24 Apr 5 Minutes with Gloria Goins

Stay Open to Unexpected Opportunities

Cisco Chief Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Officer Gloria Goins wanted to be a lawyer from the time she was six. She also aspired to become a judge. She’d achieved the first goal and was working toward the second when her father became terminally ill, so to stay nearby, she took a position in diversity, equity, and inclusion with Cingular Wireless. She went on to create the company’s first DEI program, and since then has held DEI leadership positions at such organizations as Amazon, Bon Secours health system, and The Home Depot. “If you were to have a theme song for my life, it would be ‘Woman Plans and God Laughs,’” she says. “But oftentimes those less traveled roads are the ones that provide opportunities for greater joy and greater purpose.” Goins spoke to Diversity Woman about veering off the beaten path, and how women can advance in leadership.

Diversity Woman: Cisco has been No. 1 on Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For list several times. Tell me one of the reasons why.

Gloria Goins: We have something called the Proximity Initiative. It started in 2019 from a conversation that our CEO Chuck Robbins had with Bryan Stevenson, head of the Equal Justice Initiative, around the fact that when people get proximate to the lives of people with whom they are not familiar, it gives them an opportunity to develop empathy. The Proximity Initiative enables our leaders to have conversations with people who are different from them. And since 2019, we’ve had over 2,100 different “proximity conversations.” Not only are we expanding the initiative across Cisco, but we have been called by customers to travel across the world to share the tools around how the Proximity Initiative works, so our customers can use this as well.

DW: Congratulations on being a finalist for OnConferences’s Top 100 DEI Professional Award. What do you think played a role in your nomination?

GG: Being recognized by my peers is extremely humbling and gratifying. I have dedicated the 25 years that I’ve been in this space to not only making sure that I’m successful, but to making sure that all DEI practitioners thrive. That includes everything from writing articles to starting chief diversity officer roundtables to creating DEI certificate programs.

DW: Share some of the efforts Cisco is making to develop women leaders.

GG: Half of our executive leadership team are women. Also, Women of Cisco
is our largest employee resource group. We have 11,000 members across 70 countries, and they do a lot of things around development, whether it is executive shadowing or mentoring or coaching. They have a signature event called Women of Impact, a conference to inspire and educate women.

DW: What advice would you give women who want to advance in leadership?

GG: Leaders are readers, so be a voracious reader and a constant student. I make a commitment to read at least one new book a month, and I’m constantly on the lookout for courses I can take inside Cisco and outside Cisco to make sure that I’m sharpening my business and subject-matter muscles. Also, understand the goals of your organization and how your particular lens or expertise can help amplify those goals.

—Tamara E. Holmes