🔒Lacking C-suite diversity, this CT company heightens focus on racial equality

In early June, with a historic number of Americans in the streets across the country protesting police brutality against Black people, many corporations felt the urge to respond in some way.

There were donations to Black Lives Matter causes, and displays and statements of support — ranging from JPMorganChase CEO Jamie Dimon taking a knee alongside bank branch employees in New York to Ben & Jerry’s calling for the government to defund the police.

Amid the public outcry sparked by the videotaped death of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer, top executives at Orange-based utility operator Avangrid found themselves having an unusual discussion.

In a virtual workshop and discussion organized by the company’s top human resources exec, Peter Church, and run by talent development consultant Karen Hinds of Waterbury-based Workplace Success Group, Avangrid’s senior leaders received a history lesson on Black inequality, covering the U.S. slave trade, emancipation and Great Migration, Church recounted in an interview with HBJ. They told stories about the first time they interacted with a Black person, and discussed the concept of privilege, as well as how to be sensitive to Black employees feeling distressed or angry about Floyd’s killing.

Church had approached senior leaders ahead of booking the session. He said there was unanimous agreement that the discussion would be beneficial.

“I was really pleased with that,” Church said. “The amount of trust they put in me to bring a meeting forward says ‘I might be a late-career white male and I’m watching things happen in our society I may or may not fully understand, but I have an opportunity to spend three hours with my colleagues in a raw conversation and learn — yeah, I’m up for that.’ ”

CEO James Torgerson, who was less than a month away from retirement at the time, did not skip out.

“Not only did he advocate for and sponsor this [workshop], but he participated in it,” Church said.

Avangrid, like a number of public companies headquartered in Connecticut, has no Black appointees in its C-suite nor on its board of directors.

Asking well-paid, mostly white executives to be vulnerable during a sometimes awkward or difficult conversation is not going to change everything overnight, but Church said the unusual meeting is a good start and he hopes to build on it with other initiatives.

For example, Church aims to propose a change to the company’s long-term incentive structure for higher-ups, to tie some compensation to measurable diversity metrics.

Corporate diversity is something institutional investors have been inquiring about more frequently of late, and that lack of diversity at the highest levels has perhaps never been more apparent than during the June workshop, Church said.

While Avangrid’s broader workforce tends to mirror that of the population of the communities in which it operates, things begin to skew the higher up the ladder you go.

“That right there is an epic challenge for all HR and business leaders in all industries and sectors,” Church said. “As you move up in a career path, there’s a demographic fall-off, whether it’s women or people of color.”

Avangrid also launched, on Juneteenth — the June 19 holiday marking emancipation of Black people in the U.S. — a business resource group for Black employees.

Business resource groups are common at large corporations, and focus on employee development, networking, recruiting, retention and other issues, and are usually organized around specific cultural or racial groups.

Adding to existing business resource groups, including for women and military veteran employees, Avangrid’s new one had been in the works before the recent Black Lives Matter protests.

“Is it a response to George Floyd? No,” Church said. “Is it more urgent because of him? You better believe it.”