The Hispanic Association on Corporate Responsibility Announces Two CEOs in Annual CEO Roundtable
Veteran CNBC Reporter Bertha Coombs will moderate the discussion on DEI with Martine Ferland, President and CEO at Mercer, and Christopher Swift, Chairman and CEO at The Hartford.
September 25, 2023 /3BL/ - The Hispanic Association on Corporate Responsibility (HACR) is pleased to announce that Martine Ferland, President and CEO at Mercer, and Christopher Swift, Chairman and CEO at The Hartford will take part in the annual HACR CEO Roundtable at the 31th Annual HACR Symposium: The Power of Hispanic Inclusion™. The session is set for 2:00 pm ET on Wednesday, October 11, and will culminate the two-and-a-half-day event, set to take place in Times Square, New York City.
Since 2007, the HACR CEO Roundtable has been the flagship forum of the Annual HACR Symposium: The Power of Hispanic Inclusion™, which itself is in its 31st year. The roundtable is the oldest continuous annual Fortune 500 CEO forum for a Hispanic audience in the country. Over forty CEOs have participated since its inception.
“It is a great privilege to have two proponents of Hispanic inclusion in this year’s HACR CEO Roundtable,” said HACR President and CEO, Cid Wilson. “These are two CEOs in the employee benefits industry with dual perspectives on DEI within their own companies and their client companies. We’re delighted to once-again host CNBC Reporter Bertha Coombs as moderator to lead this dialogue.”
Ferland is President and Chief Executive Officer of Mercer, a $5 billion global consulting leader in human resources, health, wealth, and careers. She also serves as Vice Chair of Marsh McLennan (NYSE: MMC), Mercer’s parent and global professional services firm in the areas of risk, strategy, and people. She is often asked to express her views on diversity and inclusion, healthy societies, sustainability, longevity, and workforce transformation through technology, and is one of Mercer’s most engaged leaders in charitable outreaches. She serves as a trustee for the New York Academy of Medicine and is active in Mercer’s global volunteering program, Mercer Cares, which partners with organizations to create high-impact initiatives in education, disaster preparedness, and recovery.
Swift was named CEO of The Hartford in 2014 and is a long-time DEI advocate and champion of mental health in the workplace. The company is a 2023 Catalyst Award winner, included in the 2023 Bloomberg Gender-Equality Index, and was named as a 2022 Best Place to Work for LGBTQ Equality by the Human Rights Campaign Foundation. In addition to his leadership within The Hartford, Swift has promoted DEI within the broader business community. He was an early signatory to the CEO Action for Diversity & Inclusion Pledge and serves on the Governing Committee for its Racial Equity Fellowship initiative. He is also a Catalyst CEO Champion for Change and has signed on to Paradigm for Parity, a coalition of business leaders committed to achieving gender parity at leadership levels by 2030.
Coombs covers financial markets, business news stories and health care throughout the business day for CNBC. Over twenty years at CNBC, Coombs has covered the tech sector from the Nasdaq Marketsite and general market news from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Before joining the network, she reported for the pioneering streaming business network, Yahoo Finance Vision. Prior to that, she served as a reporter for ABC News One and a substitute anchor for “World News Now” and “World News This Morning.”
Coombs will return to the HACR stage for the fourth time to moderate the HACR CEO Roundtable. She is a graduate of Yale University. Born in Havana, Cuba, she speaks fluent Spanish.
The HACR CEO Roundtable was created in 2007 to provide CEOs from Fortune 500 and HACR corporate member companies a platform to discuss best practices related to inclusive employment, retention strategies, increasing Hispanic consumer market outreach, and diversity in the corporate boardroom.
The 31st Annual HACR Symposium: The Power of Hispanic Inclusion™ will gather corporate leaders in diversity and inclusion from October 9 -11 for two-and-a-half days of programming on the latest data-based equity and inclusion best practices. The Washington DC-based nonprofit Hispanic inclusion organization will unveil the findings of its 2023 HACR Corporate Inclusion Index™ report on October 9 during the event.
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Founded in 1986, the Hispanic Association on Corporate Responsibility (HACR) is the nation’s leading corporate advocacy organization, representing 14 national Hispanic organizations in the United States and Puerto Rico. Its mission is to advance the inclusion of Hispanics in corporate America in the areas of employment, procurement, philanthropy, and governance. Through its corporate leadership advancement programs, best-practice conferences, research initiatives, and public engagements, HACR is illuminating The Power of Hispanic Inclusion™ throughout corporate America.
