Mark This! is a podcast in which we peel back the corporate curtain to reveal the cool and innovative people, programs, and projects that are happening all over Aramark’s varied lines of business. These remarkable initiatives happen because we have remarkable people behind them--building opportunity, building innovation, and building community.
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Mark This! Podcast, Episode 11, DEI Matters
Host: Heather Dotchel, Corporate Communications
Guests: Fenimore Fisher, Vice President for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion
It's time to Mark This!, a podcast in which we peel back the corporate curtain to reveal the cool and innovative people, programs, and projects that are happening all over Aramark's varied lines of business. I'm Heather Dotchel. As a member of Aramark's communications team, I see and hear amazing things that are happening across our company every day. These remarkable initiatives happen because we have remarkable people behind them, building opportunity, building innovation, and building community. We are going to have a more intimate discussion today, just me and Fenimore Fisher, Vice President for DEI. Fenimore started at Aramark in 2021 and has immediately had significant impact on not just the company, but also each Aramark community member he has interacted with. Today we are going to explore not only why DEI is important to Aramark, but also why it should be important to all. Fenimore, let's begin with an introduction. Can you tell our audience more about yourself and your professional DEI path?
Absolutely, Heather, and thank you for the opening remarks. I think probably some of my friends and a portion of my family will disagree with me being viewed as a cool person, but I do appreciate that opening. I'm Fenimore Fisher. I have the honor and privilege of serving as Aramark's Vice President of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. So I've worked as a DEI practitioner for 24 years, but the passion for this work really began much earlier than that over 30 years ago when my mother actually took steps to secure my first summer job. And so I worked as a student intern for our local city court in my hometown of Opelousas, Louisiana. And my first job during the summers was to work in the Marshall's office as well as to shadow the public defenders within the court system. And it was through that opportunity of shadowing one particular public defender who was just this amazing Jewish woman who was at the same time battling lupus.
To work with her and to see the spirit of care and nurture and respect that she afforded all of her clients really sparked in me a focus on identifying ultimately, diversity, equity, and inclusion is the path for me. And so at an early age of 14, I knew I wanted to at least become a lawyer by training, not by practice. I always felt that I could have an impact in the boardroom of an organization and not necessarily the courtroom, but focused on driving efforts specific to enhancing society through equity. So as I went on to college, I served as the student director of what was called, at that time, Minority Affairs. And so built at a very early stage in my life and advancement, a focus on working to improve life in the spirit of community. After law school, my first job out of law school was working in the area of civil rights.
So I worked for Reverend Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Push Wall Street Project in New York, which was focused on securing access to education, industry, technology focused on working with corporate America to advance forward diversity and inclusion. I then went to work for Walmart as it was launching its office of Diversity and Inclusion. I then moved back to the East Coast and took on an opportunity, which was extremely rewarding for me, and I never thought, Heather, I would ever be a political appointee, but I took on the role of service for the city of New York as the Chief Diversity and EEO Officer for the Department of Citywide Administrative Services and served throughout both the Bloomberg and de Blasio administrations. I then went to work for the Johns Hopkins University advancing forward its strategy, especially given the effect on increasing the overall diversity representation of faculty, students, and staff.
I then took on a role for a leading global law firm focused on... And it was a full circle moment because as a lawyer who did not meet sort of the typical requirements of the thresholds of what you need to work in big law, going then to a major law firm to focus on advocating for DEI was also an amazing opportunity for me. But my most rewarding opportunity is certainly the role that I have at Aramark and the opportunity to work directly with our employees who are on the front lines. Every time that I go to an account and just visit and speak with team members, it gives me such an appreciation for the work that Aramark does, as well as knowing that we're focused on initiatives and programmatic work that hopefully are having an impact across all of our employees. So that's a little bit about me, background. Hope that that helps set the stage.
Well, I'm going to forgive you for jumping into what was going to be my first question, which is why did you choose Aramark? Because I really appreciated you sharing the genesis for your personal passion for this work. Thanks for sharing that. It's always gratifying to get a bit of personal story when we're talking to each other in these circumstances. So let's just jump into the meat of it then. Why is it important that corporations like Aramark prioritize DEI?
