Archive

Here are my archived interviews/articles from another website about race and diversity in the workplace. All articles were written from March 2007 to March 2008

 

Africans Fight for Global Justice in “Bamako”

It’s not everyday that Westerners are shown images of Africa beyond the stereotype. It’s not everyday that African filmmakers reach out to an international audience with a modern debate of large-scale African problems. In his fourth feature, Abderrahmane Sissako has created a two hour film that brings the African problem to global levels looking for global solutions.

The film takes place in Bamako, the capital of Mali, where an African court puts the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank on trial. Sissako places the trial not in a customary courthouse, but in a lively neighborhood square. The powerful character in this film is not of European descent, but a Malian head judge. This judge gives patience to all that occurs around him, whether it be an official witness, a European representative of the IMF, or one of the many lively neighborhood characters.

The camera often takes a break from the deep debate to lazily observe the neighborhood side scenes. Sissako takes the time to share the cultural richness of West African life. He shows culture as something completely integrated with everyday life.

These artistic moments give clarity to the inhumane accusations of the witnesses. African debt is the main target under scrutiny, as well as its affect on privatization of public services including education, healthcare, and transportation. Refreshingly, this film does not leave the viewer with the usual feeling of pity of African life, but rather an empowerment of knowledge that can be continually debated and hopefully bring international action. Danny Glover has a cameo appearance. Learn more about his work with UNICEF at www.unicef.org.

Look out for a couple random side shows in the film that are not very well defined but do have good moral lessons.

“Bamako” should be congratulated as being a good sample of African cinema for a universal audience. Having said that, let’s hope there are many more to come. If you would like a chance to see this film, please contact your local independent theatre and let them know. “Bamako” is the Official Selection, Cannes Film Festival, 2006.

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Workplace bias costs companies $64 billion annually

An African American partner from a prestigious international law firm was sitting in a conference room prior to a negotiation that would determine whether her client’s corporation would emerge victorious in a multi-billion-dollar acquisition. The lawyer for the target company arrived and asked her to make copies, assuming she was a secretary or paralegal. She made the copies, reviewing the documents her opposing counsel was bringing to the negotiation. She then introduced herself and took the lead in the meeting. She later charged him the appropriate portion of her $800-per-hour billing rate for the photocopying time. – Excerpted from the book Giving Notice

 

The previous story is an example of mistaken identity experienced by 12.7% of respondents who participated in the 2007 Corporate Leavers Survey, which found that over 2 million managers and professionals leave their jobs every year solely due to unfairness in the workplace at an annual cost of $64 billion to companies. Other examples of unfairness and bias experienced by corporate leavers include:

–                  Being passed over for promotion due to personal characteristics

–                  Being publicly humiliated

–                  Being bullied

–                  Receiving unwelcome questions about skin, hair or ethnic attire

–                  Being compared to a terrorist in a joking or serious manner

People of color are three times more likely to cite workplace unfairness as the only reason for leaving their employer than heterosexual Caucasian men and twice as likely as heterosexual Caucasian women.

Gay and lesbian professionals and managers said workplace unfairness was the only reason they left their employer almost twice as often as heterosexual Caucasian men. 

– Excerpted from the book Giving Notice

 

Click here to read the executive summary of the Corporate Leavers Survey:

Freada, what motivated you to be a leading diversity advocate?

I’ve always had a sense of social justice, that the plight of any one of us is linked to the plight of all of us. 

Your research claims that the true cost of hidden bias in the workplace is $64 billion annually. Many employers focus on costs of possible lawsuits as the only cost of
workplace bias, but your work aims to debunk that myth. What are your comments on this?

# of professionals & managers in US labor force
X
% of professionals & managers who left solely due to unfairness
X
1.5 total annual compensation of professionals & managers

Cost of voluntary turnover due solely to unfairness

For every dimension of this calculation, we took the most conservative estimate. This is not the outside extreme example, but rather the minimum. An additional statistic which is not included in our cost estimate is that 13% of those who left solely due to unfairness actively discouraged others from buying their former employers’ products or services. It directly cuts into the bottom line in a number of dimensions.

Why do you recommend having only one training program in a company
instead of having sexual harassment training and diversity training
separated out? Any suggestions on how this can be done?  

