Creating a Level Playing Field Summit was held on Wednesday, July 17, where senior officers from leading nonprofit organizations and corporate DEI groups shared informative updates and generated actionable ideas.

You can view and download the Summary of the speeches and new idea here.

This Summit is organized by Committee of 100 and with financial sponsorship by McKinsey & Co.
Special thanks to Dorsey & Whitney for the use of their conference center.

Adrian Kwok
Associate Partner
McKinsey & Co.

Adrian Kwok is an Associate Partner at McKinsey & Company, based in New York City, and is part of McKinsey’s Real Estate, Private Equity and People and Organizational Performance (POP) practices. He serves clients across industries on a range of topics, including hybrid work, workplace and real estate strategy, and investing in real estate and infrastructure assets. Kwok co-founded and continues to lead McKinsey’s Asian employee resource group globally. He also co-leads McKinsey’s Connected Leaders Academy (for Asian, Hispanic and Latino, and Black leaders), and is passionate about advancing diverse leadership at McKinsey and in the broader community.

Cecilia Stanton Adams
Co-founder & President
The Diversity Institute

Cecilia Stanton Adams MA is a sociologist and entrepreneur committed to creating innovative approaches to strengthening leadership development and diversity efforts. She is most noted for her ability to foster paradigm shifts, change behavior, and empower individuals, teams, and communities. She is an award-winning trainer and was recognized for outstanding research on unconscious bias by the American Psychological Association.​

Stanton Adams is a visionary leader with more than 15 years of experience as a strategic diversity expert. She works with diversity leaders and practitioners from educational institutions, nonprofits, government agencies, and corporations to sharpen their skills and successfully execute strategic diversity initiatives.

Ngan Nguyen
Senior Vice President, Global Diversity & Talent Management
Citi

Dr. Ngan Nguyen is currently a Global Strategic Advisor at Citi, after serving as Ascend Leadership’s National Director of Executive Networks. Dr. Nguyen began her international development career at the United Nations. She then joined the Harvard Institute for International Development to help drive U.S.-Vietnam normalization, Oxfam America as a senior program officer, National Geographic as Vietnam sea-kayaking expedition co-lead, and Asia Society as a global advisor. In 2011, she earned a doctorate in international relations and Asian politics. Besides serving on various non-profit boards, she founded Ai Vy’s, a gourmet food company that mainstreams healthy ethnic cuisines.

Frank Wu
President
Queens College

Frank H. Wu is currently the President of Queens College. He previously served as the William L. Prosser Distinguished Professor, at University of California Hastings College of Law and was the Chancellor & Dean at the school, receiving unanimous renewal to a second term. Before joining Queens College and UC Hastings, he was a member of the faculty at Howard University, the nation’s leading historically black college/university (HBCU), for a decade. He served as Dean of Wayne State University Law School in his hometown of Detroit, and he has been a visiting professor at University of Michigan; an adjunct professor at Columbia University; and a Thomas C. Grey Teaching Fellow at Stanford University. He taught at the Peking University School of Transnational Law in its inaugural year and again a decade later. In his leadership roles at UC Hastings and Wayne, as well as on the faculty at Howard, he was the first Asian American to serve in such a capacity.

Professor Wu is the author of Yellow: Race in America Beyond Black and White, which was immediately reprinted in its hardcover edition, and co-author of Race, Rights and Reparation: Law and the Japanese American Internment, which received the single greatest grant from the Civil Liberties Public Education Fund. He blogged regularly for five years at Huffington Post (“HuffPo”), and his work has appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, Chronicle of Higher Education and National Law Journal. Over the years, Professor Wu has maintained an extensive schedule of media appearances and public speaking. His professional credits include commentary for National Public Radio and Now with Bill Moyers. He has appeared as a guest on the Oprah Winfrey show, O’Reilly Factor, and C-SPAN Booknotes with Brian Lamb.

Peter Young
CEO and President
Young & Partners

Peter Young is CEO and President of Young & Partners, a boutique corporate strategy and investment banking firm focused on the life science and chemical industries. He manages the firm and is actively involved in client projects, transactions, and financings. Under his leadership, Young & Partners has established and maintained its position as a highly regarded firm serving the corporate strategy, M&A, restructuring, and financing needs of clients worldwide. He was previously head of industry groups at Salomon Brothers, Schroders, and Lehman Brothers, a senior private equity executive with J.H. Whitney & Co., and a senior member of Bain & Co., a corporate strategy firm.

Mr. Young received a BA in Economics from Yale, an MS in Accounting from NYU, and an MBA from Harvard Business School where he graduated as a Baker Scholar. He is a CPA and a Chartered Global Management Accountant. He serves on several boards of directors, both corporate and non-profit; and is a board member of Société de Chimie Industrielle, a leading life science and chemical industry non-profit organization; and on the Editorial Advisory Board of Pharmaceutical Executive. He is also the New York Regional Chair for Committee of 100.

*The webinar is part of an in-person event in New York with invited leaders of DEI, ERG, and Career Ceiling related non-profit organizations who will work on creating new solutions and collaborations.