Clemson bringing big-name speakers and sponsors to diversity summits

Clemson University will present two conferences in April aimed at promoting diversity and closing the achievement gap between men and women of color and other groups.

The Women’s Roundtable Pre-Summit and the Men of Color National Summit are back-to-back events that feature nationally recognized speakers and offer messages of empowerment. Both events are open to anyone — from middle schoolers to adults.

The Men of Color Summit is April 21-22 at the Greenville Convention Center and will feature more than 40 speakers such as Ally President and CEO (and Clemson alum) Jeffrey J. Brown, author Michael Eric Dyson, and former NASA engineer and astronaut Jose Hernandez. This year, the summit is hoping to have about 2,500 attendees from more than 27 states, which would make it the biggest year yet.

The Women’s Roundtable is scheduled for April 20, also at the Greenville Convention Center, and will feature speakers Lenore Pearlstein, publisher of Insight into Diversity Magazine, and Tonya Matthews, CEO of the International African American History Museum in Charleston. Organizers will announce two more speakers in the coming weeks. The keynote speaker is Melissa Harris-Perry, the Maya Angelou Presidential Chair at Wake Forest University.

A success from day one

Lee Gill, chief diversity officer for Clemson University, has been chairing the Men of Color Summit since its inception in 2017. He had just taken a job as the university’s chief diversity officer when campus leaders, including Clemson President Jim Clements, expressed interest in hosting a Black male summit, similar to what Gill had led in a previous position at the University of Akron.

“(Clements) has always been an advocate and champion of diversity,” Gill said.

Gill said the event has been a success since it started. The 2017 summit had 1,800 people attend, since then Gill has connected with major businesses across the state. This year, Boeing, Ally Financial, Duke Energy and BMW Manufacturing Co., are among almost 60 sponsors.

Kendra Stewart-Tillman, assistant vice president for diversity education at Clemson and chair for the Women’s Roundtable says the women’s event will address issues of underrepresentation of women in many fields — particularly STEM. She said the goal is for girls and women to see themselves in spaces they wouldn’t before, such as engineering or science, or taking positions of leadership such as CEOs.

“We’re not trying to create the same experience (as the Men of Color Summit),” she said.

Inspiring the next generation

Past summits have had an impact on students like Cristian Mesa in opening his mind to the possibility of a higher education. His parents immigrated from Mexico before Mesa was born and were never able to get an education.

“They know the value of an education and the opportunities it can bring,” he said.

Mesa said he might never have considered college if not for what he learned at the Men of Color summit. Now, he’s studying engineering at Clemson University and hopes to be a civil engineer.

Brown, who won the 2019 Thurgood Marshall College Fund CEO of the Year Award, which honors business leaders who’ve identified and nurtured talent to become future leaders and champions for justice says diversity one of the key priorities since he became CEO. Ally Financial is on Forbes’ list of America’s Best Employers for Diversity 2021, and the company has contributed $1.3 million for scholarships for students of color.

“Being a Clemson graduate, I see a confluence of a lot of things that are important to me,” Brown said. “It’s a great opportunity to promote something that sits in my heart.”