DiversityInc - Winter 2012

business plans and activities. Gandy was assisted by his predecessor, Donna Griffin, who spent considerable time with him before she retired. Griffin had been the company’s global operations manager before she became chief diversity officer.

“I continue to carry the baton of
Donna and previous chief diversity
officers, especially in terms of talent
management in what we consider our
diversity space: women, people of
color and LGBT people,” he says. He
emphasizes that the organization’s 10
employee-resource groups are critical
to finding and developing talent and
to helping the company “market our
product to diverse segments.”
His early involvement with the
employee-resource groups was
through the Minority-Development
Council, a group Chubb has had
for three decades, which provides
development, networking,
sponsorship and leadership training.
Every two years, the council has a
large conference involving Finnegan
and other leaders of the company,
including members of the board.

In 2008, Gandy was asked to be chair of the council, which increased his involvement in the organization and gave him a taste of the company-wide diversity efforts. He also has served as an adviser to the Chubb Black Employee Network.

He was also among the first Black people to rush a fraternity at Pepperdine University.

“Those experiences build relationships and insights
and led directly to my personal growth,” he says. His
family dynamics also increased
his cultural competence, since he
was close to an uncle who had an
interracial marriage and then, after
the marriage ended, announced he
was gay. “It was a great journey for
my family to be close to him and
examine our own biases,” Gandy says.

From Pepperdine, he started his career at State Farm Insurance Company in commercial underwriting and then as a human-resources representative and supervisor. He also helped the company develop recruitment strategies of college students, especially those from traditionally underrepresented groups.

At Chubb, which he joined in 1996
as an HR practice leader, he’s also
working with college recruitment,
especially for Blacks and Latinos,
including branch sponsorship of the
University of Southern California
(USC) Hispanic Business Students
Association and Black Business Students Association.

He also worked with USC’s career-development center and as a business relationship manager between Chubb Los Angeles and Chubb San Francisco and corresponding INROADS chapters. He has coordinated summer internships for people from traditionally underrepresented groups through INROADS.

He’s had several HR jobs at Chubb, including regional human-resource practice leader for Southern California and Mid-Atlantic zone human-resources manager. Before taking on the chief diversity role, he was worldwide human-resources manager for Chubb Specialty Insurance.

Gandy also believes in giving back to the community. He and his wife volunteer for the Morristown, N.J., soup kitchen and the Community Food Bank of New Jersey, and he also is involved with the March of Dimes. I

TREVOR GANDY

CURRENT POSITION

Senior vice president, chief
diversity officer, The Chubb
Corporation, one of DiversityInc’s
25 Noteworthy Companies
PREVIOUS POSITION
Worldwide human resources
manager, Chubb Specialty
Insurance

COMMUNITY ACTIVITIES
Morristown (New Jersey)
Soup Kitchen, March of Dimes,
Community Food Bank of New
Jersey
EDUCATION
Bachelor’s degree, Pepperdine
University; Executive Education
Program for Senior Human-
Resource Executives, Stanford
University; Human Resources
Leadership Academy, Corporate
Executive Board

The Personal Impact

Gandy’s interest in diversity didn’t start with Chubb. Born in Oakland, Calif., he was one of three sons. When he was 5 years old, his parents divorced, and Gandy moved to the Midwest with his mother but spent time with his father in California. Being a child of divorce made him feel different from other children, he recalls. When he was older, he became a highly ranked tennis player at the state and sectional level who qualified for a couple of national-level events as a junior. “You didn’t see too many African Americans playing tennis in the 1970s,” he says.