Laurie Dowling
Over the past few years diversity, equity, and inclusion has lost some of the pioneering champions of the field – scholars, business leaders, and public servants who paved the way for the generation of leaders now coming to the forefront. This is a small tribute to their memories.
Price M. Cobbs, M.D. 1928-2018
Price M. Cobbs, M.D. was a best-selling author, psychiatrist, management consultant, and civil rights leader. Dr. Cobbs opened a psychiatric clinic in San Francisco with Dr. William Grier, who would become his writing partner on the seminal study of the experience of Black Americans in the mid-20th century, Black Rage, Basic Books, 1968. Black Rage, based on the clinical work of Drs. Cobbs and Grier, provided a narrative of how the legacy of centuries of slavery and Jim Crow era discrimination had a devastating effect on the lives of many Black Americans. This book, and the media attention it generated, helped advance crucial actions on civil rights and discussions about equity in business and society.
Dr. Cobbs followed this groundbreaking work with teaching and management consulting for organizations and companies including The Executive Leadership Council, PepsiCo, the UCLA Anderson School of Management, among many others. His additional publications included, The Jesus Bag, also with William H. Grier, McGraw-Hill,1971; Cracking the Corporate Code: The Revealing Success Stories of 32 Minority Executives, with Judith L. Turlock, Amacom, 2003; and My American Life: From Rage to Entitlement, Atria Books, 2005.
“Racism looms like an iceberg in the Arctic Sea,” he wrote. “It is huge and immobile and what lies above the water must be avoided, but the real danger lies in what is unseen.” (Price M. Cobbs as quoted in The New York Times, July 10, 2018.)
The Honorable Gwen Moore 1940-2020
Los Angeles native Gwen Moore served from 1978 to 1994 in the California State Assembly for the 47th and 49th districts. During her tenure she was a champion of “common sense laws”, authoring over 400 bills, but it was General Order 156 that has had a significant and long-lasting impact on the diversity, equity, and inclusion landscape in California, and which has been a model for other states.
GO-156, which was adopted in 1988, required the California Public Utilities Commission to establish a procedure for electrical, gas, water, wireless telecommunications and telephone providers to “submit annual detailed and verifiable plans for increasing women-owned, minority-owned, disabled veteran-owned and LGBT-owned business enterprise procurement in all categories.” Both inside the legislature and after her departure, Assembly member Moore continued to encourage participation in Go-156, speaking regularly at the California Public Utilities Commission supplier diversity En Banc hearing. Her catalyst efforts continue to bear fruit today. In 2022 California utilities reported spending $14.3 billion with diverse suppliers - 30.6% of total spend. (Source California Public Utilities Commission, September 28, 2023 report.)
Assemblymember Moore also is known for her authorship of the Moore Universal Telephone Service Act in 1994, which established a lifeline telephone service program which provided access to affordable residential telephone service to low income California households.
Judy B. Rosener, Ph.D. 1929-2022
Judy B. Rosener was a groundbreaking scholar on diversity in management, especially women in management, and Professor Emerita at the University of California Irvine Merage School of Management. Dr. Rosener was a traditional housewife and mother until the opening of UC Irvine near her home, where she was one of the first three graduate students. Dr. Rosener started teaching part time at
UCI Extension, but in order to become a professor, she knew that she would need a Ph.D., which led to her receiving a doctorate at age 50 from the Claremont Graduate University and then becoming a full-time instructor at the UC Irvine Graduate School of Management, where she served 30 years.
Dr. Rosener was the author of the path-breaking article, Ways Women Lead, Harvard Business Review November/December 1990 and co-author of Workforce America! Managing Employee Diversity as a Vital Resource, Business One Irwin, 1991, the first book about managing a diverse workforce as a business case. Her book, America’s Competitive Secret, Women Managers, Oxford University Press, 1997, paved the way for a significant growth in scholarship on the role that diverse managers’ unique cultural and gender perspectives can play in helping their companies.
Professor Rosener not only opened the door to discussions that validated the unique ways that women managers can lead their companies, with America’s Competitive Secret she highlighted the value to companies in the gender specific knowledge of their women employees, helping to lead the way for an additional value proposition for companies to consider when assessing the importance of their diverse teams.
The Honorable Harold D. Williams 1944-2022
Following a successful career with Baltimore Gas and Electric Company including serving in the position of Director of Procurement Services, Harold Williams was appointed to the Maryland Public Service Commission in 2002. That experience in procurement turned out to have an important impact on diverse business enterprises in the State of Maryland and on the entire utilities and communications industries in the United States.
During his service from 2002 to 2016, Commissioner Williams proved to be a tireless champion for supplier diversity, leading the efforts of the Commission, with his fellow Commissioners, to create and implement Public Conference 16 in 2008. PC16 (now PC 52) created a voluntary Memorandum of Understanding between the Public Service Commission and 16 regulated utilities for annual reporting on spend with diverse suppliers. The PC 52 program reports in 2023 showed that regulated utilities in Maryland spent $1.53 billion with diverse business enterprises.
During his tenure on the Maryland Public Service Commission, Commissioner Williams also was one of the founders of the Utility Marketplace Access Partnership of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC), which focused on encouraging knowledge and action among regulatory commissions in support of supplier and workplace diversity in the utilities and communications industries. This entity, now called the Select Committee on Regulatory and Industry Diversity, has been a valuable resource to regulatory commissions around the United States.
In honor of Commissioner Williams’ dedication to the PC52 program and its significant and positive impact on diverse business enterprises and utilities and communications in Maryland, the Maryland Public Service Commission voted in 2023 to rename the annual supplier diversity hearing “The Harold Williams Supplier Diversity Hearing.’
