Citi Group appoints Erika Irish Brown as Chief Diversity Officer
Citi Group has hired Erika Irish Brown from rival Goldman Sachs Group Inc to lead its global diversity strategy, the bank said on its website on Friday.
Brown joins Citi as its chief diversity, equity and inclusion officer after leading similar efforts at Goldman Sachs since mid-2018. Brown previously worked at Bloomberg in the same role.
Goldman named Megan Hogan to replace Brown, according to a staff memo seen by Reuters.
The role of chief diversity officer has taken on renewed prominence as corporations work to address inequality and systemic racism roughly one year after George Floyd’s death in Minnesota.
Wall Street banks have taken steps to increase recruitment, hiring and retention of diverse employees in recent years, but non-whites and females still comprise a small percentage of the workforce.
Under Brown, Goldman committed to ensuring that 11% of all new analysts and entry-level associates hired in the United States and 9% in the UK will be Black professionals, 14% will be Latino and half will be women.
The bank also committed to seeing that 40% of its Americas vice presidents will be women, 7% will be Black and 9% Latino by 2025.
Goldman is working to double the analysts it recruits on campuses of historically Black colleges and universities by 2025, and it launched a paid internship program for candidates who identify as neurodiverse.
Hogan, who joined Goldman in 2014, played a key role in the development and implementation of those initiatives, according to the Goldman memo sent by its head of human resources Bentley de Beyer on Friday.
