Our inaugural Sheffield Haworth Diversity Talk featured an esteemed panel of guest speakers from the financial services industry talking about ‘The Path to Racial Equity on Wall Street’. This ‘fireside’ chat drew on our guest speakers’ own experiences of their career paths on Wall Street, what their organisations are doing to promote racial equity internally and within the industry, and what measurable actions we all must be taking in light of recent events globally, sparked by the killing of George Floyd and so many others.
Our Panel comprised of:
- Erika Irish Brown – Chief Diversity Officer, Goldman Sachs
- Indhira Arrington – SVP, Head of Targeted Sourcing, Wells Fargo
- Egwu Nwankpah – VP Supplier Diversity and Development, Bank of America
Moderated by:
- Rhona Gibson – Director, Global Banking & US Lead for Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, Sheffield Haworth
Watch the full discussion.
Biographies of our Guest Speakers:
Panelist: Erika Irish Brown – Chief Diversity Officer, Goldman Sachs
Erika is chief diversity officer, responsible for global diversity and inclusion strategy and driving inclusive culture initiatives and efforts related to the recruitment, retention and advancement of diverse professionals. She joined the firm as a managing director in 2018.
Prior to joining Goldman Sachs, Erika was global head of diversity and inclusion at Bloomberg from 2015 to 2018. Prior to this, she led diversity hiring efforts at Bank of America between 2009 and 2015 and Lehman Brothers between 2005 and 2008.
Erika’s background includes a range of banking and finance roles, including head of business development for Black Entertainment Television, senior associate in the high yield capital markets group at Morgan Stanley and senior policy analyst for domestic finance for the United States Department of the Treasury. She began her career as an analyst in the public finance department at Lehman Brothers.
Erika is a member of the Executive Leadership Council, vice chair of the Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation and serves on the Board of the Riverside Hawks. Erika earned a BS in Economics from the State University of New York at Albany and an MBA from Columbia Business School.
Panelist: Indhira Arrington – SVP, Head of Targeted Sourcing, Wells Fargo
Currently, Indhira heads the Targeted Sourcing Team – a center of excellence focused on identifying and attracting top diverse talent to Wells Fargo by fully leveraging four key areas: proactive direct sourcing, specialized marketing initiatives/events, referrals and military veteran strategy. Previously, she provided leadership in the strategic planning and execution of diversity sourcing initiatives and programs for the Wholesale Banking Division. Prior to joining Wells Fargo, Indhira held several roles at Bank of America within the Global Diversity and Inclusion Organization, including Head of Enterprise Diversity Recruiting, Head of Diversity Recruiting Relationship Management, Diversity & Inclusion Program Manager for Global Banking & Markets, Enterprise National Diversity Sponsorship Manager, and Executive Diversity Recruiter covering GBAM, GCB, HL&I, Legal, Audit, CFO, and Risk. Prior to this she worked at Morgan Stanley as an Equities Derivatives Sales Trader and before that at Citigroup.
Indhira earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics from Rutgers University where she graduated summa cum laude. She holds a MBA in Finance from New York University Stern School of Business/ London Business School and is a Consortium for Graduate Study in Management Fellow, TOIGO Fellow and an INROADS alum. Indhira is also a Cornell University Certified Diversity Professional/Advanced Practitioner (CCDP/AP). She is a member of Omicron Delta Epsilon, Phi Beta Kappa, Association of Latino Professionals for America (ALPFA), PRIMER Network and the Council of Urban Professionals.
Indhira serves on the Board of Directors of Poly Prep, the Committee for Hispanic Children and Families and the Council of Urban Professionals (CUP). She also serves on the Corporate Advisory Board of the Consortium for Graduate Study in Management.
Panelist: Egwu Nwankpah – VP Supplier Diversity and Development, Bank of America
Egwu Nwankpah is currently a Vice President at Bank of America. He is part of the Supplier Diversity and Responsible Sourcing team where he serves as a Supplier Diversity Manager, specifically for the Local Markets and Partnerships. In his position, Egwu serves as an advocate for small and diverse businesses, a liaison to key partner organizations, a project manager for strategic initiatives, and a manager and analyst of related supplier diversity spend data. Prior to this position, Egwu was part of the bank’s vendor management team where he dealt primarily in international supply chain management, and process improvement in the third party risk management. The Bank of America Supplier Diversity and Responsible Sourcing team, is renowned in the Financial Services industry and is the only financial service firm who is a member of the prestigious Billion Dollar Roundtable.
Previously, he was a Manager in the Deloitte’s Financial Services group of Deloitte & Touché LLP. In that role, he provided auditing, accounting and advisory services to both public and private clients, inclusive of banks, broker dealers and mortgage banks. Egwu has more than 19 years of combined relevant experience in the realms of internal audit and advisory services, vendor management and diversity.
Egwu is heavily involved in the Diversity and Inclusion space at Bank of America. He is currently the Co-Chair for the Black Professionals Group New York and also serves as the company’s Ambassador for the National Association of Black Accountants. He is frequently called on for public speaking opportunities either by Bank of America or any of the many professional organizations.
Egwu earned his Bachelor of Business Administration degree with an emphasis in Accounting from Andrews University where graduated as a member of the prestigious J. N. Andrews Honors Program. He holds a MBA from the R.H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland, where his focus area was Global Strategy. He is a Certified Public Accountant (NY, MD, and CA), Certified Internal Auditor (IIA), a Chartered Global Management Accountant (AICPA), and is a member of NABA, AICPA, IIA, MACPA, NYSSCPA, and GWSCPA.
Moderator: Rhona Gibson – Director, Global Banking & US Lead for Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, Sheffield Haworth
Rhona Gibson is a Director in the Global Banking and Private Equity search practice at Sheffield Haworth and focuses on senior roles in Corporate & Investment Banking, M&A, Equity and Debt Capital Markets and Leveraged & Structured Finance. She is also the US Lead for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion for the firm.
Prior to joining Sheffield Haworth in 2018, Rhona worked in-house at JP Morgan with responsibility for diversity recruiting in Corporate & Investment Banking, Commercial Banking, Asset & Wealth Management and Consumer & Community Banking as part of the Advancing Black Leaders recruitment efforts.
She previously held key talent and staffing roles at Bank of America Merrill Lynch and New York Life, was a Director/Senior Consultant and Head of US Research and Execution at the Whitney Group, and was a Partner at a women-owned search firm focused on banking, ECM and GCM.
Rhona started her career as an Analyst at Goldman Sachs in Mortgage Finance, Sales & Trading; worked as an Associate at Morgan Stanley in Private Wealth Management; and as a Vice President at Utendahl Capital in Convertible Sales & Research. She also was the Director of New Business Development at the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone, a state and local initiative to revitalize Harlem, Washington Heights and the Bronx.
Rhona graduated magna cum laude from Brown University with a Bachelor of Arts in Applied Math & Economics and holds an MBA from Stanford University.
She has an Advisory role with Higher Heights for America, a political action committee and leadership research team focused on promoting black women in public office at the local, state and federal levels. She is active on other boards related to female and minority owned start-ups in education and technology. Rhona is a member of Chief, the private women’s club, founded to drive women forward into positions of power – and keep them there. Finally, she volunteers for Stanford Women on Boards Nominating Services Committee where she actively places women from Stanford into board seats.
