Kodak’s External
Diversity Advisory Board:
(Top row, left to right)
■ Antonio M. Perez
Kodak chairman and CEO
■ Rev. Norvel Goff Sr.
Pastor of Reid Chapel AME
Church in Columbia, S.C.,
former president and CEO
of Greater Rochester
Chapter of the NAACP
■ Eric Holder Jr.
Washington, D.C., attorney
(partner, Covington &
Burling) and former U.S.
Deputy Attorney General,
chaired the original panel
■ Lionel Sosa
Consultant, CEO of
Mexicans and Americans
Thinking Together, and
author of Think and Grow
Rich: A Latino Choice
■ Jean E. Dubofsky
Attorney, former Justice on
the Colorado Supreme Court
(Bottom row, left to right)
■ Essie Calhoun
Chief diversity officer and
director, Community Affairs;
vice president, Kodak
■ Dr. Johnnetta Cole
President, Bennett College
for Women, and immediate
past chair of the board
of directors of United Way
of America
■ Taeku Lee
Political-science professor
at University of California at
Berkeley, former assistant
professor of public policy,
Harvard University,
John F. Kennedy School
of Government
internal advisory panel. I’m the leader of the
panel, the chairman.
DiversityInc: Kodak has a stated goal of maintaining a work force whose multicultural make-up matches the available U.S. labor force. How
are you ensuring that Kodak achieves that goal?
Perez: You have to realize that one objective
for becoming a digital company included
reduction of people directly employed by the
company. Part of the digital model requires you
to outsource processes more efficiently done by
external companies. So one company becomes
a supplier of five or six and gets to a scale that
makes them more efficient. Because of that and
because we were [declining] in film, those led
to a reduction of employees. But we did not
want to reduce representation. We wanted to
increase representation. And in most areas, we
increased. In some areas, we lost. But overall,
we haven’t lost ground.
DiversityInc: How did you not lose ground?
Perez: Following the labor laws and just communicating more. Re-educating people. We’ve
been trying to rescue as many employees from
