patricia david – a seat at the table

Citigroup has positioned itself as a premier financial leader in the African American community, in large part due to their efforts to build partnerships in the communities they serve. In collaboration with the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition’s Annual Wall Street Project, Citigroup’s Patricia Davis, the managing director and global head of diversity and talent management, is a major participant in the annual conference. The Wall Street Project’s objective is to educate African Americans on economic development issues and strategies. Davis says she fully supports the messages being brought forward from the annual event.
“I personally think that it’s important to provide a forum for African Americans and Latinos in this country to continue to keep things like [the Wall Street Project] on the agenda. I think sometimes in local community settings we don’t have the power and the force, or the relationships with organizations to get together and show how as a community we can actually be strong. [Being] a stronger voice … is another way to actually bring up the community to break the economic social injustice that I think goes on in this country,” explains David.
David’s insight on ascending through the ranks of corporate America has proven to be advantageous to the many minority women that Citigroup employs. “Women who get their degrees sometimes are maybe naive to think that just the fact [that] you’ve got a good degree is going to get you in the door. The cover charge is education, but the ability to stay at the company is not just your education – it’s relationships, it’s networking, it’s mentoring, it’s really just understanding how you actually navigate the seas of a corporate environment early on in your career,” says David. -jason thompson