Small businesses in East Tennessee are invited to attend a half-day summit on Tuesday to gather tools and tips on building a more diverse, inclusive work force, a press release said.
“Because of their mutual commitment to workforce development, UCOR and Pellissippi State Community College are offering a free program featuring speakers from global companies providing insights on diversity,” the press release said.
Pellissippi State President Anthony Wise and UCOR President and Chief Executive Officer Ken Rueter will open the event, the East Tennessee Small Business Diversity Summit. The morning’s key speaker is Pat Harris, former global chief diversity officer and vice president of community engagement for McDonald’s Corporation. Harris led the evolution of McDonald’s diversity and inclusion function and has documented that experience in her book “None of Us is As Good As All of Us: How McDonald’s Prospers by Embracing Inclusion and Diversity.”
Harris will be followed by Clifford Brown from Accenture and Cheryl Cabbil from AECOM, the press release said. Brown is service delivery operations lead for Accenture’s Knoxville Intelligent Operations Center. More specific to the diversity topic, Brown is the executive adviser to the Center’s Employee Resource Groups, the release said. Accenture uses its ERG program to connect its employees, believing that they are “stronger, smarter, more innovative together.” Their ERGs bring together employees from a variety of backgrounds, cultures, ethnicities, beliefs, and languages, the press release said.
Rounding out the morning will be Cheryl Cabbil, AECOM’s senior vice president of operations. Cabbil has more than 30 years of executive and leadership experience in high-hazard nuclear facility operations, the press release said. Central to Cabbil’s presentation on micro-aggressions will be her extensive experience leading and managing people, the release said.
“This session deals with recognizing when micro-aggressions are happening and how to deal with them so that employees can work together more effectively,” the press release said.
Due to limited space, registration is required for the August 13 event. To register, go to diversitysummittickets.eventbrite.com. Registration begins at 8 a.m. The program runs from 8:30 a.m. to noon. The event is being held at Pellissippi State’s Hardin Valley campus in the Goins Administrative Building auditorium.
UCOR, an AECOM-led partnership with Jacobs, is under contract with the U.S. Department of Energy to clean up East Tennessee Technology Park, a former gaseous diffusion plant that DOE is converting into a multi-use industrial park. It also performs cleanup work at other DOE Oak Ridge Reservation locations, including Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Y-12 Nuclear Security Complex. Pellissippi State Community College offers associate degree and certificate programs, workforce development programs, and transfer pathways to four-year degrees. For more information, visit www.pstcc.edu or call (865) 694-6400.
More information will be added as it becomes available.
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