“No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.” — Nelson Mandela
Hear from Kevin Chavers of Blackrock and Val Kay of Lending Club, the SFA Executive Committee Sponsors of SFA’s I&D initiative
We (Kevin and Val) enthusiastically welcomed the chance to work together and launch the SFA I&D Initiative . We are both passionate advocates for promoting diversity and belonging in our industry and feel a duty to act, to not only enhance the experience of underrepresented minorities in our industry, but also, to strengthen our organizations. Moreover, we are excited and honored to work together on this vital issue and leverage our long, close and respectful friendship. We are also thrilled that SFA will serve as the fulcrum for our the industry to come together to make meaningful changes, establish aspirational goals and metrics to measure and engage a vibrant, energetic and welcoming community of diverse professionals. So come join us with this important initiative. Add your leadership help effect meaningful change. We NEED YOU!
Get involved in the steering committee. Sign up here.
All our best,
Kevin Chavers BlackRock
Managing Director SFA Executive Committee
Val Kay LendingClub
Chief Capital Officer SFA Executive Committee
Join Our Conversation
Join the SFA I&D Advisory Committee
The Advisory Committee will work closely with SFA leadership and will serve an active role in shaping the goals, objectives, and priorities of SFA’s I&D initiative. Key focus areas will include aggregating best practices, conceptualizing engagement opportunities, and ultimately designing our industry’s “network of networks.”
SFA’s I&D membership is open to all industry participants, regardless of SFA membership status, and is complimentary to join. By signing up, you will be notified of the latest news, developments, and networking opportunities in conjunction with the initiative.
Foster a deep appreciation among participants in the structured finance industry around the value of tangible, visible, and demonstrable diversity at our firms – at all levels, and particularly at the senior levels – and promote understanding of how such diversity increases the industry’s ability to serve the real economy.
Enhance access and long-term success in the structured finance industry for people of color, women, and LGBTQ+.
Establish and hold ourselves as an organization accountable for real change, including instituting key performance metrics and sharing these results broadly.
Create a community where industry participants share best practices, ideas, and challenges so that we can all learn from one another and make progress together.
Conduct regular research analyzing our industry’s impact on communities of color, and work to ensure that progress is made to close the inequality gap in credit access to these communities across the country.
Read SFA CEO Michael Bright’s February 2020 Op-Ed in Thrive Global about how more diversity in Wall Street’s C-suites could be a key ingredient in preventing the next financial crisis.
Mehrsa Baradaran, UC Irvine Law professor and author of the above titled book, explores how a segregated economy limits access to capital in communities of color and perpetuates a cycle of poverty.
Marco A. Davis, President & CEO of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute (CHCI), and SFA CEO Michael Bright discuss the impact on the Hispanic community of COVID-19, institutional bias, and the ongoing protests, as well as how our industry can help Latin youth gain access to jobs in finance.
Since 1980, SEO Career has provided training and resources to over 7,000 underrepresented students nationwide, allowing them to secure positions of leadership across Wall Street and Corporate America. This video highlights the successes achieved by their alumni, as well as the progress being made toward creating a more equitable society and diverse
S&P Global, in partnership with AARP, examined Corporate America’s family leave policies to understand the relationship between family-friendly benefits and female representation in the workforce and senior management.
“It is vital to recognize that bias is generated reflexively by the brain, and masquerades as reality. As a distortion, bias blocks our access to the present reality. When our biases are in charge, we are on automatic pilot and unaware of the uniqueness of the present moment and other people.” So concludes a summary newsletter article on the topic of bias produced by the Institute of Coaching. Direct and straightforward, the above statement gets to the heart of the matter. Bias is within us, and so much so we often do not recognize it because it distorts our reality.
2020 has been a wake-up call for leaders and companies on many levels. From a global pandemic to protests across our country fighting systemic racism, it’s been a year like none other, and we’re only in the second half.
Out of the chief executives running America’s top 500 companies, just 1%, or four, are Black. The numbers aren’t much better on the rungs of the ladder leading to that role. Among all U.S. companies with 100 or more employees, Black people hold just 3% of executive or senior-level roles, according to Equal Employment Opportunity Commission data.
The average Black family had less than 15 percent of the wealth of white families in 2019, a trend that barely budged despite economic gains among minorities over the past three years, the Federal Reserve said on Monday.
America's failure to address wide gaps between Black and White communities has cost the economy up to $16 trillion over the past 20 years, according to an analysis published by Citigroup this week.
The report -- focusing on inequities that exist in wages, education, housing and investment -- underscores racial tensions that are helping to fuel unrest in the United States today.
Jane Fraser will become the first woman to run a major Wall Street bank, succeeding Michael Corbat as Citigroup Inc. chief executive when he retires in February.
With nearly half of the UK’s workforce working from home, many of us are signing on to our day with our pets, kids, and partners as “in real life” co-workers.
Heather Boushey, who is unofficially one of the top economic advisers to Joseph R. Biden Jr., does not play to type. When the progressive economist and I arranged to meet last December in a Midtown Manhattan coffee shop, I was expecting someone buttoned up, and I couldn’t find her in the room.
SFA’s I&D initiative is a collaborative effort between SFA’s Board of Directors, membership, executive leadership, and the broader industry. Associated programming is funded through annual SFA membership dues, and the I&D Advisory Committee works with SFA to create and curate educational content and networking opportunities.
If you are interested in getting involved, please email [email protected].