Separate sexual harassment training is a real problem. It signals that that issue is more important than other issues. Yes, sexual harassment is an important issue, but I suggest CEOs initiate one overall policy for “diversity” or “anti-harassment” which covers all fairness practices in the workplace, including dismantling stereotypes and assumptions of all sexes and all peoples.

 

Companies are losing a lot more money from people voluntarily leaving due to subtle bias/exclusion than from potential lawsuits. It’s easier just to move on than to stay and fight it out. 

What are simple steps employers can take to eliminate workplace
bias in an inclusive manner so that all employees can truly experience
equal and fair opportunities and treatment?

 

In Giving Notice, I describe five steps that add up to a comprehensive approach. 

1. Policies – There is no substitute for creating a customized approach that reflects your business and your workforce.  What behaviors are appropriate and which are inappropriate?  How do certain behaviors undermine morale or the business achieving its goals?  As previously mentioned, unifying policies are better that separate policies for different issues.  Policies should describe all the behaviors that drive people out the door—the types that we covered in the Corporate Leavers study—including subtle bias, mistaken identity, stereotyping, bullying.  Having a policy is essential, but that alone is not sufficient. 

2. Complaint channels – In addition to formal complaint channels, it is also essential to create a safe and anonymous or confidential vehicle to receive complaints from employees. “Employee Resource Groups” are often formed as an alternative to formal HR channels. They can provide a place for employees to receive advice.  Employees need a place to go with the subtle, day-to-day problems that we heard in our study before they’re ready to walk out the door.

3. Training has to be mandatory and customized for different constituents. Educate employees on how to speak up and how to best be heard. Educate managers that every action or inaction sends a message. If an employee is having lunch with her/his manager and a client, and the client makes a racist/sexist/homophobic joke, if the manager automatically laughs and is agreeable, that sends a resounding message about what matters and what doesn’t matter to the company. Complaint handlers also need to be trained on how to respond to various situations brought to their attention. 

4. Sensing and monitoring mechanisms – Each company requires customized surveys for their specific business. Generic downloaded policies and surveys will not reflect a company’s specific sector and culture.  If information collected is truly anonymous, employee trust will remain intact. After stories and data are collected from the majority of employees (one must have a high participation rate for success), they can be presented to senior management. Also, Employee Resource Groups should be tapped for information on how the company is doing and the company’s reputation on the street. They should keep track of online blogs and public company assessment sites to stay informed of issues that are published about the organization.

5. Commitment from top – If you don’t have that, you cannot excel at steps 1 through 4.  Every time senior management looks the other way when a star revenue producer continues to be a bigot, it undermines every effort already undertaken by the organization. Companies should follow the NFL “Rooney Rule” – whenever interviews are being conducted for a coaching position, there has to be at least one African American candidate. If the NFL can do it, everyone else can do it, too. If companies end up having a slate of candidates that is not diverse, there is no possibility that the organizations’ leadership will reflect society-at-large. If they require a few people of color (of all backgrounds) to be interviewed for all positions, then companies take a crucial step towards leveling the playing field for diverse candidates. 

How can everyday readers of your book raise awareness of the true
cost of workplace bias without turning employers off?

I think whenever one can link impact on business and “the right thing to do,” we’re ahead of the game. Using legitimate humor and stories can also break the ice, especially given the volatility of topics such as racism, sexism, and homophobia in the workplace. Tell a story from the book, such as the one shared at the beginning of this interview. 

We have to remember that (unfortunately) it often falls on people of color/women/homosexuals to try to make the workplace more welcoming and inclusive because most heterosexual white males have the option of dealing or not dealing with the subject. We have to make it imperative and relatively easy for the majority of people to address these issues. Of course, the financial impetus also matters.

 Nobody wants to be perceived by her/his peers as racist, sexist, or homophobic; or as someone who creates an exclusionary or unwelcoming work environment for others. We all need to learn about the appropriate and inappropriate ways to ask questions, and to make dialogue about diversity in the workplace safe and comfortable.

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How women are Getting Even, and useful advice for grassroots organizing

Author of Getting Even: Why Women Don’t Get Paid Like Men – And What to Do About It, Evelyn Murphy has excelled in the private, public, corporate, government and non-profit sectors. She earned a BA from Duke University in mathematics; a MA in economics from Columbia University; and a PhD in economics from Duke University. She has served as Massachusetts Secretary of Environmental Affairs, Secretary of Economic Affairs, and became the first woman in Massachusetts to hold constitutional office when elected Lt. Governor in 1986. Evelyn Murphy is President of The WAGE Project, Inc., a national organization to end wage discrimination against working women, and Resident Scholar in the Women’s Studies Research Center at Brandeis University, where she has researched and authored Getting Even. To read her entire bio, please click here.

