ChicagoSkyline-1

As promised, I’m going to share my thoughts and opinions about The Conference Board’s 2010 Annual Corporate Diversity & Inclusion Conference in the next two blog posts.

I thought the conference went extremely well. I have attended several Conference Board events and all of them (including this one) have been top quality events in terms of the participating companies, the speakers, the content, and networking opportunities. Carole Weinstein put together this event (along with other diversity-related sessions for The Conference Board) and it was excellent.

Below are some of the learnings from the first day (it was actually a 1/2 day) of the conference (more will follow in tomorrow’s post):

One major theme that emerged is that diversity and inclusion needs to be global and local. This theme came up several times on the panel Business Not As Usual: New Possibilities & New Visions. The panelists included Rob Leary, Chief Executive Officer, ING Insurance U.S., Julie Hodges, Senior Vice President, Human Resources, Diversity and Inclusion, Walt Disney Parks & Resorts, and Paul Richardson, Senior Vice President of Human Resources, ESPN.

Each of the panelists emphasized the necessity of integrating diversity and inclusion initiatives with various cultures in the U.S. and internationally. Julie Hodges of Disney mentioned an interesting challenge that Disney faces as they develop parks globally—how to give guests a consistent experience, while simultaneously adapting to local cultures.

For example, in Disney’s U.S. parks, wine isn’t generally served and when Disney opened a theme park in France, they initially didn’t even consider serving wine (in France, mind you). As the audience chucked, Hodges noted that they changed this policy due to local culture, which makes alot of sense. Likewise, when opening theme park in Shanghai, Disney Parks consulted with a local feng shui expert. So Disney integrates local culture with the global theme park. Hodges summed up her idea this way: it’s important for our customers to see themselves in our theme parks.

Paul Richardson of ESPN suggested something similar, noting that fans and viewers need to be reflected in and to participate in the offerings of the network. He also discussed the communication that ESPN facilitates between their global offices through rotational programs, and language learning systems. Robert Leary, CEO ING USA, noted the importance of understanding cultural differences when developing and selling products across cultures.

Each of these companies has found ways to integrate local cultures into a global strategy layered with elements of diversity and inclusion, and it seems that this type of dual strategy is the future of D&I at major companies.

Part 2 of this post will discuss some of the other ideas from the conference.