Inspiration: Nsombi Ricketts

By Elizabeth Macanufo 

March 2010

"As a woman and a person of color, I have always been sensitive to diversity issues," states Nsombi Ricketts. As an MBA student at Emory University, her awareness evolved into passion, and led Ricketts to her current position as Director of the Office of Diversity and Inclusion at the Johnson School at Cornell University.

While at Goizueta Business School, Ricketts served as a Consortium student liaison and President of the Black MBA Association, hoping to promote diversity initiatives on campus. "As a Consortium fellow, I felt that I had a responsibility to enhance diversity at Goizueta," Ricketts recalls. "I wanted to support underrepresented minorities on campus and help Emory become more inclusive."

Beginning her mission, Ricketts researched the nation's top 20 business schools' diversity initiatives and determined that Goizueta needed a large-scale forum to celebrate diversity. She collaborated with the admissions office, formed a student team and gained approval from Dean Lawrence Benveniste to launch the first annual Diverse Leadership Conference.  

The Consortium community provided support for the event as Ricketts leveraged the network to raise more than $25,000 in sponsorship funds. The inaugural conference, held in 2005, drew 250 attendees. Ricketts also partnered with the school's newly appointed Director of Diversity and Community Initiatives, Alicia Sierra, to develop Goizueta's new strategic diversity plan. These achievements earned Ricketts Goizueta's 2006 Global Multicultural Leader Award and also produced tangible results - the number of Consortium fellows at the school doubled the following year.

Following graduation, Ricketts accepted a full-time marketing position with American Express. She again leveraged the Consortium network to find a mentor in 2009 Peter Thorpe Award recipient Linda Hassan, former Director of Diverse Talent Acquisition at American Express and current VP of Diversity and Inclusion at New York Life. When a lateral opportunity opened up on American Express' diversity recruitment team, Ricketts took the risk to make a career switch from Marketing to HR. She was responsible for developing the company's national diversity recruiting strategy and comments that "working with Linda I learned so much about diversity recruiting and how to successfully advance diversity and inclusion in a large corporate setting."

Finding herself at a career crossroads once her team was a casualty of the recession, Ricketts reflected on her past experience and considered how to pair her strengths with her interests.  She asked herself, "What organizational environment would be the best fit for my personality, and what am I most passionate about?"