PEOPLE &PLACES
BY T.J. DEGROAT / © 2006 DiversityInc
Edna Norwood
Director of Diversity Retired After 38 Years at Wachovia
the truth. At her retirement
party in early April, chairman,
president and CEO Ken
Thompson said he could count
on Norwood’s honesty. Less
sophisticated executives could
wind up with one-way tickets to
the unemployment line, but
Norwood speaks in a way that
prevents her audience from
becoming defensive. “I trust and
believe in individuals and meet
them where they are,” she
explains. “I try to enter conver-
sations without judgment.
When you do that, human
beings meet you where you are.”
Norwood is leaving the
truth-telling to Rosie Saez, sen-
ior vice president and director
of diversity-integration prac-
tices, who has had the benefit of
several months working along-
side Norwood during her tran-
sition. “You just know when it’s time,” Norwood says.
“And it’s time for me to hand it off to a wonderful indi-
vidual who’s got just as much spunk as I have.”
With all of that energy, Norwood couldn’t stop working altogether. She plans to consult through her own firm,
Norwood Associates, and wants to do more community
work, using her corporate-diversity background to help
bring together different segments of the community.
She also plans to spend more time with her grown
children and her 10-year-old grandson, who she says
inspired her corporate work.
“I have always said that I do this work in the corporate
world so my grandson won’t have to sit in a three-and-a-half-hour workshop to learn what diversity is,” Norwood
says. “He will experience it in his daily life.”
But while diversity is easier to embrace for each new
generation, there always will be more work for diversity
executives to do, Norwood says. “The universe will
always give us issues and things we need to be paying
attention to,” she says. “I’m not sure you ever get to a
place of rest around diversity.”
After joining Wachovia, then First
Union National Bank, in 1967, Edna
Norwood moved to a new position
every 18 months or so—until she
landed in the diversity department.
“I thought, ‘Here’s home,’” she says.
Norwood, the first black American
hired by the company to work a non-courier or non-janitorial job, was
director of diversity from 1998 until
the end of April, when she retired.
During her 38 years of service at
the Charlotte, N.C.–based financial-services company, Norwood, 59,
worked in or supported every department, beginning as a proof operator in
the operations division. But diversity
is where she made her biggest impact.
During her tenure of service,
Norwood led all three phases of the
company’s diversity journey: the start-up period, focused on building awareness and developing skills; building
capacity, which centered on continued
training, the creation of employee-resource networks
and alignment with the supplier-diversity office; and the
current phase, institutionalization, including enhanced
metrics and CEO commitment.
That word—commitment—is what Wachovia
uses to describe its diversity work. “We didn’t want it to
be just another program or initiative … we chose it to
demonstrate that it really was a journey and was going to
take us time to get there,” she says. “It was not going to
be an initiative we start and set goals for and know if we
don’t meet by a set time it won’t continue. Diversity doesn’t work like that. It takes time for people to learn and
change and recognize the real value of differences.”
Wachovia began its commitment to diversity in 1994
with workshops lasting three and a half days, in which
employees could “get a feel for what the real issues were,”
Norwood says. She began working with the diversity
team, helping develop diversity strategies, two years later.
During her time at Wachovia—the only company
Norwood has worked for since graduating from ITT
Technical Institute—she earned a reputation for speaking
Edna Norwood
Company: Wachovia
No. of Employees: 153,000
2006 Top 50 Rank: 21
2005 Annual Revenue: 26. 1 Billion
