Six Leading Corporate Executives Join United Negro College Fund’s Board To Help HBCUs

The United Negro College Fund (UNCF) announced the appointment of six corporate executives to its board of directors, effective immediately.

Yahoo News reports corporate executives from Alaska Air Group, Citigroup, Chevron, ExxonMobil, General Motors, and Intel will join top executives from Walmart, Goldman Sachs, KKR, and Procter & Gamble to support the UNCF in its effort to ensure HBCU students reach higher levels of success.

The new members of UNCF’s board are Citigroup Managing Director Vladimir Jean-Fritzner Galiothe; General Motors Executive Vice President Gerald Johnson; Alaska Air Group CEO Ben Minicucci; Chevron Chief Human Resources Officer Rhonda Morris; ExxonMobil Diversity Manager Tara Parker, and Intel Chief Strategy Officer Safroadu Yeboah-Amankwah.

“UNCF and HBCUs have experienced unprecedented donations and recognition of our important mission during the past two years. Today we take a major step forward to continue that momentum in aggressively growing a Board that will deliver increased leadership, funding, and resources for all our UNCF-member institutions,” UNCF Board Chairman Milton H. Jones, Jr. said in a UNCF release. “We are thrilled to welcome this impressive group of diverse, experienced, and talented corporate leaders to join in our progress as we support our member institutions and the students they serve.”

All six have decades of combined experience sitting on corporate boards and dealing with mentoring, recruitment, and retention of employees. Additionally, the group is known for developing and implementing college to career pipelines and career development programs. Plans for the group are still largely unknown but are expected to involve college to career pipelines, job training programs, mentorship programs, and more.

The UNCF is America’s largest and most effective educational organization, supporting the development of Black students through scholarships and other programs. The UNCF has administered more than 400 programs, including scholarship, internship, fellowship, and faculty development programs supporting more than 60,000 students in 1,100 colleges and universities.

HBCU schools have enjoyed numerous partnerships, donations, and initiatives over the last two years as interest in Black students and talent have skyrocketed because of the Black Lives Matter movement and the focus on social equity.