Joe Reagan, president and CEO of St. Louis RCGA, broke a major piece of local business diversity news at the 13th Annual Salute to Excellence in Business Awards & Networking Luncheon held Thursday, November 15 at The Ritz-Carlton, St. Louis.
Reagan announced that the RCGA – one of the region’s most powerful business associations – had appointed Valerie Patton, executive director of the St. Louis Business Diversity Initiative, to serve as vice president of economic inclusion for the RCGA. The RCGA also has now incorporated the St. Louis Business Diversity Initiative into its operations.
The announcement was greeted with enthusiasm by more than 500 guests, who heartily celebrated excellence in African-American business and the business imperative of diversity. The crowd rose for a half-dozen standing ovations over the course of a long lunch hosted by the St. Louis American Foundation, St. Louis RCGA and the Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis.
Reagan broke his news while introducing the winner of the 2012 Corporate Diversity Award, Nestlé Purina PetCare. The Salute to Excellence in Business also recognized Corporate Executive of the Year, Non-Profit Executive of the Year Award, Entrepreneur of the Year and others (see story on page 1A).
Reagan is relatively new to St. Louis and the RCGA, where he started on February 1, succeeding Dick Fleming, who had led the RCGA since August 1994. Reagan brought with him from a sense of the value of inclusion, he said. “As a mentor taught me, if you are not intentionally inclusive, you run the risk of being unintentionally exclusive,” Reagan said.
Reagan said that when he arrived in St. Louis from Louisville, where he had been president and CEO of the Greater Louisville Inc.-Metro Chamber of Commerce since 2005, he heard “over and over and over” about the St. Louis Business Diversity Initiative and its Fellows Program.
“The Fellows Program is one of our region’s most important programs,” Reagan said. “Civic Progress, the RBC and the RCGA have been supportive of it, but now we are going to take it into every corner of the business community and invite our alumni to fully take part in their leadership role in our community.”
Carol Daniel of KMOX, who emceed the program, said in her introductory remarks that for diversity and inclusion to succeed, commitment “must start at the top.” Reagan made it clear that RCGA intends that to be the case with its expanded commitment to the St. Louis Business Diversity Initiative and its executive director, Valerie Patton.
“Valerie has joined our top team as vice president of economic inclusion,” Reagan said.
Patton said she is “humbled, honored and blessed” by the news. Her role in the Salute program was to help introduce Nestlé Purina PetCare as the winner of the 2012 Corporate Diversity Award, and she stayed within that supporting role. But praising Nestlé Purina PetCare’s commitment to diversity included discussion of the company’s commitment to the St. Louis Business Diversity Initiative.
Patton said that Nestlé Purina PetCare connected with the Diversity Fellows Program five years ago. She said Steve Degnan, Nestlé Purina VP and head of human resources, told her, “We’ll take as many slots in your program as we can get.”
Crystal Hardiman, a 15-year veteran of the company, went through the Diversity Fellows Program in 2010. She told The American the program “helped me become a better leader and coach.”
In accepting the Corporate Diversity Award, Degnan recalled when Patton first approached him and Patrick McGinnis, CEO of Nestlé Purina PetCare for North and South America.
“She got to us,” Degnan said of Patton. “We see her as a visionary. She is a change agent in our city and our organization.”
Degnan then addressed Patton directly: “Thank you.”
