Eric Nitcher, group general counsel, BP

In a company like BP, it is often easier to progress the diversity agenda in functions like legal than when working on the oil and gas side, where the pipeline of diverse candidates may be less robust. But because of the global nature of BP’s operations and the rich cultural diversity in which we do business, it is vital that we provide all of our employees with the tools and skills necessary to effectively integrate into different environments.

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Eric Grossman, chief legal officer, Morgan Stanley

At Morgan Stanley, we are in the service profession – we don’t make anything. Rather, we serve the communities we operate in. But we don’t always reflect those communities in the ways we would like. Putting aside the moral and ethical issues, we just think this is bad business, and as a goal, we want to better reflect the communities we serve.

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Dana Rao, vice president of intellectual property and litigation, Adobe

I’m an electrical engineer by training and then became a patent lawyer. In patent law you need to have a technical degree before obtaining your law degree, and so, even though I’m in the legal field, I see first-hand the diversity issues that tech companies are facing. The pool of diverse candidates in the engineering space is smaller than it should be, and so the pool in patent law is even smaller.

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Mark Roellig, general counsel, MassMutual

Diversity for me has been an issue I’ve been passionate about throughout my career. It’s certainly something which has evolved over time, but it’s rooted in my upbringing. My parents were very involved in the Civil Rights Movement back in the 1960s, so from an early age it has been ingrained in us as children that concepts like civil rights, diversity and valuing differences were the right thing to do.

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