Celebrating Black History Month Through Inclusion

February marks Black History Month, a time to remember and celebrate the important people and significant achievement of African Americans in U.S. history. This observance began in 1915 and 103 years later, it is important for all people – no matter their race, ethnicity or gender – to take time to celebrate the achievements of African Americans. It is also a time to acknowledge that our work is not done, both in the United States and across the globe, to ensure equality and inclusion for all.

African Americans are vastly underemployed compared to other races, having a 20.5 percent underemployment rate compared to Caucasians at 11.8 percent. In the technology industry, specifically, African Americans make up only 7.4 percent of all tech employees (according to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission).

As the Culture & Identity Lead for SAP, I am proud to say that over the past five years, SAP has committed to ensuring that diversity and inclusion are central to our talent agenda. While we understand we face an upward battle to ensure the tech employment rate for minorities increases, I am proud of the steps we’ve taken and excited about the opportunities ahead in 2018.

Some of our key accomplishments to ensure we are supporting and celebrating minorities in the workplace include:

1. Focus on Insight: a unique seven-module diversity and inclusion learning curriculum, to all 88,000+ employees around the world, which includes a specific module dedicated to cultural inclusion, covering topics of race and ethnicity. This curriculum is complemented with onsite workshops to provide guidance on working in an ethnically and racially diverse environment
2. Annual Silicon Valley Culture Shifting Weekend: in its third year, this event includes more than 200 accomplished African American and Hispanic executives, entrepreneurs, innovators and social impact leaders to discuss how to bring greater diversity into the tech industry.
3. Project 99: a program piloted in the headquarters of SAP America in Newtown Square, PA. This program specializes in diversifying leadership by helping to equip employees, especially underrepresented minorities, with leadership skills.
4. Project Propel: a a cooperation with the Delaware State University which is dedicated to enabling Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and minority-serving institutions (MSIs) across the United States to build the next generation of technology talent. The program focuses on training and empowering students on the latest SAP technologies such as SAP S4/HANA, big data/predictive analytics and design thinking/innovation to better prepare them with critical digital enterprise skills in demand in the SAP ecosystem.
5. “We Are One”: a grassroots initiative from the SAP Employee Network Groups that aims to better reassure, enable and empower colleagues around the world in times of major global and social change.
6. Cooperation with the SAP’s Black Employee Network and Latinos@SAP: To foster further employee-led internal initiatives like the celebrations of Black History and Latino Heritage Months and the joint participation with SAP’s Talent Acquisition in recruitment events targeting under-represented minorities like those of Management Leadership for Tomorrow – for Black, Latino, Native American students, and the Richard Tapia Conference of Diversity in Computing – for minorities in the sciences.
7. People Weeks: an extremely popular culture and identity-related initiative that includes a series of employee-driven events held both virtually and in-person each year. The “People Weeks” agenda focuses on topics of interest to our cross-cultural organization.

One exemplary employee who goes above and beyond his every day role is Kuran Williams, SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud launch advisor in SAP Global Customer Operations and also a member of SAP’s Black Employee Network (BEN), a group of more than 400 employees which consists of several chapters in different US and other international locations. For the BEN, Kuran creates programs focused on developing the professional skills of minorities working at SAP, including a monthly webinar series focused on career development, mentoring and other professional topics. While this series is offered by BEN, any employees can participate to grow his or her skills.

Additionally, Kuran is committed to sharing the importance of diversity and inclusion to students who will be the workforce within the next couple years. In fact, he shared his personal and professional experiences at Delaware State University in 2016 to a group of students within SAP’s Project Propel program to empower students with knowledge of the latest SAP technology to enhance their academic and career outcomes. For these and many other achievements, Kuran was recognized with the 2017 GCO Diversity and Inclusion Award for the North America region.

Another example is Robin Whitaker, who works for SAP in Digital Supply Chain Management, Presales, as a Principal Sustainability Solution Advisor.

Early in her career, Robin Whitaker worked for a large power generation company and had challenges in the workplace because she looked different from other employees. Her mother advised her to use the situation to focus and dive deep into her work. She said to “become the very best at what you do” and no one can take the results away from you.

Robin continues to share the wisdom from her mother and give back by volunteering her time supporting diversity and inclusion initiatives as part of SAP Corporate Social Responsibility. Robin has been a guest speaker, mentor, and judge of high school student business plans for the National Federation of Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE), an organization providing training and education programs to young people from low-income urban communities. Robin arms college students, who are a part of SAP’s Project Propel program at Delaware State University, with insights on SAP methodologies such as Design Thinking and analytics, as well as presentation skills and executive presence. She is a reading tutor to 2nd grade low income children as part of Achieve Now and mentors several SAP interns and SAP Academy graduates. Robin is also President of the Newtown Square chapter of the SAP Black Employee Network. According to her manager, not only is she a thought leader in terms of giving back, she is also changing the game in SAP Presales in how we lead our customer engagements in an exemplary way.

While our work is not done yet to ensure African Americans, and minorities across the globe, are represented in the tech community, I am proud of the traction we have made as an organization to continue supporting, hiring and retaining minorities across the globe.

You can read more about how SAP supports employees from all backgrounds by checking out the Culture & Identity section of SAP’s website, and by checking out my recent blog post on making real change happen for black and Hispanic communities.

Miguel Castro - Lead for Culture and Identity - SAP Global Diversity and Inclusion Office