Month: June 2023

We’re thrilled to be expanding our EV fleet to help us meet our company goal to achieve a 50% reduction in Scope 1 & 2 emissions by 2030. An added bonus, our EVs have features and technology that support our service teams, including outlets for powering and recharging tools on work sites.

Click here to learn more about our EV pilot program and our commitments to sustainability: otiselevator.co/ESGReport

As published in Qualcomm’s 2022 Corporate Responsibility Report

We are committed to promoting and respecting all internationally recognized human rights and avoiding complicity in any human rights abuse throughout our Company, our operations and our business relationships, including our subsidiaries, partners, customers and supply chain.

Our efforts are informed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the eight Core Labor Standards of the International Labour Organization (ILO), the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC) Principles and the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.

Our Company’s respect for human rights is enshrined in The Qualcomm Way: Our Code of Business Conduct and our Supplier Code of Conduct. Our approach is explained in further detail in our Human Rights Statement.

We require all employees to complete training and certification on The Qualcomm Way: Our Code of Business Conduct, including the subsection on human rights.

As part of our human rights due diligence efforts, we regularly conduct formal, third-party human rights impact assessments (HRIAs) of our operations as a whole or at the market level. These assess potential risks across our operations and/or value chain, including risks related to employees, manufacturing facilities, supply chain and communities. HRIAs help us identify our salient human rights issues — those human rights at potential risk of negative impact due to our Company activities or business relationships.

Because we primarily rely on third parties to perform the manufacturing, assembly and most of the testing of our semiconductor products, we do not generally encounter issues with child labor, forced labor or human trafficking in our direct operations. Indirect salient human rights risks exist primarily in our supply chains and with local community members. Although we may not have direct control over or causal relationships with these risks, we are committed to raising awareness of our expectations and working toward mitigating any potential link or contribution to these risks.

Due to our reliance on suppliers, our Company has taken specific steps to prevent human rights abuses in our supply chain through our engagement with the RBA. Our efforts to prevent, mitigate and remediate our human rights risks and impacts in our supply chain include annual assessments of suppliers’ operations in accordance with the RBA SAQ, engagement with suppliers to ensure conformance to our expectations, risk-based onsite audits and participation in multi-stakeholder initiatives.

As previously discussed, we require our primary semiconductor manufacturing suppliers to complete the RBA SAQ, which includes human rights risks, such as working hours, child labor, freedom of association and more. All our primary semiconductor manufacturing suppliers comply with this requirement, and all have low-risk manufacturing facilities according to the SAQ ratings. In addition, we encourage our primary semiconductor manufacturing suppliers to complete an RBA Validated Assessment Process (VAP) audit.

During VAP audits, certified third-party auditors conduct record reviews, manager interviews and worker interviews for conformance to all standards of the RBA Code of Conduct covering labor, health and safety, environment, ethics and management systems. For more information on the VAP, please see the RBA VAP guidance documents.

Our internal Human Rights Working Group focuses on strengthening our management of human rights risks. This cross-functional team includes representatives from departments including Legal, Procurement, Corporate Responsibility, Government Affairs, Environment, Health and Safety, Security, DEI, Supply Chain, Risk and Compliance, Privacy and Cybersecurity. The working group is responsible for implementing, improving and supporting adherence to our human rights practices and for engaging external stakeholders on our human rights approach.

We are committed to providing remedies for individuals or communities where we have identified that our Company or third parties acting on our behalf caused or contributed to adverse human rights impacts. As such, we have a formal, third-party operated grievance and remedy mechanism, Business Conduct Hotline. The hotline is a comprehensive and confidential reporting tool available to anyone — external or internal — to raise concerns, ask questions or seek guidance anonymously.

Learn more in Qualcomm’s 2022 Corporate Responsibility Report

June 1, 2023 /3BL Media/ – SkysTheLimit.org, a global nonprofit organization dedicated to fostering a vibrant community of entrepreneurs and their allies, brings the community together to celebrate Pride Month by spotlighting the success of entrepreneur Amnoni Myers and inspiring others to make their dreams happen.

