andrea l. mason- matching opportunities
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photo by steed media service
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Director of External Partnerships, Global Workforce Diversity, Citigroup
When the Rev. Jesse Jackson created the Rainbow/PUSH’s Wall Street Project in 1997, he hoped to improve relations and racial inclusion between large corporations and minority firms. One of the first major corporations to come onboard was Citigroup. Andrea Mason, Citigroup’s director of external partnerships for global workforce diversity, says the company immediately realized the importance of Rev. Jackson’s initiative.
“We’ve been with the Wall Street Project since the beginning. We’ve always looked at the WSP as a strategic opportunity for us to meet small minority business people to match with opportunities to do business at Citi,” she explains.
As one of the initiative’s corporate partners, Citigroup plays an integral role in planning WSP’s annual Economic Summit and determining which areas should be highlighted. “We start the planning discussions in August every year,” she says. “That’s when we normally start deciding what the primary focus should be the following year.”
This year however, the discussions centered on ensuring that the conference would address the issues that the participants wanted. “One of the things we talked about doing this year at our initial steering committee meeting was that immediately following the conference in January ’08, we would go out and get feedback from the participants so that we could incorporate that into the early stages of the planning for next year’s conference,” she reveals. “We’re always looking for ways to improve.”
–ivory m. jones
The 11th annual Wall Street Economic Summit takes place January 6-9, 2008 in New York City. For more information, visit www.wallstreetproject.org.
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