Robert McDonald

Robert McDonald
Chairman of the Board, President and Chief Executive Officer, The Procter & Gamble Company

Headquarters: Cincinnati, Ohio
Website: www.pg.com
Primary Business: Consumer goods
Revenues: $82.6 billion
Employees: 129,000

P&G Launches New D&I Strategy

Critical to our growth strategy is diversity and inclusion. As a company, our continued success and growth is dependent upon a deep understanding of the diversity of our consumers. To do this, our employee population must reflect the diversity of our markets and consumers. This helps us have empathy for them. Empathy leads to life-improving innovations.

Innovation is connecting two seemingly unconnected ideas. Diversity provides the disparate nodes to connect. We purposely try to put diverse groups of people together to create more opportunities for innovation. There is a correlation between the diversity of our organization, our innovative capability, and our ability to realize our purpose of improving lives. This is how we develop the brands and communications that resonate with the people we serve and want to serve.

I am a firm believer that diversity and inclusion is a competitive advantage for our organization and I am personally committed to continuing to foster a culture of inclusion at P&G. We have no hope of touching and improving the lives of the world’s consumers if we don’t first begin with touching and improving the lives of P&G employees.
About a year ago, we launched P&G’s global diversity and inclusion strategy. With the new strategy, we took three new steps:

1) Appointed a Chief Diversity Officer to oversee the Global Diversity & Inclusion Strategy (Linda Clement- Holmes).

2) Added key focus on inclusion, with aim to maintain a diverse workforce, a diverse leadership pipeline, inspiring employees to perform at their peak, knowing that they are included, respected and valued.

3) Created global Inclusion and Diversity Council, with the aim to renew our overall Diversity & Inclusion efforts, measure results against our goals, and drive accountability throughout the organization.

Externally, we want to be and be recognized as a global leader in diversity and inclusion. Internally, we want to ensure we are fostering a culture of inclusion so that diversity is culturally embedded in all we do.

I am inspired each day by the ways P&G employees are putting their passion behind our diversity and inclusion strategy and bringing it to life. As we continue to embrace diversity and truly make it a part of all we do, the results of the company will be inseparable from the characteristics of diversity that make up our global operations. This is how we will continue touching and improving lives, now and for generations to come.

Education:BS, United States Military Academy at West Point; MBA, University of Utah
First Job: Airborne Ranger Infantry Platoon Leader, C Company, 1st of the 504th Airborne Infantry, 82nd Airborne Division
What I’m Reading:Bismarck: A Life, by Jonathan Steinberg
My Philosophy:Live life with purpose.
Best Advice: Choose the harder right rather than the easier wrong.
Family: Married, with two grown children
Interests: Family, exercise, reading, learning
Favorite Charity: United States Military Academy Association of Graduates