Lee Jourdan

Inclusive leadership expert Lee Jourdan explains why workplace diversity gives organizations a competitive advantage, and offers concrete solutions for leveraging it amid the changing landscape.

Neither our ethnicity, gender orientation, religion, or whatever makes us diverse, makes us inferior or superior to another. So, how do we ensure all have an equal opportunity to compete? Lee Jourdan

Though data shows more diverse companies outperform their less diverse competitors, DEI efforts face growing challenges—from rulings against affirmative action to the current administration’s rollback of DEI initiatives. So what does this mean for the future of DEI? Lee Jourdan addresses how corporations can stay competitive in the global economy by building more diverse teams and leaders, while aligning with evolving policies and business priorities.

Lee Jourdan served five years as a logistics officer in the U.S. Army and decades as an executive in the energy industry, which culminated in his role as Chief Diversity and Inclusion officer at Chevron. In this role, he was tapped to develop a more diverse, equitable and inclusive culture at Chevron. He and his team were extraordinarily successful, winning multiple awards and establishing Chevron as a diversity champion with high marks for an inclusive culture in the process—no small feat, given the industry’s “Big Oil” culture and historical record of discrimination.

Now as an independent director on corporate, private equity and non-profit boards, Jourdan has been exposed to a wide range of organizational culture diversity. A contributor to publications including the Harvard Business Review and the Washington Post, he has emerged as a thought leader who advises organizations on how to implement inclusive leadership programs and measurable diversity objectives in constructive, non-polarizing ways.

Jourdan is also the co-author of From Shoeshine to Star Wars, a memoir about his father who rose from shining shoes during the Great Depression to become a logistician playing a critical role developing the “Star Wars” U.S. nuclear defense system; and his mother, a teacher and later an information technology manager who worked as a “Computer” for aeronautical manufacturers in the 1950s, a role akin to the women memorialized in the movie Hidden Figures. 

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