LGBTQIA+ entrepreneurs represent a significant portion of the entrepreneurial landscape. According to the National LGBT Chamber of Commerce, there are 1.4 million LGBTQIA+ business owners, who are contributing $1.7 trillion to the U.S. economy annually.

Amnoni Myers embodies the spirit of resilience, determination, and innovation. Amnoni became a ward of the state at birth, and through her experiences, in foster care, she became committed to helping others understand the importance of their voice and experiences so that they can break the cycle of poverty.

She is the Founder of You Are the Prize LLC., a service-based company that offers speaking, training and consulting to child welfare agencies, educational institutions and foster parents who work with young people who have experienced trauma. With the success of her book: You Are the Prize: Seeing Yourself Beyond the Imperfections of Your Trauma and her experiences working with the White House and Congress, she developed a brand to help people working with children understand the impacts of trauma.

“Mentors are a form of social capital, and I am realizing that an essential element to building a business is being able to rely on people where you may lack experience. Each mentor has given me more confidence by affirming the work I am doing. They each have encouraged me to seek after clients who are willing to pay for my services. Because I’ve stayed firm on my prices, I’ve seen that I have gained about three clients since,” said Amnoni.

Read more about her remarkable success story here.

To further honor Amnoni’s achievements and inspire others, Sky’s the Limit will be hosting the highly anticipated Limitless! premiere featuring founder Amnoni Myers. Limitless! is a groundbreaking series, where entrepreneurs can share their experiences, insights, and strategies for success. This episode will provide a unique opportunity for attendees to learn from Amnoni’s journey, gain valuable knowledge, and connect with like-minded individuals. More details can be found here.

As an organization committed to building a global community that embraces diversity, Sky’s the Limit recognizes that inclusivity is the key to innovation and progress. By providing a platform for entrepreneurs of all backgrounds, identities, and orientations, we foster an environment where creativity thrives, ideas flourish, and meaningful relationships are formed.

Join Sky’s the Limit this Pride Month in celebrating the diversity, strength, and resilience of the LGBTQIA+ community. Together, we can create a future where every entrepreneur’s potential knows no bounds. For more information about how to get your company involved in mentoring, please visit skysthelimit.org/partnerships.

Sky’s the Limit offers opportunities for traditionally marginalized entrepreneurs – typically those who identify as LGBTQIA+, BIPOC, women, veterans, disabled people, and people from low-income backgrounds – to connect with mentors to come together to foster, grow, and shape modern and future enterprise.

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About SkysTheLimit.org: SkysTheLimit.org is a digital platform that connects young, historically excluded entrepreneurs with one-on-one support from experienced business advisors and mentors, entrepreneurship training, and community-voted startup grants. SkysTheLimit.org is a 501(c)3 nonprofit. 

By Kristy Lilas, Vice President of Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging at GoDaddy

When learning that a company has a dedicated leader of diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging (DEIB) — whether it is a chief diversity officer, vice president or other position— it’s easy to wonder, “Well, what does that title actually mean? What does this person really do all day?”  

To provide more transparency into the critical work that a DEIB leader leads, I wanted to share a glimpse into how I spend my time. In fact, the better it’s understood what DEIB professionals like me do, and how our work affects the business, the more our work will be valued and championed — and the more successful DEIB programs will be overall.

At a high level, my role as vice president of diversity, inclusion and belonging at GoDaddy is to help our organization continually consider, strategize, prioritize and execute inclusive and equitable approaches across the business — all aligned with GoDaddy’s mission of “making opportunity more inclusive for all” and targeted at empowering both our people and our customers. I do this the same way we approach any other business priority, including steps relating to research and analysis, strategic planning, implementation, oversight and governance, experimentation, and tracking metrics.  

Importantly, DEIB does not just focus on employee experience. At least at GoDaddy, DEIB is prioritized across all our business operations as well as our customer experiences. My purview as a DEIB leader is both global and broad, allowing us to make the greatest impact — as a responsible business, as an employer of people and as a tech company. 

