Diversity means different things to different people. When it’s the focus of your life, job, and energies, the meaning of diversity takes on a particular significance.
In the case of Joelle Hayes, it took her to Travelers in Hartford where she is director of diversity.
Hayes, 33, a Middletown resident and mother of two was recently hired for the newly formed position that deals with components of human resources including recruitment and retention. It’s just the latest task she has undertaken involving diversity.
“I grew up on Long Island and back in the 80s, the thinking was that public schools were racially balanced when it was split half-and-half, black and white,” she said. “The diversity we see today is very different.”
Hayes graduated from Brown University with a degree in public policy and went on to receive a master’s in education from Harvard University. She has since received a second master’s degree from Syracuse University in communication management.
“I thought I would be a teacher for a while,” Hayes said. “It’s an opportunity to educate and to be a mechanism for people to learn about themselves and one another, but I have the opportunity to bring that to corporate America.”
Hayes started as director of multicultural programs at Wesleyan University in 1996 and also held a position with INROADS, a non-profit that helped minority youth get placed in internships that might lead to full-time positions.
Her most recent position was at United Technologies Corporation in Hartford where she was manager for corporate recruiting and diversity partnerships.
“My time there gave me an opportunity to do work with executives on recruiting and vendor relationships,” said Hayes. “Some of the diversity partnership there has carried over, but I’m dealing with it in a much more broad sense.”
Hayes spends some of her spare time as a member of the Hartford alumnae chapter of Delta Sigma Theta and was on the planning committee that brought 3,500 African-American women members to a regional conference in Hartford. She also is a diversity trainer with the Anti-Defamation League, a program that works with high school and college students to address diversity that is present in school communities.
“It’s an extremely rewarding thing to be a part of,” said Hayes. “I’ve worked in higher education, in non-profit and now in corporate America. I feel that I am a ‘bridge builder’ among communities and at the core, that’s what I enjoy the most about what I do,” she said.
“It’s not what I set out to do because I live diversity, why would I want to do it for a career?” Hayes said. “I think that is actually what makes me the right person for the job.”
Emily Boisvert is a Hartford Business Journal staff writer.