Please explain why you have chosen to dedicate yourself to the project of equality of women in the workplace? 

When I started working in the 60’s with a PhD in Economics, women were earning an average of 59 cents on every dollar men were earning. I was the only college graduate in my family, and it became more popular for women to go to college. I assumed pay inequality only had to do with merit. Eyeballing society, I’d assume we’d catch up over time. I worked my entire adult life and in the mid 90’s, we were up to 77 cents on the dollar. When the economy was booming, the wage gap got bigger. Something was wrong with this picture. Graduates of any sex have the same education. Women work as hard, need just as much money. I’ve watched the wage gap professionally and personally. Intellectually, I couldn’t understand it.

Secondly, when I held different positions in public office in the state of Massachusetts, I started to see what governments can and cannot do. It’s been illegal to discriminate for over forty years ago, but the government has never funded EEOC in ways that it should. No administration either democrat or republican has had any affect on this issue. 

I went into the corporate world and learned that CEOs of companies have the power and responsibility to eliminate discrimination in the workplace. Women need to make this known to their CEOs for any possible change to come about. From the decades of my being an economist, I looked at the gender wage gap from the public sector view, the private sector view, and the womens stance. CEOs have a legal responsibility to fix this and any other discriminations in the workplace.

How can the EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) be held responsible for making sure that all employees are being paid fairly and equally? 

EEOC is held responsible only if President/Congress create a substantial budget to carry out enforcements and responsibilities it has under the law. The EEOC is underfunded, and keeps cutting back on enforcement with less litigation, less mediation services, and less advising of companies. But the reality is that unless the EEOC has threatened litigation against guilty employers, than all the constructive changes don’t happen because employers generally do not believe they’re guilty of discrimination. They don’t believe discrimination in their companies’ exists. Unless they’re forced to analyze the numbers, they’re going to continue to believe they’re not doing anything wrong. Status quo is always easier than change.

The only way the EEOC can defend discrimination is when priorities for funding change because all the laws are already there. There is a new Paycheck Fairness Act coming out now. In the end, budget and National Priorities need to stand behind enforcement of this issue. 

I enjoyed learning more about how social scientists explain the wage gap by discriminatory characteristics. Can you explain a bit about this? Have any scientists taken the stance that the wage gap is a problem? If not, why?

They differ on this. There are some sociolgists who look at patterns and persistence of stereotyping. If women/men were being interviewed for a job behind screen, then you’d find the gender biases that kick in visually aren’t there. They’ve done important analysis of how visual stimuli really start to kick in who is more limited/ less qualified/ more emotional, etc. Then there are social scientists that are more numbers driven. They look at the correlation between pay and explanatory factors such as age, education, experience, and other unexplained aspects.  Statisticians keep saying, “the part we can’t explain isn’t neccessarily discrimination, it can be many different factors.” There’s a lot of auto-correlation where discrimination is embedded so that if you were a more discerning analyst and you believed there was discrimination in workplace, you’d have a greater critique. 1/3 of unexplained of 23 cents difference cannot be explained by age, education, or other factors. The reasons are limited because the census data is limited. People don’t discriminate, workplaces discriminate. Scientists cannot correlate workplace discrimination/salary difference because they don’t have the data to do so. They need data on workplace, not workers. These patterns of behavior continue today, but they can’t quantify it. 

This seems problematic because if employers do not see themselves as discriminating, the data they give can be skewed. Although the scientist could always ask more dimentional questions and interpret the data beyond the basics of what the employers are giving them.

In the Washington Post’s article of July 30, Shankar Vedantam writes about a research study done at Kennedy School of Government by Linda C. Babcock and Hannah Riley Bowles which found that the problem was not as simple as men being more aggressive than women in negotiating salary increases. Bowles says “Yes, there is an economic rationale to negotiate, but you have to weigh that against social risks of negotiating. What we show is those risks are higher for women than for men.” Do you have any comments to these research findings? 

This is very important analysis by very credible academics about the biases which have gotten more sophisticated. Please see Women Don’t Ask, a book by Linda Babcock. These issues cost women and people of color money. When the risks are higher to be paid fairly, people are going to be more reticent because they don’t want to lose their job. This is a sophisticated argument of what some discrimination is all about today.

