by Erin Turner | Jan 20, 2015 | News Slider
He does it all — everything from serving in church ministries to playing latin percussion music in his spare time. And his diversity doesn’t stop there. Anthony Carter, Chief Diversity Officer at Johnson & Johnson, spoke to students about the importance of diversity in the workplace at Media Masters Tuesday evening in Ezell. To get where he is today, Carter took a slight detour on his journey into the field of communications. “It took me three hours in a laboratory to prick my finger to do a blood test and I knew right away that this [pre-med] is not really for me,” Carter said. During college, one of his professors invited him to do a radio talk show, giving him the chance to bring current topics to students on campus. Soon, this broadcast endeavor led him to writing for one of his school’s newspapers. “I started to fall in love with this thing called communications because I ultimately thought that it was the true way to express who I am.” His love of communications took him down another path, incorporating both diversity and inclusion. “Diversity is who we are and inclusion is how we work together,” Carter said. “Communications is the understanding of all of that.” In 2002, Carter joined Johnson & Johnson as Director of Corporate Communications, and in 2005 he was promoted to Vice President of Corporate Communications. A day in the life of Carter involves sifting through hundreds of emails and doing exactly what he loves — creating an atmosphere of transparency with those he works with. “My passion in that work [communications] makes me really comfortable in...
by Carly Bergthold | Jan 20, 2015 | News Slider
Business leaders from the Nashville area met Tuesday morning at Lipscomb for a discussion on workplace diversity in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day. The Lipscomb University Department of Communication and Journalism hosted the event in Ezell Center partnering with the Council on Workforce Innovation and National Organization for Workforce Diversity. Guest speaker Anthony Carter, Chief Diversity Officer at Johnson & Johnson, shared his ideas about diversity over breakfast. Carter discussed his belief that corporations should concentrate more on social leadership and global well-being. “Diversity is who we are,” Carter said. “And inclusion is how we work together. The beauty of that is how we pull all of that together to make sure that we are of best interest to our customers.” Carter views diversity as a social justice imperative, and pointed to Martin Luther King Jr. as a hero worthy of emulation. “His work,” Carter said about King Jr., “in fact his life, illustrates so accurately diversity and social justice. Think about it, Dr. King dismantled the barriers of segregation and transformed a nation.” Breakfast attendees came from all over Nashville to learn how to better support diversity in their own businesses, corporations and organizations. “Diversity really means everything, Lori Adukeh, executive director of 100 Black Men of Middle Tennessee said. “It gives people the opportunity to be different, and yet be the same, to collaborate, to be partners.” Attendees also discussed the increased productivity diversity brings. “Diversity, and workforce diversity specifically, really speaks to equality and opportunity,” said Jacky Akbari, director of employee services at the Nashville Career Advancement Center. “We’ve found that when there is a diverse...
