CSR 914.525.5146/DEI 914.907.6073
Where Business Interests & Community Needs Intersect for Mutual Benefit
Who We Are
Richard A. Brown
Richard Brown, founder and CEO, has over 30 years of Corporate Social Responsibility experience having worked for six corporations across several industry sectors (financial, telecommunications, retail, energy, and consumer goods). Areas of expertise include brokering strategic partnerships with nonprofit organizations that link company interest with the community needs; creating employee engagement initiatives that produce a triple win (nonprofits, employees, and company); and integrating corporate DEI priorities into the CSR strategy. Throughout Richard's career he consistently identified issues and causes that resonate with both the companies he’s worked for and its nonprofit partners that produced measurable community impact while garnering positive recognition with key stakeholders.
Donna M. Wilson
Donna Wilson, president, has spent the majority of her career working for some of the most iconic Fortune 100 brands creating transformational business strategies and organizational shifts to increase market share. Leveraging her business expertise in financial services, Donna has advised corporate leaders at various key executive levels on building global and regional transformational business to maximize sales to increasingly diverse consumer markets. She has assisted business leaders in developing innovative marketing strategies, enhancing existing strategies, and implementing innovative approaches aligned with ethnicity and cultural characteristics of consumers and clients. Donna leveraged her extensive experience transforming under served communities by transitioning from community development to a business focus on global diversity equity and inclusion. In so doing, she reached across the globe to introduce strategies to increase representation of women and under-represented market segments, retain top diverse talent, to build a more inclusive workplace.
Noteworthy CSR and DEI Initiatives:
American Express Leadership Academy and Alumni Network
Founded in 2008, the American Express Leadership Academy builds the personal, business, and leadership skills of emerging nonprofit and social purpose leaders through multi-day, in-person and virtual trainings. The initiative has expanded to a global program, training world-class leaders in the areas of education, the arts, social services, health, the environment and more. From 2008 to 2021, American Express hosted more than 160 Leadership Academy programs around the world, training more than 6000 nonprofit and social purpose leaders. The company partnered with established leadership training practitioners, such as Ashoka, the ASU Lodestar Center, the Aspen Institute, Atlas Service Corps, the Campaign for Black Male Achievement, the Center for Creative Leadership, Common Purpose, the Independent Sector, the Points of Light, the Rockwood Leadership Institute, SparkAction and the Thunderbird School of Global Management. Leadership Academy programs and alumni summits have been held in Aspen, CO, Berlin, Dakar, Fort Lauderdale, FL, Greensboro, NC, Hong Kong, Johannesburg, London, Madrid, Mexico City, Nairobi, New York City, Phoenix, Paris, Osaka, Singapore, Tokyo, Toronto, Washington, DC and virtually.
LeaderStories.org: A Multimedia Storytelling Platform
Founded in 2010, LeaderStories.org spotlights and connects for-purpose leaders who are bringing their insights and passion to create more equitable societies where everyone can thrive. Around the globe, these committed and innovative leaders are tirelessly working to find sustainable solutions to the most pressing problems facing our societies. In addition to helping make the world a better, greener, and more just place, the social purpose leaders featured in the 90-second narrative videos have another aspect in common: they have benefited from an American Express funded leadership development program, including the signature program, the American Express Leadership Academy. The LeaderStories team of storytellers documents the impact of professional development and support for emerging social purpose leaders across the globe. The site lifts up the power of every person to change the world, and that every person deserves the supports and network they need to dream big and work collectively to re-imagine our world. The platform features stories, resources, tips, and leadership insights from innovators and experts.
Reading Ready: Preparing Children to Be Lifelong Readers
Reading Ready supported children in the early stage of their lives (birth to 5 years old) by supporting early childhood education programs nationally. This age group is a critical time for brain development when a child is learning a language and establishing a vocabulary that will become the foundation of his or her education. By selecting this clearly defined niche within the literacy arena, the Toys "R" Us Children's Fund successfully aligned its philanthropic strategy with a segment of the population that was central to Toys "R" Us' core business. Reading Ready provided the company and its Fund with the opportunity to directly connect its philanthropic efforts with the company’s emerging early learning strategy.
Seamless Connections
AT&T Wireless partnered with NPower to spearhead a new initiative called Seamless Connections to educate nonprofit organizations about the advantages, utility and potential applications of wireless technology. (NPower is a technology technical assistance provider to nonprofit organizations with affiliates in several locations around the country.) Seamless Connections provided the company the opportunity to engage nonprofit leaders in three communities (Los Angeles, Seattle and New York) by providing tailored workshops on how wireless technology can enhance and improve their organization's service delivery. The wireless instructors made nonprofit executives more aware of the benefits of wireless technology, which helped these organizations communicate more easily, network more effectively and deliver community services more efficiently. Seamless Connections garnered media coverage for AT&T Wireless in several key markets, including articles in The Business Journal in Phoenix and Crain's Detroit.
Johnson & Johnson Sponsorship Program
In 2016, J&J launched the Enterprise Sponsorship Program pilot with 21 sponsees with the objective to change the culture of sponsorship at J&J and shift awareness around how the sponsorship relationship differs from mentorship. The sponsorship program aimed to support high-performing, diverse talent in developing successful and sustainable relationships with senior leaders, and to accelerate their development by providing meaningful feedback on career progression. The Enterprise Sponsorship Program has been widely successful. By the midpoint of the program, over 99% of sponsors say they would recommend this experience to other senior leaders, and 97% of sponsees would recommend the program to other high-potential talent. Over the past 6 years, the sponsorship program has gained significant traction. Overall, when comparing the 2016 sponsee cohort size to the 2020 sponsee cohort size, the data reflects that sponsee participation has increased by 1400%. In addition, sponsee retention is 93% and sponsee progression resulted in 67% movement, 43% promotion, 60% promotions to higher levels, and 10% of all sponsees movement was across businesses.
Multicultural Marketing
Winning with multicultural consumers will be essential. Over the next decade and beyond, almost all growth in the U.S. population will come from these groups. Within the next 30 years, multicultural consumers will become the majority – in essence the “new Gen-pop”. [Multicultural segments will be the new majority by 2047, reaching nearly 200 million people. This population’s purchasing power has nearly doubled in the last decade from $3.4 trillion in 2013 (25% of US buying power) to 5.7 trillion in 2022 (32% of US buying power)]. With competitors increasingly recognizing the inevitability of this shift, winning with multicultural consumers will become more challenging, even as these groups continue to grow rapidly in both size and buying power. Standard gen-pop approaches will no longer be sufficient. Ms. Wilson designed a multicultural marketing strategy for J & J’s consumer sector allowing them to determine where they had the greatest opportunities for growth. In so doing she uncovered a $600 million incremental opportunity to gain top share and allow the consumer business to capture share and become the leader with multicultural segments.