LEADERSHIP
BY JOY BUCHANAN
Expanding Employee
Opportunities
Target’s
diversity
head uses her
store-side
background to
connect with
associates and
customers.
Kim Strong
Kim Strong comes from a family of educators.
When she went to Howard University, she aspired
to become a teacher. After encountering recruiters
from Target, her career goals shifted to business.
After 23 years with the company, Strong was named vice president of
diversity and inclusion in January—the first person in the role with an extensive
background on the store side of the business.
That experience and her network through the company are crucial in one of
the biggest projects she’s involved in now: expanding Target’s employee-resource
groups, called Diversity Business Councils, from headquarters to retail stores.
Bringing the Field to Headquarters
Strong began her career at Marshall Field’s, once a division of Target Corporation, in 1988 as an executive-in-training. In 1995, she joined Mervyns, also once a division of Target Corporation, as an operations manager and later
was promoted to the district human-resource manager, overseeing 15 Mervyns
stores in Michigan. Five years later, she was appointed director of human resources
for Mervyns. In 2004, she was promoted to the director of human resources for
Target stores. Before her current role, she was regional vice president, stores human
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