It’s a positive cycle: inclusivity and encouragement ultimately leads to stronger leadership.
Ricardo Hunter has only been in his role for a year and a half, but even still, he feels that his impact can already be seen. When asked what he loves about Nasdaq, the answer is simple: “They want to see people succeed.”
“I think there's a genuine care about people's career when it comes to most people," Hunter adds. "I like the company and the benefits are great. The people I work with have been fantastic.”
The name ‘Nasdaq’ conjures familiar images of the trading floor, but it’s so much more. Ricardo agrees: “I try to tell people we're more than just a stock market where we do technology, we're a fintech company at this point. So there's a lot more different business units and opportunities that we have here.”
As part of GLOBE (Global Link of Black Employees), Ricardo has been able to meet other black employees, and discuss issues facing them as a community, both within Nasdaq, and in the wider community.
It’s only through inclusion, diversity and banding together that recurring issues can be identified and brought to the attention of those in power. “We were able to create a task force to try to address some of the needs or issues that we thought were relevant to Nasdaq that we either we see or didn't see, where we think Nasdaq needs to go in the future and how we need to think about where the black employees are lacking or where we see lack of diversity.”
On the one-year anniversary of George Floyd’s death, Nasdaq CEO Adena Friedman penned a note to staff regarding the importance of transparency and diversity.
Ricardo got in touch to thank her.
“There’s still a long road ahead of us,” he says, but he did also note that it was impressive to see a CEO who clearly wants “...to be a change agent for everything, I just wanted to let her know that we appreciate it.”
This transparency is something that rings true throughout company culture at Nasdaq.
“I know I personally am not afraid to raise my hand to maybe drive a project or at least ask the question and say, we shouldn't be doing this anymore, we should be doing something else, or someone else should be taking care of this responsibility," Hunter said.
