His View
Working Together in Support of
Racial Equality and Economic Opportunity
By Brian Thomas Moynihan
Chairman & CEO
Bank of America
The healthcare and economic crisis caused by the
pandemic has created a more urgent need for
individuals, communities and companies to come
together and drive positive change. While we have made
great progress as a country in so many areas of equality
and opportunity, there is more we must do. All people
should be treated with respect, and live free from
discrimination. At Bank of America, we enable you to
come to work, to bring who you are to work, and to be as
successful as you want to be without regard to your race,
gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other
characteristic. This is core to who we are as a company
and how we drive Resposible Growth.
I chair our company’s Global Diversity and Inclusion
Council, and have throughout my tenure as CEO. The
council includes leaders from across our company and is
a governing body that oversees how we execute our
diversity and inclusion strategy. We work to ensure
diverse representation at all levels of our company,
including a Board of Directors and management team that
are nearly 50% diverse. Within the top three levels of our
company, more than 40% are women and nearly 20%
are people of color. And, in our 2019 class of full-time
campus new hires, 45% were women and nearly 55%
were people of color, including 15% who were Hispanic-
Latino. In addition, on our board of directors we’re
fortunate to benefit from the guidance and expertise of
Monica Lozano, whose leadership has been
acknowledged on Latino Leaders’ list of the nation’s most
outstanding Hispanic Fortune 500 directors.
One of the core tenets of Responsible Growth is that
it be sustainable. A key aspect of sustainability is sharing
success with the communities we serve. To address the
need for greater racial equality and economic opportunity
where the gaps have been exacerbated by the global
pandemic, we are underway with a $1 billion, four-year
initiative to create opportunity for people and communities
of color in health and healthcare, jobs/reskilling, support
to small businesses, and affordable housing.
We already are the leading lender to small business
in the United States, but in this and the other priority areas
in our initiative, our focus on providing opportunity for
Black and Hispanic-Latino business and individuals is just
the latest in many ways we are investing in today and in
the future.
We’re proud to serve 9.5 million Hispanic-Latino
individuals and over 1 million business owners. We also
provide support to many organizations that predomi-nantly
serve the Hispanic-Latino community, and we
maintain longstanding partnerships with the Association
of Latino Professionals for America (ALPFA) and
UnidosUS, among others.
Sharing the diversity of perspectives on these
important issues is another way we create an inclusive
environment inside and outside our company. Open
dialogue helps each of us gain a greater understanding
and appreciation for one another, and deepen our
understanding of our unique histories and differences.
Conversations like this happen every day across our
company, including through our 11 employee networks
with more than 180,000 memberships. This includes
our Hispanic-Latino Organization for Leadership &
Advancement (HOLA), comprised of more than 16,000
Hispanic-Latino teammates. This year, we also
announced a $25 million grant to assist in the launch of
a new Smithsonian Institution program to organize
discussions across the U.S. on how Americans
understand, experience and confront race, its impact on
communities and how that impact is shaping our future.
We kicked this off with a discussion for our teammates
in which I was joined by UnidosUS President and CEO
Janet Murguía, National Urban League President CEO
Marc Morial and Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution
Lonnie G. Bunch III. We encourage other companies to
offer their own support to the Smithsonian program and
help create a national platform.
On behalf of all of my 210,000+ teammates, thank
you very much for the honor of being your 2020
Company of the Year.
LSM VOL.26#4