DiversityInc - January/February 2009

Special Regional Report

the local demographics. Their work forces are 29. 3 percent Black, 4. 6 percent Latino and 6. 5 percent Asian, while their new hires are 33 percent Black, 5. 3 percent Latino and 3. 8 percent Asian, showing progress in two of the three demographic areas.

The companies retain their diversity commitment in their communications practices. For example, 60 percent of them have mandatory diversity training for the entire work force, close to the 2008 DiversityInc Top 50 average of 70 percent.

Overall, the Jacksonville companies, like the Columbus, Ohio, companies in our first regional survey (see the October 2008 issue of DiversityInc for details), demonstrate a growing commitment to diversity and to the best practices advocated by The DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity.

CSX’s Susan Hamilton BREAKING INDUSTRY BARRIERS

usan Hamilton tells it like it

S
is. Her lawyerly background
is apparent as she delivers
facts and uses percentage increases
to make her points. Her passion for

diversity is even more apparent as she talks about her role in making Jacksonville-based CSX the first railroad to crack The DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity® list (No. 47 in 2008).

Referencing the DiversityInc Top 50, she says: “I’m so proud that we are at a point as a company that everywhere, you see diversity. The company has been changing fairly rapidly and it’s been fun to see the excitement with our newer people and diverse groups.”

Hamilton, assistant vice president of diversity, has had a long history at CSX. She first joined (when the company was L&N Railroad) in 1977, right after she graduated from the Cumberland School of Law in Birmingham, Ala.

“I was the first woman in the claims-litigation department and it was a little lonely,” she recalls. “But everyone was so kind to me.”

Eventually, this barrier-breaker—who also was the first woman to chair the Gator Bowl Committee—headed CSX’s freight-claims and damage-prevention department. Always concerned about diversity (“I grew up in Birmingham and was six blocks away from the church when those four little girls were murdered,” she recalls), she didn’t actually get involved in the diversity efforts at CSX until she became the chief diversity officer in 2002.

The company had started its diversity initiative approximately six years before that. In those years, CSX was downsizing as a result of industry deregulation. “We went from 80,000 to 35,000 employees—and we were too busy to even think about hiring people,” Hamilton says. These days, CSX is “fairly recession-proof,” she says,

so the challenge is branding the railroad as the most progressive in its industry.

She gets a boost with that from CSX Chairman, President and CEO Michael Ward, who is a huge diversity advocate and personally has donated $1 million each to the Wounded Warrior Project and Edward Waters College, a historically Black college in Jacksonville.

Hamilton says: “I’m told by my colleagues that I’m not finished yet. I have more work to do, both at CSX and in Jacksonville. The city has so much potential but the people need to be led toward total racial equity and inclusion.”

BCBS of Florida’s Ed Gallegos LESSONS SHARED

I

n his 16 years at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida,

Ed Gallegos has done it all. Gallegos, who last year was named vice president, Office of Cultural Competence and Diversity Systems, has experience as vice president of claims operations and vice president of human resources, two very disparate positions.