UMass Boston Alumni Magazine - Fall/Winter 2008-2009 - (Page 13)

Govermor Patrick, Chancellor Motley, and Mayor Menino (l-r) at the Commonwealth Compact launching. “The first question was, is there an opening? Is there a role for some new endeavor?” Turner says. “And the overwhelming response was ‘Yes.’ Yes there was.” Carol Fulp, the vice president for community relations and marketing sponsorships at John Hancock Financial Services, was one of the people at the table. As both a black woman and a 30year veteran of Boston’s business scene, she has heard this kind of talk before. “I’m always sensitive about sitting at tables where we have had these conversations 30 years ago and things haven’t really moved much further,” she says. “But I was really struck by the diversity of leadership in this particular initiative.” The group split into working groups to tackle particular problems. One group, led by Beverly Edgehill of The Partnership, Inc., Sandra Henriquez of the Boston Housing Authority, and Beth Smith of the Hyams Foundation, worked with Turner to develop a set of diversity benchmarks for Massachusetts organizations. They came up with six categories in which Massachusetts organizations should strive to improve their diversity: CEO commitment, board membership, workplace and personnel, customers and consumers, vendors and suppliers, and community and civic agendas. critical when you want to make change,” she says. A third was Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, led by President and CEO Paul Levy. “This did not require a long committee meeting where people addressed the pros and cons,” Levy says. “It struck me as eminently right, and the right thing to do. So we did. I don’t get to make many decisions around here, but this was one I got to make.” In fact, Levy went a step further than the benchmarks require. Though members of the compact will file details about their diversity goals with Commonwealth Compact, information about specific businesses will remain private. But Levy has announced that Beth Israel will independently publish its corporate diversity statistics. “It seems to me that organizations only hold themselves accountable when they are public about where they stand,” he says. Today, well over 100 organizations have signed the Commonwealth Compact pledge, more than its designers had hoped. “It’s just been very stunning to me,” Turner says. “It’s a really a very loud voice saying, ‘We’re different from what we were two decades ago, and we want people to know it and we want to improve on that.’” Steve Crosby, too, is pleased. “Judging by the reaction of our political, business, and non-profit leadership,” he says, “there is a powerful wish in our community to remedy both this reputation and reality.” On the day of Commonwealth Compact’s launch, despite the looming holiday weekend, over 500 people, including Boston Mayor Thomas Menino and Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, gathered at UMass Boston. There, they heard Crosby explain that the initial success of the pledge was the first step toward ridding Massachusetts of the stain of its history. Fulp, who watched Crosby speak, says that she came away filled with hope. “I think that, finally, I am really feeling encouraged that the time is right for Boston, for the Commonwealth,” she says. BEYoND ThE PLEDGE The pledge is not Commonwealth Compact’s only project. Several others are also in the works, among them: • establishing a databank of minority job candidates and potential board members; • creating a clearinghouse to improve the coordination and development of existing programs dealing with diversity; and • seeking in a variety of ways to promote public discussion and to tell the story of the new majority-minority Boston, particularly in terms of what the region’s increasing diversity means for the future. To learn more about Commonwealth Compact’s current activities, visit www.compactlaunch.umb.edu. Julia Reischel is a reporter at Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly and a freelance writer based in Boston. She can be reached at reischel@gmail.com. UMass Boston n TAkiNG ThE PLEDGE Local organizations would not be asked merely to meet the benchmarks, but to sign a pledge promising to report their progress back to Commonwealth Compact, which would then make the aggregate data public. This spring, Commonwealth Compact put the project into action by quietly asking local business leaders to take the pledge. “We literally hoped that something like six or eight or ten organizations would sign on by the time we went public,” Turner says. “We expected a lot of pushback from this.” Instead, a trickle of organizations embraced the benchmarks, and then the trickle became a torrent. One of the early adopters was Carol Fulp’s John Hancock. Another was Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, where Senior Vice President for Corporate Relations Fredi Shonkoff, helped fine-tune the plan. “I think it’s good that it’s a collaborative effort, and that it provides structure and measurement, which are always 13 http://www.compactlaunch.umb.edu

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of UMass Boston Alumni Magazine - Fall/Winter 2008-2009

UMass Boston Alumni Magazine - Fall/Winter 2008-2009 Contents UNews Oh, the Places They've Gone! "One of Those Rare Leaders" Acknowledging History, Renewing a Commonwealth Heart and Mind Indelible Images About Alumni Investing in UMass Boston A Generous Friend Alumni Calendar

UMass Boston Alumni Magazine - Fall/Winter 2008-2009

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