Building a Culture of Belonging at Ford to Lead the Electric Era

Last week, I had the honor of speaking with Reverend Jesse Jackson on stage at the 23rd annual Rainbow PUSH Global Automotive Summit. It was a privilege to share a conversation with someone whose legacy of fighting for equity and opportunity has had a profound impact on our country. And while only a small piece of that legacy, he and Rainbow PUSH have long played a critical role in advancing our industry’s conversations on these vital issues.??

Ford is proud to be a huge supporter of Rainbow PUSH. In fact, we first supported the organization way back in 1966! And I am personally proud to have had so many members of our team participating in this year’s Summit. Last Monday night, Executive Director, Investor Relations Lynn Tyson was honored with the Living Legends award and Marketing General Manager, Electric Vehicles Sondra Phung received the Emerging Leader award. These women set the benchmark for all of us at Ford. Over the course of the Summit, Chief Government Affairs Officer Chris Smith and Vice President, Supply Chain Jonathan Jennings spoke on panels with their peers across the industry.?

Here’s what I told the Reverend: while our company’s efforts around diversity, equity, and inclusion have moved forward, we need to pick up the pace of change. Just like in my auto racing, I don’t want us to settle for anything less than leading the industry, and even then, to never stop pushing to improve.?

Building a culture of belonging internally and supporting an equal playing field externally aren’t just the right things to do – they’re foundational to our success as a business. This work makes our teams stronger, breeds innovation, and helps us to better support the communities we serve. It’s essential to the transformation we’re leading at Ford, and an absolute top priority for me. Especially because our work to lead the electric and digital revolutions means there is an enormous amount of opportunity ahead that we’re committed to sharing equitably. And right now, we’re not moving fast enough towards where we need to go.

I am proud of the progress we’ve made in some areas -- dealer representation in the U.S., for example. The team has a goal of becoming the leader by the end of 2025 among full-line, non-luxury manufacturers in terms of the percent of its dealers who are ethnic minorities. They have a plan dedicated to growing minority representation and they’re leading the industry with two consecutive record years of quality appointments, with over 55 new dealers and 105 pre-approved candidates added in that time. The team is also increasing the number of minority customer-facing positions in our dealerships. Approximately 1,000 dealers have attended their customized training.?

This has started to help us improve our retail share performance with African American customers. While African American market share for the Ford brand is 9.6% -- up more than 2 percentage points versus a year ago -- we trail our general market share. We are 4th among non-premium brands and 8th in Premium brands with African American customers. This is not okay with me.

Another area we're going to improve is our approach to marketing. It's not changing fast enough. To really connect with minority customers, we have to be authentic and build genuine relationships – and we're going to do just that. I'm excited for you all to see how our marketing evolves in the near future.

?Earlier this year, I had the amazing opportunity to meet with another legendary civil rights hero in Ambassador Andrew Young. I was humbled and deeply moved by our conversation. Having a chance to listen to and learn from him will be a moment I will always carry with me. I left our discussion wanting to be a better leader and a better man – knowing we have a ton of work to do at Ford.

?Nearly all major companies and CEOs speak about the importance of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), but only a small percentage truly walk the walk and are viewed as companies and leaders of substance and action. I expect 2023 to be the year where Ford grabs that reputation through our actions, not our words. We’re going to build a culture where everyone truly feels they belong and can bring their whole self to work. It’s the right thing to do and it’s paramount to our success as a company moving forward.