be given additional
training to improve my skills as a manager and leader for the betterment of
myself, my team members, my customers and our local communities. I admit,
upon learning about my selection, I could not imagine what my 'gayness' could
possibly have to do with my leadership skills, but I intended to find out."
From diversity to inclusion
Joanna found out that the purpose of
companies with serious diversity programs is to not to simply be diverse or add
diversity as a legal or marketing check box. It's more specifically to foster a feeling of real
inclusiveness in the hearts and minds of the "diverse" people whom you
hire. Joanna's experience in this Diverse Leaders Program held in a room full
of accomplished bankers, activists, community leaders was a real eye opener for
her. "We had openly talked
about how we all felt driven to succeed so no one could say that if we failed
it was because of our 'gayness'… Yet in preparing my last word was when I
finally found the answer to my question, 'what does my gayness have to do with
my leadership style?' The answer was ultimately 'nothing'… My 'gayness'
was not the point when dealing with who I am as a leader, manager or team
member at Wells Fargo. Instead, what I found was that this program was
something entirely different. Instead it was about inclusion, real
inclusion."
Bottom line
Joanna admits that until then she thought that the word
"inclusion" was part of the corporate jargon. "I had never really never
understood it," she says. "I have always understood why having
a mix of different people in a workforce would be good to mirror the
communities we worked in but to be truly included, I mean every part of me
being included by a company, for the first time, was something I did not expect
nor could I anticipate the impact."
Joanna, what advice would you give to recruiters?
"As recruiters we are the foundation builders of diversity for
our companies. We have the ability
to impact diversity by building relationships and looking for the best talent with
the knowledge that diversity of thought and background builds the strongest
team.”
