My name is Michael Barber, and I'm the Chief Diversity Officer for General Electric. When I was growing up, it was always whatever you do do it to the best of your ability. I've just passed my 39th year with GE, I started as an intern, I was able to move into different departments at different points into my career, the door open, but that sure is not what kept me there. I want to make sure that people have the opportunity to do more to go further in the company. The areas of diversity have been so important to me in my career, the mentorship, the information, the activities of growing teams, and seeing the power of having a diverse team is something that's been always very strong and my beliefs, being an engineering operations, leading a business for the last several years, I had decided it was time for me to retire. But then after thinking about wanting to continue to drive and make the company better, I decided that I wanted to postpone things that we'll be doing on retirement. We want to make something better systemically and have lasting change. There's likely somebody in the organization who was responsible to make sure things are happening in a consistent way. For me, that's how I look at the chief diversity officer. I want to make sure that people have the opportunities beyond what I had. Because if you have everybody in the room that's had the same experience, you won't get better answers. If you have people that have different experiences and they can work together and be transparent and be themselves. You can make things better
