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JANET STOVALL
Davidson alum aims to put racial equity at the top of corporate America’s to-do list
SCOTT AREMAN
BY KRISTEN SWING
JANET STOVALL describes herself as “single-minded” in her fight against racism in the corporate world. The communications expert has worked for more than two decades as the head speechwriter at various Fortune 500 companies, most recently at UPS, where she’s worked as an executive since 2017. Few people of color work as executive speechwriters, and Stovall, 57, uses her own experiences as fuel to make sure issues of race are front and center in the minds and speeches of company leaders—most of them white men. Today, she is best known for her 2018 TED Talk on the importance of setting specific goals to achieve diversity and inclusion in business; as of early December, the video of the talk had drawn nearly 1.9 million views.
FEBRUARY 2021 // CHARLOTTE
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