Originally published in the March 2003 Issue of Link & Learn.

When the Executive Leadership Council (ELC) was founded in 1986, corporate America was largely an ivory tower. White men inhabited most senior leadership positions and were out of step with the social and economic changes resulting from events like the civil rights and women's movements, the growing minority middle class, and the power of ethnic marketing (as demonstrated by the $2.4 billion bottom-line pop sensation Michael Jackson delivered for Pepsi-Cola the summer of 1984).

Jerry Bartow, retired Senior Vice President & Director of Administration at ITT Hartford Insurance Company, was one of ELC's 19 founding members. He recalls that senior African-American corporate executives were so few and far between; "We didn't have role models, we didn't have mentors, we didn't have anyone who could assist. By pulling together into an organization, we were able to share with each other and we became mentors for one another."

Today ELC's leadership and networking organization comprises 300 of the most senior African-American corporate executives in Fortune 500 companies. Members have worked in corporate America an average of 23 years and direct more than 1,500 employees. Of the four African-American CEOs currently leading Fortune 500 companies, two are ELC members and the other two are strong ELC program supporters. They join a network of senior vice presidents, chief financial officers, and other executives that makeup ELC's membership - many of whom report directly to the CEO and actively support ELC's mission to expand the pipeline of African-Americans at all leadership levels of corporate America.

ELC's message about diversity as a business imperative rings as true today as it did nearly two decades ago. Companies who fail to heed the sage counsel can ignore the advice but not the impact on the bottom-line.

In 2002, DivesityInc.Com reported that K-mart, the nation's no. 3 retailer, filed for bankruptcy, closed 283 stores, and secured $2 billion in debtor-in-possession financing to keep its remaining 1,831 stores open. Experts assessing the problems concluded that K-mart had lost touch with its customer-base and failed to capitalize on multicultural markets that it once controlled. The suggested solution was for K-mart to place more emphasis on wooing consumers of color.

The Coca-Cola Company has learned powerful lessons about diversity the hard way. Twice before Pepsi hired Michael Jackson as their soft drink pitchman, Coke failed to act on deals their ethnic marketing division developed with Jackson. Most recently Coca-Cola paid $8 million in back-pay to African-American executives as part of a discrimination settlement and then found itself, again, in hot water for failing to include diverse candidates in their search for corporate board members.

ELC member Michael Hyter, President and CEO of J. Howard and Associates, a Boston-based management-consulting firm, has described management's reluctance to admit more than a token representation of diverse leaders into the executive ranks as an "elephant in the room" syndrome. No one acknowledges the elephant in the room, but no one lets other elephants inside either. Frank Wu, an Asian-American law professor at Howard University, acknowledges it as a comfort issue. The unacknowledged elephant, he says, indicates the inability to deal with complex contemporary racial issues.

In its initiatives focusing on board diversity, CEO engagement with senior African American corporate leaders, and best practices to empower management in the diverse workplace, ELC is committed to offering executives access to leadership networks and career coaching that addresses personal comfort-level issues related to diversity. Beginning April 30, ELC and corporate partner Sears, Roebuck and Co. will co-host a series of regional symposiums in Dallas and Chicago aimed at African-American mid-level managers to address the global case for diversity, and multiracial teams of senior human resource and diversity executives to grapple with the value their companies place on the business case for diversity.

The value of diversity as a business imperative grows clearer each year. Current U.S. Census figures indicate that persons of color comprise nearly 25 percent of the United States population. A study from Texas A& M University's Center of Retailing Studies says American retailers must understand the changing ethnic and cultural consumer market to survive. In the new millennium, successfully engaging diversity in the marketplace is no longer an option. It's the key to our economic survival.

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