-: My name is Kelly Palmer
and I'm the Head of Global Inclusion and Diversity
and Corporate Citizenship for CFA Institute.
We are first and foremost a credentialer.
We provide a certification called The Charter
and we also provide continuing education,
business resources, advocacy and many of the things
you would expect from a professional association.
So my work is in three parts, inclusion and diversity,
corporate citizenship and environmental sustainability
and in short, we want to leave the world
better than we found it.
So under inclusion and diversity we're thinking
about our employees and their experience
as well as our members and test-takers.
Under corporate citizenship, that's the additional things
we do in the communities that we occupy,
where our offices are located
and there are 10 around the world.
And then under environmental sustainability
it's all about minimizing our carbon footprint.
It's about making the business case across the organization
and making it in a variety of geographic context
because we operate in not just the Americas but APAC,
Asia Pacific and AMEA, Europe, Africa and the Middle East.
So it's being able to convey the importance and salience
of the work in a way that each audience will hear it.
So to give you an example,
my last two weeks included a public speaking engagement
with the U.S. Pension Funds in Boston
followed by a retreat with our business resource groups
followed by a retreat with our diversity
and inclusion counsel
and now we're in the Virginia Film Festival
where we're supporting the education
of high school and middle school students
and I'm off to the next thing on Friday
which is engaging our high potential employees.
It's a fast pace.
There're definitely deliberate scheduled deliverables
and landmarks throughout the year
but there's also all the opportunities
that present themselves,
be they issues that pop up that are of concern
or doors that open that I need to walk through
because we've been waiting for it.