At Wells Fargo, we know that we can only be as successful as the communities we serve. We know that when we invest in those communities – by lending to families and businesses, putting people to work and supporting organizations that help people thrive – we win, and those communities win. We also know that, if we want to truly understand our customers and serve them well, the diversity of our company – including team members throughout our ranks, as well as our suppliers – should reflect the communities we serve.
Because we know that serving our communities is critical to our success, Wells Fargo is committed to promoting diversity, inclusion and team member development in every aspect of our business, and at every level of our organization. We strive to offer our diverse team members the training, mentoring and other development opportunities they need to advance in their careers and move our company forward. We also strive to enhance our diversity and inclusion awareness across the company through cross-cultural team member engagement, as well as through a strong focus on robust team members networks and diversity and inclusion councils that ensure that we are not just talking the talk, but walking the talk.
But our commitment to diversity and inclusion goes beyond our team members. We know that it provides a competitive advantage in the marketplace. It provides an authentic customer experience that reflects the diverse demographic of our customers, and allows us to effectively invest in our communities by diversifying our spend – from sourcing to women- and diverse-owned suppliers to sponsoring and building strategic partnerships with organizations such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Out and Equal and the National Council of La Raza.
These values are eagerly adopted across Wells Fargo’s business lines, including the Law Department, and are reflected in our business strategies. In order to increase the diversity of the Wells Fargo Law Department, we have taken steps to ensure that the pools of qualified candidates from which we select team members are all diverse. To address challenges in finding diverse candidates for certain candidate pools, we have developed several strategies for improving the way we source qualified candidates for our positions, including: posting our job openings with organizations that target diverse legal talent; engaging team members and local diversity bar organizations to identify diverse talent; collaborating with our partners in Human Resources to ensure that our interviewing and onboarding processes include diverse talent; and, holding managers accountable for the achievement of a diverse and inclusive workforce.
We also recognize that promoting diversity among the broader law profession is essential to increasing our future candidate pool. We seek external opportunities to promote diversity and inclusion efforts, such as sponsorship of and networking with legal diversity organizations like the Leadership Council on Legal Diversity, the Minority Corporate Counsel Association, the National Association of Minority and Women-Owned Law Firms, the Minority Association of Corporate Counsel and Women, Influence & Power in Law and others. We also manage a diverse legal internship program for first year law students in several of our offices, with the intention of developing top diverse talent among future lawyers.
Our team members are proud to be a part of Wells Fargo, where diversity and inclusion values are engrained in our culture and our business strategies. While our company has been acknowledged frequently for significant progress on our diversity and inclusion goals, we recognize that there is always more work to do to sustain that progress and ensure that the communities we serve have the resources they need to succeed. The success of our company depends on it.
