by Jane Carruthers (London)
After all the recent economic doom and gloom, a rare glow of positive light shone over a gathering of some 500 business and public sector leaders in the City of London on 29th April 2009: The Opportunity Now Awards, sponsored by Santander, celebrated those UK employers addressing inequality as a business imperative, creating workplace best
The Exelon Corporation ’s chief executive officer, John Rowe, ruffled some feathers at the Corporate Diversity & Inclusion Conference in Chicago last week when he said in his keynote speech, “If you want work-life balance, you don’t belong on an executive board.” Just before saying that, he had explained that Exelon values diversity and that he has employees of a large variety of cultures and creeds. “It is hard to teach diversity when everyone looks like you,” he said. Which is why his prior statement came as such a surprise. When asked to clarify, he said that senior level jobs take a totality of time and that balance becomes impossible in certain professions.
Baraz Samiian, a diversity consultant in the Diversity Strategy and Development department at BlueCross BlueShield of Florida said that Rowe may not have been aware of the implications of what he said. She took from his speech that if you have younger children, parents who need to be taken care of or other personal and ethnic commitments, you need not apply.