Finding a home for diversity at Freddie Mac

A Q&A with Freddie Mac's Suzanne Richards about their diversity practices for Diversity Executive magazine.

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Suzanne Richards, vice president of diversity and inclusion at the mortgage giant, talks about its collaborative group programs to engage both leaders and employees in everyday diversity.

Who: Suzanne Richards

What: Vice President of Diversity and Inclusion, Freddie Mac

When: Since June 2011

In what areas do you place special emphasis on diversity and inclusion at Freddie Mac?

Richards: For the first time, each of Freddie Mac’s 14 divisions, working with our office of diversity and inclusion, created its own diversity plan tailored to meet division needs. This will ensure that all levels and areas of the company are making diversity a priority and helping Freddie Mac realize its overall diversity and business goals.

We’ve also ramped up our supplier diversity program to strengthen our business. In 2011, we increased our expenditures with diverse suppliers and vendors by more than 50 percent over the previous year.

Another area of focus for us is our employee network groups (ENGs). After an extensive review of ENG participation and efficacy, we re-launched our ENGs at the end of 2011, with a renewed focus on leadership. All of our ENG executive sponsors are members of the firm’s management committee. By engaging senior leaders to lead the ENGs, we are ensuring effective coaching, mentoring and sponsorship of ENG members, as well as providing an active forum for developing and showcasing the future leaders of Freddie Mac.

Continue reading at Diversity Executive magazine!

This year, don't think resolution -- think revolution.

A newsletter piece originally published on Talent Management magazine online about corporate New Year's resolutions.

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How many of us have given up on new year’s resolutions because they simply don’t stick? Well, forget about resolutions. Here are five ways to revolutionize your new year.

Personal resolutions don’t fulfill themselves — investing in a gym membership isn’t the same as showing up and getting on the elliptical. The same is true for businesses. Simply setting vague goals in a post-holiday meeting and throwing money at them won’t make them realize themselves.

Here are five ways talent managers can ensure their goals don’t suffer the same fate as some folks’ plans to swim the English Channel.

Make the “how” the goal. According to Paul David Walker, a business adviser, Genius Stone Partners founder and author of Unleashing Genius: Leading Yourself, Teams, and Corporations, a company’s resolutions are something to be worked toward with every action.

“People can’t relate to a number; there’s no ‘how’ in a number,” he said. The activities that lead to that number or goal are the goals themselves, Walker said. “You have to have a visceral description of how that will happen, and it needs to be in the present tense. Because if you say, ‘I will’ or ‘we will,’ you push it into the future.” Brainstorming the steps needed to reach a goal, then making those steps into a clear plan will make initiatives easier for clients or employees to follow and get excited about.

Culture of communication. This is most effective when the entire workforce is on board — something that can’t be achieved unless management is actually listening. This isn’t something that can be faked, but requires a collective shift in the culture of a company toward one where every member of the team feels valued and heard, Walker said.

“It’s really critical that you establish a relationship with your employees, that you’re open to hearing all their ideas and thoughts,” he said. “You have to create the environment that encourages people to speak up.”

The key is cutting egos from the conversation and resisting the urge to shoot down an idea immediately. “A big part of that is when someone does share, even if it is totally stupid — which sometimes it is — never make the employee wrong.”

Continue reading at Talent Management magazine!

Serving Chicago's underground since 2011.

Since graduation, I've been spending lots of my time doing PR and social media marketing for Neo, "Chicago's oldest nightclub." I've learned a lot about managing a facebook account from the business side and what kind of tactics will get people to sit up and pay attention. I've also been having a blast sharing music and entertainment news with a Chicago rock and alternative audience and basically being lucky enough to be allowed to play in with the folks behind such an iconic Chicago institution.

One of the biggest undertakings has been creating an archive for their amazing collection of advertising materials. Combing through 30+ years of flyers and posters has been a real treat. Here's a flyer I made for a recent event:

Please visit their page to see more of where I've been trying to take their editorial voice and place in the facebook sharing world. And don't forget to fan us!

Beaucoup Chicago

Medill's annual publishing project presents Beaucoup Chicago, the very first local magazine made exclusively for the iPad.

This is my capstone project. I was lucky enough to be able to combine my magazine skills with something as high-tech and cutting edge as this project, for which I was a part of the editorial team. This means I did everything from copy-editing the text for many of the stories in the final draft of the magazine and pitching in with an extra hand for many of the special projects.