Sheila Robinson

Building a Legacy at Bennett College:
Meet Bea Y. Perdue

“I was fired from first real job during the summer of the seventh year of my life, by my father, who meant the world to me and then some. Being fired wasn’t nearly as devastating as disappointing the man who had provided me with a true example of work ethic. When I finally stopped crying, he explained to me—as he had done many times before—that even when I was doing the simplest of chores, the difference between doing a job and doing your best at a job. ‘When you shake a man’s hand and accept a job, you’re making a promise to him and to yourself to do the best possible work you can. It doesn’t matter if it’s hot, it doesn’t matter if it turns out to be harder than you thought it would be, and it doesn’t matter if it turns out that you don’t even like the job. You won’t get very far in life if you aren’t willing to put in an honest days work for an honest days pay. If you do the little hard jobs well, you’ll get the chance to do the big easy jobs.’ Those words have guided me and I can still hear his voice when I hear someone trying to convince me that fair is good enough.”

Bea Y. Perdue

To see the evidence of Bea Perdue’s lesson learned, alongside her commitment and dedication to hard work and attaining perfection, one only has to look at the outstanding progress of the Johnnetta B. Cole Global Diversity and Inclusion Institute at Bennett College for Women under her leadership. The Institute was launched just two years ago in March 2004 when Bennett College presented its first Chief Diversity Officers (CDO) Forum here in Greensboro. The 2004 CDO Forum hosted about 170 diversity professionals, practitioners, and thought leaders to focus on issues of workforce diversity and inclusion. Bea and her planning committee surprised everyone in attendance, including Dr. Johnnetta Cole, when they announced the launch of the Institute that would bear Cole’s name. “When Ms. B [it’s how Cole affectionately refers to her] takes on a project it’s like white on rice and black on coal, it’s going to get done and it’s going to be done well. I find myself in constant amazement of the effort and results I’ve seen.” Cole has already announced that she will chair the board of the Institute when she completes her tenure as Bennett’s president in June ’07.

Two years later, this past March at the 2006 CDO Forum, nearly 400 conference attendees converged on Greensboro. Luke Visconti, publisher and cofounder of DiversityInc magazine, espouses, “If you only have time to attend one diversity conference during the year, the CDO Forum is the one to attend.”

The CDO Forum is the Institute’s signature program, but other program launches have been just as successful. With the consultancy and assistance of an advisory board that is composed of a virtual who’s who in the world of diversity, the Institute has already awarded more than $250,000.00 in scholarships to young women at Bennett through the O. LaVelle Bond Diversity Scholars program. The Power Girls Global Summer Leadership Institute, aimed at leadership and personal development for “women of color” in high school, is in its second year. A partnership with the North Carolina Office of State Personnel launched LIFE (Leadership Institute for Female Employees/Executives) while another partnership with Cleveland State University will produce the Institute’s first research project aimed at gaining insight and critical data on the Diversity Management Professional.

“When you work with Bea, you need to put all your assumptions aside about the typical experience of being on a committee or advisory board—things are going to get done, if it’s within her power to do it. Even as you watch her getting it done, she’s convincing you that she has very little to do with the success of it all,” notes Harvard Business School Professor and JBC Institute Advisory Board member David Thomas.

Bea credits her ability to go about most efforts unnoticed with living life as a middle child. “My older sister, Lorene, was a star that had somehow fallen out of the sky and she just lit up every room she entered. I just didn’t have to concentrate on much besides doing what I liked to do—read. When my younger sister came along and Lorene and I were teenagers, I was totally under the radar. Unlike many kids who end up feeling overlooked, I felt blessed. Now I’m charged with the task of advancing an Institute that will serve as the legacy of one of America’s greatest female leaders, and I find the possibility of it all beyond excitement. The only way I really know how to express that excitement is to work at making the JBC Institute representative of how people view Johnnetta Cole and not Bea Perdue.”

Bea came to Bennett with Dr. Cole in 2002 as part of the original fundraising team charged with revitalizing the fledging institution. During her eight-year tenure at Dow Jones, Bea had the fortune to meet Dr. Cole, then president of Spelman College, when the company funded an information resource center for the Atlanta University Center. When Cole came out of retirement to lead Bennett, Bea agreed to commute from Atlanta to work with the Vice President of Advancement to build a strategy for corporate and major gift solicitation. She expected her own tenure to be a year or two at the most. There are varying accounts of a fundraising trip in Detroit where Dr. Cole first expressed the possibility of bringing corporate diversity officers together for a symposium of sorts. Passion took over the rest, as Bea had an opportunity to help create a venue to look at issues around addressing under representation, diversity, and inclusion. It was world she had lived in since 5th grade when she entered an all-white elementary school outside of Birmingham, Alabama. “I remember how lonely it felt not to have a friend to eat lunch with or decide what color we would wear to school the next day. I remember white kids who simply wanted to touch my hair, who refused to sit in the seat next to me and teachers who were more than willing to accommodate their requests. Those same teachers seemed amazed that I could read and write, let alone do it well.”

Even when she went on to complete her Undergraduate degree at the University of Alabama and found career success, it was in companies where few people looked like her. But there were people who took an interest in her and mentored her and they weren’t always women, nor were they always African-American. “I admired Dr. Joel Whitman at Alabama so much because he worked his way through graduate school as a long-distance truck driver, and any time he saw a student really putting forth the effort to succeed he was there with encouragement and assistance. Ninety percent of the people were afraid of Dr. Whitman, because he was definitely about “business,” and that tends to intimidate. My father had served as my Dr. Whitman all my life, and my work study experience in Dr. Whitman’s office was life affirming—they were two people who knew and respected the value of hard work and helping others.”

“At Dow Jones, Tim Andrews, our group president at the time, and an openly gay executive at was considered a very conservative company, really gave me confidence in being me—an African-American woman who could do business. Tim’s advice always came with the preface ‘you can’t whine to me, but you are welcome to the benefit of my experience and knowledge.’ He was truly one of the most brilliant people I’ve ever met and he understood the challenges of attempting to ‘utilize one’s differences to make a difference.’”

“Things have changed and yet much remains much the same. The conversation on diversity and inclusion has simply expanded. The race and gender issues which have been a part of my personal journey are no more crucial to the workplace and the worldplace than issues around sexual orientation, religion, culture, class and all the other ‘isms’ that have the potential to deny access. What people who sit in the seats of privilege often fail to grasp is what it feels like to experience the bias of those ‘isms.’”

Bea and all the individuals who are building the JBC Institute and the legacy of Dr. Cole seem well on their way to expanding the diversity conversation and utilizing the differences of many people to make a difference for all people.

www.jbcinstitute.org