Celebrating and Showcasing Diversity & Inclusion

SPEAKING: Joann Mitchell, Glenn Bryan, Mark Mills, Michele Leff, Winfred Sanders, Craig Carnaroli, Glenn Stieffenhofer.

Joann Mitchell: The Penn Compact 2020 has a strategic vision for moving university forward. Our work around local and global engagement trying to ensure that people have access to opportunities and whether or not we're inclusive with our community eventers and suppliers and contractors and service providers.

Glenn Bryan: Penn's Economic Inclusion Program is really been part of our overall local engagement strategy at Penn for quite some time and a how thriving university can help stimulate the surrounding community's economics.

Mark Mills: Well, I think the qualities a diverse business needs to have is they need to be passionate about what they do. They need to bring an innovation to what they do. They need to really get to know their customers. They come, they sell, they're proud of themselves, and they just knock it out of the park for Penn.

Michele Leff: When we moved our building to West Philadelphia in 2008, we probably had about 50 full time employees and we have now 85 full time employees and about 200 part-time employees. 25 more in the past couple years have all come from West Philadelphia.

Winfred Sanders: We want to make sure that we understand what the customer needs and then meet those needs on time and to exceed those expectations.

Craig Carnaroli: Penn's commitment to inclusivity really stems a lot from our interdependence with the city. The stronger and more vibrant Philadelphia is it helps us with attracting and retaining who will be the best staff and faculty, whether it be the best students.

Mark Mills: To set goals, you need metrics. We set goals every year on what our spend levels are going to be with diversity and local suppliers. With that, we have to report monthly. Here's what we're doing to try and do more to help advance that spend.

Joann Mitchell:  Our economic impact on the whole is enormous. It's important to us that people of color and women and veterans and people with disabilities and the LGBT community have access to those opportunities to be able build their capacity.

Winfred Sanders: We've been able to create jobs for the area and to bring young people into the company. We started off with three people and we're now up to 40 employees in our company.

Glenn Bryan: Other institutions have come to us, university, to find out how do we do what we do, what's our recipe.

Craig Carnaroli: We're able to grow the city and I think the world is not a static place. It's dynamic and it's part of what our contribution and expectation is.

Glenn Stieffenhofer: 90% of our employees come from the immediate area surrounding the University of Pennsylvania. By far the largest value to us is aligning with the university's growth and goals of inclusiveness and diverse cultural involvement.

Michele Leff: When we first came here, we were tasked with 45 events for alumni weekend, totaling over 20,000 guests and we succeeded and have continued year after year to build on those successes.

Winfred Sanders: Diversity will open the door, but it will not sustain you. You have to deliver. I think sometimes people lean on diversity. You can't lean on it. Diversity is a license to fish, but you got to go out there and do the fishing yourself.

Glenn Bryan: Penn has its own culture, so I think it's really important for the business to really learn that culture and get to know Penn.

Mark Mills: We think about identifying great suppliers, bringing great suppliers into our system that are diverse and local, but also promoting them. I find that those suppliers that really understand Penn, get to know the customers, and really develop with us, they're the ones that find the greatest success.

Winfred Sanders: Your brand should stand for something that means quality, integrity, customer satisfaction, so when they see your name or hear your name, they ought to have an image of who you are.

Craig Carnaroli: We can make the city stronger, that enables Penn to be stronger and vice versa.

Glenn Bryan: We stepped out on this economic inclusion program not because we had to do it, we did it because we felt it was the right thing to do.

Glenn Stieffenhofer: I think the best advice that I can give a company that's trying to work with Penn is to realize that you're not too small.

Michele Leff: The biggest things is passion.

Mark Mills: Being professionally persistent.

Glenn Bryan: Unique.

Joann Mitchell: Committed to excellence in everything that they do.

Glenn Stieffenhofer: Honesty and building relationships.

Winfred Sanders: Trying to mentor.

Joann Mitchell: As long as Philadelphia and West Philadelphia and our community rises, Penn rises and we benefit enormously from that.