Be forewarned: a lot of what I do may seem very dry. In fact, an aspect of DEIB programming that doesn’t often get discussed is how much of this work is focused behind-the-scenes on tactical processes.

Why? Because DEIB is both about influencing people’s actions and designing systems and processes that are inclusive and equitable. In other words, people execute processes, but processes dictate people’s actions. So, to make DEIB truly integrated — and steadfast — we must focus on a two-prong approach, because you can’t have one of these approaches without the other and expect to make progress. 

 In the spirit of transparency, here is a snippet of what I’m up to this month, aligned to this year’s priorities. While it’s not everything I’ll work on — given this role is constantly evolving and every day is different — I hope what I share provides at least a good understanding of a day in my seat, and I welcome other leaders to consider and share how they too are approaching DEIB in the workplace.

CommunicationsRegular meetings with Communications, Public Relations, Marketing, Events, and Brand teams to further embed the importance of DEIB into how we: communicate internally and externally; share best practices around helping people feel authentically represented and included; amplify our Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) and employee stories; and provide transparency into our DEIB and culture efforts. For example, for June we are discussing how to execute thoughtful, authentic campaigns around both LGBTQIA+ Pride and Juneteenth, including deep consideration of current events affecting the LGBTQIA+ and Black communities that reflect our employee and customer perspectives.DEIB focus groups with employees at various times and across regions to collect feedback about our employees’ experience.
 Learning & EngagementERG one-to-one and group meetings to check in on their plans, programming and feedback so we can better support their efforts and consider their priorities within the broader DEIB work we’re doing.Collaboration with our Learning and Development team to create employee training modules on inclusive engagement concepts, including psychological safety, growth mindset, microaggressions and where bias can appear in the employee lifecycle.Early research and planning around possible new professional development programming focused on enabling representation in management and leadership at the organization. ERG event attendance and participation for this month’s heritage month (Pride!).Webinar presentation on developing DEIB strategies for our Empower by GoDaddy cohort of small business owners in partnership with the Better Business Bureau Serving the Pacific Southwest.Webinar attendance on building a culture of DEIB with a focus on skills, behaviors and actions. A shared DEIB and professional development best practice is to always stay curious and keep learning!
 Operations & Process IntegrationRegular touchpoints with Technology, Talent, Human Resources and other groups to share updates, discuss solutions and prioritize DEIB in our business operations and processes. For example, I meet regularly with our Talent Acquisition team to plan opportunities to continually attract candidates from all types of backgrounds and mitigate how bias can appear throughout the recruitment process.Project status call with Procurement around the launch of our Supplier Diversity program.  Research and meetings around revised self-identification data inputs to further enable an inclusive employee experience and the create more data driven DEIB approaches.Providing and soliciting guidance, input and feedback on different efforts to further globalize our approach to DEIB.  
 GovernanceDEIB Steering Committee meeting to review a scorecard summary of our efforts and discuss status, resources and metrics.Global leadership team meetings to align on goals and provide DEIB-related guidance as needed across our corporate priorities. 

To continually make progress, DEIB programming and priorities need to be authentic, focused and strategic. This work cannot be owned by any one single person — rather it’s a shared responsibility of all across the company, with so many creating great impacts through their passion and commitment. My role as a DEIB partner is to simply guide and enable this orchestra of action and accountability.

Empowering through Equity & Inclusion: A GoDaddy Series – At GoDaddy, we make apps and services that our worldwide community of entrepreneurs can relate to and that serve our mission of empowering entrepreneurs everywhere, making opportunity more inclusive for all. Our people and culture reflect and celebrate that sense of diversity and inclusion in ideas, experiences and perspectives. But we know that’s not enough to build true equity and belonging in our communities. That’s why we prioritize integrating diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging principles into the core of how we work every day. This article is part of the Empowering through Equity & Inclusion thought leadership series that reflects on how organizations can strive for more equitable and inclusive workplaces – as well as communities.

The morning was calm and quiet when Mike climbed into the passenger’s seat of a truck to make the commute to his worksite south of Fort McMurray, Alta. Both he and the driver were Suncor summer students in 2006, each taking turns driving to work.

