I’ve been mulling over this Fortune Unfiltered interview with Richard Parsons, the former Chairman of Citigroup, and, as CEO of AOL Time Warner, the only black boss I’ve ever had. (Many, many, many layers removed.)
Parsons, almost Zelig-like, has appeared in leadership roles during one major crisis after another, bringing a consistent calm to very challenging times. First, at Dime Bank, just as the S&L crisis hit. Then, tapped to prevent the storied brands of Time Warner from disappearing under the weight of a poorly designed merger, all while trying to invent a new digital future. (We still have work to do, he said kindly.) And he managed to help keep the lights around the world on as the Chair of Citigroup in 2009, arguably one of the institutions hardest hit by the financial crisis.
“The financial global financial system could have gone dark,” he said. For too-big-to-failers, his account of keeping the financial regulators at a “respectable distance” while navigating a path forward is a must listen. (Around the ten minute mark.)
Parsons is one of very few black baby boomers who rose to the highest ranks in corporate life. But, as we’ve covered extensively here, the list of black C-Suite executives remains a small one. So, it’s no wonder that many next-generation executives of color, specifically men, wonder if he did enough to pave the way.
Parsons shared a poignant tale that speaks to the world he walked into, and the world he’s leaving behind. One of his first professional jobs was as a staff lawyer for New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, an early insight into how business and government worked.
Ironically, his grandfather had been the head groundskeeper on the Rockefeller family estate. (The Rockefeller family had a long history of hiring black people in a variety of functions, which helped create a small, but loyal cadre of moderate, black Republicans in the Northeast.) Parsons talked about visiting the estate in the 1970s, fresh from a lawyerly stint in D.C., and meeting some of the people his grandfather had hired. Many had been there for three decades or more. One woman, when she heard that “Old Judd Parsons’” grandson had shown up, assumed that he had been hired to work the grounds, too.
“Principle reason I hadn’t is because of how dramatically the country had changed in the 30-40 years since,” he said. “African Americans could go get quality education and could compete for and hold higher end jobs. Probably the big difference. Wasn’t that I was the swift guy and my grandfather wasn’t.”
His advice for young people of color today builds on that. “The sky’s the limit. Those barriers that were almost impenetrable a generation ago, certainly two generations ago, are gone. There are other structural things that we need to do in our society to level the playing field but you can go from the top to the bottom almost irregardless of race, origin creed or sexual orientation.”
Coming from a groundskeeper’s grandson, I get the point.
Parsons was a regular fixture at the various employee resource groups around the Time Warner sphere, and he tended to give more tactical advice. “It’s up to you to bring yourself to the attention of powerful people around you,” he once told a small group of us. Share your ideas, your passion, your plans. “They’re not going to find you on their own.”
But he was also making a bigger point. It wasn’t so much that we needed their attention to succeed, though it would certainly help, but that we were worthy of it. And that changes the conversation dramatically.
On Point
| Hillary Clinton accuses Donald Trump of amplifying hate |
| Hillary Clinton did not hold back in a speech delivered yesterday in Reno, NV, attacking her Republican opponent for currying favor with racist groups and stoking dangerous sentiments. “From the start, Donald Trump has built his campaign on prejudice and paranoia. He is taking hate groups mainstream, and helping a radical fringe take over the Republican Party,” said Clinton. |
| Fortune |
| Former Twitter engineer says Silicon Valley hostile to diversity |
| Former Twitter engineer Leslie Miley sent shockwaves through Silicon Valley when he published a blistering post on Medium that placed the blame for the lack of diversity in tech squarely on the shoulders of white, clueless company founders. (He also blames the failure of tech companies to curb abuse on their platforms on the same people.) In this must-watch interview, he doubles down, saying that meritocracy in tech is nonsense, and that tech companies can’t find people of color to hire because they don’t want to. |
| Ars Technica |
| South Korea’s Lotte Group vice chairman found dead |
| Vice Chairman Lee In-won was found dead earlier today, after an apparent suicide. Lee was about to be questioned by prosecutors conducting a criminal probe into the conglomerate’s business practices, which had increasingly come under scrutiny after a nasty and highly public family succession battle. The company is South Korea’s fifth largest conglomerate, it started in 1948 as a chewing gum manufacturer. |
| Reuters |
| Diverse teams win. So why aren't leaders serious about diversity? |
| Howard Yu, a professor of innovation and strategy, pulls no punches in this indictment of the lack of diversity in business. Stop talking, and start doing. “To break new ground, we need tangible rules that intervene in our operational decisions, perhaps akin to the affirmative action system, but applicable to all levels, from the rank-and-file to the board.” |
| Fortune Insiders |
| #StopWhitePeople2k16 prompts Binghamton University officials to respond |
| The provocative hashtag #StopWhitePeople has been around for a few years, an internet meme used to frame a variety of conversations, some serious, like rape culture, and some less so, like jokes about whether white people can jump or dance, etc. But when a Binghamton University student group used a version of it to promote a training session about race, the internet lost its damn mind, believing the tax-payer funded institution was offering a course with the same name. Oh, to be a crisis manager these days. |
| CNN |
The Woke Leader
| Images of braids and a history of black, female strength |
| That black women braid each other’s hair, sometimes for hours, is a precious and iconic emblem of the African diaspora, something that binds women together over generations, even if an actual memory of ancestry has been lost. (It’s also part of why white women wearing corn-rows is considered a form of appropriation.) These photos by Shani Crowe, now at the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts in Brooklyn, take that communal tradition into the realm of art and portraiture. |
| New York Times |
| Remembering a brother that everyone else has forgotten |
| Do yourself a favor and take a look at this extraordinary exploration of loss, grief and resolution – which is also a breakthrough in digital storytelling. The story centers on the brother of one the victims of the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, and how he’s trying to let go, while still holding on to the pieces of his brother that still remain. Although it is not explicitly about race, it is about finding peace while seeking a justice that’s not coming. Bring your headphones and tissues. |
| Frontline |
| Where are America’s most economically segregated schools? |
| A new study examines 33,500 borders between school districts in the U.S., to find out which adjacent school systems experience the largest poverty gaps. The biggest: 49.2 % of Detroit's school-age residents live below the poverty line, while only 6.5 % of their peers in neighboring Grosse Pointe do. The greatest disparities occur in the country’s manufacturing centers: Michigan, Wisconsin, Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, and all are a result of school financing policies. |
| Christian Science Monitor |
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