OAK RIDGE, TN – Small businesses in East Tennessee are invited to attend a half-day summit to gather tools and tips on building a more diverse, inclusive work force. Because of their mutual commitment to workforce development, UCOR and Pellissippi State Community College are offering a free program featuring speakers from global companies providing insights on diversity.

Pellissippi State President Anthony Wise and UCOR President and CEO Ken Rueter will open the event. The morning’s key speaker is Pat Harris, former Global Chief Diversity Officer and Vice President of Community Engagement for McDonald’s Corporation. Harris led the evolution of McDonald’s diversity and inclusion function and has documented that experience in her book None of Us is As Good As All of Us: How McDonald's Prospers by Embracing Inclusion and Diversity.

Harris is followed by Clifford Brown from Accenture and Cheryl Cabbil from AECOM. Brown is Service Delivery Operations Lead for Accenture's Knoxville Intelligent Operations Center. More specific to the diversity topic, Brown is the Executive Advisor to the Center’s Employee Resource Groups. Accenture uses its ERG program to connect its employees, believing that they are “stronger, smarter, more innovative together.” Their ERGs bring together employees from a variety of backgrounds, cultures, ethnicities, beliefs, and languages.

Rounding out the morning is Cheryl Cabbil, AECOM’s Senior Vice President of Operations. Cabbil has more than 30 years of executive and leadership experience in high-hazard nuclear facility operations. Central to Cabbil’s presentation on microaggressions is her extensive experience leading and managing people. This session deals with recognizing when microaggressions are happening and how to deal with them so that employees can work together more effectively.

Due to limited space, registration is required for the August 13 event. To register, go to diversitysummittickets.eventbrite.com. Registration begins at 8 a.m. The program runs from 8:30 a.m. to noon.

UCOR, an AECOM-led partnership with Jacobs, is under contract with the Department of Energy (DOE) to clean up East Tennessee Technology Park, a former gaseous diffusion plant that DOE is converting into a multi-use industrial park. It also performs cleanup work at other DOE Oak Ridge Reservation locations, including Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Y-12 Nuclear Security Complex.

Pellissippi State Community College offers a high-quality, affordable, convenient and personal education to prepare students to achieve their educational and career goals. Pellissippi State offers associate degree and certificate programs, workforce development programs and transfer pathways to four-year degrees. For more information, visit www.pstcc.edu or call 865-694-6400.