It was Mike’s turn to sit back and nap on the drive, so he reclined his seat and dozed off. He was startled awake as the truck hit a ditch along Highway 63, the only road leading in and out of town.

“The truck was upside down and I was having difficulty breathing, so I was mostly focused on trying to breathe, not on what happened,” says Mike. “It took a couple of hours to get me out of the truck using the Jaws of Life. But once I got out, I was in good spirits; joking around with everyone and laughing.”

Fortunately, both Mike and the driver survived the accident, but Mike had a spinal injury that left him paralyzed.

“I’m paralyzed from the chest down and technically classified as a quadriplegic because I lost some use of my hands as well as my legs,” explains Mike. “I was also burned on my legs and needed skin grafts, but because of my spinal injury, I didn’t feel much pain.”

Since the accident, Mike has become a passionate accessibility advocate, working to raise awareness of everyday tasks that can be challenging for those with disabilities.

“There are so many ’invisible,’ life-changing accessibility features that make navigating the world easier for me,” says Mike. “A lot of time, thought, care and the voices of countless people with disabilities and allies have advocated for these benefits and I’m privileged to take advantage of them.”

Although features like ramps, elevators, automatic doors and accessible washroom stalls are familiar to all of us, there are other accessibility tools that are less obvious such as alt text on images in a social media feed, and screen readers for computers and mobile devices.

“Things like being able to use the tap feature debit and credit card machines; taking my kids to tourist attractions designed with accessibility in mind ensuring I have a clear view; not having to worry if my wheelchair will fit through doorways or having hand controls installed in rental cars are just some ‘luxuries’ that would be less common had I been injured a decade before.”

Mike returned to Suncor as a student the following summer, and eventually met another student who would later become his wife.

“At this point, after meeting my wife and raising two amazing young girls, the accident seems like a lifetime ago. But because of it, accessibility will always be a part my life,” he says.

Almost 20 years after the accident, Mike now works for Suncor as an accounts payable administrator and is an active member in Suncor’s accessibility employee inclusion network, enABLE. Through the network he hosts regular sessions on accessibility, providing a safe space for persons with disabilities, caregivers and allies to discuss a range of disability related topics.

“Many people don’t speak up about things they know will make their life easier, often because they’re worried about what their colleagues might think,” adds Mike. “But when we are vulnerable and open up, we give our coworkers the chance to help make this an even better place to work.”

National AccessAbility Week runs from May 28 to June 3, and is an opportunity to celebrate the valuable contributions and leadership of persons with disabilities, highlight the work of people, organizations and communities that are removing barriers and improving accessibility, and reflect on the ongoing efforts to become more accessible and more inclusive.

Ahead of its popular music festivals, Just Like Heaven Festival and Cruel World Festival, AEG and Goldenvoice hosted two AEG Futures career exploration events for high-school students from the Pasadena Unified School District and local non-profit, Adelante Youth Alliance, at the Rose Bowl Stadium in Pasadena, CA on May 12 and May 17, 2023.

The events were designed to engage students about career opportunities in the live entertainment industry. More than 50 students were provided an inside look at music festivals from Nic Adler, VP, Goldenvoice Festivals, Michael Ilves, Director, Goldenvoice Festivals, Martha Saucedo, Chief External Affairs Officer, AEG and industry executives from TenFifty Entertainment.

Students participated in speed-mentoring sessions led by industry executives and were given behind-the-scenes tours of each festival prior to their openings.

Following the tours, the students had the chance to design their own music festivals and pitch their ideas to the executives, including selecting the music genres and festival names, staging the grounds layouts and choosing participating vendors.

“As festival producers, we are charged with making it look simple, but there’s so much that goes into planning a festival,” said Nic Adler, VP, Goldenvoice. “I hope that these programs provided these students with an idea of all the work that goes into creating an event like a music festival and reminds them that it’s not how you start but how you finish. If you work hard and put your all into it, you’re going to end up with a great product.”