Well, I believe if I provide a little bit of pushback, I honestly don't think that DEI is something to be prioritized as opposed to something that needs to be embedded into all that you do as a company. I fear that when we focus on the language of prioritization, and I understand that it certainly can be appropriate for organizations that have never had a DEI program to then focus on prioritization. But I think that when you look at this from a aspect of the sustainability of DEI, you have to focus on, in my opinion, an alignment across the entire focus of your business strategy and across the components of the culture that you want to have and across the themes of the legacies that your leaders want to leave behind.
And so from my perspective, it is about that aspect of not just solely focusing on prioritization, because I think it creates the impression of, okay, this is the go-to, tell me the playbook of what I need to do. We'll get that done. We will check the box. And so I feel it's more so a focus on alignment and consistently across everything that we do.
Fenimore, can you point to a specific example or moment that resonated with you, indicating that DEI was integral to Aramark's culture?
I think, Heather, for me, probably one of the most powerful moments came at the time when not only I was researching Aramark, but when I was an initial early new hire and I had an opportunity to view our CEO, John Zilmer's interview with the CEO of Diversity Inc, Carolynn Johnson, and to hear his remarks about trust and people and a community of connection. And when you think about the timing of that interview and what the world had gone through, that was the most powerful for me. And it takes me back to your question concerning prioritization, because while Aramark has a variety of businesses at the core of who we are, we're a hospitality company, and with that being said, I do think that what is fundamental, as John has said, for a hospitality company to establish whether that's with its clients, its customers, its people, the communities that we serve is the importance of trust.
And I feel that trust is established when people don't just periodically feel that, but they genuinely believe that they're respected, that they're recognized, and that they're valued for their contributions. I also believe at the same time that financially you get better results when you include people of diverse backgrounds, cultures, and experiences from the front lines all the way to the C-suite and the boardroom. And so for me, to your question concerning about the work being integral, that's the framework that I have is at the forefront of how I approach my work. But again, that interview with John, which I think we still have published, I believe, really was a key moment for me.
We'll make sure to see if that interview is still available and if it is add it to the newsroom page for the podcast. I also want to talk a little bit about the importance of naming. You mentioned earlier one of your first positions was working in minority affairs, and that language has evolved over the course of the years. Why is it important to name diversity, equity, inclusion clearly?
Oh, Heather, you're going to get me in trouble. Yeah, look, as I've mentioned, I worked as a DEI practitioner for 24 years. If you go back to my college days, and that's over 30, I've seen so many name changes. I did welcome, though, the inclusion of equity because I believe it to be the foundation of this work. And I intentionally, I'm one of those oddballs, I don't use the and sign before inclusion because I don't want that work to be viewed as just an add-on. All I can say is that as A DEI practitioner, I have to be grounded in this work and tenacious in this work and moving letters around or dropping and/or adding words to me at the end of the day is just an unnecessary distraction. So yeah, you're going to get me in trouble on that one.
Well, I'll get right along in trouble with you because as a communications person, I like precise language, so I like to name things clearly myself.
I also think being precise allows us to come from a space and place of truth telling about the importance of the work. I think at the end of the day, certainly does DEI have to evolve as businesses evolves, as society evolves? Yes, absolutely. But you can't make DEI an exercise in marketing spin, in my opinion.
Well, I agree. Speaking of change, however, there's a lot of change going on in the country right now. Given the recent rollback of standing DEI initiatives like affirmative action, how does a corporation's DEI culture impact historically marginalized peoples?
Early in my career, I had an opportunity to hear Reverend Jackson in several speeches make the following statement. He said that society doesn't change just when people change, that society changes when both people and the law change. And I think during times of when there's a perceived misalignment of the law and societal views, the workplace culture of an organization must continue to represent its values and advance forward in that representation and in that work.
And how do you hope that that commitment to the values, that staying the course ripples beyond the walls of the corporation?