Beyond the personal stories and research, the most inspiring part of Getting Even is the Responsibility Steps that readers are suggested to take. Many people are aware that discrimination exists, but they need basic steps and community to help make change. Please explain the community that has come together on wageproject.org. What has it accomplished so far, and what do you hope to achieve in the future? 

1 – We are helping to support women when they start talking about money. For women to talk about what they earn is the most intimate conversation that they have. We’ve all been socialized not to talk about money. I’ve been in investment clubs which include women of all backgrounds. We would talk about investing in detail, but never what we earned. The WAGE project is trying to get women to talk about what we earn in a non-work community environment, if we’re paid fairly, etc. It takes a while to get comfortable with this language.

2 – We are drawing on womens’ organizations that already exist and leverage their reach into the community. We work with YWCA, AAUW, NOW, and others. We become part of their programs. This fall, we’re going to twelve campuses with Start Smart workshops, where female students are learning how to benchmark their starting salaries for jobs. They need to figure out the going wage rate for that area of the country so they are prepared. It helps women immediately because the wage gap starts with the first job and the consequences grow over time. Starting from the first job through retirement, there is a 1.2 million dollar wage gap. It may start with a 3-4 thousand difference at the beginning, but over time, men will earn more and more and more. That is something that needs to be acknowledged.

3 – We are targeting women reentering the workplace after a long break because of personal or family reasons to help them benchmark their salaries.

4 – We are working with women that are already in the workforce.

5 – We are working with women in specific sectors to help cater specific needs: Librarians, Scientists, Acadamics, etc. All of this is immediately helpful to narrow the personal wage gap.

Women need to get together and talk about what they earn.

WAGEhubs in Chicago meet monthly to figure out how they will use these workshops in the next year. They decide what programs they need to fight discrimination and the wage gap. Their main agenda is to be paid and treated fairly wherever they work. This is a grassroots movement. 

Employers will hear about this work and will start to look under their roofs or get pressured from employees. Institutional biases and discrimination will have to change.

As this is a blog dedicated to Race in the Workplace, can you see your book being transferable to other minorities in the workplace? Can you suggest other guides like this that are dedicated to race inequities? Do you think all workplace minorities can find a way to work together for change? 

People often get scared and paralyzed on these issues. When I was running for office, my campaign manager Joe was ten years younger and previously a football player in college. He told me that running for office reminded him of playing football. First you get out, you haven’t been hit yet and you’re a bit timid. Then, you get hit so many times that you start to throw your body at things anticipating the impact.

Once you throw yourself into the game of activism and start with some small projects for change, if you have the right kind of values at heart, it’ll workout. The similarities between race and gender discrimination are so close that here’s the exciting part to me.  

This insight comes from the state of Minnesota. They pay women 97 cents for every dollar they pay men. They passed a law in 1980’s, equal pay for equal work, which forced the state to take every job and evaluate and rank them by experience you need, technology background, education, degree of danger. They compared a nurse with a snow plow driver, a university professor and state park ranger. You pay for the job, not who does the job. That concept eliminates the wage gap for all minorities when you’re not making those distinctions anymore. That’s a solution everywhere. Titles were changed, principles were changed. If every employer of all sectors paid for job and not who does the job, it would erase the wage gap today. It can be constructive if employers take responsibility to take the steps to do this today and not wait for messy litigation. It requires leadership, talking, and understanding. In public forums, I face reticence. But in Minnesota, not one man lost a penny when they brought womens’ salaries up. If you go at this deliberately, after a couple years, nobody gets rich off this, it’s just small adjustments. Over time, everybody feels treated fairly. The psychological affects of this could be a major point to getting American jobs competitive in the global market.

I am on the road every day usually giving two presentations a day. I may be loony, but I get traction when I leave, and the echoes start coming back to me over time.

 

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A “white guy” who is a voice for diversity

Luke Visconti is a partner and co-founder of DiversityInc Media LLC. He is a recognized leader in the publishing field and diversity, often appearing on Fox, MSNBC and CNBC, and regularly quoted on diversity issues in publications such as The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, BusinessWeek, Fortune and The Wall Street Journal. You can find more Race in the Workplace interviews in our archives.

What led you to found DiversityInc?

