Marriott's New Diversity Executive Comes Full Circle

Back when she was a college student working as hotel gift-shop attendant, Jimmie Walton Paschall got some career-building advice from a mentor: get a diverse set of experiences in the business. You'll see issues through multiple lenses and be able to address them from different perspectives.

More than 20 years later, that lesson has brought her back to the company where she got her start. Last week, Paschall, 45, began her new job as global diversity officer for Marriott International, helping the company define and expand its diversity agenda as it focuses on growing overseas.

"It felt like a unique opportunity to blend the range of my experiences with Marriott and external experiences," said Paschall, a Howard University graduate from Georgia. "It was an opportunity to build on the success of the program, initiatives that Dave and other team members had made."

Paschall succeeds David M. Sampson, who, as senior vice president for diversity initiatives, helped make supplier diversity a factor in determining whether a prime contractor gets more business with Marriott. Under Sampson's watch, Marriott also hired a minority-owned investment firm to conduct some of its stock repurchases.

Sampson was one of Paschall's earliest mentors. He died last year.

His advice "was very helpful for me because I had started as an hourly employee with an organization and I knew what that felt like," she said. As she worked her way up from various operational jobs to executive positions, she came into contact with all levels of Marriott employees, as well as customers and suppliers.

The company, which operates more than 2,900 hotels worldwide, said it has met more than 80 percent of its goal of operating 500 woman- and minority-owned hotels abroad. It also has a goal of spending 15 percent of its procurement budget by 2009 with U.S. suppliers owned by minorities, women and gays.

The efforts make sense as the company moves into countries where its operations may change workplace norms, Marriott officials said. While the company may define diversity differently in other parts of the world, its goal is to hire workers to provide services at standards Marriott customers expect.

"We look for people who are friendly, who want to serve, who want to work in this business and who have an appetite for growth and opportunity," Chairman Bill Marriott said at a luncheon last week at the National Press Club.

Last year, Marriott launched Sed de Saber, a program to help Spanish-speaking employees learn English. While 60 percent of Marriott's workforce are minorities, 27 percent of its new managers hired in 2006 were minorities and 46 percent were women. Marriott founded the diversity program in 1989. In 2003 it established a board-level committee to set goals and monitor the company's progress.

Marriott is in the minority of companies to have a high-level diversity officer. Just 30 percent of 1,700 companies surveyed several years ago by Novation Group, an African American-owned consulting group, reported having a diversity officer who reported directly to the chief executive officer.

Paschall's return to Marriott was prompted by a meeting she sought with a company executive she was trying to cajole into partnering with the Volunteers of America, where she was vice president of external affairs.

Instead, the Marriott executive asked if she would want to return to the hotel company.

Two weeks ago, a friend held a congratulatory luncheon for Paschall, where she began reacquainting herself with old and new colleagues.

Among them was a young woman whom Paschall had mentored a decade ago when Paschall was director of human resources in Marriott's lodging division.

"Mentoring happens in formal and informal ways," she said. "But it always has been and will continue to be part of the way we reach out to others."