Opening remarks for the AEG Futures sessions were given by City of Pasadena Mayor, Victor Gordo and City of Pasadena Councilmember, Tyron Hampton.

“So many young people are passionate about music,” said Martha Saucedo, Chief External Affairs Officer, AEG. “It is incredibly rewarding to go into a career that you are passionate about and that impacts people’s lives in a positive way. This program is important because it introduces students to a wide range of career opportunities in an area that they care about.”

The AEG Futures offers high school and college age students the chance to learn first-hand from industry professionals about career opportunities in sports and live music. Over the years, AEG has hosted multiple in-person and virtual events in conjunction with its music festivals including Goldenvoice’s Day N Vegas, Arroyo Seco Weekend and the BET’s BET Experience Youth Program at L.A. LIVE, among others.

June 1, 2023 /3BL Media/ – Inogen Alliance is proud to announce that we will be an official sponsor exhibitor at The Global Summit on ESG reporting for the Energy & Extractive Industries! The conference will be held in Brussels, Belgium on June 20th. Our global Alliance team will be represented by six co-sponsoring Associates, including Antea Group Belgium, Ayrton Group in Ireland, Baden Consulting in Switzerland, denxpert in Hungary, HPC Germany and HPC Italy.

According to the Global Summit on ESG Reporting website, “The conference aims to bring together the senior decision-makers from the Energy, Mining and Oil & Gas Industries for a business networking-oriented event. The attendees will have the opportunity to witness a program that focuses on insightful case studies and panels which will promote in-depth exchanges and discussions that address the industry’s challenges.”

This conference aims to promote transparency and accountability in the extractives sector by providing a forum for discussing key ESG issues such as climate change, biodiversity, and human rights.

Program highlights include:

ESG Metrics and KPIsESG Commitments that are “Greenwashing Proof”Reporting RequirementsCollecting Quality DataAccurate Visibility Across your Carbon FootprintData TransparencyMisinterpretation of ESG DisclosuresGreen Bonds and Sustainability-Linked FinanceInvestor Relations and SustainabilitySocial Issues in the Context of ESG Reporting Standards

Bill MacDonald, Antea Group USA, Energy Working Group leader states “The collective energy project experience of the Alliance membership rivals any global consulting firm. Our mission is to collaborate with each other to expand our consulting capabilities geographically, and to win multinational client opportunities.”

This is a unique opportunity to exchange experiences with energy and mining industry leaders and build connections with members of the wider community. Check out more on the event and request a brochure to register on the site here and make sure to connect with our Associates in attendance at the table exhibit! Or watch for more content to come from our team that will be attending representing the Global Energy Transition Working Group and Sustainability Working Group.

Inogen Alliance is a global network made up of dozens of independent local consultancies with more than 6,000 team members and experts skilled in delivering solutions and supporting client success across the globe. Click the links below to learn more about us and how we can use our global expertise to meet your local needs. Explore our Associates, News & Blog updates, Contact Us or follow us on LinkedIn.

Originally published on Built From Scratch

June 1 officially marks the start of hurricane season in the Northern Hemisphere. This year, The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is predicting a “near-normal” season, with an estimated 12 to 17 named storms. If you live in areas prone to hurricanes, it’s important to start preparing now.

Team Depot, The Home Depot’s associate volunteer force, recently built more than 5,500 disaster relief kits to restock Home Depot distribution centers in Georgia and Texas. These 5-gallon buckets contain items like garbage bags, paper towels, cleaning supplies, hand sanitizer, gloves and N95 masks. After assembly, they are shrink-wrapped and stored for disaster response efforts as needed.

In the past year, thousands of relief kits were shipped into disaster zones in the immediate aftermath of storms to help impacted communities with clean-up efforts. As we approach the start of another hurricane season, these new kits are now ready when disaster strikes.

The Home Depot Foundation is committed to supporting communities with natural disaster preparedness, short-term response and long-term recovery. With the help of several nonprofit partners, The Foundation is able to provide immediate support, resources and relief supplies to communities in need. Visit HomeDepotFoundation.org to learn more.

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