Basically, my motivation comes from my experiences. I was in the US Navy as a helicopter pilot. On my last tour of duty, I volunteered for officer recruiting. They asked me to be responsible for minority officer recruiting and I was assigned to my home state of N.J. There was an African American pilot already in the office and I asked him for help. We worked together for over a year and half, and became good friends. He helped me become aware of things I had not been aware of before, the levels of racism and bigotry that previously had escaped my world as a white man.

Later on, I worked in publishing, at McGraw Hill and at Fortune Magazine. I met Foulis Peacock, my business partner, at Fortune Magazine. We left Fortune with the intention of launching a magazine. We started our own company and created a robust revenue stream as ad sales reps. We tested different ideas. DiversityInc is the one we both really loved. We abandoned other, very profitable aspects of our business to focus on DiversityInc. The website is 10 years old and the magazine, five. It is a labor of love for both of us. We have no outside investors and no debt. There is no board of directors.

Do you feel that people are surprised when they find out that you, a white male, has immersed himself in work around diversity issues?

Typically, people are very surprised that I, as a white male, am involved in diversity efforts. What many don’t understand is that our country has a long history of white people being very involved in civil rights; that fact suprises white people as well as people of color. However, I think it’s true that most people involved in this subject are not white.

There are two kinds of people involved in diversity issues. There are people who fight for their groups’ specific interests, and there are people who fight for all people. I am striving to be in the group that fights for all people. DiversityInc is an American centric publication, however, this subject affects the rest of the world.

Tell us more about the “Ask the White guy” column. This column deals with pretty sensitive current media topics related to race and diversity. Did you anticipate it to be this popular?

I thought we would have a very good chance of this column being very popular because I get very good questions at my speaking engagements. The title, of course, is satirical. I got the idea from a diversity executive’s experience of being selected to be the diversity executive because he was the only person of color at his company’s headquarters. Our audience is very interactive and not afraid to express themselves so I knew that I’d get good questions. It all worked out, and it is very popular.

Do you think that some people feel more comfortable asking a “white guy” about diversity issues?

In person, white people are generally more comfortable asking other white people about diversity issues. When they feel I am one of them, they feel more comfortable, especially with my life experiences – being in the Navy and a successful business man, these add stature. Most white people will tell me that they’re not white, they’re German American for example, and they deny their whiteness and the white culture of this country.

I don’t think that’s the case online. In that platform, I get hostility from many white people. In my column, Ask the White Guy, I take their statements, break them down, counter ignorance with facts, and try to bring them up to speed. On the other hand, people of color often ask questions that are driven by pain, humiliation, discrimination, from how they’ve been treated. I would say that 90% of the comments I receive from the “Ask the White Guy” column are negative, but some are very kind and curious. It’s worth pointing out that for most people, diversity is something they deal with at work, but when they go home, they go back to people who look just like them. The “Ask the White Guy” column is a safe environment for people to ask questions they may not feel comfortable asking anywhere else.

In one column, a reader asked Why Are Sports Dominated by Blacks? I answered this sarcastic question as if the person was being sincere. That enraged the person even more; I got more hate mail for this column than any other. White people hated my answer. Many white people think that cultures and nuances of different races should go away. There are many more ways than one to look at things. Some perspectives are much better than the ones you have, you can absolutely prove diversity; the more solutions, the more potential solutions for the best possible solution.

Have you experienced any extreme reactions (positive or negative) to any parts of your website or magazine?

I get extreme reactions fairly regularly, some resent that I’m white; some virulently disagree with me over GLBT issues. I have a rainbow flag in my office just to make everyone aware of what I believe is a human rights issue. Sexual orientation is as natural as anything else we do. In our society, being heterosexual is normal and allowed, and nothing else. But no one is abnormal, people are people. During speaking events, I remind my audiences that if there are 50 people in the room, a few of them will be gay. Everyone in the room knows someone who is gay and I point out that if they don’t think they know someone who is gay that it only means that their behavior causes the gay people around them to choose not to be themselves in their presence.

Most of my business contacts are African American women; from this, I have formed close friendships over the years. It’s great to be the recipient of such grace and empathy and courtesy and respect and generosity, really humbling. I know these women don’t get the same respect in their offices full of mostly white men. They’re often working three levels below their talents and experiences, which is a truly amazing waste of talent.

