DiversityInc
COVER STORY
&
How Employee-
Resource
Groups Drive
Eng a gement
Innovat ion
BY BARBARA FRANKEL
After four years with Aetna in customer service, Cyndee Ward was at a crossroads familiar to many women. She had a toddler son and a newborn daughter and had every intention of becoming a stay-at-home mom. Then came the call.
“It was from someone wanting me to work on a project. Half-kiddingly, I said: ‘The only
way I’m coming back is if I can work from home.’ And he said, ‘No problem,’” she recalls.
Today, Ward is a business continuity consultant for Aetna, No. 48 in The DiversityInc
Top 50 Companies for Diversity®, and the chair of the company’s Telecommuting
Network, which was launched two years ago.
Stewart Anderson of HP has a very different story. He joined the tech company
in 1999 in product development. A gay man, he had lost jobs at other companies
after being outed. Since his partner had children from an earlier marriage, Anderson
was very leery about coming out at HP, which is one of DiversityInc’s 25 Noteworthy
Companies in 2009.
Then in 2004 he was asked to attend a company weekend workshop called White
Men As Allies. “It was cathartic on so many levels. I came to understand that, being a
white male, I had so many things attributed to me that I had no knowledge
