NEW YORK — Lowe’s CEO Marvin Ellison personally knows about racism.
He grew up in segregated rural Tennessee. His father was a sharecropper-turned-insurance salesman and his mother was one of the first in their family to graduate from high school. Both parents taught him and his six siblings to never allow their surroundings to limit their expectations or their vision of what they could be.
Today at 55, Ellison stands out as one of only three Black Fortune 500 CEOs, bringing with him 35 years of retail experience including as the former CEO of J.C. Penney and various senior operations roles at rival Home Depot.
When he took over the helm of Lowe’s in 2018, Ellison diversified the company’s ranks to better reflect its customer base. Now, 55% of its executive leaders and 60% of its board are female or ethnically diverse.
Following the police killing of George Floyd, Lowe’s began holding meetings with employees to create “comfortable″ settings to have “uncomfortable” conversations about race; it also invested $55 million in minority-owned businesses.