LEADERSHIP PROFILES
Rashida Y.V. MacMurray was attracted to engineering as far back as she can recall. In elementary school, she signed up for a drafting course. So after earning a master’s degree in civil engineering from the University of Virginia, MacMurray landed her first job as a project engineer for a construction company. The only woman on site—“with my own Porta-John,” she
says—working in engineering was her dream.
Rashida Y.V. MacMurray
Deloitte Financial Advisory Services
Deloitte is No. 25 in The DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity®
Tasked with managing subcontracts, MacMurray took night
courses in contract law at Rutgers University - Newark
School of Law. Although she “never intended on practicing law,” she ended up with a J.D. and her career took a
detour: working as a private-practice patent attorney. But
MacMurray longed to return to engineering. “I would drive
by construction sites just to see the cranes,” she admits.
After a serious career assessment, two years ago
MacMurray found a job at Deloitte Financial Advisory
Services that combines her many talents. Today, as a
capital projects consulting manager, MacMurray provides construction advisory services to federal government agencies in Washington, D.C. She analyzes contract
claims and documentation, assesses risk and counsels
public-sector organizations on ways to best implement
and manage capital projects. For instance, MacMurray
helped a federal client develop a program to manage the
receipt and distribution of stimulus funding under the
American Recovery & Reinvestment Act.
Eager to help develop other Black talent at Deloitte,
MacMurray now serves as president of its greater
Washington area Black Employee Network, where she
informally mentors colleagues, coordinates networking events and makes critical connections for Black
coworkers from different functions and levels with
senior leadership in the firm. “Members use these connections as references to get on other engagements that
they may not even have known were available,” she says.
The relationship-building experience has also helped
MacMurray form new partnerships with people from
different practices at Deloitte “so we can now market to
different clients.” GAIL ZOPPO
After moving up in human resources at companies from McDonnell Douglas to A.G. Edwards, Sharon Harvey Davis landed a job at HBE Corp. where, in 1999, she “went from zero to 60 in terms of diversity.” One of its subsidiaries, Adam’s Mark Hotel in Daytona, Fla., suddenly was at the picenter of a racial-discrimination lawsuit involving the NAACP and the U.S. Justice Department. “And because I was probably the only person in HR who could even spell diversity,
I was asked to lead the effort,” says Harvey Davis, who was promoted to vice president of
corporate affairs and served as a spokesperson throughout the ordeal that ended with a nearly $2-million settlement
and compliance order.
“It was a great opportunity to learn just about everything there is to learn in diversity,” Harvey Davis says, noting
that the NAACP eventually ranked HBE the No. 2 hotel when she left the company in 2002 to adopt her two-year-old
daughter, Cori.
After a seven-month sabbatical, however, Harvey Davis accepted an offer as diversity manager at the St. Louis–
based utility Ameren. “I had a couple of offers but chose Ameren because of something CEO Tom Voss said in the
interview: ‘We don’t know how to do this diversity thing, but we are committed to doing an exceptional job.’”
Harvey Davis has since helped launch three corporate-wide diversity-training programs for all 9,000 employees,
formed a cross-departmental diversity council and rolled out a diversity-focused web site, including quarterly in-
house-created media clips. Thanks to the support of nearly 200 corporate diversity ambassadors, she has also formed
partnerships with inner-city schools to build a talent pipeline of underrepresented students. One of her proudest
accomplishments, she says, is Ameren’s dedicated diversity celebration, which has grown from one day to a full week
of diversity speakers, multicultural performances and videos spanning 300 locations. GAIL ZOPPO
Ameren
Sharon Harvey Davis
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