CEOs’ awakening on race no fad
Jose Minaya grew up in New York City, the child of immigrants from the Dominican Republic whose biggest involvement with the financial system was a savings account. Now, he’s CEO of Nuveen, the investment arm of TIAA that has more than $1 trillion spread across stocks, real estate and other assets around the world.
As CEO, he’s pushing to bring in a more diverse workforce at Nuveen, and he says the great awakening on race companies have undergone over the last year will only continue.
After George Floyd’s murder, companies are expected to voice their opinions on race and other social issues much more than before. Do you see this being just a fad?
This is not a fad. This is a real thing. If anything, the voices are going to get louder. CEOs and leaders are going to have to get better at talking about this.
A lot of us, we are not trained on this. I am a person of color and a leader, and these are not things you talked about on your soapbox. These are not things you engaged with your employees.
But what we realized through this past year is that for our employees, for retaining our talent, for engaging our talent, this was extremely important to them. And our clients, as well. It was important to them, what our views were on the issues impacting the globe.
How did you talk about it?
One of the most powerful things I’ve seen in my career is when we decided to hold “Courageous Conversations,” (a program in which former TIAA CEO) Roger Ferguson engaged the employee base with issues of his life. I did as well. It encouraged employees to share their own stories. The hairs went up on the back of my neck as I heard the stories. You saw the power of that and the need, that we should be out there, giving our views, because it’s important to every single one of our employees.
But do you think other CEOs would say the same thing? Are you an outlier?
There’s one thing that all my peers and competitors alike all understand: talent. We understand our business is worth only the talent that we can hire. If your firm is not doing this well, you’re not going to get the talent coming to you.
This shift wasn’t happening because there was an awakening of CEOs. No, there was an awakening of your everyday employee. There was an awakening of your clients. When that voice gets loud, only the good firms that adjust to that survive.
And you have numbers already to show it’s making a difference to the bottom line?
We have hired a lot of people at Nuveen in the last six months. The diversity numbers have gone up. If you look at performance — investments and financial — it has been strong. Turnover for us is very low. Now, it’s a pandemic, and there are also other variables driving this. But as I told my board: Good performance? I’ll take it, even though we measure in five-year increments, not 12 months.