Leadership Profiles

J&J’S ANTHONY CARTER GETS THE RIGHT MESSAGE

If anyone understands how crucial clear and focused communications are to diversity success, it’s Anthony Carter, vice president of global diversity and inclusion and chief diversity officer at Johnson & Johnson.

Unlike most chief diversity officers, who come primarily from HR but increasingly have been leaders in profit-making lines of business, Carter’s background is in communications. He joined the company in 2002 from Bristol-Myers Squibb and was placed in corporate-communications roles of increasing responsibility. He now reports to CEO and Chairman William Weldon.

“Diversity and inclusion is bigger than me. I want to tell the story, not become the story,” he says.

Carter has made communicating correctly the mantra of his department, which is focused on using diversity to help J&J business leaders meet their goals for recruitment and retention and in the marketplace.

Everything his department does ties directly to the company’s credo, which aligns the business to serve customers, employees, the communities where it does

business, and shareholders.

“Diversity is embedded in all of these,” Carter says. “Disease does not discriminate between the haves and have-nots, and neither should a healthcare company.”

His extracurricular activities reflect his deep commitment to making the world a better place.

JANET CRENSHAW SMITH xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ANTHONY CARTER Johnson & Johnson DiversityInc Top 50 Rank: 1

Carter has served as a sports coach for underprivileged youth, a mentor in the Archbishop’s Leadership Project for Black high-school students, on the executive committee of the Board of Visitors at Howard University, and on the advisory board of the New Jersey Orators.

“My passion is for equity and fairness. When I decided I wanted to [head diversity], to his credit, Bill Weldon said: ‘ You’re actually talking about a higher calling,’” says Carter.

TOMMY SHI: WHAT IT TRULY MEANS TO BE ‘THE ONLY ONE’

Tommy Shi knows all too well what it’s like being “the only one.” An immigrant from Taiwan who was raised in New Jersey, Shi grew up in a community with a virtually nonexistent Asian population.

TOMMY SHI Mercedes Benz USA

“It wasn’t until I went to college that I met a large number of other Asians,” says Shi.

But Shi didn’t let being

“different” stop him. He became the first Asian-

American valedictorian of his high school and, while attending Boston College Law School, he became president of the Asian Pacific American Law Student Association. Today, Shi is leveraging those experiences in his role as diversity and inclusion officer for Mercedes Benz USA. “Working in diversity and inclusion isn’t something I just do; it’s something I believe in,” says Shi, who has led the company’s

diversity efforts since transitioning from the legal department in 2004.

Shi has made it his mission to make sure every department in the luxury-car company understands how diversity directly impacts the bottom line. “We know that our customers are different, in terms of diversity, [from] 10 years ago,” says Shi. “So we are working to make sure our employees understand the business case for diversity by celebrating heritage months and providing a robust diversity web site.”

Externally, Shi has built lasting relationships with organizations, such as the Association of Latino Professionals in Finance and Accounting (ALPFA) and the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association.

“Our relationship with ALPFA is a prime example,” says Shi. “We took an existing sales platform, the Diversity Organization Fleet program, and adapted it to fit their mission while at the same time maximizing business return through nominal additional expenditures. We’ve already seen results in terms of web traffic.”