If people could understand what civil rights advocates bring to the table, most people would be one. It’s a nicer world. When you meet another person on the right path, there’s an immediate kinship. Our world situation would look different if government officials had some grounding in diversity management. I do get hostility and love at the same time from the fact that DiversityInc exists. Our advertising comes from people at companies who have conviction that their companies will absolutely benefit from advertising in DiversityInc. Conviction creates momentum for our growth and in relation, diversity as a whole.

I think this subject has longevity because I believe that that human DNA is wired to want us to be free. When you serve an issue which lowers oppression, you tap into something much greater, the sum of the parts. MLK said “The ark of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” Civil Rights will continue to expand. Human beings don’t live that long, so our perspective is that change has been slow, but if you look at history, the pace has actually been very rapid..When you serve this subject which is deeply wired inside each human being, you can’t even begin to fathom the strength of it.

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THE REAL PEPSI CHALLENGE: 

The Inspirational Story of Breaking the Color Barrier in American Business

The following review comes at a timely manner to celebrate the life of an African-American marketing legend, Edward F. Boyd, who died last week at the age of 92. Boyd is most known for his innovation and leadership in establishing niche marketing through his work at Pepsi. Boyd respected the African-American market as a unique community with everchanging needs. His work increased American consumption of Pepsi ten-fold, but even more importantly, he fought for race equality every step of the way on a personal, community, and corporate level.

 

Walter Mack, one of the earliest presidents of Pepsi, revolutionized Corporate America. In the late 1940’s, Mack, a Jewish Harvard graduate from NYC believed “that the world’s problems could be solved through the cooperation of the great powers.” Using creativity in his business techniques, Mack invented the modern day ‘business internship’ by having a contest for young college graduates who were “most likely to succeed in life.” 330 men and women from 254 colleges in forty-five states were part of the contest, specifically including female and black students. Thirteen impressive interns won the contest with seven females and two African-Americans. This was the beginning of a racial change in Corporate America. Each intern was to work for one year, and afterwards, Pepsi would either hire them or assist them to get placed elsewhere.

Around this time, Walter Mack hired the first ever black national sales team which would at its peak have twelve members. The main reason for this ‘special-markets’ group was to expand Pepsi consumption among African-Americans. Although Mack’s sole purpose in this move was for gaining un-tapped profits, his tactics were still leaps ahead of most American corporations, including his rival Coca Cola. 

The author Stephanie Capparell molds her investigative research into a cohesive story that sometimes feels as if each character is speaking directly to you. She does not tell the simple story of competition between Pepsi and Coca Cola. Instead, she tells the in-depth history of twelve impressive individuals and how they marketed Pepsi to black communities all over America during segregation and the civil rights era. It was at a time when traveling through the south, they were still not allowed to stay in hotels and had to have separate train cars, even though they had first-class status.

This is a story of corporations, a story of breaking color barriers, a history that all Americans should be aware of. Before this team was put together, it was the norm for African-Americans in media to be shown as purely caricatures like Aunt Jamima or Uncle Ben. The team’s black manager, Edward F. Boyd and his Special Markets team changed the face of advertising. It would have been easy to get a black sports icon to sponsor Pepsi for their black marketing efforts, but Boyd wanted to appeal to his growing middle-class market by catering to their needs. He launched a “Leaders in Their Fields”  advertising campaign and endorsed little-known black leaders in the fields of chemistry, medicine, banking, etc. These ads were popular beyond the magazines and store fronts, and were also requested from black universities and individuals. 

The team, who defined niche marketing, used politics and the promotion of race equality to increase their sales on an individual and community basis, and the African-American market responded. Without mentors or many resources and with many risks, these twelve black leaders succeeded to deal with their white bosses, co-workers, the segregated south and white Pepsi bottlers on a daily basis. They excelled not only in their time with Pepsi, but went on to many other life accomplishments on a national and international level.

Boyd’s team consisted of William Simms, Paul Davis, William Payne, Richard Hurt, Allen McKellar, Julian Nicholas, Harvey Russell, Winston Wright, Charles Wilson, Jean Emmons, and David Watson. 

Later on in Pepsi years, the Special Markets team changed shape because of new leadership. In 1962, Harvey Russell, team director, was promoted to VP in charge of special markets by executive Herbert L Barnet. This was the first VP role appointed to an African-American at a major international company. A touching moment in the book is when Capparell cites that a third of Barnet’s NYTimes obituary was dedicated to his decision to elevate Russell to VP, noting the historical importance.