INROADS Ninth Annual Best of Class Conference
May 25, 2007
INROADS Ninth Annual Best of Class Conference was held on February 27th - 28th in Hartford Connecticut. It was sponsored by United Technologies Corporation (UTC). This year’s theme was: “From Strategy to Execution: Succeeding with INROADS”.
Participation in the annual Best of Class conference and national awards ceremony was limited to INROADS National Accounts, comprised by those corporate clients that have made a significant commitment to the leadership and career development of exceptional multiethnic college students.
“Best of Class awards goes beyond celebrating the number of interns because, as we all know, diversity is about much more than just numbers,” said Charles Cornelius, CEO of INROADS. “We recognize companies who enhance their environments to encourage a diverse employment base through retention and conversion metrics.”
Partner and co-founder of DiversityInc Magazine and DiversityInc.com, Luke Visconti, spoke at the awards presentation. “This is an event that measures success. INROADS recognizes those businesses who make an investment in diversity. And it is important to know that this isn’t charity. INROADS is an investment in a company’s future,” says Visconti.
Award recipients were the following:
Growth Award: Recognizes companies with the highest INROADS Intern growth percentage.
Walgreens: Growth percentage rate of 55%; (grew from 38 to 59 interns)
Ernst & Young: Growth percentage rate of 76%; (grew from 90 to 158 interns)
Conversion Award: Recognizes companies with the highest percentage of INROADS Interns who became full-time employees upon graduation.
KPMG: Conversion rate of 95.5%
PricewaterhouseCoopers: Conversion rate of 87.5%
Retention Award: Recognizing those companies with the highest INROADS Intern retention percentage
KPMG: Retention rate of 92.3%
Ernst & Young: Retention rate of 94.4%
Executive Champion Award: United Technologies Corporation (UTC)
Honored for their efforts to expand the partnership nationally and for acting as ambassadors of the INROADS mission.
UTC representatives were Bob Currier, Tom McEachin, and Jeffrey Pino.
“UTC has partnered with INROADS for more than 20 years and today, we still have roughly two-thirds of all the people who we’ve hired through INROADS since 1985. That is an enviable track record that we are very, very proud of, and we could not have accomplished that without INROADS,” says J. Thomas Bowler, UTC Vice President of Human Resources.