The following article was originally sourced from the piece “Deeper-Level Diversity” on Kellogg’s News & Events page.
The Kellogg School of Management sent its first ever team to the annual Ernst & Young Diversity Case Competition, which is hosted by Notre Dame University.
The Kellogg squad took second place after being judged by a panel of Ernst & Young executives, taking home $2,500 for their plan that outlined increasing diversity not only of race and gender, but of skill and performance potential. The team, made up of Juliana Merola, Zoila Jennings, Samara Mejia and Daniel Davidson, team outlined not only plans for diversity recruitment, but for retention and promotion as well.“I just found that a lot of the initiatives that brought people on board weren’t the same ones that would keep you there,” Merola said.
“What we also wanted to do in that same vein of adding surface-level diversity is adding deeper-level diversity as well,” Jennings said.
They looked at diversity of work style as well.
“What we suggested was go for people who had high performance but maybe not so much potential, so they can drive the business, and people who had high potential and mediocre performance, so they can really grow into the role,” Jennings said.
Although the rules of the competition prohibit judges knowing which students are from which school, Jennings said people started guessing which school the team represented from the lateral thinking their presentation exhibited.
“That creativity piece, they said ‘Oh, they had to be Kellogg,’” Jennings said.
