Using Diversity to Drive Business

CLEVELAND: Luke Visconti, partner and co-founder of DiversityInc and DiversityInc.com, shows how businesses can use diversity to better their bottom lines at noon on Friday, June 1, 2007, at The City Club of Cleveland.

Founded in 1998, DiversityInc has a circulation of 150,000, and DiversityInc.com serves more than 1.3 million monthly sessions. More than 175,000 people receive their daily email newsletter.

Responsible for the editorial direction, scope of coverage, and philosophy of the publications, Visconti developed and directed the methodology for its “Top 50 Companies for Diversity” as well as the benchmarking product.

Visconti is a frequent lecturer on the business benefits of diversity to corporations, business groups, and non-profit organizations, including The New York Times, Sodexho, Comerica Bank, Marriott, Scripps Network, Johnson & Johnson, United States Navy, and the American Bar Association. He regularly appears on Bloomberg Television and MSNBC and is quoted in numerous national publications.

Visconti is a trustee at Bennett College for Women, a member of PRIMER (Puerto Ricans in Management and Executive Roles), and a member of the United States Navy Diversity Senior Advisory Group. In 2006, he received the “Bridge Builders Award” from Rev. Jesse Jackson and the “Legacy of Leadership Award” from the Spelman College Center for Leadership & Civic Engagement.

This Friday Forum is second in the 2007 KeyBank Diversity Thought Leadership Series. Upcoming speakers include the following: Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum, president of Spelman College (Sept. 21, 2007); and Ralph Alvarez, president of McDonald’s Corporation (Oct. 26, 2007).

Nation of Secrets

Ted Gup, the Shirley Wormser Professor of Journalism at Case Western Reserve University, will speak about his newest book Nation of Secrets: The Threat to Democracy and the American Way of Life at noon on Friday, June 8, 2007, at The City Club of Cleveland. The book is scheduled for publication on June 5.

Drawing on original reporting and analysis, Gup argues that a preoccupation with secrets has undermined the very values—security, patriotism, privacy, the national interest—in whose name secrecy is often invoked. He shows how the expanding thicket of classified information leads to the devaluation of the secrets we most need to keep, and that journalists have become pawns in the government’s internal conflicts over access to information. Gup also explores the exploitation of privacy and confidentiality in academia, business, and the courts.

A former investigative reporter for The Washington Post and Time, Gup is author of The Book of Honor: Covert Lives And Classified Deaths At The CIA and has written for Salon.com, The New York Times, Village Voice, Sports Illustrated, Slate, Newsweek and others. He has been a Pulitzer finalist and the recipient of numerous awards, including the George Polk Award, Worth Bingham Prize, Gerald Loeb Award, and the Book-of-the-Year Award from Investigative Reporters and Editors (for The Book of Honor).

Gup has been a Fulbright Scholar to China, a grantee of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, a Fellow of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics & Public Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and a Guggenheim Fellow. An expert on secrecy, he has been a guest on numerous national radio and television programs, including Larry King, NPR’s Diane Rhem Show, Talk of the Nation, The Today Show, CBS Sunday Morning, Good Morning America, and MSNBC.

Tickets for this City Club Friday Forum are $18 for members and $30 for non-members. Lunch is included. They can be purchased by calling The City Club at 216.621.0082 or visiting the website at www.cityclub.org.