BLACK ENTERPRISE has released its listing of the 40 Best Companies for Diversity as featured in the publication’s September 2015 issue. While the list showed most companies scoring high marks in senior management and corporate governance, most were found unsatisfactory when it came to procurement dollars spent with firms owned by African Americans and ethnic minorities – demonstrating a critical need to diversify this area.
In 2005, BLACK ENTERPRISE began publishing its list of the “Best Companies for Diversity,” identifying those corporations that proved to be the best of the best in executing policies and developing a culture that promoted inclusion for African Americans within their workforce, senior management ranks, corporate boards, and supplier pools. Highlights of this year’s list include four companies with black CEOs, 59 black female senior managers, and 72 black board members across companies.
In compiling this year’s list, the BLACK ENTERPRISE research team sent surveys to more than 1,000 of the largest publicly traded companies and global companies with significant U.S. operations. This year, BLACK ENTERPRISE gained support from the Executive Leadership Council, the pre-eminent organization of current and former CEOs, board members, senior executives, and leading entrepreneurs in producing our list.
Companies were evaluated based on representation of African Americans in senior management and on their board of directors, percentage of African Americans within the employee base and the procurement dollars spent with African American or ethnic minority group firms. There is still work to do in terms of major corporations fully embracing diversity; hundreds of companies were either unresponsive or declined to participate in our survey process.
Of the 40 best, Exelon Corp., IBM Corp., McDonald’s Corp., and MGM Resorts International were some of the companies that demonstrated significant strengths in the four areas surveyed.
The full list of the 2015 BLACK ENTERPRISE 40 Best Companies for Diversity is as follows:
Arkansas
Walmart Stores Inc., Bentonville
California
Pacific Gas and Electric Co., San Francisco
Toyota Motor North America, Inc., Torrance
Wells Fargo & Co, San Francisco
Connecticut
Xerox Corp., Norwalk
District of Columbia
Fannie Mae, Washington
Georgia
Aflac Inc., Columbus
The Coca-Cola Co., Atlanta
Southern Co., Atlanta
Illinois
Allstate Insurance Co., Northbrook
Exelon Corp., Chicago
McDonald’s Corp., Oak Brook
Northern Trust Corp., Chicago
State Farm Insurance Co., Bloomington
Louisiana
Entergy Corp., New Orleans
Minnesota
General Mills Inc., Minneapolis
Maryland
Marriott International, Inc., Bethesda
Michigan
Ford Motor Co., Dearborn
General Motors Co., Detroit
North Carolina
Bank of America Corp., Charlotte
Duke Energy Corp., Charlotte
New Jersey
Merck & Co Inc., Kenilworth
Prudential Financial Inc., Newark
Nevada
MGM Resorts International, Las Vegas
New York
IBM Corp., Armonk
American Express Co., New York
Consolidated Edison Inc., New York
JPMorgan Chase & Co, New York
TIAA-CREF, New York
Verizon Communications Inc., New York
PepsiCo Inc., Purchase
Ohio
Macy’s Inc., Cincinnati
Nationwide Insurance Co., Columbus
Pennsylvania
Aramark, Philadelphia
Comcast Corp., Philadelphia
Tennessee
FedEx Corp., Memphis
Texas
AT&T Inc., Dallas
Comerica Inc., Dallas
Virginia
Freddie Mac, McLean
Wisconsin
Johnson Controls Inc., Milwaukee