When you say especially beyond the walls of a corporation, it makes me reflect on, I think, a significant shift in corporate America that occurred in 2019, but I think sometimes is forgotten. So in 2019, the business round table, which consists of the CEOs of multiple corporations, they did something that was viewed at that time to be significant, and I think certainly was intentional. And they rewrote the purpose of what a corporation should be beyond focusing on shareholder value. And they said that companies should also focus on growing earnings as well as improving lives. And that companies should be focused on their employees, their customers, their communities, their suppliers, and the environment. And so when you ask about going outside of the walls of a corporation, for me, that's what I think about is then how do we then hold true to then what this gathering of multiple CEOs were focused on when they restructured the mission of corporations?
So let's take that meta view, that philosophical guidance and talk a bit about some of the concrete projects that we've implemented at Aramark. Specifically right now, I'm thinking about the Self ID campaigns and our HBCU student leadership program, although that's just two of many. How do programs like these make a tangible impact on our community?
Yeah, I'm so glad you've asked about that. We just launched our Self ID campaign during Pride month, and with all of the talk and discussion about identity wars and cultural wars, representation matters to people. And our Self ID campaign provides an opportunity for our LGBTQ plus employees and new hires to voluntarily and confidentially self-identify. It also provides an opportunity for all of our employees to make sure that the data that we have that reflects who they are and how they identify is accurate. And that helps us to better inform whether what we are bringing to our workforce by way of initiatives and strategies are relevant and inclusive. And so to be engaged in that, I think, at a time where there's so much of societal marginalization, I think is important. And I think what it does is it drives, hopefully, a sense of community by the inclusiveness of it.
I think also too, I've always been energized in my work by having a thought process that we should also work as futurist. So there's always been so much talk of what's the best, what are best practices, how are we benchmarking? And I don't dispute those, but I've been focused on wanting to know what the next practices should be. And so when I think about efforts in which we can support the advancement of our world's future leaders, I get enthused about initiatives that we have with organizations like the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, where we have a cohort of Aramark's emerging leaders where we are working with students to not only bring them to our headquarters here in Philadelphia, but to learn from them and to get insights from them as to what are the perceptions about corporate America, what the aspects that are needed in a workplace to make them feel engaged, empowered, but also that they can contribute to society by working in corporate America?
Because I think there's a viewpoint there that that opportunity at times doesn't exist. And it takes me back, Heather, too, if we look at then that recrafting of the purpose of corporations by the business round table. So those concrete initiatives give me a sense of reward because our amazing DEI team is doing such just wonderful work in this space. We're also taking a different approach to our views on traditional mentorship and sponsorship and several of our 11 employee resource groups, which represent 5,000 plus employees across the world, as well as our allyship employee network group, which represents roughly another 1500 employees, I'm so privileged to be able to work with this group of volunteers, but you swear they are all a part of our team.
But when I look at what they're doing to support our efforts around building that sense of community and connection around a focus on professional development, around volunteerism, and when I look at initiatives that are sustainable, such as the work that I think now nearly eight or seven of our employee resource groups took a small initial dream that our Impacto and lead ERG had to do efforts around supporting kids during back to school and providing supplies for backpacks and to see how that's expanded, those are the efforts that I feel are sustainable and concrete, as well as at the same time combining that with leadership accountability.
So having an ESG scorecard for the members of our executive leadership team with a level of accountability concerning advancing and our overall diversity representation of our senior leadership, as well as advancing the growth and membership of our employee resource groups. I find efforts like that to be concrete. And I'll end by saying what's also concrete is our governance structure. So the fact that I have an opportunity every quarter to update our comp and HR committee of our board of directors, and I have an opportunity to work with our executive diversity council, and I have the ability to partner with my HR peers as well as our LOB presidents in advancing this work because it can't be done by one person and one role or one team. So I think those aspects are true examples of concrete initiatives that are sustainable.
Want to know more about Aramark's DEI initiatives? Visit our newsroom on aramark.com to access more information. Thank you, Fenimore, for joining us, and thanks as always to our listeners for tuning in to Mark This!
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